It’s a neat little party, it’s a swell time. The man didn’t get out much but he tried to enjoy himself whenever he did. It’s been harder and harder to smile ever since they botched his operation but he managed a small quick anguished one when that scamp Richard Gates brought out the grain alcohol. A few secretaries and human resources types, all women, joked a swoon when they saw that first show of hooch. Gates made small talk and flirted with them and the man’s own secretary, Sheila Pastor, a dimpled fresh-out-of-college thing, all sweetness and light and the daughter he imagined her having sometimes, malingered around the table to converse with this bartender. Gates was a handsome man, always sharply-dressed, and though both men were in their forties, birthdays proximate enough to one another that one company cake would suffice for both, Gates didn’t look like he had passed thirty. His blonde hair hadn’t entered into a recession like the man’s. He was a new hire, a poached savant up from Arizona, one month in and already popular. Small pond legends sprung up concerning Gates at industry conferences, retreats, seminars, all those gatherings where rings meant nothing to anyone but the man. The man had heard that Gates played a game of golf with their mutual boss three weeks back – a feat that had taken the man considerably longer to accomplish and which occurred at a rate the man thought too-infrequent considering his position but Mr. Lucho was a busy man and he understood. The man liked Gates just as all the others liked him. They were all drawn to the easy smile and the confident boyish way he carried himself. Unaffected, he still had what was lost to them though none thought of it this way. Folks migrated towards Gates.
	Gates rounded up a posse of a few strong young men and together they unloaded a large tupperware sarcophagus, maybe a fifty galloner, from the backseat of his truck. It was pregnant with about half of Richard’s recipe. They set her down on a table and Richard had the boys go back to collect the rest in second, third, and fourth trips. He unloaded assorted bottles of liquor – Bacardi, wine, this or that Schnapps, nuclear-grade Everclear, among others, and the mixers, lemon-lime drink and orange juice and tropical punch. A separate container frosty with refrigeration had with it the breadth of a tropical Eden’s bounty – apples, mangoes, oranges, several pineapples, watermelon, and so on. He had a knife and cutting board and took to carving. Everyone watched the maestro. The fellas set the last of the doublewrapped liquor store bags at this staging area and asked Mr. Gates if there’s anything else they could do for him. He finished off the last of an unhusked pineapple and slid it into the salad. He said nothing beyond working up a thirst, but hey, on second thought, go ahead and pick out a bottle of what looks best to you and pour it on in. Gates invited others to partake and bottles were opened, corkscrews were provided, the mixers unhinged with evaporating hisses, the chugalug cascade vomit while hunks of apple plopped into the gathering murk. Participating looked fun and this drew more company folk. Soon Gates was a focal point. The man didn’t flex his authority but waited patiently in line for his turn and came up with a bottle of fine Sobieski vodka, his wife’s favorite, and he turned, holding it up like a hunting dog with its dead duck, looking for his wife who was absent. He poured. All of these people and all of these bodies and still in the shallows. Gates threw in watermelon steaks or cubes and pink juice ran in small rivulets off the board off the table and onto the stained concrete below to draw pitiful swarms of mindless insects. Bob Loeman asked Gates if the fruits needed more time to set. Gates grinned and said he’d done this a thousand times before. The younger crowd took pictures and posed with the sloshy green trough whose orange and red heads were bobbing under their drool like the coughed up refuse of the cucking stool. He whipped up a whirlpool with a long black ladle. His developed muscles strained with the effort of conducting the tide and the bevy of hacked up fruits. Women took note and Gates was aware. After the conjured maelstrom settled to a shaky calm and all looked satisfactory, Gates had the honorary first sup and smacked it delightfully across the canines and the palate, took a picture to commemorate another masterpiece set forth. He declared that it was open season and all of those assembled took a cup, kneeled at an ice trove, accepted the generous helpings given by Gates. They thanked good fortune to work for men who from time to time would spend thousands on bread and refreshments and entertainment. They thought themselves lucky upon reflection and compared themselves to friends stuck in the middling positions from which there would never be advancement, all the old high school chums fallen to oblivion. It’s a neat little party. The empty-handed man watches them drink and has to sit when a pang erupts in the crevasse the stitches held together. Sheila Pastor is behind the bar with Richard Gates and they touch each other’s arms intermittently for contrived reasons. A young couple across the lake lie looking at one another on a picnic blanket and mirror these same motions under cool treeshade and the man watches them.