“Really, they’re promoting me?”
“Listen, they thought that was so amazing, discovering a ten-and-a-half-million dollar painting for us. Right after the Poussin, too. Why, the PR, alone, my dear! And entre nous, they should probably give you Peregrine’s job.”
Fernanda supports herself briefly on Marcia’s narrow shoulder as she steps into her slim silk skirt. She hooks up the tabs at the waist, as Marcia, who hasn’t uttered a single word so far, helps her into her jacket. Marcia, on tiptoe, tries to whisper in her ear.
“I can’t help it, Fernanda. I wish it were me.”
“Oh, my dear, it will be soon.” She turns and smoothes Marcia’s hair. She kisses her blush-daubed cheek. “He’s out there for you. Believe it. I know he’s out there for you.”
Courtney’s on her way to the kitchen for the drinks. As Fernanda buttons her jacket, she returns, balancing a tray.
Courtney, handing out glasses all around, raises her own to make a toast.
“Fernanda hesitates for a fraction of a second. Oh, damn. Bloody Marys.
“To soulmates. And a lifetime of happiness,” she says.
Marcia, still not herself, drains her glass and so does Courtney. Fernanda takes one small, quick swallow before setting it down. Her fingers tremble ever so slightly as she tries to pin André’s fragile ivory orchid to her suit lapel (it’s so Frannie, she thinks).
“Can you do this for me, Marcia? I can’t seem to stop shaking.” She laughs uncertainly. “Nervous! Would you believe?”
“We believe,” they say in unison, and laugh, and her shaking lessens a bit.
Over Marcia’s bent head, she asks Courtney, sitting on the bed, “Hey, what? No joke things? No penis candies for my purse?”
“Damn,” Courtney replies. “What with the sale yesterday, I totally forgot.” She grabs her clutch from the bedside table. You wouldn’t mind postponing this while I go out to shop, would you? Or maybe you’d like to come with me to the porn store. You’ll probably discover a Leonardo there.
“Hey, you know, I just might!” With rock-steady hands at last, she claps the tulle veil on her loose, bright hair.
“Let’s go, ladies.”
She’d arranged for a plain-black car to take them to the chapel. Nothing extravagant, she’d been careful to say. Nothing big at all. Despite that, double-parked and idling at her door is a giant black stretch-limo. No point in making a fuss about it, Fernanda decides. Not today. So they all climb inside. Ten feet in front of them, the uniformed chauffeur in the driver’s seat starts the thing up and calls back over his shoulder, “This won’t cost you a penny more, ladies. It was the only free car they had this morning. And anyway,” he informs them cheerily, maneuvering his ocean liner through the light morning traffic, “when you come out of there a ‘Mrs.’,” he twinkles at Fernanda in the rearview mirror, “it’ll be easy to find me and this bus right in front, ready to go.”
Fernanda rolls her eyes at her friends.
Within minutes, it seems, they’re being met at the chapel’s hidden side door by a smiling, brooch-wearing, wiry-haired, middle-aged woman. She leads them along a dim, carpeted hall that smells very pleasantly, Fernanda thinks, of green soap and furniture polish. At the end of the hall she shows them into a sunwashed dressing room all done-up in sparkly silver and cream. On inspection, the three of them decide that while it has far too many girlish poufs and wall-to-wall gilt mirrors, it’s saved by a pretty vintage dressing table with a robin’s-egg blue, old-fashioned dresser set complete with hand mirror, comb, brushes, cut-glass bottles and jars, and even a shoehorn. It looks like it’s never been used.
Two imposing bouquets rest on the French-ish end tables that flank the sofa, and Fernanda goes over to sniff the blossoms in the more elaborate of the two, a fragrant burst of pink tulips and stargazer lilies. It’s been sent, says the small, tasteful card, from all her friends at Berger’s. She turns to hug Courtney, who blushes.
“I just mentioned it to Charles’ secretary,” she tells Fernanda. “The rest is all her … or Charles.” She sort of winks.
