Wedding Season (12 page)

A
COUPLE OF
hours later, Henry comes to pick me up; we are going to Aunt Charlotte’s bachelorette party together. The office is swooning in pale, dusty sunlight, and quiet as a church. Most of the staff have departed. Besides Charles and
me, only Tulley remains in the front room, seated at the conference table with her laptop computer, squinting and reading softly aloud her latest masterpiece for
BabyDoll.
I’m standing by the front windows with a sheaf of papers in my hand, watching the street below. It’s a mild day in the city, though not actually warm, but everyone seems to have removed as much clothing as possible. It’s as though they can’t bear to wait a moment longer for spring to begin and believe that by disrobing they can will the temperature to rise. I hear footsteps on the stairs, and a minute later, Henry pushes our door open.

“I’m stuck.” Tulley looks up. “What’s a good synonym for jism?”

“Spooge is one of my personal favorites.” Henry waves at me.

“Want a job?” Charles calls from the back office.

“How about it, Hank?” I leave the window and come to kiss her. “Want to become invisible? Tulley will share assignments with you, won’t you, Tull?”

“And leave off teaching
The Iliad
to those little hormone-addled darlings at Greeley? How could I?” Henry pretends to weep at the thought of it. “It’s been hilarious lately. The seniors must have been fucking like rabbits all through spring break. I can’t make it through a sentence without one of them sussing out a double entendre and setting the rest off.”

“Maybe they’re just quicker than we are,” Tulley suggests.

“It’s kind of amazing that the mere suggestion of sex is so powerful for them,” Charles says, wandering into the front room. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“That’s because it
was
yesterday, Vern.”

“You’re the one editing the trashy romance novels, Vern.” He points to the manuscript in my hand.

“That’s
my
trashy romance novel you’re talking about,” Tulley scolds.

“Pete did this one,” I tell her. “It’s the bankers in Hong Kong installment. Young futures trader falls for beautiful daughter of Chinese mobster. Very Oriental.”

“Put down the exotica,” Henry says through the police megaphone of her cupped hands. “Let’s go get a drink. Want to come, guys?”

“I have a date,” Charles says.

“I have a date,” Tulley says at the same time.

“I didn’t know you two were dating.” Henry giggles. “That’s great.”

“Office romances allowed only in our trashy romance novels,” I say.

“I’m having dinner with the owner of Boîte.” Charles waves dismissively at us.

“My brother knows him,” I mention to no one in particular. “How about you, Tull?”

“Um.” Tulley looks sheepish. “That editor at
BabyDoll.”

“That’s interesting.” I squint at her. “You know we can’t do anything about sexual harassment off the job, right? Can we, Vern?”

“Tulley’s a professional.” Charles winks at Tulley. “She doesn’t mix business and pleasure.”

“Working for you, Charles,” Tulley says, curtsying, “business
is
pleasure.”

“And working for
BabyDoll
, pleasure is your business.” Charles tips an imaginary hat at her.

“Oh, my god,
stop.
Death by witticisms.” Henry stands and stretches. “Come on, Jojo. Let’s motor.”

I collect my things and follow Henry down the stairs. The door to the Socialist press on the floor below Invisible is open. As we pass, the sounds of a passionate argument are audible. Someone pounds a table. A woman coming up the
stairs flattens against the wall to let us through, then slips into the psychologist’s suite. Out on the sidewalk, I take a deep gulp of the early evening air.

“Oh, no.” Henry angles her head in the direction of a petite blonde exiting the New Age bookstore. “Don’t look! Too late. She saw us. Better go say hello.”

Here’s a weird thing about Henry: For all her rowdy bitchiness, she has this stringent (though erratic) sense of etiquette; she’ll show up late to a dinner party with an extra guest or two, but she’ll always write a lovely thank-you note, for example. Which is why she insists on dragging me over to make small talk with Ora Mitelman, whom she obviously hates. Maybe it’s a Southern thing; I don’t know.

“Hello, Joy.” Ora clutches a lavender paper bag emblazoned with the Crystal Visions bookstore’s logo, some kind of giant mandala, which she is holding so that the mandala is positioned directly over her pelvis. “And, Harriet, is it?”

“Henry, it’s Henry.”

“Henry.” Ora holds up her cheek to be kissed. Henry obliges, barely.

