Every Boy's Got One (43 page)

To: Claire Harris
Darrin Caputo

Fr: Jane Harris

Re: Holly and Mark

We’re here! At the Commune di Castelfidardo, in the Municipale building, for Holly and Mark’s wedding!

For a minute it looked as if it weren’t actually going to happen. The mayor seemed to suspect all was not right with Holly and Mark’s paperwork.

But then Cal Langdon—CAL LANGDON, Mr. I Don’t Believe In Marriage Himself—stepped up and, whipping out a notepad, asked the mayor for his full name.

And when the mayor asked him just what he was doing, Cal went (according to Peter, who translated for me), “Oh, I’m a foreign affairs correspondent for
The New York Journal
, and I think my readers would be very interested in learning about how Le Marche officials treat American visitors to their region.”

The mayor couldn’t put his sash on fast enough! He started the wedding ceremony then and there!

CAL LANGDON SAVED THE DAY!

I wasn’t the only one who started cheering, either. Half the town seems to have turned out for the ceremony, as well!

Holly looks so pretty in her dress, which is—even though I helped her pick it out, so I am sort of complimenting myself by saying this, but it’s true—stunning. Her waist looks TINY, and she’s got a tiny bouquet of white flowers that this kid Peter made her…actually they’re garlic flowers from the garden, so you don’t want to sniff them. But she doesn’t know that, so DON’T TELL HER.

And then, solemnly, with all this dignified grace, they began the ceremony, with Holly and Mark holding hands and looking so sweet and nervous in front of them, and all of the rest of us— including, I am astonished to note, a good number of school-children, including the mayor’s own daughter, who surely should be in school—crowded all around the sides of the room. Everyone seems to be on his or her best behavior.

Well, except for Cal Langdon, who despite his earlier heroics for some reason won’t stop looking at my feet. I do have on my new Christian Louboutins, though—the ones with the rhinestone flowers over the toe straps—so that might be why. Possibly he thinks they aren’t suitable wedding attire?

The mayor opened this big book and began to read, while the secretario translated in not very good English. It’s a very moving ceremony so far, all about how they promise to live in the same house and educate their children. Marriage is obviously taken very seriously here in Italy, but they don’t seem much concerned about the for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health stuff. They just seem to want everyone to live under the same roof and go to school.

This seems very reasonable to me.

Ooooh, it’s the ring part, I have to start taking pictures, more later—

J

I’m in total shock.

I can’t believe he did this.
When
did he do this? He must have snuck out at the crack of dawn to get all this done. He couldn’t have arranged any of this before this morning. I KNOW he didn’t arrange it yesterday. I was with him all day yesterday. He was still vehemently opposed to marriage all the way up until last night. I KNOW that.

So the only way he could have done all this—the only TIME he could have done all this—was this morning, before eight. Before EIGHT IN THE MORNING.

How did he do it? I mean, there is enough food here for a small army. He must have had to wake people up to get them to start cooking this much food—much less get it delivered on time. What did he do, stand outside a restaurant and bang on the door until someone let him in?

You know what? He must have. He totally MUST have.

But WHY? Why would someone as ethically opposed to love and marriage as he is DO something like this?

Maybe for the same reason he stepped up and made sure Holly and Mark got their wedding after all—because he has a heart after all?

I’m serious. He MUST have one. This—and what happened back in town—PROVES it.

Cal Langdon is actually… well… nice.

Seriously! The terrazza looks so beautiful—someone’s put vases of fresh flowers everywhere. There are tables set up across the lawn covered in white table cloths, and there are plastic lilies—actually, quite tasteful ones—floating in the pool. The champagne corks are still popping—it’s a real party!

A party of people we never met before this week—some we never met before today—but a party nonetheless. Thrown together at the last minute by a man who, as of midnight last night, was still insisting love is nothing but the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Holly looks so happy over there, dancing with the mayor! It’s almost as if she were dancing with her dad after all.

And Mark, dancing with—well, whoever that is. Oh, wait, Annika called her Mutti, so she must be the mayor’s wife. He looks blissfully happy too. The two of them seem to be over the moon. This is SO MUCH better than eloping down at City Hall back home. This is like… well, what the reception would have been like if Holly’s mother had planned it.

It wouldn’t have happened—any of it—without the man who’s been insisting from the beginning that Mark and Holly were making a horrible mistake. Cal Langdon did it. Cal did it ALL.

This is just unbelievable. I wish I had thought of something so sweet. Why didn’t he ask me? I totally would have chipped in.

But apparently I’m the enemy now, judging by the way he’s avoided speaking to me all morning—except once to say that my Christian Louboutin pump had come unbuckled. Only he didn’t call them Christian Louboutins. He said, “Your, um, shoe is coming undone.”

I guess I can’t really blame him. I mean, about the not-speaking-to-me thing. I really was pretty brutal to him last night. It was just a kiss, after all. I don’t know why I had to jump to the conclusion that all he wanted was a roll in the hay. I’m so STUPID sometimes. I’ve blown it with yet another great guy.

But how was I to know he was planning this lovely party all along? I mean, what’s someone who claims not to believe in love doing, throwing a wedding reception? Not to mention rushing in and SAVING the wedding in the first place. How could I have misjudged him so BADLY?

But the brain-chemical thing. I mean, there’s still THAT—

Peter just wandered over here and asked me to dance again. This is the third time. I was like, “Peter, why don’t you ask Annika to dance?”

I said it kind of loudly, since Annika is standing nearby. She doesn’t exactly look like she wishes I hadn’t mentioned it.

Then again, her English isn’t as good as Peter’s. In fact, she should probably be in school. Half the wedding guests look like they’re skipping calculus to be here. Did Cal get this declared as a local holiday on top of everything else? Or is it Italian tradition for everyone in the village to abandon their schools and workplaces whenever zany Americans take it into their heads to be married in their town?

Anyway, Peter is telling me he CAN’T ask Annika to dance, as she’ll just say no.

“Annika,” I say. “If Peter asks you to dance, will you say no?”

Ha. Annika just shook her head, blushing. BLUSHING!

So I shoved Peter over there, and the two of them are slow-dancing to “Killer Queen.”

Because of course Holly keeps insisting Peter play Cal’s Queen CD over and over again. “Fat-Bottomed Girls” really IS her official wedding theme song.

Oooh, Cal is smacking one of Zio Matteo’s spoons against the side of a champagne flute. He’s going to make a speech!

Oh, dear. Considering how he feels about the occasion—or did until his mysterious change of heart this morning—“Down the hatch, and through the gums, look out stomach, here she comes,” is about as eloquent as I imagine this is going to get.