The Last Fourth of July by Scott Pomfret

Catastrophe. Social disaster. Already noon and not enough dancers, Kitty told the pool boys.

The pool boys were piecing together a parquet dance floor on her back lawn. They said, We can dance.

I’m sure you can, dear, Kitty said. She could just picture it: scandal. Maybe she’d take up their offer. God knew her husband and the other patricians of Oyster Cove were too dignified to kick up their heels.

The party planner set loose imported spiders in the oaks, which spun webs in the branches. One of the poolboys shinnied up the trunk, and, using bellows, dusted the webs with silver and gold glitter, so that after nightfall, they’d sparkle. 

Parfait! Kitty said.

Parfait, parroted the poolboy. Shirtless, seeking a tip, wearing a Fourth of July flag bathing suit, he lewdly asked whether he could perform any other service.

Kitty wondered whether he and the other poolboy boned each other on the side. Such exquisite deviance.

The hammering of tentpoles had displaced the poc of lawn tennis and the swot of badminton. Carrying an umbrella to ward off skin cancer, Kitty’s husband shuffled out on the lawn in protest. His pocket square was festooned with anchors, very much like the ones with which his body would be weighted a few months hence when the mobs threw him still alive into the harbor. Kitty dispatched a poolboy to fetch a gimlet to take the edge off his temper.

The party commenced before sunset. Oysters. Olives. Ice. Stiff jokes about imported spiders creeping down one’s spine.

But still no dancers. Suzanne, the first outsider to purchase a beachfront mansion in Oyster Cove in over a century, had promised to supply friends. But nothing. It was maddening. It was sixteen minutes to midnight. Fifteen. Fourteen.

A comet streaked overhead. Her husband decided: a sign of good luck. His civilized banter belied all care of political strife. (This was, of course, just months before desperate persons led by the poolboys occupied the often-empty Oyster Cove mansions.)

Still, no dancers.

Thirteen minutes to midnight, just when Kitty started to sob, Suzanne’s friends spilled across the lawn: ill-fitting secondhand suits, flapper dresses, and mismatched clown shoes. They incited riots among the grandchildren, whom they flung around like Mardi Gras beads after someone had showed their tits. They smoked pot with the poolboys.

And Lord, Suzanne was right: they could dance. They led grandchildren to the floor. Old ladies. Even Kitty permitted herself to be twirled, her feet kicking mid-air as if she were dangling at the end of a rope.

Her dance partner cracked his knuckles, which reminded Kitty of bones shaken in a dice cup and scattered, their positions and proximity read for prophecy. He said the secret smile playing about Kitty’s face made him think Kitty could see the future. 

Kitty winked and admitted she’d always had a touch of the second sight.

Glimpses, she said, giggling modestly. They’re nothing.

Suzanne’s friend swept off his trilby. He countered that (as she well knew from the cards) Kitty would soon come to love him so much, she’d hack off his legs at the knee to keep him from running.

Three minutes to midnight, a solitary spider glittering in the gleam of party lights descended on a single thread of web. Kitty trapped the silvered creature in her champagne coupe. The poolboy cheered.

Indignantly refreshing their martinis, Kitty’s husband and the other Oyster Cove patricians steamed. They were honking Canada geese shitting turds on the putting greens.

In Kitty’s opinion? Delicious. 

Kitty’s husband observed, “The dancers are as bad as the poolboys.”

Another Oyster Cove patrician opined, “Someone ought to call the cops.”

A third asked, “Who on earth let these ruffians in?” 

Overheated, breathless, amused by her own audacity, Kitty bleated, “I did.”

The poolboy winked. Kitty touched the cold coupe to her forehead. Midnight. Fireworks.

Scott Pomfret

Image: A burst of fireworks in red and white against a black sky.