Amateurs (31 page)

She turned her head toward him.

“A stove.”

“I see that,” she said. “I do.”

And then it was time to drive to the ceremony.

At the wedding dinner Lucas was seated between Maxwell, now clinking at the smears and crumbs of his cake, and Alan Motrinec, a shinily balding sexagenarian with rows of dancing elephants on his light-blue tie. Alan and his wife didn't fit in with the relatively young and artistic table, and Lucas guessed that they'd been set aside like
tricky monochrome puzzle pieces during the seating debates, then dumped here as a last resort. During dinner they had mostly murmured to each other, though they did exchange scattered banalities with the photographer Jessica Kim and her new boyfriend, and with Lucas when he wasn't talking football with Maxwell or listening to Karyn discuss politics with a young authority on Inuit sculpture. “So I didn't catch your connection to the happy couple,” Lucas said to Alan as the waiter poured decaf. “Happy couple” seemed like an expression Alan would like.

“We're old friends of Cole and Pamela.” It took Lucas a moment to remember that Cole and Pamela were Archer's parents. Alan took his last bite of cake with what seemed to be compromised dexterity. Advanced stage of stroke rehab, Lucas guessed.

“But it's complicated, as they say these days,” Alan's wife, Francine, added.

“I'm not judgmental,” Lucas said.

“Complicated, not sordid,” Alan said with a chesty laugh. “Well, maybe a mite sordid. Let's see, Cole is Pamela's
third
husband, you know.”

“Yes.”

“My older brother, Charles”—he pronounced it in the French way—“was her first.”

Of course, Motrinec's!

“Their separation was less than amicable,” Alan continued, “but we managed to stay on good terms with Pam.”

“Well,
I
did,” Francine said. “At first it was me who kept the friendship alive.”

“That's true,” Alan granted. His wedding band chimed his wineglass when he took a clumsy sip.

“You'll need a baby bib, Alan.”

“I've been eating with my left hand,” Alan explained. “Neuroplasticity.”

“I think I read about that.”

Alan tapped his head. “Start eating with your nondominant hand and you'll
know
whether you read something or not. So are you part of the literati with Archer and his gang?”

“No, not really.”

“Not my bag either. I like to read history when I have time, though I did read—what was the name of that novel I stayed up to finish the other day?”

“
Loaded for Bear
,” Francine said.

“
Loaded for Bear.
Outdoorsman from Little Rock. I couldn't turn the damn pages fast enough.”

“I'll look for it.”

“Don't try to finish it on a school night. But yes, Frannie kept things alive with Pam, and Cole and I have done some business together over the years.”

The table broke to watch Gemma and her father inaugurate the dance floor.

“What kind of business?” Lucas said after a dutifully sentimental minute.

“Just a few stray dogs with Cole,” Alan said. “Mostly I'm in the grocery biz. My family ran a small chain of supermarkets for many years, eventually sold to a competitor. But after the noncompete expired, I got sucked back in.”

“On an even smaller scale,” Francine said.

“Right, sucked into a Dustbuster more than an upright Dyson.”

“Isn't he impossible?” Francine said.

“We just have the one store, Select Table,” Alan said, “but we do all right.”

“So I have to ask, are a lot of your customers bringing in their own bags?” Lucas said.

“Oh sure, we're seeing more of that.”

“We were selling some for a while at the registers,” Francine said,
“branded and the whole shebang, but we found—maybe this was just me, but I didn't think they washed well: got peely, took an eternity to dry.”

Lucas sat up straighter. “Exactly,” he said. “I bring this up, see, 'cause I have a line of reusable grocery bags, kind of a back-burner operation for me, but they're great bags, sturdy vinyl ones available in all sorts of—an array, really, of collectible colors and designs.” He pointed to Alan's tie. “We don't have elephants yet, but we have one with tigers, another with llamas. Eminently washable, in cold.”

“We have our girl do most of the laundry in cold now,” Francine said, “not just the darks. Although some detergents, I understand, aren't activated in cold water.”

“And these bags dry—what is it, in a twice?” Lucas said.

“Trice, I think.”

“Wham: dry,” Lucas said.

“Wham, I like that,” Alan said. He nodded a few times, sucking in his lips. “Wham. What's the name of your outfit?”

Lucas swallowed. He had learned to downplay the name. “Brand Nubagian.”

“Come again?”

“Brand Nubagian.”

“Brand Nubagian!”

“Yes.”

“Now that's . . .” He trailed off contemplatively. “You say this bag outfit isn't your principal employment?”

“A sideline. I've been in banking and footwear, but I'm getting into air dryers.”

“Hair dryers?”

“Hot-air electric hand dryers.”

“Ah.”

“Like you see in restrooms.”

“No need for further explanations,” Alan said. “The technology
has reached us.” He pulled his card from his breast pocket, laid it on the heavy white tablecloth, stood up, and took Francine's hand. “Send me a few samples, the llamas for sure.” Lucas wondered if Alan was pursuing counterinstinctual business opportunities in support of neuroplasticity. “Now if you'll excuse us,” Alan said, “I think we'll get in a dance or two while they're still playing the geriatric music.”

