Wedding Season

by Darcy Cosper

  Sunday, May 6, 200—

  IT’S THE FIRST SUNDAY EVENING of the month, and so, as is the monthly custom in this country, I leave Gabe to his own devices—perusing contact sheets from a series of shoots he did this week, Hot Young Novelists in their own outfits and natural habitats, for a glossy city weekly—and head down to Pantheon to carouse with my girlfriends. Leaving my apartment building I note, according to the Unitarian church’s blue-plate-special board, that today’s sermon was on tolerance and forgiveness; the featured scripture is that old favorite, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I think of the meek pastor whom I often see lingering on the steps on Sunday mornings, bidding adieus to the congregation, and wonder what he might have on his conscience.

  FOR ONCE, I am not the first to arrive. Ora Mitelman is seated at the bar, smiling up at Luke. He sees me come in and waves, but for perhaps the first time in the history of our acquaintance he doesn’t leave the bar to welcome me. Ora twists around on her bar stool.

  “Hello, Joy.” She lowers the thick fronds of her lashes at me. “What a coincidence. What brings you here?”

  “I’m here for dinner with Joan and our friends. As are you, I believe.”

  “Yes, I am,” Ora coos. “What a nice surprise to see you. Do you come here often?”

  “Joy’s a regular.” Luke hands me a glass of wine.

  “Oh, you’re a barfly!” Ora smiles. “I envy you, Joy, I really do. I don’t get out much these days.” She gives a martyr’s smile and flutters her hands.

  “Really? How strange. Because I see your picture in the ’Night Life’ column all the time. Just today, you were in—”

  “You looked great,” Luke cuts me off. “That film premiere party. You photograph so well.”

  “Oh, no.” Ora shakes her head prettily. “Well, thank you. I was hoping no one would see that. My publicist makes me go to these things. He says it’s good for the book, and what can I do?” She sighs.

  “It must be exhausting.” Luke touches her wrist with one finger.

  “It really is.” Ora sinks a little on her bar stool, weary with the thought of it, then turns to me. “Joy, I just had an idea. I know the nicest boy. Maybe you’d like to meet him. We used to date, but he wasn’t right for me. A lawyer, a little conservative. He might be perfect for you. He’s really very sweet.”

  “Thanks so much for thinking of me.” I swallow half my glass of wine. “But I’m seeing someone.”

  “You are?” Ora’s eyes widen. “I’m surprised.”

  “Why?” Luke laughs. “Joy’s a catch! Aren’t you, little gal?”

  “Of course she is.” Ora gives him an icy smile. “But she just seems single somehow, don’t you think?”

  A bloodcurdling howl comes from the entrance, and Henry rushes in and flings herself upon me, pretending to weep with joy. Emblazoned on her T-shirt are the words What Would Joan Jett Do?

  “Honey, baby, angel, darling! Let me look at you! My god, how you’ve grown! It’s been so long, darling!”

  It’s been eighteen hours; Gabe and I had dinner with Henry and Delia last night, and we accompanied Henry to see Mercy Fuck perform at Miss Trixie’s show on Friday. Henry crushes me to her chest. Over my shoulder, she acknowledges our companions, then goes back to mauling me.

  “Honey, bunny, lovely, sweetheart! Look at you!” She scrunches up her face and pinches my cheeks.

  “Hi, Hank. How was your day?”

  “Well!” Henry flings herself down on the stool beside me. “Barkeep!”

  “What are you drinking, Henrietta?” Luke asks, though Henry always has the same thing, and he knows exactly what it is.

  “A lot. I am drinking a lot. Of the usual, Luke. The USE-YOU-WELL. You’re not angry with me over our little debate the other night, are you, my darling, darling barkeep?”

  Luke turns away without speaking and mixes Henry’s martini.

  “What debate?” Ora asks.

  “Ah-HA! Funny you should ask, Ora.” Henry pronounces the name absurdly, emphasizing and drawing out the second syllable like a sigh. “That’s a very, very interesting question. Isn’t it, Joy?” She lifts the drink that Luke has just set in front of her. “Ladies and gentlemen—present company excluded, of course—a toast to our resident celebrity! Pictured with Bobby De Niro in today’s ’Night Life’ column! The new Dorothy Parker-meets-Marguerite Duras! The next Anaïs Nin! The female Erica Jong! To your book, Ora! To your triumph!”

