by Darcy Cosper
“You got it, bro.” Mick gives him a happy thumbs-up and we lurch forward as the gates swing silently open. “Heavy duty, guys. Wow. Wait ’til I tell my roommates about this. Hey, didja know that rapper guy’s ex-wife, who he, like, filed restraining orders against and all that, lives in the house across the street? Okeydokey, here we are.” He jerks to a stop. A uniformed attendant takes a languid step backward just in time to avoid being mowed down by our car, and moves, unperturbed, to open the door for me. Mick honks musically and waves as he peels out. Gabe tucks the silver-ribbon-entwined box containing our wedding present—a billion-thread-count, twenty-five-foot-long tablecloth from the bridal registry list—under one arm, and offers me his other. We ascend through the milky, eucalyptus-scented air, up a long, low-slung arc of stairs, past a fountain with a hulking abstract sculpture at its center, and up toward an unspeakably big house made almost entirely of glass. Gabe and I exchange glances, and I hear a low laugh rising in his chest.
“No puns,” I beg. “I’ll get the giggles.”
“As you wish.” He squeezes my arm. “But clearly you don’t know what you’re missing. Oops. There’s another resolution out the window. I hope it doesn’t reflect too badly on me. I don’t mean to cause you any pane.”
“I can see right through you,” I tell him, as another attendant directs us through the front door and into a vast, faux-Japanese-minimalist foyer. A third attendant takes our gift and deposits it on a long table with a mountain of others, and a fourth hands us glasses of champagne and waves us on. The foyer opens onto a slightly sunken and lavishly furnished living room, several times the size of our entire apartment, where sixty or seventy guests mingle. I am gaping around, entertaining the vague notion that interior designers are God’s way of telling people they’re not giving enough money to charity, when someone calls my name. I turn to see Christopher Adams, with whom I have very deliberately had no contact since our contretemps at Marilyn and Ben’s wedding.
“Isn’t that… Topher?” Gabe asks me, taking a step forward as Topher comes toward us. I struggle not to blush or cower or think about anything in particular or at all.
“Gabriel, Joy!” Topher shakes the hand that Gabe extends to him.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, as he turns to kiss my cheek.
“Theo was a producer for the first show I worked on out here—which got canceled after two episodes. Fortunately, he didn’t hold it against me.” Topher stuffs his hands into his pockets. “What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were coming to Los Angeles. Why didn’t you call to let me know?”
Gabe explains his connection to the wedding party, and together we observe the requisite round of amusement about the various ties that bind us and the relative smallness of the world we inhabit.
“And where is your lovely fiancée?” Gabe asks.
“Evie, yes. I mean, no, she’s not here.” He looks out toward the patio, then down at his feet. His face is flushed. “Actually, we broke off our engagement. A few weeks ago.”
I stare at Topher, feeling a number of things at once, which average out to another case of nausea.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe murmurs. I nod assent.
“It’s for the best.” Topher gives us a stiff smile and clears his throat. He takes his hands out of his pockets, shoves them back in. “Well. It’s great to see you guys. This place is really something else, isn’t it? Belongs to Theo’s uncle. Very strange guy, Keller. I’ve been up a couple of times for parties. I can show you around a little, if you want. Waiter?” He stops a young man carrying a tray of champagne glasses, and takes one. “Have you been out back yet? You won’t believe it. Come on.”
Gabe and I follow Topher past the crowd in the living room, through floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall sliding glass doors, and out into the area that under normal circumstances would be referred to as the backyard; the term is insufficient to describe this massive tract of expensive landscaping that unfolds before us toward a distant panorama of the smog-swathed city below. Here, serpentine footpaths, paved in some pale green, semiprecious stone, arabesque across a multilevel acre of gray slate patio and around a vast swimming pool. On its surface, thousands of pale lotus blossoms drift like ornate paper boats. At one end of the pool is an odd gazebolike structure covered in gold filigree and draped in long, silky banners; its roof is supported by pillars in the shapes of Buddhas and writhing, multiarmed dancers. It suggests, generally, a pan-Asian temple, and, specifically, very bad taste. Facing this creation, on either side of the pool, are rows of spindly gold chairs adorned with ribbons and set with embroidered cushions.
