The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  "Do you believe that the devil exists, then? That there's some being at large in the universe who's only purpose and fondest desire is to lead God's children astray?"

  He squinted at me. "Of course. What else?"

  I blushed. "In college when we talked about the Bible we discussed the devil as a literary device, as a metaphor for evil, not as an actual being."

  Squeezing the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, Eliot shook his head. "And I suppose in ethics class you talked about how outmoded ethics have become in a technological society."

  "How did you know?" I giggled, picturing Mr. Pepper-never Dr. Pepper, thank you kindly, despite the oak-framed PhD on his office wall. I remembered him raising his small arms from the sides of his little round body. Most lectures ended with him railing against the backwardness of Christian ethics. I'd joked about his class along with all his other students, but now as it turned out, I'd taken much of it with me.

  Smiling, Eliot said, "I took the same class, or a similar one, rather. There is no black and white, remember? Whether something is right and wrong depends on motive. The whole world's a gray area."

  That sounded like Mr. Pepper. I remembered his tiny voice, breaking with passion. How very strongly he'd believed in-what?-nothing?

  * * *

  At Thursday's group, from the moment I stepped into Eliot's living room, Charlie could not take his eyes off me.

  Mason wasn't there. He hadn't been to group in a couple of weeks, and there was some discussion about his absences. Was he sick? Had he taken on a new schedule at the library? Had he decided to leave group? Eliot waved away the questions. "I'm sure he'll be back soon," he said. "Let's get to it, shall we?"

  Charlie barely spoke. All the while the others talked, he watched me.

  Jeremy's boss was playing some kind of passive-aggressive game, sending him the stingiest and surliest customers, and then complaining that Jeremy's sales numbers had declined. I'd had no idea that Jeremy was a salesman. It wasn't clear from his story what he sold.

  Charlie watched me.

  After a few awkward dinner dates, Rob's fledgling relationship with Chloe had fallen through. He wept for a while, choked his way through the story of her gradual withdrawal from him, of his repeated attempts to win her affection. Eliot hugged him, comforted him, patted his back, stroked his shellacked hair.

  Charlie watched me.

  Fred had gotten fired. Though he'd sent out dozens of resumes, he couldn't find another job. He'd been struggling with a temptation to bind Jeremy with nylon rope-to beat him, spank him, torture him with alligator clamps and wax dripped from burning candles. When they'd been a couple, I gathered, all of this profligate activity had been the stuff of any old weeknight. Mouth hanging open, I listened to the details of Fred's elaborate, vicious, and very specific fantasies. Jeremy listened, too, with an oddly affectionate half-smile.

  And all the while, Charlie watched me.

  At the end of the session, after Eliot disappeared into the kitchen and as the other men gobbled Jeremy's heart-shaped sugar cookies, Charlie leaned over and said in a whisper, "You look good. I like the-." He brushed the top of his head with the palm of his hand.

  "I was overdue," I said. "I was thinking maybe I went from one extreme to the other, though."

  "Not at all." He glanced across the room. He licked his lips. "Do you-? I was wondering, do you belong to a gym?"

  "A gym?" I blinked. A random question, to be sure. "I did. A long time ago. I had to quit."

  "Do you want to work out together some Saturday?" He was still whispering. "I can get you a guest pass. My treat. It's only five bucks or something."

  "Well. I-."

  "You'd be helping me out. I'm in desperate need of a spotter."

  Given Charlie's size, I doubted I could usefully spot him on wrist extensions; the idea of spotting him on something like a bench press was patently ludicrous. What on earth could he be thinking? I cleared my throat. "I don't think-."

  "Please."

  "I guess-. I guess so."

  Across the room, someone-Rob, I thought-said, quite loudly, "If you don't ask, I won't tell." It could have been Rob. His eyes were red-rimmed, puffy from crying, but he was smiling. Everyone laughed.

  Fred said, "I'm certainly not planning to pursue," and again, they all laughed.

  Urgently, Charlie said, "This Saturday?"

  "This Saturday?" I pretended to think it over. "Not this Saturday, no."

