The People We Hate at the Wedding

by Grant Ginder

  “Uh.” Amanda looks down. Her cheeks glow red.

  Mark’s computer chimes: a new e-mail has arrived.

  “Anyway.” He stands, smiles, and shepherds Amanda toward the door. “Something to think about as you revise, at the very least.”

  The trio that was lounging in Franklin’s shadow has scattered. Across the lawn Van Pelt Library is ablaze in midmorning glow; the tall windows that line its first floor are slabs of blinding white. Mark slides in front of the computer and clicks on the new message.

  From: Alcott Cotwald

  To: Mark Gordon

  Date: June 20

  Subject: Re: Incoming

  Mark,

  Agreed re: missing each other in Philadelphia. Positively sinful. Thrilled, though, to hear that we’ll finally be meeting face-to-face on this side of the pond. Well done on convincing Paul to make the trek, and to spend the week “doing work” in London prior. Am unsure what said work will entail, though I’m sure I’ll manage to come up with something (wink). Must admit, though, a wedding in Dorset sounds ghastly. Nothing but sheep and assaulting accents, I fear. But duties must be done, pensions paid, etc. Suppose that’s love. Meantime, no more talk of hotels. You two shall stay here, in my flat on Bermondsey Street. It’s not large, so we must think of ways to get creative with space. Oh well. Shall send you to the rural banality of the Jurassic Coast with fond memories of the city (double wink).

  More forthcoming.

  Alcott

  * * *

  “Hey. Kid.” Mark shakes Paul’s shoulder, but he just mumbles something and repositions himself in his seat. Turns his head. Pushes his left cheek against the British Airways insignia on the headrest. Mark shakes him harder.

  “Paul. We’re almost there.”

  He jolts and rubs his eyes.

  “Huh?”

  “The captain just announced that we’ve started our initial descent.” Mark reaches into the seat-back pocket in front of him. He hands Paul a plastic-wrapped toothbrush and a small tube of Crest. “Go brush your teeth.”

  Paul rubs his eyes again. He unbuckles his seat belt and stumbles toward the bathroom. Mark lifts the window shade halfway and morning light spills into their row. Five miles below them, the English countryside rearranges itself geometrically. Squares and hexagons and other angular shapes are stamped out like grassy emeralds. He sips his coffee and digs a fingernail into the Styrofoam cup. He doesn’t know why he told the flight attendant he wanted some. He rarely drinks the stuff. Boredom was the reason, he figures. Too much time vacillating between reading theoretical texts under a less-than-luminary light and watching Paul dream.

  He’s not tired, even though he didn’t sleep. Not a single wink over the past six hours. But then, that’s not necessarily surprising—he never sleeps on red-eyes. There are too many observations that require his attention, too many minor phenomena to study. The ways in which his fellow passengers attract and repel one another. How they share each other’s space only to create individual burrows in their seats. Piles of blue felt blankets and paper-wrapped pillows. Avoidance turned into a communal effort. Although they typically live in colonies, the arctic lemmings are predominantly solitary animals. They breed and feed alone—facts that prove problematic, given their tendency toward rash and individualistic decision-making.

  They land and clear customs and, once they’re in a cab and on the way to Alcott’s flat, Mark begins to wonder whether they should stop somewhere along the way so Paul can pull himself together a little bit more. He had him use the bathroom at Heathrow so he could wash his face and comb his hair, but dark circles still shadow his eyes, and his cheeks are red and creased, like he’s had his face pressed against a grill for the past eight hours. Mark leans over and kisses his cheek: he could use a shave. And a clean shirt.

  Traffic on the M4 is light, and the cab makes good time. Mark crosses his legs and Paul leans his head against the window. On each side of them the sloped roofs of West London align themselves in imperfect rows. Brick chimneys belch smoke. A council flat, a dusty cathedral, an old television antenna obscure the city’s skyline.

  Paul asks, “So what is it that you’re going to be doing again?”

  The cab swerves around a Fiat. Mark clears his throat.