The second bouquet is a cut-crystal vase filled with long-stemmed yellow roses. It appears to have no card at all and Fernanda and her bridesmaids are puzzling over it – is it from André? From Charles himself? – when the photographer, slightly testy, tattooed to his ears and gripping a cardboard container of coffee, arrives. Wasting no time on niceties, he manages to coerce the little wedding party into posing: a threesome, then two pairs, then Fernanda all alone.
After a fun half hour or so of this, the threesome has grown so very much more festive, so very much more relaxed, that even Marcia (more like herself now, Fernanda’s happy to see) is comically striking supermodel poses, making funny, un-modelly faces, drying on drop-dead sexy or fatuous looks, and wishing, desperately wishing, they’d brought along more to drink. Their hilarious photo session is taking so long that Fernanda’s beginning to think she’s going to be late for her wedding. So she’s relieved when, at around 10:45, and evidently pleased with his morning’s work, the photographer permits himself a smile, tells them he’ll meet them for the after-the-ceremony pictures and departs. Flushed, exhilarated and far from sober, the women repair their make-up, pat their hair into place and, pretending to (a fragile) solemnity, Marcia and Courtney walk alone into the fragrant outer hall, where, after one or two last-minute rearrangements, and giggling madly over nothing at all, after switching feet for much too long to be certain that they’re in unison and with bouquets held demurely at their waists, they begin the wedding march. At the hall’s far end, they stop to squeeze each other’s hands. They can hear the music now.
It’s almost time.
Fernanda has hung back for a second or two, to adjust her veil, to savor her radiant reflection, to thank, to thank – well, who? To be in love again … at her age. To be loved in return at long last. To have somehow, managed to make the most of this miraculous second chance. It’s worth everything she’s been through, everything she’s done. Today is so much more than she’d dreamed it would be. But then, of course, so is she.
He’s waiting for her out there, her soulmate.
The music starts.
Stepping out into the hall, she sees her bridesmaids have turned left and, in unison, have begun their solemn slow-march. Only a few beats behind, Fernanda Turner herself – ravishingly beautiful and straight as a radiant shaft of lily-white light, her heart and eyes full of love – makes her own triumphal turn onto the white-carpeted aisle.
And stops, her face gone slack.
The breath escapes her lungs.
Ahead of her, Courtney and Marcia stand dead still.
And while an invisible organ plays celestially and the chapel glows golden in the sun, the pews all around them … are empty.
There are no wedding guests.
No one at the altar.
No minister.
No groom.
Despite that, the empty chapel continues to reverberate to Wagner’s hackneyed march, and now Fernanda shuts her eyes. For the space of a shaky inhalation – and another one – she waits. Then she opens them wide.
No one is here.
Has she confused the day? Surely this is Saturday, March 3rd?
Puzzled and worried, her friends turn back toward her now. Is André late? Weren’t there supposed to be guests? Why isn’t there anyone here to perform the ceremony?
Courtney studies her face for a moment, and then, with exquisite care, she sets her bouquet on an empty wooden pew, walks back down the aisle to her friend and opens her arms.
But Fernanda steps away. She sees the trouble now.
Because, above her, drifting unhurriedly along the chapel’s high ribbed vault is Elizabeth Taylor. In a red tulle gown. And the gown is all aflame.
Her bouquet hanging from her hand, Fernanda stands transfixed as Elizabeth begins a slow and graceful dogpaddle through the melodic, glimmering air, until – well past the roof’s painted vault and precisely
above the altar – she somersaults down to land neatly upon it, her back to the reverberating room. The bouquet falls to the carpet.
Oh, how Fernanda admires that jet-black cap of hair. She admires the way it catches the morning light and shines so fiercely. Yet she’s fascinated, too by the way the gorgeous dress – its volatile tulle trailing feathers of hungry flame – seems to be burning to char but, then, its billowy skirt dissolves into a pool of thick … blood? Is that actually blood?
With her waxen hands and alabaster arms, Elizabeth daintily fluffs up the dress and turns.
And now Fernanda sees, above the exquisite Elizabeth’s doll-like waist, above the sculpted strapless breastworks of her dress, as pale as polished bone, the awful visage and slavering jaws of the massive yellow dog. Its ears lie flat against its head. Its eyes – it has no eyes.
