“Very romantic,” said Dominic enthusiastically. “Madison is so nice of a girl. They will be very happy together.”
“Have you tried any of the food yet?” I asked Dominic, watching the waiters walking around with platters of elaborate hors d’oeuvres.
“The food is crap,” Dominic said with equal enthusiasm. “All cheap. Bad quality olive oil. Caviar like fish bait. Don’t eat smoked salmon.” He rubbed his fingers together. “Bad edges. Like pencil erasers.”
“Yuck,” I said.
“I guess you can’t tell if you’re watching it on TV,” said Jerry.
“Good champagne, though.” Dominic held up his champagne flute. “Go near the table with the bridal party, you get Cristal. Very expensive. Later on, you watch me on the dance floor. I break-dance better than Michael Jackson. Get on national TV.”
Jerry grinned. “We’ll be watching.”
“When’s your reception going to be?” I asked Pete.
He looked irritated. “I have no idea. We had actually planned on having one back in February, when we were on vacation, but the entire family’s been so preoccupied with this wedding that we felt like it would just be an inconvenience.”
“We’ve had that same problem,” said Jerry.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering. “Pete, I almost forgot to tell you. We got married yesterday.”
Pete stopped smoothing his hair over and widened his eyes at me, then looked at Jerry and back to me again. “You did?”
Jerry nodded his head. “Yeah, in Tennessee.”
“Good for you!” said Dominic. He reached up and patted Jerry on the shoulder. “Welcome to the family. I can’t wait for my nieces and nephews.”
“Me, either,” agreed Jerry.
“Well, congratulations,” said Pete. “So when is your reception?”
“We weren’t planning on one,” I told him. “We went to the drive-through at Jack in the Box and then straight to a cheesy hotel with a heart-shaped Jacuzzi. That was all the party we needed.”
Dominic smiled and did a little shuffling disco dance. “Sound much more like fun. Make love and eat much better food than here.”
“We should at least take you out to dinner,” offered Pete.
“We’ll take a rain check,” Jerry said. “This thing’s going to go all night, and we need to get back on the road by noon tomorrow.”
“No problem,” Dominic told him. “We fake it. Have a big celebration all by ourselves. Come on, we can get our coats and go.”
Pete squeezed Dominic around his shoulders and leaned down toward his ear. “There’s no way we can get our cars right now. They’re completely blocked in.”
“Don’t need our cars. Trust me, right? I know how to have fun with no car. All year I live on a cruise ship. Just don’t go out the left-side exit. Smells like dead birds.”
Pete collected our coats and we headed out the right-side exit of the tent. As soon as we turned the corner, Dominic unbuttoned his trench coat with one hand and retrieved the bottle of Cristal he had been holding by the neck with his other hand, through the pocket.
“You stole a bottle of champagne?” asked Jerry.
“Not stealing. We’re guests. Whether we drink it here or there, it doesn’t matter. We don’t waste, it’s not stealing.”
Jerry looked Pete in the eye. “You need to have a talk with your husband.”
“Sorry,” Pete offered. “There’s nothing in the Canadian vows about obeying.”
“No one even notice I walk out with it,” Dominic bragged. He tucked it under his coat again, demonstrating. “See? Everyone thinks it’s really me. You hear the rumor about Filipino men? Eat so many oysters all the time?”
“I hadn’t heard that,” I told him.
“I heard a completely different rumor about Asian men,” added Jerry.
“Not true,” insisted Dominic. “See, I prove it just now. You try sneaking out some champagne like that and see if people notice.”
“People ask me if I’m doing that even when I’m not wearing a coat,” Jerry said.
“Jerry,” I warned.
We followed Dominic to the big old stable building, where he jiggled the lock and walked right in. He felt around for the light switches and Pete grabbed his hand.
“Someone will notice,” he whispered.
“Only the little lights,” Dominic assured him. “Not the big ones.”
