A party, an infuriated host and a secret code

A party, an infuriated host and a secret code. That was how it happened. Someone, I don’t know exactly who, was throwing one of those parties where everyone stands around, dressed to the nines, nibbling hors d’oeuvres and making small talk, all the while dreaming of getting home and taking off their high heels.

My great-uncle Billy was there. Billy was a priest, a catholic priest, but he had no patience for the rituals and pomp of the church. He liked to play pranks on my mother and her siblings; driving the car with his knees, long grasshopper legs folded to squeeze into his Volkswagen, while my mother and maybe two of my aunts sat in the back seat watching in awe. He would talk to them, gesticulating wildly, all the while secretly steering with his knees, as they shrieked at every corner.

At this party, however, there were no children to encourage to unscrew the tops to the salt shakers. There was no one to talk to, no one to laugh with save one friend who, to Billy’s dismay, had been captured by a little old lady who spoke too loudly, her hearing aid broken. Billy stood in the center of the room, hands in pockets, waiting for his friend to return. With his long legs, he could easily survey the party over the tops of the guests’ boring, boring heads, even as they jostled him on their way to get more wine and even as they tried, in vain to ask him about his flock.

He stood in the center of the action, like a guard tower, only so that he could intercept the maximum number of hors d’oeuvres trays and fill up on tiny quiches, bits of French bread and Bruchetta, pâté, little shrimps on toothpicks, and an unidentifiable, though delicious and savory, mush in what looked like miniscule cannoli. He thought, as he chewed slowly and looked around for his friend, that it probably contained mushroom.

Over the hubbub of the party, he didn’t hear his name being called for several minutes; he was too busy listening to his friend’s captor accidentally bellowing about her Bichon Frise.

“Father William!” came a wheezy voice from someone at my uncle’s shoulder level. My uncle looked down to see a short, perfectly combed crop of salt and pepper hair. He gave the hair his kindest, most priestly smile.

“Hello.” He said, before turning to continue looking absently around at the crowd. They were all bumping each other and drawling out excuse me’s and pardon me’s as they tried to negotiate their ways to the drink table and the restroom, alternatively. They looked, to Billy, like a group of exceptionally polite and stupid penguins.

“You’re being extraordinarily rude!” the crop of hair said to my great-uncle, its voice becoming nasal with annoyance.

“Oh, am I?” Billy asked, disinterested. The little old lady friend-napper was chattering at the top of her lungs about her grandchildren, now. Billy sighed and wondered why his friend was not using their secret code, the one they’d decided on before the party to escape awkward conversations.

“Yes!” said the hair, craning its neck to actually look Billy in the eye. “You are! Now, my wife went to a great deal of trouble to put this party together and—”

Billy frowned and hummed and nodded at the end of each sentence, to give the impression that he was listening. “…She’s been trying to get your attention for nearly fifteen minutes and you’ve snubbed her no less than ten times…” Billy made an apologetic expression as the man’s face grew red and he seemed to grow, expanding like a puffer fish. “And I expect an apology, now!” Billy’s heart stopped and then began again in double time. His eyes widened. Pretending to listen seemed, suddenly, very unwise. “Father William!”

Billy swallowed, hard. His mind flew to his and his friend’s secret code. The word they were supposed to work ever-so-casually into a conversation to hint to the other that they would need rescuing. “Apologize to my wife!” the man huffed and puffed, his neatly combed hair rebelling in his fury. The entire room of socialite penguins turned to stare at the conflict, confused expressions on their faces, as if they’d forgotten what anger was. Billy, his heart pounding, mouth dry and mind flying did the only thing he could think of. He opened his mouth and, over the voice of the friend-napper, over the fascinated lull of the crowd and over the waiters quietly offering guests spinach dip, he bellowed the codeword:

“LEOPARD!”