Wedding Season (34 page)

T
HIS WAS A HISTORICALLY
significant morning. I woke up early again, lay awake and restless, staring through the bedroom window at the stones and dark arches of the church across the street. After an hour I slipped out from underneath Gabe’s arm, dressed, and wandered through the silent streets for another hour or so before finding my way to the office. And thus it was, in an event unprecedented in the existence of my little company, that I got to the office first. I managed to arrive even in advance of bright-eyed young Pete. God only knows where he woke up this morning. I got to unlock our front door for the first time ever. I got to make the first pot of coffee as weak as I wanted; everyone else here takes it like battery acid, black, bitter, and thick as sludge. I got to choose the music: none. And sitting at my desk in the alien quiet, going over this week’s much-neglected work, I had that pure, strange feeling I used to get in college, when I’d stayed up studying so late that there’d seemed no point in going to sleep; hours and momentum bore me unnoticed over the edge of the next day. I’d wander from the library back to my dormitory, across the empty quads, feeling hollowed out or rubbed away, as if I had lost my corporeality or specificity to the passing night and become transparent, invisible to anyone who might happen to glance from their
windows into the gray dawn. It was, then and today, an extremely pleasant feeling.

As the morning passed, I returned gradually to the concrete world, but to a suddenly well-mannered and deliberate world in which, as if by mutual tacit agreement of its denizens, nothing was or ever had been amiss. Pete sailed in perhaps an hour after I did; he looked like a canary who’d gotten the better of a cat, but made no comment. The rest of the staff arrived after their fashion, Charles last of all, sheepish and much the worse for wear. No one made reference to yesterday’s mayhem; we greeted one another brightly, handed off papers and instructions with brisk, polite efficiency.

By early afternoon, the office has settled into a quiet, steady groove of thorough normalcy. I’m ensconced in the back office with a subdued and industrious Charles, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m unabashedly of the “least said, soonest mended” school of thought. I say rugs are for sweeping things under, and I say the hell with it.

“Vern.” Charles looks up from his papers. “We should sit down and go over the schedule for the next few months. I think with all the Medici work and the Transgression Enterprise, we may have to bring on another writer or two. Can you do lunch?”

“Not today. I’m leaving in a couple of minutes to meet Henry and pick up our dresses for the wedding.”

“Okay, well, maybe we can meet later this afternoon. And listen, take my cell phone with you.” Charles slips a phone the size of a lipstick out of his pocket and puts it on my desk. “I may have a question or two about assignments, and since we’re a little behind this week—”

“Sure, of course. Just call if you need me.” I put the phone into my bag and stand up. “Feel free to pillage my
desk. I have notes on all of the projects around here somewhere.”

“Vern.” Charles shakes his head gently. “Finding anything in those drawers would require sonar equipment and spelunking gear. I’ll just jingle.”

“I’ll be waiting by the phone.” I wave to him and the staff, and head downstairs.

Passing through our building’s arched entranceway and onto the street, I am struck with a sudden lightness of heart. The only hint that summer has passed and gone is the utter absence of humidity. The air is soft, the sky bluer than the eyes of angels on a Vatican ceiling, and there’s not a cloud in sight. Perhaps everything has set itself right, after all this, I tell myself. Everything will be fine. For one minute, walking east to hail a cab, I feel like Julie Andrews on the mountain-top. And then I see Gabe. And Ora. Together.

I see Gabe and Ora together.

It’s interesting that when one’s suspicions are confirmed one’s brain somehow simply won’t compute the very thing one has been contemplating with such focus and regularity for all these hours and days, weeks and months. Ora and Gabe are together. Right there. Standing outside a vintage record store about fifty feet ahead of me, peering in the window. I instinctively duck inside the nearest doorway, and find myself in a beauty salon. The woman at the front desk smiles broadly, bobs her head, and asks if I want a manicure. I do not. I lean a couple of inches out the door and watch as Gabe and Ora turn and head north along the street. And without exactly intending to, I begin to follow them.