“That thing,” Topher indicates the temple, “was custom-built for the wedding by a woman who won the Oscar for production design a couple of years ago. Angelina converted to Buddhism after she saw that movie about the search for the new Dalai Lama.” He kicks back the remainder of his champagne and tosses his glass into the pool. We all watch as it bobs for a moment on the surface, then disappears beneath the floating blanket of flowers.
“Cheers,” Topher says. “More bubbly?” He waves at a waiter on the other side of the pool.
“Back in a second,” I tell them. “If I don’t get lost.”
But of course I do. On my search for a bathroom I end up first in a giant kitchen where several people are screaming at one another over trays of canapés, then outside a door at the end of a hallway that I am about to open when I hear the distinct sounds of an illicit quickie. At last, after nearly toppling an attendant whose arms are full of orchid bouquets, I locate the ladies’ lounge, conveniently announced as such by an engraved silver plaque on its gleaming cherry-wood door. The lounge decor aesthetic is sort of Bette Davis-boudoir, an opulent shrine to Depression Modern design that would make Charles weep for joy. It is currently occupied by three attenuated, archly pretty young women wearing tiny strappy dresses and tiny strappy shoes, who grace me with bored glances before they return to cutting lines of cocaine on an elegant glass and chrome coffee table. I cross to the rest rooms, my heels sinking perilously into a sea of plush burgundy carpet, and lock myself into the cherry-wood toilet stall.
“This will be a lovely first marriage,” I hear one woman say. “You go ahead, honey.”
“Oh, it’s not her first,” another voice says over a series of loud sniffs.
“She had that annulled after three weeks. Doesn’t count.”
“I give them a year,” a third voice says. More sniffing.
“That’s optimistic.”
“I swear he’s gay. My best friend’s stylist slept with him last year.”
“So did I, honey. Half of the bridesmaids have validated little Theo’s parking ticket. He’s not gay.”
“He’s just a hedonist. Like us.” The redheaded woman making this pronouncement looks up as I reenter the sitting room. She acknowledges me with a half-nod and a onceover, and proffers a candy-striped straw. “Want to powder your nose before you go? Courtesy of our benevolent host. No? You sure?” She picks up a cut-crystal dish, holds it out. “Percodan? Xanax? Demerol? Ritalin? Stuff’ll knock you out quicker than a ghost says boo.”
“Keller’s so thoughtful like that,” one of the other women adds. “No, pain, no pain, that’s his motto.” As the three of them convulse with laughter, I slip out of the lounge and come face to face with a burly man loitering in the corridor.
“Joy Silverman?” He peers down at me, then strangles out an awkward laugh.
“Hector.” I offer him a trembling hand and he shakes it. “I haven’t seen you since you came by the office last year… Hector Kappler. You’re related?”
“Groom’s uncle. Just waiting for, ah, my wife.” He studies his shoes. I inspect the wallpaper. “Think she may be in there. You see her?”
Before I can answer, the feline redhead from the lounge glides through the door and comes to stand beside Hector.
“Anabel,” Hector tells her, “this is Joy Silverman. She’s a, ah, business associate of mine from New
York. Joy, Anabel Kappler, my wife.”
“Anabel.” I give her my very best blank business face. I try not to picture her with cuckold’s horns—or whatever the female equivalent is. Now that I think of it, there probably isn’t one. As Damon said the other day, the cultural norm is for men to stray. The term for a man with an adulterous wife is cuckold. The term for a woman with an adulterous husband is wife.
“Lovely to meet you, Joy.” Anabel smiles. “Sorry to keep you waiting, baby. There were such long lines.” She winks at me, then takes Hector’s arm and leads him away. I watch their backs disappear down the hall and briefly reconsider the candy dish of tranquilizers, before going in search of Gabe.