  “Alcott’s running a clinic,” he says. “Looking at the way capuchin monkeys approach risk and group problem solving in captivity. He’s already gathered all the raw data. He just needs someone to help analyze it.” He adds, “He said he’d give me a coauthor credit when he publishes.”

  “Where’d he observe them?”

  “The monkeys?”

  “Yeah.” Paul yawns.

  They hit traffic—a small, contained pocket of it—and the cab pulls up next to the sort of miniature white van that Mark associates with European florists.

  “The London Zoological Society,” he says.

  “That’s it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hardly seems accurate.”

  Paul runs a hand through his hair, and it stands straight up on its ends. He looks young—a freshman the morning after his first college party. Mark weighs potential opportunities: this could be a good or a bad thing, depending on Alcott’s tastes.

  He says, “Why’s that?”

  “Who’s to say all monkeys are the same? Who’s to say French monkeys don’t do things differently than British ones?”

  Paul tries to suppress a grin. He’s unsuccessful. The cab jolts over a pothole, and he smiles.

  Mark pinches his thigh, and the smile erupts into a laugh.

  The traffic begins to open up, and cars unpeel themselves from one another. The cabdriver tunes the radio to the news and cranks up the volume. Gear up for another hot day in London.

  “What night are we having dinner with your mother and sister?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.” Paul sighs and puffs his cheeks. Mark catches the driver eyeing them in the rearview mirror.

  “I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.”

  “I think the chances of that are very, very low.”

  “But what night…”

  Paul says, “Tuesday. Of next week. Donna gets in the night before. And then on Friday Alice has to go to that godawful bachelorette party.”

  Mark reaches into his bag for a bottle of water.

  “You’re not even a little bit upset that you weren’t invited?”

  The blocks closer to the city’s center are fuller, cleaner, better cared for, shedding the anemic sparseness of the exurbs.

  “Why would I ever be invited?” Paul says. “I’m not a bachelorette.”

  “Of course you aren’t.” Mark laughs. “I just figured that, perhaps, she’d want to—”

  “That would be so Eloise, though, wouldn’t it?” Paul interrupts Mark, which Mark considers pointing out, but doesn’t; he likes to let Paul believe that he controls some of their conversations. “Inviting her gay half brother to her bachelorette party? She’s absolutely the sort of person who’d do that. Like, one of those women who thinks it’s cute and novel, as opposed to totally homophobic and demeaning, to invite you over for a ‘girls’ night.’ It’s like, no, bitch, that’s not how it works. Just because we both like cock doesn’t mean you get to treat me like some paper doll with a dick.” Paul snatches the water from Mark, takes a swig, and continues, “Frankly, though, I’m sort of shocked that she didn’t ask me to be in the bridal party. Never mind the fact that we’ve hardly spoken in two years. I guarantee you that she’d be willing to look past that minor detail in order to get some bougie diversity points for having some faggot—or, this faggot, specifically—up there holding an overpriced bouquet.”

  Mark smiles. He lives for moments like this one. Moments when Paul loses himself on one of his rants. He finds them adorable, particularly when they’re directed at him. He can’t quite articulate why. He likens it to how he feels when he successfully convinc
es Paul to wear his unwashed shin-guards from college soccer when they have sex, or when he thinks of what it might be like to watch other men fuck him: it turns him on.

  He uncrosses his legs and catches Paul’s eye. He winks and glances down at his crotch, where his half-hard cock is pressing against his jeans.

  “Knock it off,” Paul says, and looks out the window. Quickly, he turns back to Mark. “You’re sure this is all right with Alcott? Us crashing at his place for a week and a half?”

  “He’s got a spare room. He’s excited to finally see us.”

  “But, I mean, a week and a half. That’s a long time. You’re sure?”

  Mark nods and adjusts his jeans.

