by Anne Wagener
It’s absolutely magical.
Charlie squeezes my hand, and there’s something in his eyes that halts my breath. A kind of guarded hopefulness, a small fire he’s protecting from heavy winds.
The music changes. Gets slower, settles into all the corners of the room. Inches its way up the courtyard buildings and windowpanes. Fills me until I could burst.
“Mary Alberton, will you dance with me?” Charlie unlocks his fingers from mine and holds his hand out as an invitation.
“John Alberton! I thought you’d never ask.”
He sweeps me onto the dance floor in a goofily dramatic move, but I sense what I hope is a slow seduction behind the playfulness. His left hand locks mine into a ballroom dance frame, while his right rests dangerously low on my hip. We’re waltzing.
“I didn’t know I could waltz,” I tell him.
“I’m making it up as I go along.”
His tie sways slightly as he moves, a life-size metronome: He keeps perfect rhythm. We make our way across the dance floor, and I get a secret thrill when my skirt brushes against the elegant dresses of the corporate matrons. An even more secret thrill when Charlie and I move closer together to maneuver around other couples.
After a few moments of intense eye contact, I look away and remind myself to breathe. My eyes rest on a lonely-looking man lurking by the hors d’oeuvres, his large glasses tipped to the end of his nose as he holds a gigantic piece of goat cheese–ricotta ravioli between his thumb and pointer finger.
“What do you think his story is?” I ask Charlie. We make a subtle path past the lurker, watching as he rotates the piece of ravioli to examine it completely before popping the entire thing in his mouth.
At this, Charlie pulls me fully into the Lurk Zone, sidling up to the other end of the ravioli table. “He’s Peter Vandermoorten. Works in accounting but dreams of opening his own homemade-pasta shop. The kind of neighborhood shop where he knows all his customers’ names. Working for Leverage, he feels like he’s offered nothing tangible to the universe. All the spreadsheets and PowerPoints disappear into the corporate ether without any lasting value. He worries that he himself has no lasting value.”
Peter’s chewing slows as a tall brunette walks past, deep in conversation with an even taller blond man.
“He’s secretly in love with Marina Macklemore, head of marketing,” I say, leaning closer so Charlie can hear. “Rumors abound of Marina’s secret engagement to Atticus Corley, Chuck Corley’s freakishly tall son, but Peter refuses to believe it. Meanwhile, he’s working up the nerve to ask her on a date.”
“He has visions of inviting her to his place. He just knows, if she tastes his pumpkin gnocchi, she’ll be his forever.”
I laugh. Peter looks up at the sound, and Charlie quickly pulls me back into the fray for another few slow songs. By the time he leads me off the dance floor again, our fingers interlocked, there’s no sign of Peter. In his place is a server with a fresh round of drinks. Charlie fetches me a flute of bubbly. I shouldn’t; I’m still tipsy from the wine and beer. But I do. Charlie follows suit.
Finishing our drinks, we amble through the Great Hall and deeper into the museum, where three open-faced stories of portrait people gaze down at us. We start on the first floor and work our way up. The portraits are organized by theme and era and depict all walks of people. Royalty and commoners, politicians and plebeians, mothers and children, rock gods and starlets.
We wander for what feels like hours, losing all track of time and studiously ignoring the portrait captions in favor of our own fictional portraiture.
“Speaking of characters,” I say as we wander under a “Miscellaneous Americana” sign, “are you going to let me read that screenplay of yours sometime?”
Charlie stops in front of Elvis, mimicking his pose for a moment. As he drops his arms, a look of vulnerability crosses his face. “I just might,” he says softly. He tugs on the ends of his suit sleeves.
All of the painted faces seem to be watching us, and I wish I had another drink to sip or some words at the ready.