I do so for what seems like miles. I am forced now and then to duck behind whatever presents itself in a necessary moment. Mailboxes and hot dog carts are especially handy; telephone poles and lampposts will do in a pinch. My followees
don’t seem to have any particular destination; they wander through the crowded streets of the West Village, stopping on impulse at storefronts, on corners, pointing things out to each other, Ora touching Gabe’s shoulder or arm from time to time. The sight of them together crowds everything from my mind; I can’t stop and I can’t think, my head is tight and reeling and my heart slams like a bionic squash ball against my ribs. At one point, crouching behind a row of newspaper vending boxes, I see a man eyeing me with suspicion and it occurs to me, briefly, that I’m engaged in unusual and perhaps questionable activity. Before I can process this notion any further, I see that Gabe and Ora have moved down the street and almost out of sight, and I flee my hiding place and rush to keep them in view. I lose track of them in Washington Square Park and race through the crowds in the direction I last saw them headed until, several agonizing minutes later, I spot them crossing a street just outside the park. Relieved, I shadow them down the block and around a corner, turning it just in time to see them walk, arm in arm, up the stairs to the entrance of Café Paradiso.

I am following them into the restaurant with my head on fire and no particular plan in the works when the phone in my purse rings, and I stop short. What are you doing? I ask myself, as I grapple for the phone. Are you insane? I know the answers to these questions, and I do not like them.

“What are you doing?” Henry yells when I answer the phone.

“Stalking Gabe.” Did I just say that out loud?

“What? You’re supposed to be at Veruka’s with me right now this second. I think she’s going to chew a limb off or something. Are you insane?”

“Apparently.”

“Why
are you stalking
Gabe
?”

“He’s with Ora. I saw them and I’m just, you know, following them. To see.”

“Well, quit it. Right now. You won’t discuss the situation with him on principle, but you’ll stalk him? God, this is worse than I thought. Where are you?”

“Near Washington Square Park. How’d you find me?”

“Called the office. Got the number from Charles.”

“Henry, Gabe is with Ora.”

“I know, honey. You mentioned that. It’s going to be okay. Listen to me now. See those yellow cars going by? The ones with the lights on top? Those are cabs. Now raise your hand and wave.”

I do so. A cab screeches to a stop in front of me.

“Did it stop?” Henry asks.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Get in. Tell the driver to drop you off on Ludlow and Rivington. I’ll be waiting outside. Okay?”

“Okay.” I hang up the phone, open the cab’s rear door, and climb in. I sit, staring into the window of the restaurant until the driver behind us begins honking his horn and my taxi lurches forward.

“Lady, you want to tell me where we’re going?” The cabbie scrutinizes me in the rearview mirror.

“Sure. Ludlow and Rivington. Please.” I can’t see anything anyway.

B
EFORE THE TAXI
has come to a complete stop on the designated corner, Henry is leaping to open the car door and pull me out. She hands the driver a ten-dollar bill, wraps an arm around my waist, kisses the side of my face, and leads me through the graffiti-covered entrance to Veruka’s shop. When we get to the inner sanctum, Veruka gives me an icy
stare and gestures brusquely for me to take off my clothes. I begin to walk toward the dressing room.

“No, no,” she barks. “No time. You are very late. Clothes off here. Magdalena, the dress.”

Henry gently removes my bag from my clutching fingers and sets it down on the floor. I slip off my sandals and stand passive while Henry undresses me as if I were a child. I can hardly breathe.

“Jojo, look at me,” Henry says. “Just keep looking at me. It’ll just take another minute and then I’ll get you out of here. You’re going to be okay. Deep breaths. Please don’t hyperventilate.”

Magdalena holds the dress at knee level and I step in without looking at it, balancing myself with a hand on Henry’s shoulder. I hold obediently still as Magdalena zips the dress at the back and steps back to view it.

“Perfect,” Veruka says. “Very good. Turn, look. Turn, darling, turn, turn. See yourself.”

I shift reluctantly to face the mirror. Wavering there is someone who looks only vaguely familiar, a thin woman with rust-colored hair, pallid skin scattered with freckles, face stamped with doubt and fear. Thirty years old, knowing nothing, possibly crazy, definitely in trouble, heart beating a crazed apoplectic drum solo. And meanwhile, sheathed in the world’s most beautiful bridesmaid’s dress, which is a deep, soft, midnight blue.

“It’s not orange,” I tell Henry. “That’s so nice.” Then I faint.