“How’d the shopping go?” Henry nods at Ora’s bag.

“A gift for a couple of friends who just became engaged.” Ora holds it out for inspection.

“A Gathering of Spirits,”
Henry reads from the cover of the book. “A collection of multicultural marriage rites, rituals, and vows.’ That sounds so… inspiring.”

“I hope so.” Ora tucks the book under her arm. “It must be such a challenge to write the ceremony oneself. But my friends really feel that it’s the right thing to do. They want the wedding to represent who they truly are.”

“Well. I think that’s just great,” Henry tells her. “Don’t you, Joy?”

I nod.

“Listen, we have to run, but it was great to see you!”

“Yes, and I’ll see you girls at Joan’s bachelorette dinner, if not before.” Ora directs a gracious smile into the middle distance behind us.

“We’re looking forward to it. Aren’t we, Joy?” Henry bares all her teeth at me. “Taxi!”

“A
RE YOU SURE
we have time for a drink?” I ask, as the cab pulls up outside Pantheon. The yellow neon sign over the entrance burns a halo into the gray twilight.

“There is always time, little missy.” Henry hands the driver his fare. “Always time for a gathering of spirits. And the party is close by. Out!” She pushes me out of the cab, slams the door, and with her hands on my shoulders, marches me ahead of her into the bar.

Pantheon is already crowded with young professionals, sharp-eyed women hiking up their skirts to perch on the bar stools and young, very young men in several-thousand-dollar suits. Their smooth, elastic faces and bright, blank stares give them the appearance of unfinished sculptures, and they elbow one another in silence and move aside for Henry, a tribute she accepts with the oblivious entitlement of the organically gorgeous. Luke has seen us coming in and is chilling a martini glass and opening a bottle of wine by the time we take our seats. He leans over the bar to kiss my cheek.

“Where’s mine?” Henry pouts.

“You can have extra olives.” Luke swirls his martini shaker.

“Fantastic.” Henry watches him pour. “She’s not even your girlfriend, and you won’t cheat on her. We should stuff you and put you in a diorama in the Museum of Natural History.”

“Maybe you should stuff me instead.” I put my head
down on the bar. “A rare specimen for inspiring such loyalty.”

“My, my.” Henry fishes an olive out of her martini. “Barkeep, tell that girl in the red sweater I want to buy her a drink.” Luke and I look down the bar.

“The one with the Brooks Brothers model attached to her mouth?” I ask. The woman in question, a spunky sitcom type with a wheat-colored ponytail swishing across her back, is nuzzling giddily with one of the young suits who checked Henry out when we came in.

“Damn. He beat me to the draw.”

“Aren’t you getting married in a couple of months?” Luke asks her.

“What’s your point?” Henry sucks gin off her fingers.

“Look, there’s Donald Trump’s new girlfriend.” I gesture vaguely in the direction of the entrance.

“To the best of my knowledge, most girls stop sending drinks to strangers when they’re planning to get hitched, is my point,” Luke says.

“There are two categories of flirtation.” Henry drains her glass. “As a means to an end, and as an end in itself.”

“What’s
your
point?” Luke laughs, but it’s unconvincing. I look from one to the other, trying to figure out what’s happening.

“That there’s a difference between me buying a drink for a pretty girl because I feel like flirting, and buying a drink for her as a first step toward fucking her.”

“And your fiancée is okay with that distinction?” Luke presses both hands on the bar, ignoring a customer who waves a handful of money at him.

“What’s it to you whether she is or isn’t, Luke?” Henry asks sweetly.

“Wow, look at the time.” I poke her. “We should go soon.”

“Was your heart broken by some siren who couldn’t keep her hands in her pockets, Luke? Is that it?” Henry’s smile is seraphic. Luke opens his mouth to answer, gives me a stricken look, and moves down the bar to take an order.

“Hank, what are you up to?”

“What?” Henry looks innocent. “The barkeep and I are just having a little conversation.”

“You’re goading him. For no reason. What has Luke ever done to you besides get you drunk on the house?”

“Little bundle of Joy.” Henry sighs. “That barkeep is in love with you and it’s so pathetic I can’t help tormenting him a little.”

“Not one part of that sentence made anything remotely like sense.”

“I hear the weather in the state of denial is really nice.” Henry waves at the sweater girl, whose new boyfriend gives us a curious stare. “When did you buy property there?”