WITH THIS WINDUP, I’d expected the wedding to include a procession of vestal virgins, ritual smoking of opium in hookahs, and the blood sacrifice of a plastic surgeon or two. In reality, I don’t think there was anything like that, but I honestly can’t say for sure. I was barely able to take in the details of the ceremony, distracted as I was by the maid of honor: Ora Mitelman. The bride’s dearest, oldest friend. Who, after the reception dinner, asked Gabriel to dance, right in front of me, without so much as a blush of shame. And with whom he is currently doing the cha-cha. The two of them are out there on the dance floor, amid the topiary and tiki torches, dancing up a storm with a crowd of tipsy guests, while I sit alone at a table by the pool.
I am throwing sugared almonds at the floating lotus blossoms, and in the advanced stages of a royal sulk, when Topher finds me.
“You don’t look like you’re having a particularly good time, young lady.” He crouches beside my chair. “Where’s Gabe?”
“Dancing.” I throw another almond.
“Without you?”
“So it would seem, as I’m here discussing it with you, Toph.”
“You want to dance?”
“No.”
“No. Never mind. I have a better idea.” Topher stands and pulls me up. “Let me take you away from all this.” He leads me into the house, pausing to coax two bottles of champagne and glasses from a waiter. We wend through the corridors, past the ladies’ lounge, and stop outside a set of ominous black double doors. Topher pushes them open and waves me into the pitch-black room. I hear a switch snap, and the lights rise to reveal a private screening room built to look like an old-fashioned movie house. At the front is a half-scale proscenium stage, complete with red velvet curtain and marquee lights. Instead of chairs, the room is filled with rows of love seats upholstered in plush gold fabric. The walls are painted with trompe l’oeil murals depicting luxe balconies and opera boxes.
“When does the next burlesque show start?” I ask.
“Shut up and sit down.” Topher nudges me toward a seat in the front row and begins to open a bottle of champagne. “You are wearing an engagement ring, Silverman. We clearly have some catching up to do.”
AN HOUR OR MORE slips by as we exchange stories. Topher tells me about breaking his engagement with Evelyn. I tell him about my family’s weddings, about the evening Gabe asked me to marry him, about the birthday party proposal, about my fear and loathing for Gabe’s family and my anxiety about the engagement party they’re planning for us in mid-September, which does not bode well for how much input we’ll have in the wedding itself.
As I talk, I realize what a relief it is to get all of this off my chest. I haven’t really been able to admit to any of my friends—I haven’t, I guess, even admitted to myself—just how psycho I am these days. I’m so weirdly embarrassed about having reversed my stand on marriage, and now that I’m a convert to the honorable estate it feels as though it’s somehow not my right to quibble about the particulars. I can’t quite follow my own logic, if there is any. I do know that as Topher meets my confessions with sage nods and his trademark lopsided smiles, I begin to feel lighter, easier, grateful to him. He looks so familiar and kind sitting across from me, a friend of my youth, someone I can have faith in.
There’s only one hitch. I am unable, try as I might, to answer his query about what affected my change of heart about marriage. This is disturbing, but since both champagne bottles have somehow become empty, I conclude that my vagueness on this point can be explained by garden-variety inebriation, an excuse that Topher accepts.
“Never mind.” He grins at me. “Didn’t mean to put you on the spot, Silverman. How about a little music? A little night music, please?”
I bob my head and note that the room wobbles rather alarmingly as I do so. Topher weaves up the aisle to the back of the room and into the projection booth; a moment later “I’m a Believer” fills the room at ear-splitting volume for several bars, and then is shut off. Muffled apologies come from the projection booth. I hold my left hand out in front of me and wave it around, wiggling my fingers and looking at my engagement ring. I draw it slowly toward my face, keeping my eyes on it until they cross.
“He certainly is a catch, Joy,” I tell myself. “You’re a lucky girl.” The music recommences at a normal volume, and Topher capers down the aisle to me, singing along to some lovey-dovey-moon-June Frank Sinatra ballad.
“May I have this dance?” He drops to one knee and holds his hand out to me. I nod and take his hand.
“You lead,” I tell him, as he puts his arms around me. “I’m wobbly.”
“Do you remember when we danced to this song at the prom?”
“No. Uh-uh. Didn’t dance to this song.”
