Borrow-A-Bridesmaid

by Anne Wagener

  When Susan and Brandon step forward together toward the minister, my line of sight to the groom’s side opens up, and I watch Charlie smile as his sister places her hand in Brandon’s. For a few seconds, I forget my commandments, my self-consciousness, and the way the tendons in my feet are tightropes. I imagine kissing him on those dimples. Holding his chin in my hand and gently turning his face to kiss one cheek, then the other.

  I will keep my eyes on the bride at all times. I turn back toward the pair as they begin their vows. Susan starts off confident but stops in the middle of “for better or for worse,” her voice slipping into a tearful glissando. She’s stuck at the “for better” part, leaving an eyebrow-raised congregation wondering if she’s in it “for worse.” Lisa looks like she wants to reach out to Susan, but she has Susan’s bouquet in one hand and her own bouquet in the other. Edward Bouquet Hands!

  My fingers begin to move before I even have time to think. My thumb and index finger slide the handkerchief from around the bouquet stem. I step around Lisa and press the handkerchief against Susan’s arm, after giving her shoulder what I hope is a reassuring squeeze. “Deep breaths,” I whisper.

  She takes one hand out of Brandon’s and reaches up to take the handkerchief, mouthing “thank you” as she turns back to Brandon, whose eyes are red-rimmed and bleary. She dabs right, then left, and I can see her chest rise with a prolonged inhale, then deflate with an exhale.

  I step back and am rewarded with a grateful smile from Lisa on the way.

  “For better or for worse,” Susan continues, her voice stronger now.

  Feeling like I’ve finally earned my keep, I settle back and watch the rest of the ceremony unfold without event.

  When the pastor pronounces them husband and wife, I feel my own eyes getting a little teary. As we parade out and I take Charlie’s arm, I’m relieved at first to be off the altar. But Angry Achilles is back when I become very aware of every inch of me that is touching every inch of him, our arms locked together as the photographer snaps a shot.

  “Smooth moves, bridesmaid,” Charlie says, pulling my arm in closer to his body. My nerve endings are doing the electric slide.

  He feels warm against my arm. As we reach the foyer and he releases me, he lets my arm slide all the way down his, and his palm lingers against mine.

  “See you at the reception,” he says. “I’m plotting to monopolize your dance card.”

  Seven

  The place settings instruct us to sit at the Mighty Bassoon table. Each table has its own instrument mascot, featuring a pop-art picture of said instrument in the center. Charlie and I stand between midnight blue satin tablecloths, clueless. My only musical interlude was middle school show choir; it was piano for Charlie. He tells me that after three months and little more than “Twinkle, Twinkle” under his belt, he knew he’d never match Susan’s musical talent. Instead, he spun off in a direction that suited him better: the Mighty Pen.

  On his way back from the buffet table, Charlie gets waylaid by relatives, so I focus on my food and drink. I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as a cordon-bleugasm, but I’m pretty sure I have one during the third course. Wedding cake arrives shortly thereafter: A succulent raspberry cream holds together layers of chocolate and vanilla. I look up from my last bite to find Charlie approaching our table, the decorative string lights twinkle, twinkling in his eyes. A grin, then he nods toward the bar. I glance around for more encroaching coveys of relatives, but we appear to be safe. Susan and Brandon are making the rounds; they’re currently chatting up the Ostentatious Oboe contingent.

  We talk over wine—mine red, his white—as guests populate the dance floor.

  “I have to ask,” he says, finishing a sip and turning to me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Susan rented you?”

  I almost spit out my wine.

  “She told me this morning after family brunch. Hey, I’m not judging.” He leans against the bar. “In fact, I might do the same when I get back to L.A. for some extra cash.”

  “I’d do this again. Especially for a bride like Susan.”

  He smiles. “I miss her, being out there. Definitely don’t miss my parents, though.”

  “What’s the story there?” I ask softly, thinking about his mom’s strained questions at the rehearsal dinner. “They want you to take over the family business or something?”

