Wedding Season (28 page)

“Mitelman’s fucking brilliant,” Tulley says.

“That vile nonentity?” Myrna turns on Tulley, eyes wide.

“Who is Ora Mitelman?” Pete bobs his head at me. I could kiss him.

“Vern?” Damon raises his hand and turns to Charles. “I slept with her. Is that a conflict of interest?”

“Overshare,” Tulley tells Damon. “Go stand in the corner.”

“Joy, you look rather unwell,” Myrna says. “Would you like me to open a window?”

“I’m fine.” I avoid looking at Charles.

“Well, as we’re on the subject of nausea,” Myrna says, “I was unfortunate enough to take a call this morning from a certain adulterous, philandering monster—”

“Hector,” Pete says. “He called to ask for another letter.”

“Two.” Myrna twists a strand of her hair around one finger. “One each for lucky wife and mistress. Joy, as a woman whose own ideas about the institution of marriage have recently undergone a surprising reversal, perhaps your position regarding our role in these indiscretions has altered, as well?”

“How’d a smart girl like you get so dumb about this stuff, guy?” Damon turns on her. “Men sleep around and deceive the ladies about it. It’s what we’ve done for millennia. Biological imperative.”

“That’s enough!” I am on my feet, slamming my hands down on the table. Coffee cups do tiny rattling dances across the pink Formica. The staff stares up at me. “That. Is. Enough. Out of everyone. Pete, do the letters. Myrna, Damon, your opinions are not required. Everybody back to work.” I stomp away from the table into the back office, fling myself down on the couch, pick up a section of the newspaper scattered on the floor nearby, and hide behind it as Charles follows me in.

“Good morning, sweetness and light.” He sets a fresh cup of coffee down next to me. “Something very strange just happened. My occasionally cranky but generally mild-mannered, conflict-avoiding business partner was just body-snatched. You know anything about this?”

“No idea.” I eye my reflection in the coffee cup. “Listen, I’m wondering if maybe we should sit down and talk about the direction the company’s taking. We’re kind of getting away from Invisible’s original mission with all this new stuff. Maybe we need to, you know, reevaluate, get back to basics.” I stand up, wander to my desk, wander back to the couch, pick up the paper, put it back down.

“Well.” Charles raises an eyebrow. “Sure, we could set aside some time to discuss where we want to take the company in the coming year or two. Never hurts to have a plan.”

“Ladies, ladies, lovely ladies!” Miss Trixie hails us from her balcony. She is dressed in immaculate tennis whites. “Come have some coffee with me, darlings,” Trixie calls. Charles waves at her, then looks at me. I shrug, and follow him out the window and onto our fire escape.

“Good morning, my little petunias,” Trixie greets us. She offers me a delicate china cup balanced perilously on a matching saucer. “Charles, one lump or two?”

“Need you ask?” Charles accepts his cup from Trixie and grins as she plucks two cubes of sugar from a little bowl with tiny silver tongs, and drops them gently into the cup. “You’re looking very sporty this morning, dear lady.”

“Life is a game, my darlings. One must dress for it.” Trixie strikes a pose, then turns to me. “Baby, why ever were you not at that fabulous, fabulous party last week? You missed my performance, and little Delia’s girls. And your young man was there into the wee hours.”

“The wee fact of which I was abundantly aware, actually. Thanks. I didn’t attend because I was not invited.”

“What party?” Charles asks.

“Party for the paperback release of Ora Mitelman’s novel.” I peer down into the alley below us, where a group of children are passing around a cigarette and hacking loudly. “Gabe was there on business. Ora seems to think of him as her personal photographer.”

“Ah,” Trixie says. “Well. Never mind. I’ll be performing in just a few weeks at Henry and Delia’s wedding, you know, and I’m sure to see you there.”

“Mmm,” I tell her, thinking of Henry in tears at the bridal shop.

“And how is everything else, dears?” Trixie asks. “How’s your clever little company? Keeping busy?”

Charles shakes his head at her very slightly, and she turns to me.

“How about all those weddings of yours, poor darling? Have you finished the long march?”

“No. Flying to Los Angeles next week. Friend of Gabe’s from college is getting married to some actress.”