“We didn’t? Are you sure? I think we did.” He laughs and twirls me around in a little circle, and we stumble against each other. “Whoops, Silverman. You okay, there?”
“Mmm.” I nod, then giggle, then notice that he’s looking at me very seriously, and I try to look serious as well. “Right. Okay. What are you looking at me like that for? Wait a minute,” I tell him, as he begins to stroke my cheek with the back of his hand, then puts a finger under my chin. “Wait, I’ve seen this movie.”
“Shut up, Silverman,” Topher says, and kisses me.
“This movie has a very bad ending,” I tell him, and he stops kissing me. Without precisely intending to, I sit back down on the couch. He sits beside me, and puts his arms around me. He gives me the serious look again, and draws me closer. I am attempting to push him away when the door swings open, and a man and woman tumble into the room, laughing. I look up. The couple notices they have company. I shove Topher away, and he falls onto the floor. The woman stares at us. It is, of course, Ora. The young man with her stops laughing. It’s Damon. I feel suddenly and extremely sober but not, luckily, for long.
“Joy!”
“Damon.”
“Joy?” Topher looks at me slightly cross-eyed.
“Topher!” Ora has gone exceedingly pale.
“Hi,” Topher tells her.
“Topher? I mean, Ora?” For some reason this strikes me as funny. “I mean, Topher, you know Ora?”
“What do you mean, do I know Topher? Do I know Topher?” Ora goes from white to red with fury. “Oh, I don’t believe this. This cannot possibly be true.” She stalks toward the exit. I stare after her.
“You know her?” I ask Topher, who is getting up off the floor.
“I’ll explain later,” he says, and weavingly follows Ora out. The door slams shut behind them.
“I very much look forward to seeing you attempt that,” I call after him, as Damon drops down on the couch beside me. Two shifty, semitransparent doppelgängers of Damon sit down next to him.
“Hello,” I tell all three of him, and giggle. “I’m drunk.”
“Looks that way,” the three Damons agree.
“Are you following me? You’re supposed to be at the office. In New York.”
“Well, first of all, guy, it’s Saturday night.” The Damons flip their hair. I close my eyes. “Second, you sent me out here for work, remember? Screenplay, Transgression Enterprise, that stuff.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Right. And one of the ladies on the Transgression Enterprise just broke up with her man and
she asked me to be her escort, and so here I am. Pretty cool, huh?” He studies me for a long moment. “So, what just happened in here?”
“That is an excellent question.” I sigh, and slouch into the cushions. “And one to which I’m not at all sure either you or I want an answer.”
“Gotcha,” Damon says. “Okay. You all right? Do you need anything?”
“I need,” I say, “to sleep.” And with that, I slip onto the floor, curl up under the love seat, and do so.
Sunday, September 9, 200—
I MEET HENRY AT PANTHEON for a pre-Girls’ Night drink. Since my return from Los Angeles, I have refused to discuss the events that transpired there on the grounds that no events whatsoever transpired. Everything is just fine; that’s my story and I’ve stuck to it.
Alas, Henry knows me too well to believe it for one red-hot second. When I walk into the restaurant, she leaps from her bar stool and gallops to meet me. Her pale pink T-shirt is emblazoned with elegant script that reads I only date crack whores. She grabs me by the shoulders, peers down at me, and snorts with annoyance.
“You are such a goddamn liar.” Henry throws an arm around my waist and leads me to the bar. “I knew it. Your voice has been weird all week. You have some explaining to do.”
“Lovely to see you, too, Hank. How’s everything? How’s Delia? Everything set for the big day?”
Henry and Delia sorted things out a few weeks ago and, several premarital counseling sessions later, their wedding plans are back on track.
“Your diversionary tactics are pathetic, Jo.” Henry tosses her head. “Barkeep, a drink for my pathetic best man.”
“How was your Labor Day, little gal?” Luke ignores her and leans across the bar to kiss my cheek. My Labor Day, as it happens, was spent in the company of the Winslow family, up in Maine, and I have vowed not to discuss it in polite society. “Hey, I got the invite for your engagement party,” Luke says. “Thanks, I’ll be there.”