Perfect Fifths (7 page)

Jessica didn't admit it to Hope, but there was another reason she wasn't so eager to dismantle the bunk beds and move out of the tiny bedroom nicknamed the

Cupcake, after the cloying color scheme selected by the tween twins who were its previous tenants.

Chloe and Claire were in high school now—just like the Girls, just like Sunny—and would definitely balk at bunk beds if their two mommies ever did choose to return to Brooklyn. The twins had outgrown the decor, so it stood to reason that Jessica should, too.

Jessica dragged her belongings down the hall, bought a queen-size bed frame and a button-tufted headboard. This is a luxurious bed. There is nothing stopping her from sleeping vertically, horizontally, or diagonally across this vast expanse of mattress. There is no one.

And yet to this very day, whenever she thinks about those

cramped, uncomfortable bunk beds and all those months of twilight giggles and moonlight sighs—Hope above, Jessica below, and yes, Marcus occasionally

astride—she fears she might never feel that close to anyone ever again.

Hope would want to know about her run-in with Marcus, but there is no casual way to broach the subject. No breezy "oh by the way" segue. Not today.

"How is she?" Hope asks. "How are you?"

"She's the same," Jessica replies. "I'm ..." Her voice drops out suddenly. Whether Jessica is overcome with emotion or undermined by a bad connection, Hope

doesn't ask the second question again.

"I'm sorry," Hope says. She never met Sunny but has come to feel like she knows her through stories.

Sunny has often said the same thing about Hope.

"Yeah, well," Jessica says, "me, too." / should just say it now, she thinks. Hey, Hope! Guess who I just ran into? Literally! Marcus Flutie!

"I just wanted to see how you were doing." Hope pauses before cautiously adding, "And to find out what time you think you'll get here." Hope flew to St. Thomas yesterday, took the ferry, and met Bridget and Percy and a well-edited group of family members and close friends on the smaller, less touristy island of St. John.

Jessica originally booked herself on the same flight, same ferry, before she got the news that forced the detour in Pineville.

"I've been better." I'm in shock. I just ran into Marcus Flutie. "I missed my flight."

"Oh," Hope groans before revising her tone. "Oh!"

"I shouldn't have gone back to Pineville yesterday. I should have just flown down for the wedding, like I originally planned, then back to New Jersey to see Sunny

before flying to Chicago ..." But if I hadn't changed my plans, I wouldn't have run into Marcus Flutie.

"No, you did the right thing," Hope insists. "Bridget and Percy understand. With them, it's not about the ceremony, it's about everything that comes after."

"Yeah, I know," Jessica replies. "But I'm kind of a major part of the ceremony."

"If it makes you feel any better, they've found a backup minister, you know, just in case."

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This does not make Jessica feel any better. Of course Bridget and Percy found another minister, you know, just in case. It was the practical thing to do, but the news overwhelms Jessica nevertheless. Hearing that they have prepared themselves for the probability of another no-show forces Jessica to pinch back the swelling storm of emotion gathering between her eyes.

77?/s is too much, she thinks. This is all too fucking much.

"He's a pro, the local go-to guy for secular celebrations," Hope is saying, totally unaware of Jessica's meltdown. "We crashed one of his services today so we could check him out. He's not so bad, though he acts as if he's the first minister to ever come up with the whole spiel about how wedding rings are circles, and circles

symbolize eternity, and that this ceremony symbolizes the bride and groom's eternal love."

Hope has heard just about every version and variation of the modern wedding ceremony. Before she made a name and a living with her portraits and original

paintings, Hope had attended approximately two hundred weddings in her two years of employment with Capture the Moment. This photography firm specialized in

documenting wow-factor weddings involving acrobats, belly dancers, drag queens, drum cores, magicians, fireworks, Klezmer bands, celebrity look-alikes (fat Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Thriller-era Michael Jackson are very popular), Disney On Ice (the princesses, mostly) on a portable dance rink, and a combination of the Viennese table and Japanese Nyotaimori known as the Naked Human Dessert Tray. Such tacky pageantry was enough to turn even a swoony romantic like Hope into a valentine-stomping hater.