  I looked at him. Again, he licked his lips. He wore a green silk shirt, the color of a golf course or of a field of new wheat. In the firelight his eyes shone more greenish than usual.

  More laughter. Guffaws. I looked. Fred stood with his left hip thrust out to the side, with the back of his right hand resting on the opposite hip. His left hand dangled limply from his wrist. Belatedly, I realized that he had said something bawdy, that he had said it in an effeminate way, with a lisp. Had he said something about having sex-anal sex-"on the pulth of morning"?

  Rob said, "I can always feel my pulse in the morning."

  And again, they all laughed. Fred-still keeping his wrist limp-slapped Rob's shoulder.

  Charlie touched my elbow. I looked at him.

  Something in his eyes-the jade shimmer, the intense stare-told me that I wouldn't be able to put him off forever. He wouldn't stop asking, inviting, pressing me to join him at the gym.

  And if we went to the gym together-. If we ended up in the locker room together, stripping, showering, sitting in the steam room, what then?

  "Next Saturday?" he said.

  He leaned toward me, his eyes glowing, intense. It was unseemly, the way he leaned in, the way he stared at my mouth.

  "I'm not sure," I told him. "I'll let you know."

  * * *

  Christa and Tory settled on a date for their wedding. The twenty-eighth of February-a couple of weeks away, but-as Christa put it-not six whole freaking weeks.

  The date moved again, though, and then there was no date. Certain delicate negotiations with Tory's parents were proceeding in fits and starts, Christa said. He'd decided they should come to the wedding. They lived in Phoenix and hated to travel north of I-40 between October and May. They hated to fly. Talks had broken down, Christa told me, as if Tory were negotiating with a sovereign nation and not his own parents.

  She told me all of this in the cave, over sandwiches and bowls of soup. She didn't seem upset. I began to worry. The phrase "cold feet" kept running through my mind.

  "You're taking this with a surprising measure of equan-equanim-." The word escaped me for some reason. "You're awfully calm. You're going to be four and a half or five months pregnant, after all, by the time you set a date."

  She shrugged. "Que sera," she said.

  "Have you started meditating or something?" I asked her.

  She laughed and batted my shoulder. "You're funny," she said. "Confidentially-." She leaned closer and looked over her shoulder, as if prying ears were all around. "Confidentially, I just hated that wretched Lutheran guy, that preacher or priest or whatever of Tory's. I don't give a shit how pregnant I am, as long as my water doesn't actually-you know-break during the ceremony."

  Relief washed through me, and then I felt silly for feeling so relieved, and then I felt silly for having worried in the first place.

  Christa tugged a leaf of lettuce from her sandwich and munched on it. "God, that guy's a dick," she said, staring off to her left.

  I turned to see what she was looking at-surely at Thorstensen, I thought. But there was only a television set tuned to the Senate session. I realized, then, that she meant the wretched Lutheran guy. The wretched Lutheran preacher or priest or whatever of Tory's-he was the dick in question.

  * * *

  Eventually, they set a date, a final date. March fourteenth. Christa promised me, no more postponements. Tory's parents weren't coming. Instead, Tory and Christa would spend a week in Phoenix on their way back from their honeymoon.
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br />   On the day of the wedding, as I stood at my bathroom sink-all the while I shaved my head, my chin, my pubic stubble-sleet pecked at the window. I edged aside the blinds. The streets were coated in ice. Power lines and tree limbs sagged under the crystalline weight of dripping icicles.

  Three or four times that morning I called Tory's house. There was a chance, surely, given the weather, that the wedding would be postponed yet again. Each time I called, the answering machine picked up.

  I left the house at three o'clock, allowing two hours for travel time. The sky had cleared. The sun shone bright. Streets, sidewalks, lawns, trees, utility poles-everything glimmered and dripped, bright as glass. Meltwater streamed in the gutters and silvered the streets.

