Wedding Season (16 page)

Ora opens her mouth, closes it, opens it, closes it again. She looks like a carp drowning in air.

“You’d better hurry up and
get
him to marry you,” she finally says. “Or
someone’s
going to steal him from you, even if it’s not me.”

This offends me on so many levels I can hardly think straight. There are a thousand things I want to say, but I hear them in my head and know what they are: stupid defenses, hollow jibes, the taunts of the playground, the petty melo-dramatics of soap operas and pulp romances, the motives and moments to be expected of girls, girls, girls. I struggle with myself. I lose.

“According to your theory,” I tell Ora, “marrying him won’t be any use. And according to my theory, if he can be stolen by a nymphomaniac with a trust fund and a dye job who plagiarizes her own memoir, he’s probably not worth marrying, is he?”

Ora flinches, and for a moment I’m full of righteous triumph. It doesn’t last long.

“If he can be stolen,” she says coolly, “then
you’re
the one who’s not worth marrying, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I’m worth
not
marrying,” I hear my voice rise, “because, like my boyfriend, I’m not some idiot so obsessed with the
idea
of love that I need some stupid institution to shore up my relationship.”

“Oh, I see. Of course. But did you ever think maybe he hasn’t asked you to marry him because he doesn’t
want
to?” Ora’s voice is sweet and smooth as taffy. “And your stupid ideas just make it easier for him to wait and amuse himself until someone worth marrying comes along.”

“That’s quite enough,” Henry says, standing up and
looking down at Ora. “It’s been a pleasure having you as our guest, but we don’t want to keep you from your next appointment. Have a lovely night.” She gestures at the door. Ora turns to Joan for help, but Joan has fallen gently, drunkenly asleep. Ora snatches up her purse, gives me and Henry a long baleful look, and stalks to the bar. After a brief exchange with Luke, she leaves the restaurant, tossing her hair back and lifting her chin like a czarina on parade. We watch in silence as the glass doors swing shut behind her.

“Holy fuck.” Henry drops back into her seat. “You two deserve Emmys for that fucking performance. Best catfight in a nighttime drama. What do you think, ladies?” She turns to Maud, who struggles into her jacket as Miel attempts to revive Joan, without success.

“I think that I’ve had a hell of a day.” Maud glares into the middle distance. “And since I’m one of those idiots who needs a stupid institution to shore up my relationship and I’m in the middle of planning a stupid wedding, I’m going home now. Excuse me, Joy. I need to get out.”

“Maud, no—”

“What?” She looks at me fiercely. “What?”

“I didn’t mean
you
. I’m sorry.”

“Get up, Joy. I need to go.”

“Maud, please. Please. You know what I believe.”

“I knew you didn’t want to get married. I didn’t know you thought your friends were idiots for doing what
we
believe in. Let me out.”

I slide out of the banquette and let her climb out. Henry gives her a hug and whispers something in her ear. Maud nods.

“Want to share a cab?” she asks Miel, who stands on tiptoe to kiss Henry, and then comes to me.

“Don’t worry,” Miel breathes into my neck, her slender hands on my shoulders. “It’s just a bad night. I’ll talk to
Maud, okay? And I’m so sorry about that girl being so mean.” She straightens up, gives my forehead a little pat, and follows Maud, who is heading briskly for the door. I sit down and put my head on the table.

“How to win friends and influence people, by Joy Silverman,” Henry says. “Iconoclasm is a thankless profession, isn’t it, honey?”

“Henry, do you love me?” I lift my head and look at her.

“Yes, you idiot. I love you. Now, let’s wake Joan up and get her home. Damn,” she adds. “We got stuck with the check.”

W
HEN
I
GET HOME
, the apartment is quiet and dark.

“In here,” Gabe’s voice comes from the bedroom. Francis waddles out to meet me, wags his tail in the dim of the foyer, and trails me down the hall. Gabe is in bed, the duvet tucked around his waist, reading glasses sliding down his nose, and a biography of Guy Burgess facedown on his bare chest. “Hey, Red. You’re home early. How was dinner?”

“Fine.” I can’t look at him. I kick off my shoes and slink into the bathroom. “How was your night?”

“Uneventful. My parents called. They both send their regards.”

“Thanks.” I give my teeth an unusually thorough brushing, splash some water on my face, and put on Gabe’s striped pajama top, which hangs on the back of the bathroom door. I avoid my reflection in the mirror.

“What took you so long?” Gabe asks when I come back into the bedroom. “I missed you. Get over here.” He holds the blankets up for me, and I crawl in next to him. He wraps an arm around my waist, pulls me onto his chest, kisses my neck, and reaches over to set his book and glasses on the nightstand. “So, how are the girls? Any news?”

What a question. Let’s see. Well, Gabe, Joan will probably require heavy-duty animal tranquilizers to get through her wedding without murdering her groom, I behaved like Joan Crawford, Maud is no longer speaking to me, and Henry almost beat up our special dinner guest. And are you planning to leave me for Ora Mitelman?