But it was the trend toward paparazzi-style wedding photography—wherein Hope was paid to stalk the future Mr. and Mrs. D'Abruzzi-Glazer in the weeks leading up to their wedding as if they were Hollywood A-listers whose every gesture was worthy of a million flashbulbs—that epitomized the loss of moral values in favor of production values and gave Hope the final incentive she needed to quit the business once and for all. Bridget and Percy never would have asked her to make a reluctant return to the genre. Hope surprised them by offering up her services for free.

"I need to document two people who care more about the marriage than the wedding," Hope said a few months ago, when she first told Jessica about her role in

Bridget and Percy's celebration. "It will give me, um, hope." She half laughed, the way she always did when she caught herself optimistically evoking her own name. "I have to remember to make the photos about Bridget and Percy and not give in to the temptation to make it a crass composition of contrasts. His dark skin, her white skin. Dark suit, white dress. Dark sky, white sand. The stuff of dorm room posters the world over." She sighed in admiration. "Jeez oh man, those two are so gorgeous.

Who could pass up the opportunity to photograph them? I don't know how they manage to do anything else, quite frankly. If I looked like either one of them, I would just spend every minute of every day capturing my own gorgeousness as a form of performance art."

"You could do that," Jessica said from another bedspread. Another assortment of minibar snacks.

Another hotel room somewhere. Another phone call.

"And Cinthia's gallerina friends would pay any price!"

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Hope made this joke because she could. Her career took off when a piece from her (Re)Collection series (Birthday Girl, 1973) was featured in a Wallpaper magazine spread devoted to the former wig factory on the East River that was gutted, renovated, and decorated at the behest of Cinthia Wallace, the twenty-five-year-old party girl turned philanthropist/patron of the arts with her finger on the arrhythmic pulse of anything worth knowing anywhere. Hope had no qualms with whatever impact

Cinthia's money and connections had on her own success as an artist. Even if it were true that the only people commissioning portraits were Z-list artfuckers who had too much money to spend—which wasn't the case at all—Hope honestly doesn't care. Not if they allowed her to make a decent living doing what she loves.

Similarly, without Cinthia's vision and investments, the Do Better High School Storytellers project wouldn't exist. The Girls—and Jessica—would be a lot worse off.

Unlike her blithe-spirited friend, however, Jessica felt guilty about having her life's work both founded and funded by Cinthia's charity. What Hope viewed as friends helping other friends, Jessica considered a form of freeloading. Jessica knows she's being un necessarily neurotic when she worries about what a dead-end in-debt

position she'd be in right now if it weren't for Cinthia's big faith in her little idea. Her only comfort for this onus of unworthiness is the hope that one day she'll be in a position to return the favor for someone she believes in.

"And if you stack the rings on top of each other," Hope is saying on the other end of the phone, presumably paraphrasing the backup minister, "the circles come together to make a figure eight, which is the symbol for infinity, and ..."

Jessica knows she should be on the phone with the Clear Sky automated customer service system right now and not on the phone with Hope. And even if it were

okay for her to be on the phone with Hope right now, she shouldn't be having a leisurely, inconsequential discussion but a hysterical heart-to-heart rant about how she just ran over Marcus Flutie. Jessica knows this. Yet she's desperate for a diversion, and there's no one more qualified than Hope to provide it.

"Hey, Hope," she breaks in. "Tell me a strange-but-true story right now. One I haven't heard before."

Hope is used to this random request. "A strange-but-true story you haven't heard before. Okaaaaay."

Jessica can picture Hope scrunching her sunrise-orange curls with her fingertips, a primitive way of stimulating her brain. "How about this? A twenty-five-year-old woman with gaidrophobia—"

"You're still afraid of donkeys?" Jessica blurts, remembering her best friend's most irrational—and therefore comical—fear.

"You would be, too, if you nearly got trampled to death at the Ocean County fair when you were three years old," Hope retorts, dead serious. "And I'll have you know, Jessica, that more people die every year from donkey kicks than in airplane crashes."

