Wedding Season (11 page)

Gabe shifts in his seat and presses his knuckles against his mouth.

“The great poet Anaïs Nin,” the CEO continues, “once said, ‘Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly
not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.’ Meg and Joe made worlds like this for each other on the lucky day that they met, and today they come here to merge those worlds into one big world that they will share with each other, and that they will open wide to the friends, new and old, who represent more worlds to explore and enjoy.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying they’re going to fuck around all they want,” Joan leans across Gabe’s lap and whispers to us. Gabe puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head at her.

“Here are the rings you have chosen to represent your vows,” says the CEO.

Joe takes one of the rings from him, turns to face Meg, and takes her hands. “Meg,” he recites, “I trust in your love for me, and mine for you. I believe in you, and don’t need to possess you. This ring represents my love for you, not my ownership of you, and I want you to wear it knowing that.” He slips the ring onto her finger.

Meg takes the other ring from the CEO and repeats the speech to Joe.

“Joe,” asks the CEO, “do you promise to love this woman with all the love in your heart, and strive to make her happy?”

“I do,” says Joe.

“And do you, Meg, promise to love this man with all the love in your heart, and strive to make him happy?”

“I do,” says Meg.

“Richard Lovelace wrote, ’If I have freedom in my love, and in my soul am free, angels alone that soar above enjoy such liberty,’” the CEO drones. “Meg and Joe promise each other freedom and love. They celebrate and entrust to each other their bodies and hearts and souls, not to claim, but to care for and treasure and adore in love and freedom, and we
who are gathered here to witness their union rejoice in it with them. Meg and Joe, I now pronounce you life partners. You may kiss each other.”

Meg and Joe throw their arms around each other and engage in a long, deep kiss, and Joe bends Meg back so far that her top hat falls to the ground. The crowd erupts into applause and laughter, and from the speakers I can hear the tinny cheers from our videoconferenced companions in distant cities. I wonder about the people out in the world, sitting alone in front of their computer screens, looking on, and what they might be thinking of this. Meg and Joe are still kissing, and our fellow guests are giving them a standing ovation. The music comes on again, and Gabe lifts me to my feet.

“Yes,” he says, under his breath.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, you certainly can disapprove of both a tradition and its perversion. And yes, let’s go get a drink.”

“Just what I was thinking.” Bix tucks the 3-D glasses into his breast pocket. “Great minds, huh?” He claps Gabe on the back. Gabe coughs.

“But don’t you boys want to line up to fuck the bride?” asks Joan. Gabe flinches.

“Joan.” I feel ill. “Enough, already.”

“Oh, come on, Joy,” Joan snaps. “Lighten up.”

“We’ll go fetch those drinks,” says Bix. “Come on, Gabe.”

“That was just a bit much,” I tell Joan, sinking back into my seat as the boys depart. She sits down next to me and looks at me irritably.

“Darling. You of all people, with your famous opinions on marriage. You’re not usually so anemic.”

“One of my famous opinions against marriage, if you recall, is that monogamy is a rather unlikely proposition. So
on some level, it would be my position that Meg and Joe are to be commended for understanding that.”

“You’re defending this spectacle?” Joan’s smile is fixed and stiff.

“No. But I do wonder—maybe this open marriage business has you concerned about Bickford’s ability to sleep exclusively with you for the next half-century. Which is why you’re acting this way.”

“And how exactly am I acting?” Joan glares. I bite my lip and wish I’d kept quiet. She opens her mouth, reconsiders, then starts giggling. “Darling, I’m so sorry. I’m all wound up. I’m absolutely on the verge. Bix and I had—oh, the most awful fight on our way over here.” She takes my hand. Her laughter has become slightly hysterical. “Sometimes I think you may be right about marriage, after all. I’ll probably lose my mind and be locked away before I get our damn wedding planned. Oh, god. I need a drink. I’m going to go find Bix. Forgive me?”

I nod, and she sweeps away, hiking up the bodice of her strapless dress, the red satin sweeping the floor behind her.

“That was a dramatic exit.” Gabriel emerges from the crowd, hands me a fresh glass of champagne, and watches Joan disappear into the crowd.

