Party Favor

LAST WEEKEND I WENT to a party where people were wearing black lipstick, tropical shirts, chokers, and little drink umbrellas behind their ears. That was because the theme was “Hot Topic in the Tropics.” Many of the same people had recently been at another party where we danced on an Astroturf rooftop at a house rumored to be owned by the daughter of a famous dead novelist where there was a bathtub full of beers. Most of us had met at a succession of parties held in different cities over the course of more than a decade: birthday parties, magazine parties, dinner parties, parties where all we

fiction July 20, 2021

Needful Things

In one of the stories from Prepare Her, Genevieve Plunkett’s debut collection, a pair of newlyweds who grew up together are staying at a mildewed, hot cabin on their wedding night. It is a makeshift honeymoon at a camp the groom’s grandfather owns. For the special occasion, they begin to drink wine. “We couldn’t think with all the heat and noise and so we began to talk instead,” the narrator recalls. “We said things that could not be taken back. All of this chatter, in this womb-like environment seemed safe at first—daring and intimate.” The atmosphere almost imperceptibly becomes stifling.