  As it happened, it was crazy to allow two hours for travel time. The streets were clear. I-94 was dry. Traffic moved quickly. In thirty minutes, I reached the church. It was easy to find in the tidy grid of streets below Lake Street-at Lake and Thirty-Second, not far from Tory's favorite bar-what the hell was its name? Competitors? Champs? Heroes?

  Alterations to the building's fa?ade and roof line-the addition of a pair of spires, of a gothic arch above the doorway, of an enormous placard bearing its name, The Word of the Spirit Church-had more or less failed to disguise that it had begun life as a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

  I sat in the Chevette, reading Beethoven in London, until in the rear-view mirror I saw Tory's silver Mercedes slip into the lot, and then until I saw Christa and Tory step from the car. She wore a puffy orange parka over a lacy cream dress, and she carried a small bundle of white lilies. Tory wore a black suit, a shirt that matched her dress, and his houndstooth topcoat.

  We hugged all around, grinning. Suddenly I was near tears.

  Christa plucked at the lapel of my suit coat. "Don't you look lovely," she said. She flicked my tie. "No sign of the ayatollah."

  "Are you nervous?" I asked her.

  She laughed and waved away the question, as if it were the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever asked her. Tory said, "Holy fuck, yes."

  The officiant greeted us at the front door. Her white robes shimmered like dew. She was tall, dark-haired, slender. She looked familiar-the oval shape of her face, the cleft chin. She shook our hands-Tory's, then Christa's, then mine. To Christa, she said, "Your mother's here."

  Christa's mother, Alice, sat fidgeting on the edge of a folding chair. Rubbing her hands on her sleeves, she stood. Her crisp gray suit must be brand new. The collar of her blouse was pure white and priestly stiff. She'd polished her flat-soled, sensible shoes as if for military inspection.

  "I'm sorry I'm so early," Alice said. Creases folded and smoothed themselves alongside her mouth. "I was so afraid I'd be late. This weather." She touched her blue-rinsed hair. To Tory, she said, "You look so handsome."

  He did look handsome, in his princely suit and his shiny, tassel-free chaussure. A hank of hair had come loose and hung down on one side of his forehead. I fought the impulse to reach up and tuck it back into place.

  "Thank you, Alice," he said. Alice turned one cheek toward him. Bending stiffly at the waist, he kissed her. From the pocket of his overcoat he produced a red tie, held it up. "Excuse me," he said. "I need to find a mirror."

  Christa turned, looking for the officiant. "Jonquil?" she called. "Jonquil?"

  Jonquil. Jonquil? Could it be-? How many women named Jonquil could there be in the world?

  From a back room Jonquil appeared, her robes flashing and coursing like water. It was. It was that Jonquil. Much about her had changed, it seemed-her clothing, her posture, the color and cut of her hair-but she was, without a doubt, that Jonquil.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "Almost ready," Christa said. "Just waiting for a Windsor knot."

  * * *

  Jonquil arranged us around a makeshift altar-a card table, it looked like, with a white cloth spread across it and some candles lined up along its surface. Christa and Tory stood in the center, Alice and I on either side.

  Jonquil pointed a tripod-bound camera toward us, looked through the viewfinder, made adjustments. She pressed a button. A red light on the front of camera glowed. Gears clicked and whirred.

  Placing herself between Tory and Christa, facing them, the altar at her back, Jonquil said, "We begin with a reading from the good gray poet, Walt Whitman." From the folds of her robe she drew a crackling sheet of onion-skin paper. She opened it. She read.

  When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

  When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

  When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

  When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

  How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

  Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

  In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,

  Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

  Jonquil tucked the paper under her arm. She laid a hand on Tory's shoulder, a hand on Christa's. "So it is with the love between two people. An attempt to quantify it or explain it, or to force it down one road or another, can kill it." She folded her hands. "We all know that there have been rough spots in the last couple of months. There have been breaches. There have been crises. But there is an unshakable bond between these two. There is a truth between them that has existed since the moment they met, and that will continue to exist until they are separated by death." She paused, looking first at Alice, and then at me. "To symbolize the infiniteness of this connection, we use a simple platinum band, a shape with no beginning and no ending."