“They’re Joan’s specialty.” I take a sip of the champagne. “Thank you. Well, that ceremony was—”

“Unusual, yes.” Gabe obviously doesn’t want to discuss it any further. I’m not surprised. Raised as he was in the If-You-Can’t-Say-Something-Nice-Nod-Politely-And-Change-The-Subject tradition, Gabe is generally disinclined to talk about anything he finds genuinely offensive or affronting. “Ah, familiar faces.” He waves to Tulley, who is skipping toward us with Pete in tow.

“Hello, boss! Hello, Gabriel,” Tulley calls.

We rise to greet them. Gabe extends his hand to Pete, who takes it shyly, ducking his head. Tulley pulls me down until I’m almost doubled over so she can reach to kiss me on both cheeks, then fusses over wiping off the lipstick marks she has left.

“What did you think of the ceremony, Joy?” She twinkles. Tulley actually can twinkle. It’s the weirdest thing.

“I think our master of ceremonies should have availed himself of your services, Tull.”

“I didn’t think it was too bloody bad. Very original, wasn’t it?” Tulley gives me a bright smile. I can’t be sure if she’s joking.

“You’re our foremost authority on romantic tracts,” Gabriel addresses Pete. “What did you think?”

Pete blushes at the compliment and bobs his head.

“I think it’s kind of cool, I guess,” he says. “For them. But I, ah. I guess I’m kind of old-fashioned.”

“So only angels above should enjoy adultery?” Tulley snags two beef carpaccio canapés from the tray of a passing server, and hands one to Pete.

“Well, you know.” Pete bobs. “That’s not really what Lovelace was talking about, exactly, I think, in that poem, I think. He was kind of talking about how his love for this girl and being loved by her made him free. I think. In a larger sense, I guess. Spiritually free.” He puts the bloody sliver of meat into his mouth and chews thoughtfully.

“Well, there’s the rub,” says Gabe.

“So you’re all old-fashioned about this.” Tulley twinkles. “You think their arrangement is immoral?”

“It’s not about morality. It just raises questions,” Gabe says.

“Such as?” Tulley puts her hands on her hips and lifts her little chin.

“The nature and purpose of marriage. Forsaking all others. These two whom God has joined let no man put asunder, and so on.”

“Why not reinvent the bloody institution?”

“Why not dispense with it entirely?” I ask. “If one wants freedom.”

“Why throw the baby out with the fucking bathwater?” Tulley tries to look austere, then lapses into giggles.

“I can kind of see,” Pete says, “how you would want to get married, even if you didn’t want all the stuff that comes along with it. Everybody gets married. It would be hard not to.” Pete’s brow furrows. “People want to get married, and the world wants people to get married. And, um, the way that the world thinks about love makes it hard to prove that you’re really together in a real way, I think, even to each other, right? Unless you get married.”

“I love this song.” Tulley leaps up. “Pete, let’s go dance!” She pulls at his arm. “We’ll talk to you old traditionalists later!”

“He’s really very eloquent in print,” I tell Gabe as they disappear into the crowd.

“Traditional,” Gabe says. “First time I’ve been called that for not planning to get married.”

“I think she meant literal, really, not traditional,” I answer. Gabe blinks, this slow-motion, feline, half-in-a-trance blinking thing he does when he’s processing something.

“Huh. I suppose she may have something there.” He looks at me blankly for a moment, then blinks again, shakes his head slightly as if to clear it. “Want to dance?”

“Yes. Right out the door and all the way home.”

I
N THE LATE AFTERNOON
, Charles and I are pushing things around on our desks, pretending to be productive, when Damon lopes in.

“That’s the ninth revise on the screenplay.” He drops a pile of papers on my desk. “Can you look it over? And then let’s never work for them again.”

“The glamour of Hollywood,” Charles protests.

“The money of Hollywood, is what he means,” I tell Damon. “Is it that bad?”

“The wealthy wayward son of a powerful, presidentially ambitious senator,” Damon tells us, putting on the sunglasses Charles has left on my desk. “Boy falls in love with and is transformed into good person by sensitive girl from the wrong side of the tracks or, in this case, the art world.” Damon dances around the room, flailing his long arms. “Our heroine is an artiste. Through a strange series of events, the wayward son discovers that the girl of his dreams is in fact his half-sister, who his father abandoned as an infant after his mother and her lover were killed in a car crash when our hero was a wee child. Scandal is brought to light by son’s former friend turned evil gossip columnist for city paper. Ambitions laid to waste. Lovers torn asunder. All ends in disaster and tears.” He bows deeply. “I tried to get them to
throw some vampires in there. Hot vampire chicks. Vampires are big this year. But no go.”

