“I bet you love the world right now.”
“Yes. Them too. But mostly you.”
Later, Jun and Arthur will laugh uproariously as they stumble their way out of their tuxedo and into each other’s arms. Smalltown Boy will go home with Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and will stay far longer into the next day than either of them isexpecting. Back in their hotel room, Smells Like Teen Spirit’s boyfriend, the one who refused to be Lithium, will get back into her good graces when, after turning the lights out, he whispers to her, “It’s less dangerous.” Olivia will be the last person in the dance-hall, smiling because even though it’s empty, the music will still be playing in her ears, the sound of joy made human. And throughout the night, J will lie awake and whisper his love to V, but never so loud that it wakes her. You might say that, at this moment, he is crazy in love.
Or, in other words: Ninety-nine years of wars suddenly seem to have opened up a single spot for a winner.
It is either daybreak or J’s snoring that pulls V from her dreaming. This is a novel occurrence; J is many things, but a snorer is not one of them. Usually.
V gets up quietly and heads to the bathroom. It had been her idea to role-play, after J had told her about the wedding’s costume conceit. Why not take it a little further? He would dress in his apartment and she would dress in hers—their alter egos would have the thrill of meeting for the first time, and maybe, just maybe, that thrill would carry over.
On the toilet long after she’s done using it, V ponders whether the night was a success. It was fun to see J’s response to her other suitor. It was even more fun to talk so directly with J at the bar, even if every single thing she said about herself was a lie, while he characteristically opted to tell the truth. She wonders if this is a warning sign: She used disguise to explore the person she wasn’t, while he used it to bring up the person he was.
What tempted her the most was the opportunity of it all. She knew she wasn’t going to go home with anyone but J, but at the same time, she liked having options—especially options who brought her drinks and found her attractive. Weddings often depressed her, to a degree that she’s never really shared with J. Somepeople see a balloon and see color, lightness. Others only see the coming of the pop. Weddings make V confront the fact that she feels the pop is inevitable.
For this reason, V isn’t too surprised by J’s costume choice. He wouldn’t have seen the pops coming. She is jealous of this. More jealous, in fact, than she was when she saw J dancing with the woman who gave him the drugs. Because while V craves opportunity, she and opportunity have a very complicated relationship, probably even more complicated than her relationship with J. She hasn’t often gotten the things that she’s wanted, although she’s frequently been the thing that someone else has wanted and gotten. The wonderful thing about being with J is that his desires are not demanding; he wants good company, good sex, and a sincere sounding board. She enjoys being all those things. But she’s not so sure they add up to her in the same way they add up to J.
She flushes the toilet a second time, just in case he’s awake now and wondering why she’s been in the bathroom for so long. But when she returns to the bedroom, she finds him snoring away. It’s not a buzzsaw snore or a choking snore, but more like his body has chosen to put a little more emphasis on breathing.
Her phone buzzes; no doubt a work text coming in from some American, even though it’s six in the morning on a Sunday. She doesn’t check it.
Instead she waits for the screen to unlight itself, then takes the phone from its charger and pulls up the microphone. She holds it by J’s snoring face for a minute, to record the sounds he is making. At the very least, it will come in handy the next time he accuses her of waking him with her own snores.
She puts the phone back down, not even bothering to plug it back in. She didn’t meet J at a wedding, but if she had to pinpoint the moment she fell in love with him, it would be a wedding over a year ago. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have been at a wedding where he was playing, but in this case she was the reason he was there in thefirst place, because it was an old family friend who had a serious wedding budget and an appreciation of her newish boyfriend’s music. The theme was Swing Time, and J had been given a big band to back him with horns and strings. He gamely tackled a number of jazzier standards, but it wasn’t until he slowed everything down for a rendition of “Blue Moon” that V’s heart truly took note. He wasn’t afraid to share the longing of the song, and instead of throwing everything off, it brought everything together. V looked around at all the couples leaning into one another, swaying under a moon that was only present in the song, and when she looked up at J, he was holding his hand out to her. She had felt so lonely out in the crowd, but once she stepped onto the bandstand and into his arms, she felt profoundly unlonely—if only because he had seen her loneliness and had joined it to his own to create the antidote. He continued to sing as they danced, and nobody in the wedding hall thought it was unusual, not even V.
So what now? V thinks. The enormity of such a short question nearly paralyzes her, as such questions often do. That was another benefit of being Straitjacket Heart: to have her story only exist in the present tense. In the bed, J turns, moans, and subsides into sleep, the snoring now gone.
V slips back in and sees that J—consciously or not—has arranged his body in a position that makes it very easy for her to pull close. Whether it’s an invitation or serendipity, V takes her place. She puts off any other thoughts of opportunity, of what’s next. She surrenders to being one half of this comfortable drowsing. For now, it’s enough.
THE SECOND WEDDING
“I have a favor to ask you,” J’s childhood friend Tom had said, nearly two months ago now. Then he clarified: “Actually, it’s a favor for Mom.”
The phrasechildhood friendapplies here in two connected ways: J and Tom grew up together, and as a result have a friendship forged in pillow forts and bicycle grease, video games and vague adolescent ruminations. When J got his first guitar, Tom pleaded with his mother for a drum set. J still plays the guitar; Tom gave up the drums in a matter of months, and he was realistic enough about his own lack of interest that when J formed his first band and needed a drum set, Tom was happy to “lend” his, never to be returned.
So, childhood friends. Friends since childhood.
Also, when they get together now, they tend to act like children. This is one of the advantages of having friends for so long—you get to extend your childhood whenever you’re with them. Unless you’ve given in to age, which neither J nor Tom has.
The downside is that sometimes their mothers ask for favors.
“Does she want tickets to my next show?” J asked. Lisbet loved getting free tickets to J’s shows. Even when the shows were free, she liked him to arrange for tickets to be waiting for her, so she could have that moment of being “on the list.”
“I’m afraid it’s something more than tickets to a show,” Tom replied.
Tom has, by and large, grown up into a likable unhappiness, loosely defined by an aggregation of minor disappointments that he’s always managed to fit under comedy’s mask. It is possible J and Tom have never had a completely serious conversation, and J felt a slight terror that they might fall into one now if he’s not careful.
“She’s not marrying George again, is she?” he asked, mostly joking.
Tom all but gulped. “I’m afraid so.”
J laughed. “For afourthtime?”
“I’m touched. Most of my other friends have lost count,” Tom said. “She swears that this time they’re going to do it right.”
“It’s an obsession, Tom. An addiction!”
“It’s just that they get so lonely without each other. They forget how much they hate it when they’re together.”