  Ora, who isn’t clear about Henry’s intent, smiles tentatively and lowers her lashes. I, who am quite clear about it, feel my spirits rise, and clink my glass against Henry’s. Luke, who is also in the know, gives Henry the evil eye.

  “We were debating, little Miss Mitelman,” Henry says, pausing to slurp her martini, “a topic near and dear to your heart: flirtation and fidelity.” Henry puts on a whining English accent. “The relation of the lover to the beloved. Ends and means. A whole happy host of false oppositions. It was simply delightful! I’m so terribly, terribly sorry you missed it.” Henry leaps up and trots to greet Joan and Miel, who have just come into the restaurant.

  “What is she talking about?” Ora turns to me.

  “Henry has an unconventional definition of romantic fidelity.” I glance at Luke, who is apparently enraptured by Ora’s profile. “She believes you can be faithful without necessarily being monogamous. Or rather, that sexual drift is basically inevitable, and that it’s not useful to condemn or suppress it.”

  “Well.” Ora smiles. “I certainly agree with her on that last point. Until you meet the person who’s meant for you, you’re going to be restless, because you’re incomplete. You’re still looking for the love of your life. God knows I’ve had plenty of married men pursue me. And I’ve pursued them, too. Nothing wrong with that, if there’s a chance that we’re meant to be together.” She lowers her lashes at me. Luke frowns.

  “I don’t think that was quite Henry’s point,” I tell her, but she has turned away to kiss Joan, first one cheek, then the other. Henry, who is standing beside me and has apparently overheard Ora’s proclamation, makes a gagging noise.

  “You’d better fucking believe it’s not what I meant,” she whispers. “Boy, it’s a good thing Erica’s not coming tonight. She’d be having fits. Tis-Pity-She’s-A-Whore has reached new depths in the Hank opinion polls. Though there’s apparently not a consensus on this point.” She jerks her head toward Luke, who is staring at Ora with an addled expression. “You’ve been displaced in his big lunky heart, Joy,” she hisses into my ear as I wave over Ora’s head to Joan. “No more bartender pining after you.”

  “I’m crushed,” I tell her.

  Henry gives me an acute once-over and raises an eyebrow, but makes no comment, for which I am grateful. I wave a hand in front of Luke’s eyes and ask him for another drink. Miel sidles up to me and leans the bird-frail bones of her little rib cage sideways into my lap.

  “Hi,” I tell her.

  “Hello, Joyful.” She looks up at me. “How are you?”

  “Oh, you know. Fine. Want a drink?”

  “Yes, please.” She twists around in my lap. “Luke, may I have—Luke?”

  THINGS DO NOT improve over dinner. Joan, who is in a state of near hysteria over her imminent nuptials, drinks several cocktails in rapid succession and strips down to naked id, talking loudly and viciously about her future husband and his various shortcomings in this last week of preparations; she convulses with braying laughter one moment and is overcome by misty-eyed sentimentality the next. Maud, usually the stalwart, cheerful anchor of our group, is in a dark mood; a major chunk of funding for her company’s film has been pulled as the result of a rift between her and one of her coproducers. Miel is even more abstracted than usual, and when she knocks a glass of something over and floods the table, I find myself fantasizing about shaking her violently by her little shoulders and shouting, “Earth to fairy princess!” into her little pink ears.

  “So, Ora.” Henry giv
es a bright, welcoming smile, propping her elbows on the table and making a show of chewing with her mouth open. “Did I overhear you saying that you have a taste for chasing married men? Tell me about that. As soon-to-be married women, I’m sure we’re all very interested. Useful to know what to look out for.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Ora turns from her conversation with Joan. “I don’t get my thrills from breaking up marriages.”

  “Though you’ve broken up a few,” Henry says, “if I recall correctly. I mean, according to your memoir.”

  “That was in the novel.” Joan tries to focus on Henry. “It’s fiction. It was, wasn’t it, Ora, my sweetheart?”

  “What I meant is that I don’t go for men simply because they’re married. That would be horrible. But when two people feel a powerful connection to each other, I believe the mandate to explore those feelings overrules everything else.”