“Well.” Trixie gives me a bright smile. “That should be amusing.”

“Right. You know, I think I hear my phone ringing,” I tell them, and begin to climb back through the window. “Will you excuse me? Thanks for the coffee, Trixie.”

“Air kiss,” she trills at me, waggling her fingers.

I
NSIDE
, I
POKE
my head out into the main office, where the staff is hunched at their desks, tapping away at keyboards, chewing disconsolately on pencils. Tulley and Pete are seated at the conference table, going over Medici Project materials; their enthusiasm level for whatever they’re reading at the moment appears to be in the deep negative integers. Myrna looks up from her seat beside the window, sees me, and looks away without expression. I retreat to my couch and flip through the newspaper. A few minutes later, Charles climbs back through the window and comes to stand in front of me. I hold up a section of the paper, and point to a photograph of a pleasant-looking man about my age.

“See that guy? He was in law school with me. I knew him, sort of. We went out for dinner once.”

“Cute. What happened to him?”

“According to the paper, he’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry, Joy.” Charles sits down on the arm of the couch. “Oh, god. What happened?”

“Paper says he defended a man accused of rape, got the guy acquitted. A week later his client raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. So he killed himself.”

“Oh, no.” Charles strokes my hair. “That’s so sad. Are you okay?”

“Suppose Myrna’s right, Charles. Should we not be doing these letters? Are we responsible for what happens to Hector’s marriage? Are we implicated?”

“Okay, whoa. Take a deep breath, Vern.” Charles sets the paper aside. “What your friend’s client did and what Hector is doing are not on the same scale.”

“That’s not what I asked. It’s not a question of degrees.”

“It’s always a question of degrees. And interpretation. And position.”

“It’s not like I’m some moral absolutist.” I swing my legs off the couch and sit facing him. “But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I personally think sleeping around on one’s significant other is wrong. If I facilitate someone else’s infidelity, am I or am I not betraying my personal beliefs?”

“Honey, get off the soapbox. You’re going to get a nosebleed up there. This is the grown-up world. Nobody’s hands are clean.” He moves to sit beside me on the couch. “Your sneakers? Made by tender little Southeast Asian toddlers for pennies a day. Our office is cleaned by an illegal immigrant from South America. That computer on your desk? Running software from a company that violates every antitrust agreement known to man. Forget about moral purity.
Ça n’existe pas.”
Charles snaps his fingers at me. “Here’s the thing. I think you’re under some personal pressure these days. I think you’d rather chew glass than give any assistance to Ora Mitelman’s career. I think you don’t want to do those letters for Hector for personal reasons and you’re too embarrassed to admit it.”

“You are welcome to your opinion,” I tell him. “Just don’t think the fact that you’re correct wins you any points with me.”

“Honey. Listen to me. We don’t have to do any of this stuff. It’s fine. We have plenty of work.
We
certainly don’t have to do those letters.
We
could even jettison the Medici thing, if you want. I don’t really care about being in the right, but I do care about you being happy.” Charles looks at me, fond and sincere as a puppy. How can I make him understand that this is about something more than being happy? I kind of know, in a half-in-denial sort of way, that I’d love to take him up on his offer. But I also know I couldn’t live with myself if I did.

Let’s talk, for a moment, about The Principle of the Thing. The Principle of the Thing is, roughly, the formal standard or rule that ostensibly governs a situation—but it is also a concept that is much abused. When people say it’s The Principle of the Thing that concerns them, you can almost invariably be sure it isn’t. To invoke The Principle of the Thing is, most often, to claim the moral high ground on a pure technicality. The Principle of the Thing is generally cited only when there exist theoretical but not
actual
grounds for a grievance, or if the actual grounds for a grievance are inconvenient or embarrassing. The Principle of the Thing allows us to be petty, small-minded, vain, self-serving, and righteous without appearing to be so. Because of this, mere mention of The Principle of the Thing immediately arouses suspicion of hypocrisy, and rightly so.