A
HALF HOUR
later finds Henry and me at Katz’s Delicatessen drinking egg creams, which she tells me are the cure for all ills. I came out of my swoon on the floor of the dress shop with Henry slapping my face and Veruka attempting to
get me up and out of the dress so it wouldn’t wrinkle. When they were certain I wasn’t going to perish or litigate, Magdalena hurried us on our way, but not before Veruka suggested that I make an appointment to consult on my own wedding gown. Henry snarled at her and hustled me out into the bright unforgiving light of the Lower East Side and the September afternoon.

The deli is pleasantly noisy and crowded with an odd assortment of lunch-rush customers: pierced and safety-pinned youths with hair the color and texture of cotton candy, old men wearing pock-marked sweater vests and sad faces, Catholic school girls who dawdle over promontories of corned beef and sneak glances at the crew of handsome black boys at a nearby table, alight with youth and sex, their laughter extravagant, their restless limbs thrusting and flailing into the aisles like carnival rides. A group of husky men with crew cuts came in to the deli just after us; I saw them climbing out of red vans with
Guaranteed Overnight Delivery
emblazoned on the sides. Now they sit stolid and silent at a corner table, confronting the room with a row of hulking shoulders clad in bright red shirts that read G.O.D. in fat white letters. I bet Henry would look great wearing one of those.

In addition to our restorative beverages, Henry has polished off four hot dogs with extra sauerkraut and sweet relish, and a large order of fries. How she’s managed to do so while keeping up her monologue is a source of fascination to me; she’s talking so rapidly and with such fervor that there should have been no opportunity for her to chew or swallow. I and a half dozen customers at neighboring tables sit in awed silence, transfixed as she holds forth. I’m certain I’d enjoy the whole thing even more if her mesmerizing discourse weren’t on the subject of just how very ill-advised are my intended nuptials, and my unsuitability to the institution
of marriage in general. I find it vaguely funny that I’ve spent most of my life defending my right to
not
get married, only to end up on the other side of the debate.

“I know it’s a cliché, but baby, you really doth protest too much.” Henry slaps the table, heads turn, and the remains of her lunch gain a moment of altitude above the Formica. “If you really just didn’t want to get married, you just wouldn’t have gotten married. Don’t you think all the effort you put into not believing in marriage is an indicator of something? Hey, Jojo! Are you even listening?”

“How could I not? Everyone in the restaurant is listening. Your point, as near as I can figure, is that I believed too strongly that marriage was wrong to just change my mind about it, right?”

“That is
not
my point,” Henry says. “I need another egg cream. Okay, look. If you just don’t believe in something, if it doesn’t mean anything to you, why would you spend so much energy defining yourself in opposition to it?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s a long-running tradition of active resistance to dominant paradigms, Hank.” I hand her my barely sampled egg cream. “It’s called revolution.”

“Totally not the same thing.” Henry downs half the drink in one noisy pull on the striped straw. “You want a revolution, you have to have something to revolve to. Changing from one thing that you think sucks, to something else you think is better, or at least something that sucks less. Revolution’s about the vision thing, not about the suckage. You are all about the suckage. Half-emptiness. Fear. That’s not revolutionary. It’s reactionary.”

“I’ve quit the resistance party. I’m engaged, remember? I embrace the suckage. I’m not reacting anymore.”

“Not in the same way,” Henry says. “But you are. Not talking to Gabe about Ora on principle, for example, because
you don’t want to act like everybody else, you don’t want to be a girlie girl.”

“And what’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing, per se, except that in this case you think you’re being true to yourself, but you’re lying to both of you.”

“Wrong. I’m being true, trying to be true, to what I
believe.
Just because it happens to be contradictory to what I
feel
at the moment doesn’t constitute falseness. Don’t you try that Hallmarky, follow-your-heart, emotion-as-barometer-of-the-Real stuff on me.”

“And don’t pull your Lit Crit 101 schtick on me.” Henry balls up a napkin and throws it at me. She misses.

“Anyway, given my current circumstance, all this is beside the point.” I sink down in my chair. “My fiancé appears to be having an affair, which seems the strongest argument of all for not getting married. May we discuss that for a moment?”