  We stare at Ora.

  “I’m not going to throw away a chance to find the love of my life just because circumstances conspired to attach him to somebody else before fate brought us together,” she says. “So he’s married. Or has a girlfriend. What does that mean, anyway?”

  “That’s what Joy thinks, too, don’t you honey?” Joan slurs. “Joy doesn’t believe in marriage. She thinks the connection should be enough.”

  “I’m in total agreement.” Ora nods at me.

  I glare at Joan, but she’s waving at Luke for another cocktail.

  “And if the connection isn’t there,” Ora continues, “then we’re not really breaching anything, or violating anything, or doing anything wrong. We’re really doing what’s right, by doing everything in our power to find our true loves. Because what else is life about?” She looks to me for acknowledgment, and I am so stupefied that I nod at her.

  “You really don’t feel bad at all about the women you might hurt?” Miel sounds mournful.

  “No. I’m really doing them a favor, if you think about it.” Ora leans a cheek into one hand. “I mean, if the man this woman is with is truly meant to be with me, they’ll never really be happy together, because some part of his heart will always be yearning after the sense of completeness that he could only find with me.”

  “Oh, come on!” Henry says. “You really believe there’s only one person in the world that baby Cupid has intended just for you? Give me a break.”

  “I do believe it.” Ora glares back at Henry. “And I know if I just keep looking, I’ll find him. This man I met this past week—he just might be the one. There was this incredibly powerful energy between us the minute he walked into my apartment.”

  “The plumber?” Henry says. “The UPS guy?”

  “A photographer, actually.” Ora tosses her hair. “This very beautiful man who came to photograph me for City magazine. I think maybe he was already interested in me, because he insisted on coming to do the shoot in my apartment. He said it was what the magazine wanted, but I think it was really what he wanted.”

  “Very sweet.” Joan strokes Ora’s hair. “All the boys love Ora.”

  “And how, exactly, would you describe this very powerful energy?” Henry asks.

  “I can’t put it into words,” Ora says. “It was just this force.”

  “How do you know he felt it, and not just you?” I ask, all casual-like.

  “Oh, Joy. You can tell, can’t you? When there’s that spark? When you connect with someone right away, from the moment you lay eyes on each other?”

  This, to me, sounds like your boring basic sexual attraction, but an image flickers across my mind, of Gabe with his hands full of champagne glasses, crossing a broad lawn in Long Island on an early autumn afternoon, and I feel ill.

  “He was so attentive, and such a brilliant, profound, charming man. He’s got broad shoulders and beautiful wavy dark hair. And so clever,” Ora continues, dreamy-eyed. “I love a man who makes me laugh; it’s the most important thing. He stayed for hours, to get the right shot, he said! He was very flirtatious, very chivalrous. And he didn’t mention that he had a girlfriend until the very end. I asked him for his card. I told him that maybe I’d have him do my new author photo!” She lowers her lashes at us.

  “So you’ll be seeing him again?” Henry smirks.

  “I’ll make sure of it. We’re supposed to get together this week so I can see how the pictures came out. And I’ll bet you anything, ladies, that he won’t be with that girlfriend of his for long.” She flashes a triumphant smile.

  “And who is this Romeo?” Henry asks. “What’s his name?”

  I’m surprised she hasn’t figured it out yet.

  “His name is Gabe.” Ora smiles. “Gabriel Winslow.”

  Silence, thorough and awful, arrives at the table.

  “Oh, Christ,” Henry says, after a long moment. Maud coughs nervously, and Miel looks from one face to the next, panic-stricken. I discover that I am shaking rather violently, though whether from anger, fear, or some more elusive emotion, I am not certain.

  “Ora.” Joan suddenly approximates sobriety. “Honey, that’s Joy’s boyfriend. Joy is the girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” Ora’s smile fades. “Oh. Well.”

  “So, Ora.” I knot my hands together in my lap to keep them from trembling and clear my throat. “Are you going to do me that favor you mentioned earlier, and take Gabe off my hands, since we’re clearly not meant to be together? I mean, we’re living together, but I know that shouldn’t stand in the way of true love. We’re not even married, after all.”

  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.”

  WHEN 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.