"As encouraging as it is to hear that while I'm in an airport waiting to get on an airplane, I'm pretty certain that's an urban legend. I mean, what's your resource for

death-by-donkey statistics?"

"May I continue?" Hope asks.

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"Yes."

"So a twenty-five-year-old woman with gaidrophobia, who has spent her whole life avoiding county fairs, petting zoos, farms—"

"Pin-the-tail games, the whole Shrek franchise, and the Democratic National Convention," Jessica adds, trying her best to play along.

"... is invited to a destination wedding on St. John, the smallest and most unspoiled of the U.S. Virgin Islands. St. John may not have its own airport, but it does boast an abundance of plant and animal life, including a thriving wild donkey population!"

"Oh, no," Jessica says.

"Oh yeah. And I'm freaking out, Jess, just like the Pickle Girl on Maury Povich. Wild donkeys are to St.

John what pigeons are to the city, only they have a tendency to mount each other during beachfront wedding ceremonies. There are packs of fornicating donkeys all over this island."

Jessica has to cover her open ear to block out the ruckus being made by the Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club. They have made a

collective decision to shut off their cell phones and are now loudly debating their options for recompense.

"The locals say that wild donkeys are highly perceptive creatures, very in tune with other animals'

emotions. So they, like any human wedding guest, get so caught up in the display of love between bride and groom that they are driven by instinct to mate right there on the sand."

The volume has suddenly dropped in the BMIFC's discussion. They turn in Jessica's direction, give her a big thumbs-up and exaggerated winks.

"At first Percy and Bridget were all for it, like, Let them do their thing, make it a wedding that no one will ever forget," Hope continues. "Until they actually saw a pack of wild donkeys going at it as the backdrop to some other couple's wedding. I mean, have you ever seen two wild donkeys going at it? The male donkey is swinging one heckuva meatbat. It's very disturbing even for someone without my, you know, problem."

It begins hushed and hesitant.

You ... know ... /...

Then gets louder, more confident.

Can't smile without you ...

"The only way to stop two wild donkeys from humping—" Hope breaks off. "Am I hearing things, or are there people singing in the background?"

"I'm on line behind twenty disgruntled members of the Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club," Jessica replies matter-of-factly. "And they have apparently decided to stage a sing-in."

"Are you making this up?" Hope asks.

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Jessica holds her phone out toward the voices, which spurs the protestors to sing even louder and more off-key. CAN'T SMILE WITHOUT YOU. CAN'T SMILE

WITHOUT YOU.

Jessica says, "Now hold out your phone so I can hear the sound of wild donkeys humping."

"No way! I'm safe in my room right now. I'm not going out there to court the attention of lusty donkeys."

"How can I know your story is both strange and true?"

"You'll just have to trust me."

/ do, thinks Jessica. More than anyone. "I better go," she says instead. "I'm having trouble hearing you, and my phone is on borrowed time because I think I packed

my charger in my checked luggage."

"So what should I tell Bridget and Percy?" Hope asks.

Jessica can tell from Hope's serious shift in tone that she was specifically instructed by Bridget and Percy to find out if they need to book the local guy. "Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"Tell them I'll do everything in my power to get out of here today," Jessica says with resignation. "But in all likelihood, I won't get down there until tomorrow afternoon."

Jessica doesn't elaborate on the consequences of an afternoon arrival. Hope understands.

"You'll be here soon enough," Hope replies with forced cheer. "And I've somehow managed to take many donkey-free pictures, so you'll feel like you didn't miss anything. You'll feel like you were here the whole time."

But I'm not, thinks Jessica as she shuts off her cell. I'm not.

The phone is barely back in the bag before Jessica is debriefing herself on why she never got around to mentioning Marcus. Perhaps she's worried that this

accidental omission will turn into a conspicuous one—the kind that has caused problems in the past. But she quickly dismisses the notion as absurd. There was never the right moment to bring it up. And besides, it was a run-in, not a reunion. "Accident" is a more accurate description, and it was over almost as soon as it started. What happened with Marcus amounted to a few minutes so fleeting and insignificant that Jessica may fail to find a good reason to tell anyone about it at all.