  “Bingo.” His gaze drop to the bottom of his wineglass. “My parents are practical people. They’re waiting for me to get over this screenwriting phase.”

  I sip my wine, sensing his discomfort and shifting closer to him. “Well, my parents don’t own a business or anything, but they spent the better part of their life savings on my college education. And then I went ahead and became an airport bookseller.”

  A disco ball descends from the ceiling, luring more people to the dance floor. Sparks of light shimmy across Charlie’s wineglass. He touches the lip of his glass against mine, so that our knuckles brush. “That’s where you started, not where you arrived. It’s only the first stop.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. I guess it feels like I’ve been there forever. I know I do other things and go other places, but it feels like I always wind up back in front of the register. Like I’m in a time loop.” I tell him my theory about the airport as the Divine Comedy’s limbo.

  He slips an arm around my waist and draws me closer. “Spoiler alert—Dante makes it to paradise.”

  “Yeah, after descending through hell and clambering over a three-headed Satan.”

  “Hey, it’ll give you plenty to write about.”

  We chuckle as an old man begins doing disco moves to “Stayin’ Alive.” I start to tap my foot but stop as pain shoots through my calf. Curse you, heels.

  As Charlie swirls his wine, I catch a hint of its sensuous, fruity odor. I can smell Charlie, too, cologne and aftershave and soap. Even when I sip my wine, my peripheral vision won’t let go of him.

  As I drain the last drop, he releases my waist and holds out his hand for my glass. “What’ll it be next?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “More wine, I think.”

  “Classy.” He winks, turning back toward the bar. Halfway en route, his wine expedition is hijacked by a trio of elderly aunties. One of them pinches his cheek while another starts talking a mile a minute, gesticulating wildly with her hands. The third looks stoned.

  Charlie peers over their heads to offer me an apologetic glance. I should have known I wouldn’t have him all to myself tonight. I slink back to the table, drowning my sorrows in a second piece of cake.

  Susan appears a moment later, swishing toward me in her dress. Her cheeks are flushed, and she seems faintly tipsy. “Piper! I have to get back to family in a sec, but—wow! You and Charlie?”

  I flush, not sure how much to say.

  She gives me a knowing look. “I can always tell when my brother is smitten. Even with Wedding Brain, I noticed at family brunch this morning that Charlie seemed different. He didn’t even touch the cheese kuchen—it’s his favorite—he just sat at the table and smiled the whole time like a jackass. Once Mom and Dad left, I got it out of him.” She frowns. “Where’d he go, anyway?”

  I nod toward the triumvirate of aunties.

  Susan narrows her eyes at them before turning back to me. “You sit tight.” She swishes across the room and within seconds has pulled all three aunties onto the dance floor. The stoned one comes alive to “Everybody Dance Now” as her arms bend up into a robot dance. The other two sashay around Susan.

  Charlie, thus liberated, arrives by my side a minute later, glass extended. “Wanna go outside?”

  The cool evening breeze encircles us as we exit the hall, playing with strands of my hair that have escaped from their hair-spray-and-bobby-pin prison. One strand glances the top of Charlie’s ear. He offers me a cigarette with his free hand. I take it, though
I haven’t smoked since college.

  He lights it for me, suddenly reticent, as if he’s left his chattiness in the midst of the reception hall noise. This is quiet Charlie, blowing-smoke-through-his-nostrils Charlie. This Charlie I can picture writing screenplays, huddled over his notebook at a coffee shop, one pen in his hand and one tucked behind his ear.

  We walk toward the historic house, a bed-and-breakfast where Susan and Brandon will spend their wedding night. Out of Beltway range, the quiet is delicious. The June night is warm with a soft breeze. A lone cicada hums us a song that swells and then subsides.

  I’m not sure what to say, afraid my clumsiness with words will get worse with the wine instead of better. I’m terrified last night was an anomaly. I couldn’t possibly swing two magical nights in a row. I need Lin’s smoothness, his confidence. Instead I have my aching feet, ridiculous hairdo, and fading stage makeup.