High above and with a sullen roar, the chapel’s glorious ceiling cracks and falls, and plaster, murderous chunks of plaster, smash down on the marble floor. The chapel roof opens to the heavens and, from somewhere, some … thing intones a thunderous Dies Irae. As the roar splits the silvery, screaming sky, the sudden stench of hot shit fills the thickening air, and Fernanda’s fallen bouquet, twenty-six milk-white rosebuds, shrivels to powdery ash.
She can’t look away from the beast, however, and straight as a die, she stands transfixed as the hideous thing grows larger and wider, until the red-gowned body, licked all over now with flame and as majestic as Hell is eternal, slowly unfurls to envelop the ruined, smoke-filled space.
Fernanda is roused from her trance.
Run!
She’s turning to run when, abruptly, between herself and the fiend, an envelope floats to the floor, and through quicksands of rubble and dust, she labors toward it, snatches it up and is turning to make her escape when she finds her path blocked by throngs of wedding guests. Their flailing arms crush her, block her path to the door, and push her back to the jaws of the dog.
And then, as suddenly, she’s alone in the debris. Fernanda runs, trips, falls hard, hauls herself upright, and races for the door.
On the street, coughing and choking, Fernanda stares around her. The air is foul with a fog of noxious gray smoke, and far down the block – so terribly far – the pointless massive limousine waits. Hitching up her skirt up to her thighs and kicking off her soiled shoes, Fernanda tears the ridiculous veil from her head and sprints for the car.
By its side, lying skewed in the clammy street, she sees the driver’s mangled torso, and alongside that, a gigantic iron pot. Two human legs protrude from the pot, and Fernanda feels sick, but in a single violent motion, she pulls open the rearmost car door, throws herself inside, yanks it closed behind her and hits the locks. The engine is running. She can hear its mechanical growl.
And then she retches. Wipes a foam of Bloody Mary from her lips.
But it’s dark in the car. Tinted windows, she thinks as she lies there, panting. She’s grateful for the dark. And the envelope’s clutched in her hand. So when her heart slows, she pushes herself to a sitting position and laying it carefully down and crouching low, she makes an awkward, slow progress to the distant front seat, where, by stretching across the driver’s headrest, she is able to grasp the ignition key and turn the engine off. On her equally awkward return, she stops at the miniature bar and grabs all the vodka.
Slumped now on the unyielding back seat, Fernanda empties two of the small bottles and, taking several ragged breaths, she tears the envelope open and extracts five, tightly written pages.
She forces herself to read.
January 11
My darling Fernanda,
I am a shit and I owe you so much more than this terrible, shameful letter. But by now you know I’m too much of a coward to tell you this to your face. That’s why I’ve written it down. This attempt at an explanation for today. Because I need you to know the whole thing. Not that there’s a simple explanation, and not because you’ll understand. I don’t expect you to understand. It’s only because I need you to know.
Where to begin?
Back with my family, I guess. The family I said so little about.
Okay. I used to be very successful, I think you know that. Actually, I was a computer nerd, way back when, and made millions while I was still in college. MY parents helped me invest it. So I was lucky and maybe a little smart for a while.
And because of that, when I married, my kids had nannies, they went to private schools, we owned a house in Bronxville, we belonged to a country club. We did the American dream, I guess you would say. Not all because of me, either. My wife was a patent lawyer and a good one. And we were really happy. Or I thought we were really happy. Although I suppose almost all married men think that.
But a few years ago, the company I was with then sent me to St. Louis to meet some clients, and at the end of one of those meetings, one of them suggested that if I was looking for something to do at night, there was this old sidewheeler on the Mississippi that had been turned into a casino. So I cabbed on over for a look. It wasn’t anything like you’d imagine – not Monte Carlo, for sure. It was tacky and sweaty, but I was already there and had nothing else to do, so I stayed.
I played the slots at first, losing mostly. Then I sat down at the blackjack table, and in about an hour and a half, I managed to lose maybe eleven hundred dollars, I forget how much. More than I was completely comfortable with just throwing away, that’s for sure, even back then. I was getting ready to call it a night when this old woman sat down next to me.
In the back of the limousine, Fernanda sits upright.