He turned on the candle-sconce lights along the walls, and all the horses came up to the stall doors. A couple of them snorted and shook their heads. Dominic set the Cristal on the floor and hung his coat on a peg by the door, then added his blazer to the peg beside it. The rest of us looked at each other and hung up our own coats as Dominic jogged across the cobblestone floor to a small room at the end and turned on the light.
“Little refrigerator,” he called. I heard things clinking around. A tape player made an angry clicking noise; Dominic ejected the tape and flipped it over. Elvis’s voice blasted out, singing “Viva Las Vegas.” Dominic hopped back out of the doorway with a plastic container in one hand and four small Styrofoam plates in the other. “Half a chocolate-chip cake from Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
“Sounds great,” said Jerry. He pulled over the little rickety wooden table from over by the door, propping the sign-in clipboard against the wall. I walked over to the horses and let one of them nibble at my hand. It looked at me with its big brown eyes as I stroked its nose.
Dominic handed Jerry the cake. “Now we only need glasses.”
“No champagne for me,” Pete called.
“Me, either,” said Jerry, cutting up the cake and placing the slices carefully on the plates.
“Bad sports. No fun,” Dominic called back. He looked out the doorway at me, holding up two glasses. “Only ones are Care Bear ones from Pizza Hut. You want the pink one with a rainbow or green one with a clover?”
“I’ll take the rainbow,” I said.
“Okay. Mine is lucky.” He jogged back over and handed Cokes from the fridge to Pete and Jerry. He shook the champagne bottle, then popped the cork and sprayed the horses with Cristal. “Ha! Plenty for everybody!”
“You did not just spray down a bunch of horses in two-hundred-dollar champagne,” said Jerry.
“Special occasion,” Dominic said. We gathered around the little table with the leftover chocolate-cake slices arranged on it, the horses whinnying gently behind us and lapping at the champagne soaking into the stall doors. Elvis had switched to singing “Fools Rush In.” The candle sconces cast a golden glow over the bales of straw stacked against the wall, and although it was only about fifty degrees outside, it was warm in the stable. Dominic poured the two Care Bear glasses a third full and passed one to me. He held his glass aloft. “To true love forever and ever.”
“To serendipity,” said Jerry.
“To our marriages,” said Pete. “May they ever grow and prosper.”
“To Rhett and Madison,” I added.
Dominic and Jerry both looked at me. “May their marriage be a great success,” Pete added gallantly.
We clinked our glasses and Coke cans together and drank to love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache and Jerry smiling at me from three inches away, perched around my body on all fours.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said. “Want to make love?”
“Uuuuugh,” I groaned, trying to pull the edge of the comforter over my head.
“Just kidding.” He lifted his hand from beside my shoulder, his fingers curled into a fist. “Here’s a couple of Tylenol. There’s a glass of water next to the bed.”
“Thanks.” I struggled to sit up against the pillows. The room rippled as though I were looking at it through a piece of security glass. “Ohhhh.”
“I know exactly how you feel. Champagne hangovers are the worst.” He sat on the side of the bed, already dressed in jeans and a green button-down shirt. “Go jump in a shower
and then we’ll go out to IHOP. Get some food in your stomach.”
“I’m not going to be jumping anywhere this morning.”
“You’ll feel a lot better after your shower. Take it from me. I’m an expert in the field of hangover remedies.”
I swallowed the Tylenol and climbed unsteadily out of bed. “I guess I ought to be grateful that I’m dating an alcoholic.”
“Married to, remember? That was the whole point of our wedding reception. How quickly you forget.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah.” I turned on the shower and leaned against the wall as the water warmed up. “Did anyone ever tell my father? Or Madison?”
“I’m not sure. I kind of doubt it. I pretty much tossed you over my shoulder and threw you in the car once you and Dominic finished off the champagne. He let us have the bottle. By the way, the water should be warm by now.”
“Right.” I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower, putting my face directly into the water. The water had a funny, foreign smell to it, the way hotel water always does. Not as much chlorine as back home. I peeled the soggy beige wrapper from the little bar of soap and rubbed it between my hands. Slowly I realized I was extremely hungry, and that I had an anxious, impatient urge to call Alexa. It seemed like a horrible oversight that she still didn’t know we had gotten married. I shut off the water and stepped out into the room wrapped in a white towel. Jerry looked up at me from where he was lying on the pink bedspread, reading the newspaper.