But there really are some people whose conduct is guided by principles, rather than the reverse. For better or worse, I am one of those people. For example: I do want, very much, in no particular order, to run screaming to the phone and tell Hector he can do his own dirty work; to revoke all my wedding RSVPs for the rest of the century; to corner
Gabe and demand to know what the hell is
up
, for god’s sake; to arrange for Ora to be infected with a nonfatal and basically painless but incurable infection that causes the entirety of the epidermis to be perennially and thickly covered in oozing, bright pink pustules the size of mini-marshmallows. I could do these things, all of them. No one would look askance, there would be no serious repercussions. As Henry would say, and rightly, to do so would be only human. As Charles assures me, everyone would understand perfectly. (Except for the part about disfiguring Ora, and probably only a few people would object to that.)

But I will not do these things. And why will I not? Because I believe in the ironclad separation of my personal and professional life, to the extent that it’s possible. I believe in honoring the promises and commitments I make to myself and others. I believe that living well is the best revenge. I believe that if I behave like a girlie girl, like Ora, like my mother, I will end up becoming like them, and I will get what they got and what, as far as I can see, they deserve; and conversely, that if I rise above it, I have a chance to be and to have something better than what has always been women’s lot in life.

And I believe that if we don’t hold true to our beliefs, no matter how much it might cost us, then we are worth nothing at all.

It’s the principle of the thing.

“Let’s just proceed as planned,” I tell Charles. “Medici Project, letters for Hector, everything. Oh, Vern. Please stop giving me that sympathetic look.”

“Joy, things change. People change. We change our minds about things. A couple of months back you were still swearing you’d get married over your own dead body. You can change your mind. It’s permitted.”

“I can’t.”

“Because you promised? You gave your word?” Charles makes a face at me.

“I know you think it’s odd—”

“And neurotic and uptight and just plain silly—”

“I know, Charles. Listen, I appreciate the offer, I do. Thank you. You’re being incredibly thoughtful, and much nicer to me than I deserve. But let’s call this the end of discussion. Please.” I force a smile. Charles stands up, shakes his head, and goes to sit as his desk.

I snap up a fresh section of the paper and, as luck would have it, open to the wedding announcements. The featured wedding of the week, I read, was held at the New York Aquarium. At the center of the article is a photograph of the bridal pair, taken in the dim grotto that houses one of the aquarium’s main exhibits, where a fine-boned, patrician bride and her lanky, goateed groom stand silhouetted, looking into the vast tank. Their hands are clasped, their reflections faint in the thick glass. Beyond, in the bright starry water, two enormous white Beluga whales gaze back at the couple, cherubic smiles on their blunt, mild snouts. The image brings back, with unpleasant clarity, the memory of a grade school field trip I took to that aquarium not long after my parents divorced. I remember the science teacher telling us that Belugas mated for life. The official guide who was with us corrected him sharply: It was a common misconception, she said, but entirely untrue. Mammals rarely mate for life, she added, winking at him. The group of us, a baker’s dozen of nine- and ten-year-olds, giggled and blushed without knowing why.

I pull the thin gray pages of the newspaper close to obscure my face so Charles won’t see me cry.

G
ABE AND
I
ARE RIDING
through the Hollywood Hills in the back seat of a hired car, en route to the season’s penultimate wedding. Gabe’s college friend Theo Kappler, now a television producer, is marrying a starlet in her late twenties known for lively portrayals of popular high school girls, and for naturally ample breasts. We spend the commute doing our level best to ignore the driver; it is not an easy task. Mick is a marginally postadolescent and not-very-recently washed young man who pays far less attention than one might hope to the perilous curves of the road, dedicated as he is to sharing with us a generously detailed synopsis of his screenplay. As we approach a driveway secured by large gates and flanked by a crowd of camera crews, Mick squints at us in the rearview mirror.

“Hey, wow. This is Keller Kappler’s place, right? The director dude. You guys are, like, going to Angelina and Theo’s wedding? No way!”

“Way,” I assure him. Everyone seems to be on a first-name basis in Los Angeles, even with people they don’t know personally. Especially, in fact, with people they don’t know personally.

A few idle journalists peer in our direction, and Gabe leans out the window and shows our invitation to a guard in
mirrored glasses. A leviathan white Mercedes pulls in behind us, and the camera crews spring to life. A manicured hand emerges from car’s rear window and waves listlessly.