She seemed a little lost, and when it turned out that she didn’t know how to play blackjack, I helped out – showed her the rules, how to bet, that kind of thing. But from the very first hand, well, this woman won, and after a while, I was winning, too. I swear to you, around that whole table, she and I were the only ones winning again and again. The dealer was suspicious, I could see that, but there was nothing funny going on. We were just winning. Almost every time. And it felt like nothing I can really describe. It wasn’t even like the first time I had sex, because it was better than that. I know it’s hard to believe. I suppose it felt like cocaine must feel or like soldiers say they feel in battle, but that wouldn’t begin to describe it. It was about the risk of losing everything – everything – and then … winning! Coming out on top. Was it the danger of the thing? I don’t know, although I’ve thought about that a lot. I like danger, you’ve noticed that. I like risk. (That first night together in the alley, remember?)
I couldn’t even tell you how much I won that night. I can only say it was a hell of a lot. In fact, after the old lady left, I stayed and played some more, but my winnings disappeared after that. And all I wanted – no, craved – was to do it again. Feel that incredible high.
It shattered my life.
Because after that night, I started to gamble, wherever and whenever I could. I told my wife that I was working nights, or at the club, or out of town. I lied. I sneaked around and lied. Really, I was withdrawing money from our checking account and going up to that big casino in Connecticut – I forget the name – or down to Atlantic City. (To economize, I took the bus from Chinatown, isn’t that weird?) And I thought I was winning a lot then. Once in a while, in fact, not often enough, I’d win so big that I’d feel that electric first-time rush. But as time passed, well, you probably know how it goes – I needed more and bigger wins to get my jolt, so that pretty soon, I found the hotel games, the really big games. And that’s when I started not winning so much anymore, and began chasing my losses. And kiting company checks. Pawning my wife’s jewelry, things I’d bought her that I thought she wouldn’t miss. I took out a second mortgage on the house without her knowing. And somehow, less than a year after St. Louis, I’d lost the whole thing. The house, the cars, my job, my wife, my kids. All of it. Blown.
And I wanted to die.
But then I had a little luck. A friend found me a good therapist who got me into
a group. (I told you about that, I think.) That was when I quit gambling for good. And I found this decent job I have now that’s turned into a pretty great job. And eventually, I met you. The cliché redemption story, I suppose, but who cared? I’d beaten the fucking thing, and my life got all shiny and new.
Okay then. Here’s where it gets unshiny.
Last week, after we met for our “rehearsal dinner”, remember? When I had to go to Philly for business?
Well, the first evening that I’m there, I go down to the hotel lobby – just to be around other people, you know, because I was missing you and killing time. And I sat down at this little bar and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was that same old woman from the riverboat casino! It boggled my mind. Although, I don’t think she was exactly the same. She’d dyed her hair red since I’d seen her. But I remembered her. It was the same “Frannie.” I moved over a couple of seats and introduced myself. Or reintroduced myself.
I couldn’t believe it, but she remembered me, too.
Fernanda slides off the seat to the floor.
We made a little small-talk. I told her why I was in Philly, and that we were going to be married on Saturday. I told her about you, and how incredible you are, and how lucky I was, and just as I was getting up to leave, she asked if I’d come along with her to this Harrah’s nearby – to be her luck there, she said, and kind of giggled in this strange old-lady way. Because she’d remembered me as the “embodiment of luck.” That’s what she said. I remember her words exactly. Well, I didn’t want to go. I’d road-tested my self-control when you and I went to buy your ring, and realized that day – although I didn’t say it – that I wasn’t rock-steady. But still, there I was that night, on my own in Philly. And I figured I could probably control myself as long as I didn’t bet. Besides, I had you, Fernanda. You were going to be my reward for living right. So I went.
And you know, I was okay. I just watched. I watched as, just like in St. Louis, Frannie won. Every single time she bet, she won! It was uncanny.
And so there I was, cheering her on, watching, controlling myself, and all the while, I’m hemorrhaging adrenaline. But still, I never sat down at that table, I didn’t bet. And after forty-five minutes or so, when she took a break and went to get a drink, I felt safe enough to stay there, just hanging around and kibitzing the game.
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