“Call Alexa,” I said.
“Do you have her number?”
“Yeah, it’s in my phone. She’s got her own phone. Ask her if she wants to come to breakfast with us.”
I went back into the bathroom to get dressed where it was warm. Through the door I could hear Jerry on the phone, saying, “Hey, Alexa? It’s Mr. Sullivan. Guess what?”
“It was so lame,” said Alexa, her fork paused in her blueberry Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n’ Fruity pancakes. “The music was nothing but this Billboard Greatest Hits of the ‘80s crap, and they didn’t stuff cake in each other’s faces or anything.”
I frowned. “I’m surprised you’d want to see them do that. That seems like exactly the kind of tradition you would hate.”
“It is. I just wanted to see someone do it to Colby. I was willing to do it myself if Madison wouldn’t. And then he got drunk and hit on me.”
“Did he really?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I think he got mixed up and thought I was you. He breathed his vodka breath in my face and said something about how he’d always wanted a roll in the hay with a set of twins. That’s what he said, not me. You know I wouldn’t make that up.”
“That asshole,” muttered Jerry with a mouthful of French toast. “I ought to knock his goddamn lights out.”
“Jerry, we’re in public,” I reminded him.
“Anyway, they kicked us all out around nine,” said Alexa. “I guess they had enough footage. They made the guy who caught the garter and the girl who caught the bouquet give them back. They said they didn’t want them turning up on eBay. Oh, and they confiscated my iPod. They said it was a recording device. Dad has to drive back this morning to get it.”
“That sucks,” said Jerry.
“So now I’m the only one who’s not married,” Alexa mused. “I’ve got three brothers-in-law all of a sudden. And not one of them is normal.”
“Hey,” Jerry said defensively. “I’m normal.”
She looked at him with cool appraisal. “Is it true you’ve got a snake tattoo on your back?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “How’d you know about that?”
“Adam Markoff said he saw it through your shirt one day.”
“Oh. I must have been out of undershirts that day.”
“And also because you’ve got a West Coast Choppers coffee mug and that picture in your desk of you with the lead singer from Megadeth, giving the camera the finger.”
Jerry cleared his throat. “Yeah. I think of that as a motivational tool on days when I can’t get any of you kids to listen.”
“That still makes you not normal,” Alexa told him. “But that’s okay. At least you’re not burning crosses in anyone’s yard, like my other brother-in-law. And you don’t have a sticker on your car window that says ‘Starfleet Academy.’“
“Alexa,” I warned her.
Jerry furrowed his eyebrows and took a drink of orange juice. “Who does?”
“Her last boyfriend. He actually owned a set of Spock ears.” She gestured with her index fingers jutting out from the tips of her own ears. “For conventions. Cons. He kept a Klingon dictionary on his Palm Pilot, and—”
“He gets your point, Alexa,” I said.
“That’s okay,” he said, patting the back of my shoulder. “I used to have a girlfriend who was into medieval reenactment. Half of her friends called her ‘Lady Branwyn,’ and they spoke with British accents even though they were all from Baltimore.”
“All the time?” asked Alexa.
“All the time.”
“Boy, you guys were made for each other.” She dug around in her pancakes, looking for blueberries. “So are you going to have kids?”
“Yeah, in a year or so,” said Jerry.
“Is that a fact?” I asked him. “You think we’ll be ready to start trying in just a year?”
“Actually, I was hoping that in a year we’d be ready to leave for the hospital.”
I laughed. “Were you planning to discuss this with me at any point?”
“We did discuss it. We both want kids, right?”
“Yeah, but not necessarily right now.”
Jerry crunched on a piece of ice from his water glass. “Then maybe you should have taken your birth-control pill yesterday.”
“Oh, crap.”