  When we reach the steps of the house, we sit, alternately inhaling smoke and night air.

  “I’ve decided that my next screenplay is going to be about a certain Peter Vandermoorten,” Charlie says. “I feel a burst of inspiration coming on.”

  I shake my head. “I hope I can write again one of these days. I used to stay up all night writing.” The feeling I had on those nights—that whisked-away-on-a-magic-carpet-of-my-own-imagination feeling—seems like it belongs to a past self, a different me. Not the me of airport bookstore stockrooms.

  Charlie looks at me like he’s picturing that girl, hunched over her notebook, scribbling furiously, dorm room lit only by a chain of paper lanterns. He lifts a finger to my lips. “You are writing. Starting tonight.” He fumbles in his suit jacket pocket and hands me a wedding favor from our table: a blue spiral-bound notebook with silver music notes dancing across each page. A delicate blue pen the size of my pinkie is tied across the front cover with a bit of sparkly ribbon.

  I press the notebook to my chest, a silent assent to his directive. Then I slip it into my purse and retrieve my wineglass.

  A few notes of music seep through the wood of the reception hall barn and float our way. It smells like autumn all of a sudden—a burnt wood smell that mixes in with our smoke. I shiver.

  Charlie crushes his cigarette with the polished toe of his dress shoe. He cocks his head to one side, then pulls my still-burning cigarette from between my fingers, slow, so that I’ve completely left my mind and am conscious only of the cigarette paper sliding between my index and middle fingers. He puts my cigarette out and extends his hand.

  When I take it, he pulls me off the step and into his arms. We slow-dance for a few minutes, the music barely audible over the pounding of my heart. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” fades into “It Had to Be You.”

  My cheek lolls against his shoulder. I let my eyes close, and when I open them, he’s looking at me: a pointed look, a hungry look. I meet his gaze for a moment that swirls between us like the smoke.

  We kiss.

  And kiss.

  Everything else—those hours in front of the register, riding trams, restless when I’m stationary and restless when I’m in transit—curls and burns away.

  The taste of him is salty, smoky: It sinks in below my lips, forming a sense memory.

  He pulls away, and I have to resist the urge to grab him by the lapels and drag him back to me. “How about that?” he asks, his voice huskier than I’ve heard it. “Can you get a poem from that?”

  I catch and release my breath. “Maybe a couplet.”

  “Let’s give you more material to work with, then.” He leans in again, traces the inside of my top lip with his tongue. I wrap my fingers around the back of his neck. Through the crack of my eyelids, I can see the last bit of our smoke dissolving into the night—and just past that, but also light-years away, the glow from the reception hall.

  I’m not sure how much time passes. I feel like I’m in an Acme cartoon tussle where the characters fight in a giant cloud—every now and then a fist or foot or elbow emerges. With Charlie, I’m in a passion cloud, and every now and then I become especially aware of a specific part of his or my anatomy. Tongue! Lips! Hands! Ass! But even in the passion cloud, Rational Piper is there, hands on her hips, reminding me that Charlie is California-bound. That this lovely moment must end.

  And then it does—the back door of the reception barn cracks open and we pull apart, dazed. Charlie’s hair is all over the place. I adjust my dress and put my feet back in the horrible heels.

  Charlie’s gangly teenage cousin Josh is making his way toward us, hands shoved in his pockets and face redder than raspberry cake filling. He clears his throat. “Uh, sorry—it’s just—I’m supposed to tell you that you have to, like, take Aunt Bea, Aunt Margie, and Aunt Dorothea home to Gaithersburg. Chris was going to do it, but, um, they kind of found him passed out behind the chocolate fountain. I’d do it, but I only have my learner’s.”

  Charlie nods. “It’s all good, Josh. Tell them I’ll be right there.”

  “Okay, so, yeah. Later.” Josh turns abruptly and walks back toward the barn.

  Charlie runs his hands through his hair. “I better go. Can I call you? I want to see you again before—” He can’t seem to make himself say it.

  “Yes,” I say, not wanting him to say it, either.