“You do that,” Lucas said. He tucked the card into his wallet and looked over at Karyn. She raised her eyebrows. He looked from side to side at the two-hundred-odd guests, the chocolate fountain, the buttery wallpaper, the swelling dance floor. He hoped to dance with Karyn when the music got less geriatric, though maybe for Maxwell's sake they would have to leave early. He stood up. “Need anything?” he said to Karyn, tipping his hand to his mouth. “I'd better not,” she said, moving her hands in a steering motion.

As he made his way to the bar, he felt a druggy combination of secret relaxation and heightened awareness, saw the room with mellow clarity, as if he'd just put on new sunglasses in a strengthened prescription. John Anderson's hand startled his shoulder.

“Oh! Sorry ‘bout that,” John said.

“No, my fault,” Lucas said.

“Y'all stay much longer at the zoo?”

“Another half hour maybe.”

They talked briefly about bikes, but John didn't seem excited by the topic, and a silence fell between them too soon and too sadly for Lucas to use it to excuse himself. Some raspberry sauce had found its way to John's lapel. “So—I didn't ask you earlier—are you still in Chicago?”

John took a sip of his drink. “Outside Chicago? No. To be straight up with you, I'm living in my car just now.”

“Oh.”

“It's a full-size car so it's not so bad.” If he wasn't drunk, he was at least tipsy. “And I'm at the Sheraton for a few nights.”

Lucas nodded.

“Hey, I got a mint Wilson T2000 for sale if you're interested. With the case.”

“I'm not really in the market for that stuff these days.”

Hilarity broke out by the photo booth.

“Archer seems happy, huh?” John said.

“Well, you'd hope.”

“Just finished the new book,” John said. When he gestured with his drink hand, an ice cube dropped to the floor. “He let me borrow an advance so long as I promised to buy the real thing. ‘Course I would've anyway.”

“And?”

“Amazing.” He let the adjective stand on its own awhile, then said, “It's not the kind of book I read, but he sucks you in, you know?”

“I do.”

“It makes me wish Sara had stuck with it more,” John said. He seemed to be looking around the banquet hall for her. Leaning into Lucas: “I think sometimes smart people just can't stop questioning themselves, you know, all the time analyzing and second-guessing, and then in the end they don't finish anything.” He leaned away. “Archer, he just does it. In school he had no confidence in his writing. None. Goes to show.”

“Goes to show what?”

“That sometimes the thing you're most afraid of is the thing you most need to do.”

“The thing I'm most afraid of is burning to death.”

“Sara would never show me her stuff. Which, to level with you, kind of hurt. I always knew she must be great, though—well, you went school with her and all, so you know.”

Lucas wasn't sure if he ought to let this pass, or if Sara had planted the truth for him to find and disclose. “I should”—he hesitated—“I should send you one of her old stories.”

John seemed to snap into focus. “You kept that stuff?”

“You don't know the half; I keep everything. It's on my laptop, PDF.”

“You think she'd mind?” John said.

“Well . . .”

“You know, I'd love to see something. I don't have a computer at the moment, but my phone might work, or I could stop at a library. You reckon that would work in a Canadian library?”

“Not sure, man,” Lucas said. He reached up to put his hand on John's shoulder. “But I'll send it tonight.”

John liked some of these old Motown or whatever songs, but so far only people near the poles of the age continuum were dancing, and he was starting to feel kind of Weeble-like on his feet. He put down his whiskey sour on a highboy table and walked over to the coffee station. At this juncture in his life it didn't matter
when
he slept, and he would want to be alert if Lucas remembered to send Sara's story tonight. Most of the people back at John's table were still finishing dessert, so he returned to the same highboy, took a last swig of the whiskey, then a tongue-burning sip of coffee.

Archer and Gemma were independently visiting each table, Archer struggling to be at his most hail-fellow-well-met. His tuxedo fit nicely but was incorrect in three or four respects. A tux, for one, should never have a notch collar, only a peak or, if you must, a shawl. A redheaded boy was circling around the back of the ballroom, leaning to his left and holding up a model airplane, making engine sounds with his lips puffed out. When the boy got closer, John called out, “Northrop P-61 Black Widow.” The boy ignored him.

John's most accomplished model had made the trip with him to college. His parents had driven him from Idaho Falls to Cambridge.
A tarp secured over the truck bed covered three or four boxes, one of which included a basically flawless Stearman PT-17 biplane. About a month later, Archer and John were awaiting guests, women, at their suite, when Archer picked up the plane from John's shelf. “But when I became a man,” Archer said, “I put away childish things.” Handing the model to John, he added, “You have nothing to lose but your planes.” John put the model in a bag and stashed it under his bed, but by the next morning that seemed like a half measure, and he found himself dropping the bag in a trash bin outside Santander just after sunrise. It felt like a step toward manhood at the time, but he remembered it differently now. He walked over to the boy.

“That's a really nice Black Widow.”

“Thanks.”

“Hang on to it.”

“'Kay”

“Don't let anyone convince you that it doesn't have value.”

The boy moved away, sputtering at a higher volume.