Alexa looked back and forth between us as I dug through my purse. “Okay,” she said cheerfully, setting her napkin beside her plate. “How about I let you two get back to your honeymoon?”
We’d been back for barely three days when Jerry came home from an extremely long birthday-shopping excursion with a big grin on his face and a surprise, of sorts, for me.
“I got some ink done,” he said.
“You did what?”
“Check it out.” He beckoned me over and rolled up his sleeve, where the shadow of the sword-and-skull tattoo was. High up on his bicep, just under his shoulder, was a new tattoo of a heart-shaped sign that said Forever ‘n’ Ever across it in script. On the marquee beneath it, in block letters, it said “PHOEBE & JERRY.”
“Is that real?” I asked.
“Of course it’s real. Cool, huh? I brought in the picture we took and had the guy copy it. He did a nice job, don’t you think?”
I laughed and shook my head. “That’s so trailer-park.”
He made a noise of pretend indignation and rolled his sleeve back down. “Some romantic you are.”
“No, it’s sweet, Jerry. Is that a present to me or to you?”
“Little bit of both. Don’t look in my car. All your stuff’s still in there. We’ve got a reservation at the fondue place for tomorrow. I’ve blown our budget for the month all to hell.”
“That’s okay. We’ll be all right. We need to leave for the party in a few minutes.”
Jerry rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah.”
Over at Madison’s and my old high school, a giant party had been organized to watch the wedding special. Madison’s old friends had done the same thing for the finale of Belle of Georgia, but of course, I’d been in Florida with Jerry then. I had to at least make an appearance at this party or it would come off as a huge insult to Madison and her marriage, actual feelings notwithstanding. Madison herself was in Los Angeles at the moment, taking a break from her honeymoon with Rhett to do promotional interviews on Jay Leno and the Today show.
When we got to the high school, a big banner hung over the central hallway that said Congratulations, Grace & Colby. People were bustling back and forth with party trays from the groce
ry store, mini sandwiches and sliced veggies and cold cuts arranged on green leaf lettuce, for the after-party in the gym. Someone was wheeling a giant helium tank down the hall on a dolly. A couple of girls I recognized from high school sat at a card table in front of the office, examining their fingernails from behind an enormous pile of pale purple T-shirts screen-printed with a publicity photo of Rhett and Madison. T-shirts $10, said a sign written in purple marker. Autographed T-shirts Available! $25.
“Good grief,” said Jerry.
“Want a T-shirt?” I asked.
“No, thank you.”
We made our way through an archway of twisted crepe paper to the school theater. The entire place was packed with people calling to each other and waving from their seats. Even the balcony seating was full. A velvet-roped section at the front had a handwritten sign taped to it that said, “Family.”
“I guess we’re over there,” I said.
Jerry peered down the aisle. “Doesn’t look like I’ll have to fight anyone for it this time.”
“Want to buy a soda?” asked a voice from behind us.
I turned around and saw another card table set up with about six picnic coolers beneath it and an assortment of movie-theater-sized candy boxes on top. Several high-school girls were crammed in behind the table wearing the purple T-shirts we had just turned down and mismatched red-and-white cheer-leading shorts.
“All the profits go to support the cheerleading squad,” one of them said. “Plus, with a purchase of $5 or more, you get entered in a raffle to win Grace’s old cheerleading uniform.” She pointed to a uniform tacked to the bulletin board behind her.
“She’s my sister,” I said. “I’ve got more of her junk than I know what to do with.”
“Oh,” said the girl. “Well, do you want to donate any of it?”
“Phoebe!”
Across the room, I saw a woman jumping up and waving to me. “Go grab us a seat,” I said to Jerry. “Let me go run over and see who that is.”
Jerry patted me on the hip as I squeezed through the crowd to where the woman was still waving to me. Finally, I recognized her—sort of. She was someone who had been in my Testing & Assessment class the year before, a very good-looking brunette whom I recalled as being friendly and outgoing and nowhere near as smart as I’d hoped she would be when I’d been assigned to work with her on a group project. For the life of me I couldn’t remember her name.
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