“P.J.?” Mark was doing a very funny move as he avoided the violent rhythmic swinging of a beaded scarf belonging to a woman who’d apparently been waiting all her life to dance to “La Vida Loca”.
“No,” Kate said. “Him.”
But when Mark turned in the direction she pointed, the table was empty.
“Unless this guy hid in the trunk, I can assure you, it was just P.J. and I in the car.”
“He said he knew you. Older guy. Medium height, grey eyes, named, um – Oh, wait, there he is.”
But when Mark turned again, the scarf nailed him. He clutched his eye, wincing. “I think I got some spangle in my eye.”
Kate led him off the floor and scored some eye drops from one of the contact-wearing bridesmaids, but Mark kept closing his lid whenever he tried to apply it.
“Jesus, you’re worse than my three-year-old nephew,” she said.
“I -I – It’s my eye, you know,” he whined.
“Now you’re sounding like him, too.”
She ordered him on to his back on the floor and was pleased to see him submit without a complaint. Then she told him to close his eyes.
“The last time this happened,” he complained, “I ended up with a bad case of crabs and someone else’s shoes.”
“You’ll be pleased to know you are in danger of neither tonight.”
“I don’t know if ‘pleased’ is the word I’d use,” he muttered slyly, and she gave him a look.
She had to hang over practically on top of him to get the right angle. He smelled like the really expensive French-milled soap she once found in the bathroom of the re-election campaign’s biggest donor. She wondered if she’d ever smell as good. “Now, close,” she ordered, and when he did, she let one eye drop fall into the inside corner of each eye. “Open.”
“What? Now? There’s stuff on them.”
“Do it.”
“Arrrrrrrggghhh.”The drops floated glossily over his eyes and down his temples.
“There. Feel any better?”
“What I feel is strong-armed,” he said in a mock sulk. “Misused and strong-armed.”
“Maybe write your congressman.” She helped him to his feet.
“Don’t think I won’t.” He test-blinked his bad eye. “You know there’s a name for someone like you.”
“Hero?”
“I’m too polite to say it.”
“Why do I doubt that? Is the eye better?”
“A little.” He smiled. “Thank you.”
“Bouquet!” cried Bethany, a junior bridesmaid in bare feet and a borrowed sweater, racing by. “C’mon, Kate!”
“Oh, crap.”
Mark stopped his eye rubbing. “Not a fan of the bouquet tradition?”
“Ranks right up there with the pencil in the eye tradition.”