“You know what Elvis said once?” Charlie turns toward me. “ ‘Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.’ Sometimes I feel like mine is going to either drive me off a cliff or burn out revving in place, keep me imprisoned forever in baristary while I try to make my writing happen—but I can’t let go of it. Sometimes I do wonder, what’s the point? What’s the point of putting this piece of art into the universe? Will it make anything better? Will it?” He addresses Elvis, hands outstretched in supplication.
Elvis smiles down on us, and I smile back. “I don’t know. You have to put it out there to find out. Like Peter and his pumpkin gnocchi.”
Before Charlie can respond, we freeze at a muffled sound coming from around the corner. Charlie pulls me back in front of Elvis and we stand still, facing each other, until I can’t bear the suspense. I peek around the corner and my lips part.
Peter is totally snogging Marina. He’s got his hands tangled in her hair, and she’s leaning down to him, her black pumps resting on the floor beside her bare feet. Charlie’s chin pops over my shoulder, and I feel his sharp intake of breath. We sneak back around the corner, laughing silently until tears form in our eyes. He pulls me another row over, so we’re now standing in front of an eighteenth-century schoolmarm with a taut bun and round spectacles. She’s sitting in a hard-backed wooden chair and does not share our amusement.
Charlie lets out his breath and takes my other hand in his. Maybe it’s the sight of our fictional corporate love story coming true. Maybe it’s the galactic lighting, maybe it’s the feeling of our palms pressed together, pulses racing to a finish line that stretches further and further into the distance. Whatever it is, a feeling crashes over my head: This. This is what it’s supposed to be like.
Three years with Scott and I never had this feeling. The feeling that something epic is unfolding, something cosmic. With Scott I’d felt an escalating longing, like I was riding one ski lift gondola behind him; he was always out of my reach. But with Charlie, it feels like we’re at the top of the mountain, looking down a starlit slope, stomachs delightfully queasy. The whole journey is ahead, and gravity is on our side. I can only hope he feels the same anticipation.
“Can I tell you something?” he says. The music from the courtyard is still audible, along with the white noise of a dehumidifier keeping the paintings cool. He steps closer to me.
“Sure.”
“This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. An embarrassingly long time.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I have a feeling it has everything to do with you, Piper Brody.” And as the disapproving schoolmarm looks on, Charlie bends down and kisses me. Lightly at first, letting each new sensation sink in. (For the record, I was right about his athletic lips.) Here we go is all I can think. As I lean my head back to deepen the kiss, I tip my skis over the edge of a precipitously high cliff. And then I’m not thinking at all.
The sound of other partygoers walking our way brings us out of the moment. We pull apart dizzily, as if seeing each other for the first time.
Suddenly nervous, I start to fidget. “I guess we better get back soon, huh? Rest up for the wedding and whatnot.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Do you need a ride home?”
He grins. “I wish. But I rented a car.”
We walk back through the Great Hall, hand in hand, toward the massive museum door, where Brick is still at his post. He tells us to have a wonderful evening and gives me a not so subtle wink when Charlie’s not looking.
Though Charlie’s car is closer to the Gallery, he insists on walking me back to the Elephant and Castle. Before I get into my car, he leans in and kisses me just to the left of my lips, then stands chivalrous guard to close my car door after I’ve climbed in. He nods in confusion at my half-rolled-down wind
ow. “You shouldn’t leave that rolled down—someone might break in.”
I laugh. “Well, if anyone wants to steal this baby, God help them. Also, it got stuck last month and hasn’t rolled all the way up since. I have a tarp in the backseat for inclement weather. Aren’t you sad you don’t get to ride home in this beauty?”
He leans against my car door. “Actually, I really am. Hey, thanks for showing me a good time tonight. See you tomorrow—I’ll be waiting for my word of the day.”
With more than a little regret to drive away from him, and much more than a scintilla of fire in my nether regions, I wave good night.
