Gatsby Scares Up a Devil of a Party

We are fortunate, somehow, to live in one of those leafy Los Angeles suburbs where the burglar alarms can be mistaken for the neighing of horses, and the marriages consist almost always of strawberries and lovemaking. Or lovemaking and strawberries, depending on the couple.

Sure, there are other activities too. Laundry. Soccer. The washing of the dog, which is similar to lovemaking, what with all the kissing and ear-nibbling that goes on.

And, once in a while, there’s a great party.

“So, are we having a party?” I ask, the way Gatsby used to.

“For Halloween?” my wife asks.

She and I have this arrangement, arrived at early in our marriage: I’ll handle the Halloween parties. She’ll handle the kids’ weddings.

It’s a very balanced setup. One of us winds up handling a creepy, frightening occasion where people dress up in funny clothes and misbehave. The other handles Halloween. Seems fair enough.

“I don’t know about a Halloween party,” my wife says. “They’re a lot of work.”

“Me either,” says one of the kids.

“I’ll take care of everything,” I say.

And for a few days, I actually live up to this lie. I wash the dog. I clean the garage. I climb stepladders and hang Halloween things.

I’ve reached the age where if I stand on a stepladder for five minutes, the muscles in my legs begin to quiver and my potassium level drops dangerously.

Soon, the room begins to spin and I am flailing like a canary, grasping for whatever cheap crepe paper thing I just taped to the ceiling. For me, it’s much like flying.

“You OK up there?” my wife asks over and over.

“I’m fine,” I say.

The agreement this year is that we will have a downsized Halloween party. Not dozens of adults. Not dozens of teenagers.

Just a dozen of the little girl’s friends. No stress. No mess. No police showing up on the doorstep at midnight, pleading for calm and a piece of Halloween cake.

On the menu, five large pizzas. A case of soft drinks. A few bags of chips.

“I’ve rented some tables,” my wife says the morning of the party.

“Do we really need extra tables?”

“Where were they all going to sit?” she asks.

“Sit?” I say.

These kids won’t sit. They are 9 and 10. They’ll circle the house like pirates, I tell my wife. They’ll chase squirrels from the trees and knock birds from the sky. They’ll set fire to the furniture. It’ll be fun.

“I’ve got this idea for a party game,” I say.

“What?” the little girl asks.

“Halloween Survivor,” I say. “Tribal Council, the whole deal.”

“Can I be host?” the little girl asks.

“Sure,” I say, “but you’ll have to be funny.”

“Maybe Pete should host,” she says.

Which is a real kick in the chops. Pete is her friend’s dad. He makes movies. He’s professionally funny, in a laugh-out-loud, milk-through-your-nose sort of way. Does more dialects than the U.N.

But he’s not giving the party. He’s not duct-taping witches to the wall and hanging skeletons and cleaning out real spider webs from the garage to hang fake ones, $1.39 a bag.

He’s not hanging orange and black streamers from the garage ceiling and accidentally stapling his thumb to the rafters. He’s not missing the Nebraska-Oklahoma game, or the first three innings of the World Series, Schilling on the mound.

Pete’s not doing that. In fact, on the day of the party he’s taking his wife, the leggy dentist, off to Vegas for some sort of romantic, booze-filled felony that will last most of the weekend. Pete’s watching football. Pete’s probably having strawberries.

“Pete’s booked,” I tell the little girl.

“Too bad,” she says.

“I could host,” I tell her.

“You?” the little girl says.

Who am I, Wink Martindale? Sure, I have my limitations. But I’m completely capable of hosting a kids’ party. I can entertain fifth-graders. Once, I even made my wife laugh. It was years ago, and I was probably naked at the time. But she laughed, for what seemed like hours.

“Maybe Billy Crystal’s available,” I tell the little girl.

“Who?” she asks.

“Or maybe I’ll just host,” I say.

“Whatever,” she says, a ringing endorsement.

So I grab another bag of Sav-On spider webs and climb back up on the ladder. I climb back down, grab the staple gun, then climb back up. For two hours, this is pretty much how it goes.

But on the way to setting out the rental chairs, a great thing happens. I brush by my wife, who shows signs of recognition. Even interest.

“There’s that Gatsby guy again,” she’s probably thinking.

Her hair smelled of strawberries.

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Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is [email protected].