  * * *

  Men in London wear better pants, Mark thinks. He’s watching a pair of twenty-something finance types order coffee from a kiosk stationed at the entrance of Somerset House. They’ve both got their hands shoved in their pockets, and the blue and gray fabric of their trousers stretches tightly over their thighs. He stares for a moment or two longer, and then qualifies his initial observation: Maybe it’s not the pants so much as what the pants do to their asses. It’s got something to do with how the wool accentuates their natural athleticism, he figures. At least based on what he’s seen during the past hour, a pair of everyday British slacks has the potential to turn a Londoner’s butt into something Mark can imagine eating for days. American men could never pull these pants off—this fact he’s sure of. Their legs are too bulky, too hyperinflated with clownish musculature. He thinks of Crosby, back in Philadelphia, wearing a pair of Paul Smith slacks: a pair of hot dogs shoved into two empty Pixy Stix.

  The two men finish their coffees and exit onto the Strand, where they’re consumed by the ebb and flow of midweek London. Mark frowns. He misses them, instantly.

  “And you said what again?” he hears Alcott say to Paul, his voice lilting.

  “I, uh, I didn’t say anything, really,” Paul stammers. “I just … I threw the baby mannequin at him.”

  Alcott howls. “And it hit him in the bloody face.”

  “Yeah … that’s right.”

  “That’s brilliant.”

  Mark turns from them and rolls his eyes. He’s pleased that Alcott’s enjoying Paul—that’s a good sign—but privately he fears how many times he’ll have to endure the melodrama of How Paul Lost His Job. He wonders how other people do it, how they’re able to suffer through their lovers’ retelling the same tired stories without reaching for a noose.

  From the little table where they’re sitting drinking lukewarm bottles of Perrier, he lets his gaze wander across the vast court of Somerset House. Children splash in the twenty or so tiny geysers of the fountain at the center of the square. Above them loom ancient stone bricks, ashy columns, and, finally, the House’s green copper dome. Along the outskirts of the fountain tourists wander around, taking pictures with their phones—of the dome, of the children, of the gray sky, of handwritten signs hawking juice and wine and coffee and beer. They’re fat, mostly. Fat and pink, their feet crammed into shoes with sturdy soles and cushioned supports. It had been Paul’s idea to come here. This morning, over breakfast, when they were tossing around options of how they might spend the day, Alcott suggested that they visit an out-of-the-way pub he knew somewhere in East London. Paul, though, had practically begged for them to visit Somerset House instead. He said that he’d been there once before, nearly a decade ago when he came to London with his mother to visit Eloise, and that he remembered Somerset being “gorgeous” and “heartbreaking,” but that, looking back, he suspected he had been too hungover from the night prior to properly appreciate it.

  Mark had scoffed at the notion, and had felt a stinging parental chagrin over Paul’s lack of taste. “For Christ’s sake,” he’d said. “Somerset House. Why don’t we just take a ride on the London Eye while we’re at it.”

  Paul excused himself and said that he was going for a walk; Mark finished his bowl of muesli and asked Alcott for a fresh towel so he could shower.

  And then what had happened? Alcott had entered the bathroom, right as Mark was beginning to work conditioner through his hair. Over the steady splash of water-against-skin-against-tile, he’d heard the door creak open, and then the confident baritone of Alcott’s voice: “Mind if I brush my teeth while you’re in there?” Remembering the scene for the hundredth time, Mark chuckles: It had been a polite and marvelous question, but a silly one, too. Because of course Mark didn’t mind. Earlier he’d practically extended Alcott a formal invitation to join him: disrobing down to his boxer shorts, then passing through the kitchen to linger while Alcott tidied up, absently stroking the line that ran from his chest to his belly button (should he have trimmed the hair on his stomach?) as he drank a glass of water. Still, despite his sureness, Mark was gripped with uncertainty as he waited for Alcott to make his move. And as each second passed, as the bubbles found new ways to coat his slick skin, this uncertainty grew in unfathomable ways. Grew so much, in fact, that when he did indeed hear the door open, when his predictions were confirmed, he experienced a rush of ecstasy at the sheer prospect that he had been so right—a sensation that manifested itself as an electric tingle, buzzing at the end of his prick.

  “Sure,” Mark had called out from the shower. “Come on in.”