“I think it sounds fabulous,” Charles declares. “Very Greek tragedy. I can hardly wait to read the novelization.”

“Guy, I hate to tell you, but it’s already an adaptation.”

“All the better.” Charles waves his pen at Damon. “A novelization of an adaptation is so, so… post-post-something!”

“Vern, you’re so literary,” I tell him. “Maybe you should go to Hollywood.”

“They could do a box set!” Charles claps his hands. “The novel, the screenplay, the novelization, plus a tell-all, behind-the-scenes, making-of documentary DVD. And—”

“Just get the thing out of here,” says Damon. “I’ll see you next week.” He waves and strolls out.

“My sunglasses!” Charles yelps. The sunglasses come sailing back through the door and land on my desk. “Our babies.” Charles sighs. “So multitalented.”

“Yoo-hoo! Girls!” Miss Trixie’s voice echoes across the courtyard through our open windows. She’s standing on her balcony waving to us. Charles and I get up and clamber out onto the fire escape. “Hello, darlings!” Trixie hoists a martini shaker at us. “Ready for a little drinkie?”

“Yes!” Charles cheers.

“Vern, it’s four-thirty.”

“It’s always cocktail hour somewhere in the world, sweets,” Trixie says. She’s wearing pink capri pants with matching pink shoes and a yellow halter top. Miss Trixie is a rather tall, athletic-looking man, broad-shouldered and slim-waisted, like a member of a high school swimming team. The effect is an odd one; I’m always amazed at how the practiced grace of her gestures distracts the eye from and denies her physique. She’s a master illusionist.

“You’re looking very springy,” I tell her, as she leans daintily across the dim canyon between our buildings to hand Charles a pink drink in a plastic champagne glass.

“An old queen has to keep up appearances, sweetie. Cosmopolitan?”

“Don’t you have to go to a bachelorette party tonight?” Charles asks me. “Better pace yourself.”

“Just a thimbleful,” says Trixie, pouring. She performs a neat little arabesque to deliver the glass, then raises hers to us.

“To you, girls. Divine neighbors.” We stretch out over the void to touch glasses. “I want to invite you both to a Miss Trixie extravaganza,” she tells us. “I have a new show premiering in a couple of weeks, and our little friend Delia and her girls are opening for me.”

“Henry’s girlfriend?” asks Charles.

“Fiancée,” I correct.

“The very one. The second week in May we have our gala opening at the club. You’ll be my guests.”

“Put us in the front row,” says Charles. “We’ll throw bouquets of snapdragons and kiss the hem of your gown.”

“And what are you two working on these days?” Trixie asks.

“Today, a bad screenplay,” I tell her. “And some bad romance novels.”

“Screenplay? Is there a part for me?” Trixie vamps. “I’ve always wanted to be in pictures.”

“You can play the ingenue, gorgeous,” Charles says. “You reform a bad man.”

“Only in the movies,” Trixie sighs. “And my ingenue days are long gone. I’m only good for a Norma Desmond role. Ready for my close-up—but for God’s sake, not so damn close!” She strikes a pose, leaning on the rail of her
balcony. “Now I have to get ready for rehearsal. You two be good little girls, and I’ll throw over some invitations for the Trixie-Fest next week.”

We hand our glasses back to her, and she disappears through the narrow French doors and into the mysteries of her boudoir. I lean back on our rusty fire escape and push my face into a shaft of sunlight. Charles surveys the narrow canal of air below us, the quiet, dingy backs of the buildings across the way.

“All this could be yours, my dear!” He spreads his arms wide.

“I always knew you were the devil.” I struggle over the windowsill and back into the office.

“Speaking of soul-selling.” Charles clambers in behind me. “Interesting new job opp. Someone from your friend Erica’s agency called us. They want to start a corporate sponsorship program for young writers and artists. Commercial patrons for individuals—like the Medicis, they said. Isn’t that precious? And they’re interested in having us help develop it.”

“This job gets weirder by the minute.”

“They’re sending the materials over for us to look at. If you approve I’ll meet with them in a couple of weeks.”

“Okay. It seems a little off our normal beat, but what the hell.”

“We’re expanding our skill sets,” he tells me. “We’re thinking laterally. Maybe we can throw some vampires in there. I hear vampires are hot this year.”