Losing Clementine by Ashley Ream

started. I was still fashionably late, just this side of rude.
    I stood and watched for a moment. I knew nearly everyone by reputation and some well enough to speak to. I pulled my wrap around my arms—deserts are cold at night—and watched, looking for my landing spot. The people organized themselves by category. Old college friends moved together. Faculty joined and split and rejoined. Artists who were not the groom’s former students formed a subset, as did gallery owners and a group that stayed to the sides, wearing flat shoes and conservative garden party dresses. Family, I decided, and gave them a wide berth, pointing myself instead toward old college friends.
    A reflecting pool, wide and rectangular, was full of floating candles. I took the path that wrapped around it. The closer I got, the more the hum of the party dissolved into high-pitched laughter and snippets of words. A uniformed waiter intercepted me with a silver tray half-empty but still also half-full of little toasts topped with shaved salmon and something white and creamy. I took one, and he handed me a napkin. I ate the toast in one bite. Dinner couldn’t come soon enough.
    There were two more waiters. One carried tall flutes of gold champagne, a thin layer of bubbles still clinging to the surface. I took one of those and a bacon-wrapped shrimp from the other guy. The shrimp was still in my mouth when Jeremy spotted me through the throng of guests. He hurried over and threw his arms around me. I hadn’t yet wiped my fingers, but I hugged him anyway. Bacon grease wouldn’t show on the back of his black tux.
    â€œS-s-s-s-so glad you came, Clem-m-m-mentine.”
    â€œI wouldn’t have missed it for all the world and the one after that,” I said, which was true.
    I hadn’t seen him in two years, which is one of those things you let happen and doesn’t feel like anyone’s fault but is.
    â€œHave you m-m-met Mark?” He put a hand on the bicep of the identically dressed man to his left, who put out a cool, smooth hand to shake.
    I took it. “It hasn’t yet been my pleasure,” I said. “Clementine Pritchard.”
    â€œOf course, I know who you are. You’re Jeremy’s most prized former student.”
    I smiled, and Jeremy blushed. “I n-n-never played favorites.”
    Jeremy had short, spiked silver hair and wore small round glasses with black plastic frames. He had been my professor in the painting department at the Art Institute. We both liked to work late and eat meatball banh mi sandwiches from the Vietnamese fast-food place down the street, which wasn’t a restaurant so much as a building with a hole cut into the side that dispensed food. Everything came wrapped in wax paper and without enough napkins. We would spread out our dinners on the worktables in the studio and drink sodas from the machine chained to a pipe outside the side entrance. No one was waiting for me to come home, and I guessed no one was waiting for him, either. It was nice not to have to eat alone, and he was a good teacher. He was a better teacher than he was a painter. I sensed he knew that and didn’t mind it much.
    â€œI did,” I said. “Jeremy was my favorite professor.”
    The tips of the grass tickled the sides of my feet in my open sandals, and another waiter approached with more salmon. I took one and so did Mark. Jeremy waved him off.
    â€œI haven’t said hello to everyone y-y-yet, and we’re about to have dinner.”
    â€œGo on then,” said Mark, leaning over to kiss him. “I’ll talk to Clementine.”
    Jeremy waved as he went and then threw his arms open to new arrivals. Mark watched him go. He looked young enough to be Jeremy’s son and handsome enough to get paid for it.
    â€œWhat do you do?” I asked.
    â€œNothing to do with art.”
    â€œThen keep talking to me,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t want to talk about art?”