Six
Susan looks like a bridal statue: beautiful, pale, and unmoving. Or like one of those street entertainers who paint every inch of their skin the same color and do robot dances, à la my mime savior from the Metro. But Susan is far from robot dancing. The smoothness, the confidence, from the rehearsal dinner the night before has lapsed, and she looks like she might cry or perhaps vomit. T minus twenty minutes until the ceremony. If she were a close friend, I’d be on my bridesmaid A game. But being slightly hungover and not knowing quite what to say, I’m relieved when Lisa crouches down, grasps Susan’s hands, and begins whispering to her.
I smile as I watch them, but I feel at any moment someone will expose me for a fraud, squeeze my flowers, and have them shoot water in my face. “Get this clown out of here,” some grandma from the groom’s side will shout, shaking her cane in the air. I smooth the fabric of my midnight blue dress. I turned out to be the same size as Jessie, Susan’s cousin. I’m a stand-in. A stunt double.
Someone has thoughtfully placed champagne and strawberries on a nearby table, and while Susan and Lisa are having their BFF time, I sneak over and drain the contents of a crystal glass. I close my eyes and feel the liquid settle into my stomach, feel the bubbles travel through my limbs, making them tingly. I’m counting on the surreality of this whole situation to carry me. As Susan begins whimpering, I fill and down a second glass in one swift, unbroken motion.
The church is the same one Susan has attended since childhood: a small church in Lorton, one of northern Virginia’s exurbs. I study the stained glass windows to quell the awkwardness of my third-wheelness while Lisa pats Susan’s hand and dabs at her eyes with a white handkerchief. Seeing another handkerchief sitting on the table with the champagne, I wrap it around the stem of my bouquet. At my cousin’s wedding, an extra handkerchief came in handy when she erupted into PMS-induced blubbering during the ceremony.
I look out the window at the small graveyard behind the church and the converted barn beyond, where the reception will take place. My reflection looks back at me—a reflection that’s a bit more makeupped than usual. I wasn’t able to sleep, so I got up with the dawn and cranked up my hair straightener. For the next hour, I battled my hair into submission until it was something resembling sleek. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I struck a pose. “Hey there, cowboy.” Nope, no good. I tried demure instead. “Oh, hi there!” But my eyelash-batting looked more spastic than alluring. I tried again, determined to pull off sex kitten. “Want to go to the Portrait Gallery tonight? The Naked Portrait Gallery?”
I froze as I heard Lin walk by the bathroom door. “What in the Sam Hill are you doing in there? Are you overtweezing your brows again?”
After casting a concerned look at my brows in the mirror, I opened the door, and the story from the night before spilled out.
Lin sighed. “Oh, honey. Charlie sounds like a total hottie. Charlie with the Chucks.”
“Charming Charlie!”
“Check-out-that-ass Charlie.”
“Chipotle-hot-and-spicy Charlie.”
We went on like this for a whole minute until the alliteration train ran out of steam.
A soft knock on the dressing room door jars me back to the present. I stand up, relieved to have something to do.
Leaning my face close to the door, I whisper, “Who is it?”
“Brother of the bride. Is there a secret password to see her?”
My heart beats faster. “No secret password, but I’m afraid you’re not exactly going to help the waterworks.”
“We’ll see about that. I have superpowers. Anyway, why are we whispering?”
“Dunno.”
A pause. “Can I come in yet?”
“Oh! Sure.” I open the door to find Charlie on the other side, suited up.
His eyes take me in, too. “You’re looking good enough for a portrait, Mary Alberton,” he says.
Do NOT, under any circumstances, use the naked-portrait line! Lin explicitly vetoed it, admonishing me to be myself. But right now, “myself” is a bridesmaid-shaped bundle of nerves.
“You look grice,” I say, as “great” and “nice” trip over themselves on my lips.
“Thanks,” he says, graciously ignoring my gaffe. He lingers in the doorway. “Before I attend to the bride, what’s your word?”
“Bloviate.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“To speak in a boastful or empty way,” I clarify.
“Nice one.” He squeezes my hand before striding across the room to crouch by Susan’s feet. “Hey, sis.”