  Alice and I gave over the rings. Alice's eyes glistened. I wiped a tear.

  "Tory," Jonquil said, "place the ring on Christa's finger. And I believe you have something to say?"

  Holding Christa's hand in his, Tory slid the ring onto her fourth finger. "Nothing I can say can capture the depth or the breadth of what I feel for you, or encompass the strength of my commitment to you. For millennia, poets have used metaphor to express these things that are felt but not seen, known but not heard. 'The obscure moon lighting an obscure world of things that would never be quite expressed.' I love you, more than I love myself. I need you, more than I need breath. And I promise you that for as long as I live, I will be yours." Bending at the waist, he kissed the place where the platinum band-narrow as a thread-nestled against Christa's skin.

  I looked up at Tory's handsome profile, at the rugged line of his jaw, at the good, high bones of his cheeks, at the wet glint of his black eye. God, I loved him. How had it happened? How had it come to pass, that I'd fallen in love with my best friend's fianc?? Two minutes more, and he would be her husband.

  "Christa," Jonquil said.

  Christa-weeping openly, I saw, her mascara beginning to run-pushed the ring onto Tory's finger. The ring snagged on the loose skin at the last knuckle. She twisted it, gently forced it into place.

  She said, "I used to think that I was a mostly self-sufficient person, and that if I could have a few houseplants and Peanut"-here she touched her belly-"and a place of my own, I could weather anything. But you came along and showed me different. For one thing, you showed me that I don't have to go through life being named Christa Kristiansen."

  Christa paused, and we all looked at her in stunned silence. And then Jonquil laughed-a warm, robust, musical laugh. And then we all laughed, except for Alice. Alice wore the expression of a woman whose shoes were two sizes too small.

  Christa said, "I love you for loving me, for wanting me more than you want anything else. I promise you that, no matter what happens, we will be together. This is forever."

  Forever, I thought. Forever, he would be hers. My heart hammered in my chest.

  Jonquil said, "Beloved, I believe that constitutes a marriage vow."

  They kissed, Christa and Tory. A tender kiss. A fierce kiss. A soul kiss. A kiss between newlyweds.
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  Jonquil waited. She said, "For our final word, let's turn again to Mr. Whitman." From the fragile page she read.

  Fatigued by their journey they sat down on Nature's divan whence they regarded the sky. Pressing one another's hands, shoulder to shoulder, their mouths opened, without uttering a word they kissed one another. Near them the hyacinth and the violet marrying their perfume, on raising their heads they both saw God who smiled at them from his azure balcony: Love one another, said he, it is for that I have clothed your path in velvet; kiss one another. Love one another, love one another and if you are happy, instead of a prayer to thank me kiss again.

  The newlyweds kissed again.

  * * *

  Winners. That was the name of the bar. We went there for the reception. Tory led the way. The sun had warmed and dried the streets, and we had only a handful of blocks to go, but Tory drove the Mercedes at something like twelve miles per hour, so that Alice could follow him. I followed Alice, and Jonquil followed me.

  Basketball and hockey games played, as before, on muted television sets. Half-sloshed sports enthusiasts sat on stools all along the bar, cheering or groaning over their mugs of foamy beer. From the back room I heard the bump and crack of billiard balls.

  We claimed a big round table in the front window. Tory and I fetched drinks from the bar-Guinness for him and me, club soda with lime for Christa and Alice, Long Island iced tea for Jonquil.

  "I'm famished," Christa said to Tory. "You know what I'd love?"

  "What would you like, my bride?"

  "A big platter of those super-atomic chicken wings."

  Tory smiled at her. I didn't think he'd stopped smiling since Jonquil had read the first line of the first Whitman poem. The muscles of my jaw ached in sympathy.

  "It's buttons," Tory said. "I'll be right back."

  The four of us sat around the table, looking off in every direction. I sensed movement at my elbow. Jonquil. She'd leaned sideways, toward me. She'd outlined her eyelids with thick streaks of kohl. Tiny black specks dotted her cheeks and the sharp bones beneath her eyebrows.