  He listened while Alcott turned on the sink, and while he brushed his teeth. And when he reached to open the shower’s curtain, Mark was there, rinsed of soap and half hard, ready to face him.

  “So I was thinking,” Alcott started. A smudge of toothpaste marred his lower lip. Mark would have to lick it off for him.

  “Yes?”

  Alcott’s eyes fell to Mark’s stomach, and then to his cock—which, God be good, was still half hard, maintaining the girth that it lacked in its bored and flaccid state. Mark willed more blood to rush to his groin—he wanted Alcott to watch it grow—but for some confounding reason, his body refused to cooperate. His dick just stood there, dangling at half-mast.

  “We should go to Somerset House.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Alcott reached up and wiped the toothpaste from his mouth. “It’s not that bad, Mark. It’s not like Paul’s asked to go to Buckingham Palace. If he wants to go to Somerset House, we should go. We have all the time in the world to get drunk in pubs.”

  Mark felt himself shrinking. He wanted to close the curtain.

  “Fine,” he said. “Somerset House, though I refuse to pretend to be pleased about it.”

  “Good man.” Alcott smiled. Then, he said, “Oops. Looks like you missed a spot.” A cluster of soap suds still clung to Mark’s left thigh, and with a single finger, Alcott reached forward and flicked it off before shutting the curtain and exiting the room.

  And thank God for that, Mark thinks now. Brushing soap from his leg was hardly the orgasmic equivalent of a highly skilled hand job (his assumption was that Alcott was highly skilled), but in terms of significance, of implications, it bore the same weight. What would Mark have done if Alcott had simply closed the curtain? If he had simply defended Paul’s awful suggestion, and then left? Mark doesn’t want to think about it, mostly because it’s a ludicrous impossibility. As if he’s capable of so woefully misjudging Alcott’s intentions—or, even less plausibly, his own.

  Paul continues to revel in his own misfortune, and Alcott continues to indulge him. Mark finishes his Perrier and smacks his lips. Four steps in front of him, a tourist wearing a plastic backpack takes a selfie with a gold iPhone. Ah, Somerset House. Why does he hate it so much? He supposes it’s for the same reason that he hates places like New York, or Paris, or Venice, or Rome. Places that were once interesting and authentic, but have since forged some pact with Global Tourism to become picturesque caricatures of themselves. Well-lit dollhouses meant to be admired by the Other, instead of occupied by the native. Where else is there to escape to? Berlin, maybe, but that won’t last long; he’s read too many New York Times travel section pieces on the place to believe it has a c
hance of escape. Scandinavia’s headed for the same vulgar fate, too, he fears. All those Danish and Swedish television shows getting new, American treatments. A girl’s bloated body is found in a misty lake, except this one’s outside Portland, instead of on the outskirts of Copenhagen. It’s only a matter of time before hordes of fat Indianans in search of chunky sweaters do a bit of googling and start booking tickets to Denmark.

  “That, Paul, is quite a story.” Alcott wipes a few tears from his eyes. Was Paul’s account of his catastrophe at the clinic really that funny? Had Mark missed something crucial in the initial telling of it? Or, is it possible that Alcott finds Paul genuinely and sincerely charming? Mark stops himself: he’s above jealousy. It’s a pedestrian emotion, one reserved entirely for the naïve and the insecure.

  “Isn’t it?” he says. “I get a kick every time Paul tells it.”

  “And I can see why!” Alcott stands. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ve got to run to the loo. But once I’m back, why don’t we stroll around a bit? We’ve still got a few hours before I’ve got to take leave for that dreadful faculty meeting.” He appraises the buildings on each side of him. “It’s been ages since I’ve been to Somerset House. I’d forgotten just how gorgeous the old pile of bricks is.”

  Mark says, “I think that’s a lovely idea.”

  Alcott trots over to a visitor’s center, and once he’s out of earshot, Mark shifts his chair so he can face Paul.

  “Great guy, isn’t he?”

  “He is. Very accommodating.”

  “And that accent.” Mark leans back, and the front two legs of his chair lift from the ground. “Christ, have you ever heard such a sexy voice?”