  “I’ll e-mail you my screenplay if you send me some of your stories in return. We could have a writing date. A proper date, where we won’t be interrupted. If—if you want.”

  “Yes, I want! I mean—I will.” My poor lips are disoriented. Nothing’s coming out right.

  I hand him a page from the tiny notebook with my number and e-mail scrawled on it. We give each other a last look, and he cups my face in his hands. He gives me one more kiss, this one softer and more deliberate than the others. “Good night, Piper.”

  He retreats toward the barn. I sit on the step and pull the notebook back out of my purse, along with the small blue pen. The moment might be over, but I’m going to transcribe it in ink.

  Eight

  Torture. Pure torture, standing in front of a bookcase full of two-dimensional couples embracing. All I can think about is Charlie, but I literally have to shelve my desire. An entire book cart of it.

  Sal stands behind me, supervising and prattling. “Our numbers are up, and we’re really starting to get the attention of corporate.”

  “Mmm.” I take a few more books off the cart and try to ignore his Mountain Dew breath. A little cloud of it is trapped in the corner where “Romance A–N” meets “Romance O–Z.” I could use some caffeine myself; it’s going to be a long night. But working alone in the store means I won’t be able to sneak over to the newsstand for my usual Coke and Mr. Goodbar. I wonder if I could get the United-booth guy to make a carb and caffeine run for me.

  What I do have is that small blue notebook: a snack for the soul. That alone is enough to get me through tonight’s shift. That and my sense memories of Charlie—I touch my index finger to my lower lip and enjoy the mild soreness. I can’t wait to read his screenplay. I’m hoping his writing is magic-carpet awesome.

  Sal’s still talking behind me. He never really asks for input, so it usually suffices to nod or make a somewhat affirmative noise. Hearing a natural break in his speech, I insert an “mm-hmm” and pull the next book off the cart. The stud on the cover is pulling a faint-kneed beauty onto a steed. I smile a goofy boogie-woogie smile. And then, because Sal is watching, I carefully shelve the book.

  “I know tonight might be slow, but I really need you to push sales as much as you can. We’re close to our daily goal.”

  “Rrooahkayy.”

  “Make sure to push the chain memberships, too, to every customer. Whether they make a purchase or not.”

  “Yahhh.”

  He shifts his weight, running his fingers across a nearby book spine. “So how was that wedding you were in?”

  “Shhhooo
by.”

  When he doesn’t continue talking, I turn to see his eyebrows raised expectantly.

  “Huh?”

  “How was that wedding last weekend?”

  “Oh! Fine.”

  “What did you wear?”

  “A dress.”

  “Did you meet anyone?” I can smell his breath, stronger now.

  The phone rings—deus ex telefona—and he scampers off to answer it in his “manager voice.”

  He clicks around in the inventory system and mumbles something gooey and sycophantic. From the tone and pitch of his voice and the volume of verbal goo-age, I’m guessing it’s upper management.

  He hangs up the phone. “Time for me to hand you the reins. You have my cell if anything comes up, or you can call Kathy in B store.”

  I wait until I’m sure he won’t come back for anything—that he hasn’t “forgotten” his wallet or a book. He pulls that trick sporadically to check up on us.

  I allow a good ten-minute buffer before I toss Ripped and Equipped back on the cart, lean against the counter, and commence daydreaming. “I’ll get to you eventually,” I say to the tower of unshelved romance books.

  Over the next few hours, the airport traffic slows dramatically. The periodic safety announcements—“never leave your baggage unattended”—echo down the hallway. I check my phone: no missed calls as of 8:31 p.m.

  I walk to the front of the store and pretend to rearrange the display. The United guy’s booth is deserted, all the bonus gifts and giant credit card displays stowed away. Even though we’ve never spoken, and even though there are days when his constant hollering makes me want to tell him exactly where he can shove his free bonus gift, I miss him when he’s not there. I feel like we have a certain understanding, like he has the same unspoken longing I do, watching planes take off all day, all night.