“Did you set fire to insects for fun when you were little? Go wait outside. I’m going to say good-bye to Luke. Go.” I give her a push toward the door. She laughs and ambles away.

“Are you leaving?” Luke returns to my end of the bar.

“We have a party. Hey, Luke. I’m sorry about that.”

“Naw, don’t worry. I’m fine. She was only playing.” He’s a terrible liar. “And you just put that away. It’s on me.” He pushes my hand, and the twenty-dollar bill in it, back toward me. “See you soon?” I nod and turn to wriggle out through the increasingly dense crowd. At the front door, I look back over my shoulder. Luke is watching me go; he gives a wave and a half-smile.

As I emerge onto the sidewalk, Henry pounces on me and showers me with kisses.

“Get off.” I push her away. “You’re a bitch.”

“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way,” she vamps. “Oh, lord. Duck!” She grabs my arm and yanks me behind a couple
of large potted shrubs that stand at the restaurant’s entrance.

“Ow
, Henry. What the hell?”

“It’s
her
again.”

“Who?” I peek from behind one shrub to see Ora Mitelman breezing through Pantheon’s front doors, golden curls and gauzy skirts aloft. “Ugh. Is she stalking us?”

“She’s at Pantheon all the goddamn time now.” Henry sighs. “I ran into her here a couple of nights ago. She called me Henley. Come on, toots. Let’s go party with Aunt Charlotte!” She takes my hand and skips down the street, singing “Going to the Chapel” and dragging me along behind her.

H
ENRY AND I
used to stay with Charlotte when we were in college; we’d come into the city on the weekends and sleep in her guest room. It was an arrangement infinitely preferable to staying with my mother for a number of reasons, our postadolescent vanity not the least of them. As she always had with me and my brothers, Charlotte treated us like adults; she played generously along with our delusional visions of ourselves as terribly sophisticated creatures, listened attentively to self-enraptured monologues about our academic adventures and romantic travesties, and let us come and go as we pleased. She led what seemed to us a very glamorous life: She worked as a fiction editor at a prestigious publishing house, attended parties every night, knew famous authors, and received flowers and phone calls from men whose handsome faces adorned the backs of books that we had heard about. More often than not, on the weekends we stayed with Charlotte, we would arrive home in the small hours to find her still awake, sitting on the couch in a black cocktail dress, picking Chinese food out of paper cartons
with her fingers and flipping through an obscure literary quarterly. It was rapture. For girls who feared the ordinary, she was an icon of adulthood sweeter and finer than anything we’d ever laid eyes on.

Moreover, Charlotte was for me proof positive of a viable alternative to the conventional strictures of marriage and motherhood; though they seemed to have failed every other female role model I had, these conventions still appeared, to my bafflement, to be the prime mover of the herds of fresh-faced and otherwise independent-minded college girls with whom I daily trekked from classroom to dining hall to dormitory lounge. They had ambitious career plans and took lovers in the same casual spirit with which they shopped for summer sandals. At the same time they wanted romance with all the trimmings; they accepted Jane Austen’s novels at face value, wept openly over made-for-television movies in which love conquered all, and returned from family weddings with starry eyes and total recall about the details of the bridal accessories. I was increasingly puzzled by this; increasingly, my peers began to seem very misguided.

It may have been merely a question of influence. My father dated so many women from so many walks of life that during one period I ran into them almost weekly on the streets of Manhattan, and struggled to remember their names as I answered their polite questions about my life, their elaborately casual inquiries about Dad (whose charm I had begun to find less charming, more ridiculous). I was fresh from my mother’s second divorce, her tirades about the inherent evils of men, her newfound calling as divorce specialist to the stars. I knew almost no one whose parents were still married, and of those only two or three couples that had claims to anything resembling conjugal bliss. It was during this period that I began to consider marriage an absurd position, a grand delusion, a deeply stupid thing.

Still, it was what people believed in and what they did; Charlotte served as an excellent lesson that there was another way to live, and I became quite attached to her as a symbol of that alternative. Naturally, then, I was a little disappointed when she announced her engagement, thereby depriving me of my icon, my patron saint of alternate realities. On the other hand, she’s marrying a guy almost fifteen years her junior whom she met when he was hired as her editorial assistant. This departs from the predictable just enough to appease me.