Devonne Brown

Bewildered, Joanne dunked another ginger snap into her coffee, ate it, and sat with her head in her hands. She not only remembered it was her sister Cindy’s anniversary party today, she’d been the one to organize it. It had taken every bit of stamina she had to get that last bouquet of balloons up on the bannister of the hotel lobby beside the elevator, but it looked great. The decorations had been easy, everything came from the Dollar Store, just as commanded. 

Joanne’s philosophy of decoration was bigger and more is better. Plastic table cloths were folded into twenty-foot tissue flower arrangements of bright and glorious flower arrangements. They belonged in story books with unicorns. Between the flowers and the balloons, foil and regular. Joanne couldn’t have done a finer job at making the Marriott look like a bright sparkling rain forest. It really was something to behold. Of course there was glitter.

So where was everybody? It was seven o’clock. In fifteen minutes, people would be fashionably late. This lobby couldn’t sparkle any brighter or look any tackier. It was ripe for a party. 

A drummer came in and dropped his cymbal with a crash and slow motion roll that was awkward to catch. “Where have you guys been? You should have been here an hour ago?” Joanne was righteous angry, or thought so anyway. 

“Are you Joanne?” the drummer asked?

Joanne nodded at the drummer and a dark look crossed her face.

“Your sister is down stairs, she said she wanted to move the party down there. Sent me up here to tell you,” said the drummer.

Joanne reached for another gingersnap, and dunked it in her coffee. She took her time, and sucked the coffee out of the cookie before she took the bite. She repeated the process with the remaining hard biscuit, finished it off. “No way.”

“Your sister will be so disappointed. Her grandson and everybody is downstairs,” he looked around the Dollar Store wonderland, and whistled. “Wow. She should see this.”

“Teach them how to use the elevator and take the baby a cookie,” Joanne said. All of her energy had drained from her. She picked up her purse, found a good bottle of bourbon, took it, and exited down the stairs. Her sister could have her party any damn where she wanted.