Free The Daughter-in-Law by Diana Diamond

parents.
    “I think she likes what she sees.”
    “Me?” she asked.
    “Us,” Jonathan answered. “She can tell you’re good for me because it’s nearly midnight and I haven’t embarrassed her yet.”
    “How could you embarrass her?”
    “Well, at her last affair I got blind drunk and walked into the pool. She told me frankly that for a few seconds she had hoped that I would drown. She was really ticked off at the people who jumped in to save me.”
    Nicole answered, “You said she was difficult, but she couldn’t be more pleasant.”
    “She’ll be just as pleasant when she’s blindfolding you in front of a firing squad.”
    Tisdale made a pass at Nicole, offering to show her the design for one of his new buildings. The politician asked her to dance and ground his crotch up against her belly while blowing into her ear. Ben came to the rescue by suggesting that they spend some time with the younger set that was a better fit for their ages.
    Nicole sat for several minutes with Pam, whose date seemed to have vanished on his way to the men’s room. She was impressed to learn that Pam had graduated from Columbia and ranked high in her class. “I’ll be starting as assistant manager of the New York Philharmonic,” she said. “It sounds important, but really I’ll be just another bookkeeper.” She didn’t seem enthused.
    “Any romantic interest?” Nicole asked, nodding her head to a gathering of young studs.
    “Sure,” the new graduate answered. “They’d all like to get laid in the boathouse. But if I were trapped in a burning building there isn’tone of them who would risk scorching his jacket, if you know what I mean.”
    Nicole nodded.
    “Alexandra sees through them all,” Pam continued. “None of them measures up.”
    Nicole felt a brief stitch of anxiety. No one seemed to measure up to any of Mrs. Donner’s children. Did Alexandra see through her the same way she saw through Pam’s suitors? Had the warm reception been nothing more than polite society babble?
    “I really admire the way you’ve gone out on your own and taken your chances,” Pam said with overtones of envy. “Jonathan said you were a struggling actress, sort of living in a garret.”
    “It was a tenement walk-up with old plumbing,” Nicole laughed. “Like
La Bohème
without the music. I got out as fast as I could.”
    “I’m going to try something on my own,” Pam said with conviction. “I was thinking that I’d like to run an art gallery, maybe a place for undiscovered artists.”
    Nicole and Jonathan got up for the next rock number and danced energetically. Ben used his date’s trip to the ladies’ room as an excuse to dance with Pam, and kept her on the floor through three numbers. The Asian lady kept her smile, even though her eyes were angry. At one point Nicole noticed Jack, standing off with another man, leering at her, a cigar grinding in the corner of his mouth. She stole a glance to his table where Alexandra had turned her chair to watch the dancing. Alexandra was looking right at them with a pleasantly blank expression, giving no hint of her reaction. It was hard to tell whether she was more concerned with her son or with her daughter.
    By midnight, the entire party was tipsy, sleepily on the adult side of the pool and raucously on the other. Then the inevitable: one of the younger crowd missed a step and toppled into the pool. As his friends gathered at the edge, another was pushed in. Like a salvo of battleship fire, another dozen plunged in together and then screaming women were pushed in on top of them. In a matter of seconds, half of Pam’s friends were in the water, standing chest deep and gyrating to the music. Ben was wringing out his jacket over Pam’s head.
    Word passed quickly that Jack was serving brandy back at themain house, which gave the elders a chance to pick up and leave before Pam’s friends turned on them. Nicole and Jonathan joined the exodus, and drove back to the manor.
    The