I can’t do it. I just can’t. Naturally, I want to ask. But more than even the worst answer I might receive, I am afraid of becoming the kind of woman who would ask that kind of question. A woman like my mother, who toward the end of their marriage waited up nights for my father when he stayed out late, and pounced on him as he came in the door, dive-bombing him like a flock of querulous birds. I would listen from behind my bedroom door to their arguments, which made me think of the ones I saw men and women have in the movies. As in the movies, the fights were almost identical from night to night. Night after night, they ended with the same scene: My mother ran weeping down the hall to their bedroom and slammed the door, while my father stood looking after her, smiling wryly. And every night, shaking his head and chuckling, he would comment to some invisible audience, “Women!” It was as though they were fighting by agreement, accepting out of sheer exhaustion the roles assigned to them, and playing out a scenario with only one possible outcome. It seemed to me that if only they could change something, some little thing, if one of them could just manage to alter a line of dialogue or a gesture, then another story, some other version of their lives might suddenly open up and unfold before them, an undiscovered country.

No, I promise myself. Absolutely not. You will not ask Gabe about her. You will not do anything of the kind, you will not say anything of the kind. Not for any reason, not ever. Not on your life.

I
T’S LATE AFTERNOON
and I’m in the office, answering e-mail while Charles paces in circles around my desk and gives me the weekly status report of standing and incoming jobs. All over the office the windows are open wide to let in the late spring air, and the whole staff is a little giddy; periodically I hear bursts of hysterical laughter from the front room.

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ website is done,” Charles tells me, “and they want to retain us for ongoing work, but I spoke with Jones and he said we should drop it.”

“Why?” I ask. Jones is our lawyer.

“He says the company has high lawsuit potential, and it’d be better to distance ourselves from it now.”

“What, someone’s going to sue if the Apocalypse doesn’t come on schedule?”

“Littering fines from all those flyers, maybe? Oh, also on the litigious front,
BabyDoll
is dropping their account. I got a call on Monday from the editor’s secretary.” Charles slurps the dregs of his coffee. “I guess Tulley’s date with him didn’t go as he had hoped.”

“I guess not. Well, good riddance. We’ve got plenty of work.” I wave through the window to Miss Trixie, attired in a minuscule yellow bikini and giant dark sunglasses, who has
pulled a lawn chair out onto her fire escape and is preparing to sun herself.

“Hollywood was very happy with the rewrite Damon did on
The Senator’s Son
, and they want to retain him in case anything comes up.” Charles perches on the edge of my desk. “Hey, you’ll like this. I got a call from a company called the Transgression Enterprise. They’re doing this new retail chain based on the seven deadly sins.”

“Is there anything in this great green world that can’t be commodified?”

“Apparently not. Vanity is going to be a spa—they’ve recruited some of the nation’s top plastic surgeons and lipo specialists for it. Lust is a cocktail lounge and dance club, with on-site matchmakers and private rooms. All very sophisticated and upscale, they promise me.”

“Better get that in writing.”

“Anger’s a rage therapy facility. Boxing gym and primal scream sessions on one side, yoga and meditation workshops on the other. Gluttony’s a prix-fixe restaurant with a ten-course-meal minimum, and Greed’s custom jewelry-nothing less than five carats—but the client’s thinking about repositioning the store as ’Rapacious.’ Sounds better, doesn’t it?”

“Very wily of them. What’s Sloth?”

“A resort on a private island. With a ratio of something like eight employees to every guest. Rickshaws. All service is room service. Stuff like that.”

“And Envy?”

“A clothing boutique—one-of-a-kind items and limited editions only. They’ll start the whole thing in Los Angeles, naturally, then bring it to New York next year. They want us to write all the peripherals and brainstorm a PR campaign. And they’re offering a pile of money. The wages of sin!”

“It sounds amusing, I guess. Give the sins to Damon?” I delete several e-mails promising that I can get rich working part-time from my home.

“Sure,” Charles says. “And Tulley—her mother was a devout Catholic, she has all this doctrine memorized from childhood. She can help out with the research.”

“Did we hear anything about the Extreme Romance business?”

“They loved the last installments.
Loved
them. They’re commissioning a dozen more, and they also want to discuss developing a line of erotica.”

“Great.” I delete a pyramid scheme, a promotion for a cybervirus detector, and an e-mail entitled “Top 20 Lies Men Tell.” “We’ll have Petey keep on with the love, and I’ll call Joan about the sex. Maybe we can do some cross-branding with
X Machina.
”

“Clever girl. Speaking of which, Talent Agency’s corporate sponsorship program. It’s looking really good for us.”

“What’s that?” I ask, distracted, noticing that an e-mail from Maud has just arrived.

“The thing I told you about a couple of weeks ago.” Charles gets up and starts pacing again. “Erica’s agency is developing a program to broker individual sponsorships between their hot young artist clients and big corporations. The Medici Project. I took a meeting, and they really want us on board from the ground up. Huge commission—website, ad campaign, events, the works. They’re going to hire an ad agency, but they want us to be the creative leads, coordinating with their strategic planners and marketing department. We may have to bring on a couple of additional people if we take it. Hello? Vern?”

Charles’s voice comes to me faintly through a sudden wave of nausea. I’ve opened Maud’s e-mail, expecting to
find one of the information queries she usually sends out when she’s doing research on a new film, and have found something quite different.

“Joy, are you okay? What is it?” Charles circles the desk and puts his hands on my shoulders. “You look like someone died. Oh, damn, I’m sorry. No one died, did they?”

“Nope.” I put my head down on the desk. “Nothing like that. It’s okay.”

“What happened? Did you get bad news?”

“Maud’s angry at me.” I lift my head. “She recused me of bridesmaid duties.”

Charles looks at me, agog, and then begins to laugh.

“Vern, you brilliant little thing! How did you engineer that?”

“It’s not funny.”

“Of course it is! You were joking about how to get out of service just last week, remember? Burning your bridesmaid’s draft card, fleeing to Canada?”