“Charlie!” Her shoulders begin to shake again.
“Hey, hey.” He takes the handkerchief from Lisa and presses it under Susan’s right eye, then her left. “I want to tell you something.” Her shoulders shudder again. He grabs her hand. “Remember the time I thought I was going to be a stand-up comic?”
She sniffles. “Yeah.”
“I went to that open-mike night, my head full of dreams and my pockets full of chicken-scratch on index cards. I thought I was such a champion.” He turns to me. “I go up to the mike, right, so confident, making eye contact with the audience, with tunnel vision to the Comedy Central special.”
Susan smiles. The tears are momentarily stymied.
“Anyway, I start telling jokes, and I fall completely flat. Seriously, I can see the manager coming up to pull my act when, in a stunning display of vagary, a table of people in the back begins cracking up at my last joke. Then the table next to that. The next jokes are even worse, but my reluctant audience came through for the rest of the act.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Okay, I’ll bite. What happened?”
“My sis here.” Charlie puts a hand on her shoulder. “She promised to buy a round of drinks for everyone at those tables if they’d ham it up, give her little brother a good reception. She spent her whole weekly paycheck that night on total strangers. Saved my dignity.” He turns back to Susan. “You were there for me that night. And I’m here for you now. This is your day; you’ve worked so, so hard to make it perfect, and it will be. I promise.” He squeezes her hand. “Better get back to usher duty. Deep breaths, okay? I’ll see you in there.” He cocks his head toward the sanctuary.
“Thanks.” Susan smiles at Charlie as Lisa takes over dabbing the remaining tears with the handkerchief.
On his way out, Charlie pauses again in the doorway. “Am I good or am I good?” he says to me.
“Vagary, huh?”
“From the Latin vagari, to wander.”
“That one I knew. I prefer its close relative, whimsy.”
He leans against the doorframe. “I’ve got another word for you. Two, actually.”
“Two in one day? Can it be done?”
“Crepuscular. Your dress. And you in it? Sirenic.”
“I think you’re bloviating.”
“Am not.” He reaches out to take a strand of my hair that’s slipped out of place. He holds it to his lips for a moment—during which I don’t move or breathe, don’t even bat my “Maximum Intensity” mascaraed lashes—before tucking it back into place. Then he disappears through the door and closes it softly behind him.
When the music starts, Lisa and I help Susan onto
her feet, lifting up her long off-white train and fluffing it out. It’s a simple but elegant dress, a sweeping A-line with a neckline that’s modest but low enough to showcase her delicate collarbone. Her hair has been swept away from her neck and secured into an artful French twist. She’s still wearing her silver treble clef necklace, perhaps her “something old.” The tiny charm is trembling, but that’s the only clue she’s nervous. Her cheeks are smooth, her eyes dry.
As we line up in the foyer, Charlie holds out his arm and I slip my hand into the crook of his elbow. Crikey, he smells good. I want to be alone with him so badly it hurts—wait, maybe that particular pain is the two-inch silver heels.
“What are you doing later?” he whispers as the organist spreads out her sheet music. “I’m going to this wedding reception. I don’t know if it can match up to Chuck’s shindig, but will you be my date?”
“You bet.”
The organist starts playing “Jesu”—our cue. I force my legs to move and remind myself of my self-imposed Bridesmaid Commandments.
I will not sneeze.
I will not trip.
I will stand up straight. (“Boobs out,” as Lisa put it.)
I will not shift my weight too much.
I will not lock my knees.
I will not melt.
I will keep my eyes on the bride at all times.
I will angle my body toward the bride as she walks in. (“Follow the action,” the minister said.)
I will smile/weep as the situation dictates.
I will not be paralyzed by dimpliciousness.
Susan enters the church: Everyone rises. Focusing on Susan helps me forget I’m in front of a bunch of strangers. She traverses the aisle as if she’s floating, the treble clef collecting the lights from above and miniaturizing them into tiny stars on its curved surface.
