Boysie never got over the shock of seeing the policeman at the apartment door, standing like a monument to something, with an untranslatable expression on his face, with one hand resting, perhaps absentmindedly, on the holster of his gun, and the other, raised and caught in the slow-motion paralysis of knocking on the apartment door again. The wedding guests were at that time in the middle of the speeches; and Boysie, who was master of ceremonies, had been saying some amusing things about marriages. It was at the point when he was saying (in his best stentorian, oratorical Barbadian dialect), “Ladies and gentlemen! ladies and gentlemen too! greetings and salutations. On this most auspicious of evenings, on the aurora of long and felicitous matrimony, I say to you, to you ladies and gentlemen, I say ecce homo, behold the man! ecce homo, here I stand!” Freeness was there, dressed to kill, in a three-piece suit, which he told everybody he bought from Lou Myles Designitore; Estelle, beautiful as a virgin in white, and many others, crammed into the happy apartment, all screamed for joy when Boysie thus began his speech. It was his fifth for the evening’s festivities. He was very proud of Henry on this day. Every wedding guest, including Agatha and Henry, had made a speech, some twice. Boysie had made his first about an hour after the wedding party returned to the apartment from the church. It was five o’clock then. The wedding had been delayed. (Henry couldn’t find cufflinks for his formal white shirt; and he couldn’t find the old courage he had for marriage. Boysie had to telephone Dots to ask Agatha to arrive late, because Henry had to be induced into appearing at the church.) Now, after many toasts and speeches and eats and drinks, Boysie was captivating the audience again. The time was midnight. The guests liked it. They bawled. And they told Boysie they liked it.
Henry, sober and married; Agatha, turning red, and flushed and happy, and drunk as Dots was, held her head back and exposed her silver-filled cavities and said, “I could have another wedding reception like this tomorrow! One like this every month!”
“I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, too! I say, ecce homo! behold the man, ecco homo, here I stand! Here I stand, ladies and gentlemen, with a glass of Mount Gay rum in my hand, wherewithal for to mitigate the aridity of my thirst. And as I have arisen from my esteemed seat this fifth time, and as I have quoth to you, bonswarr or goodevening, my dear Agaffa — goodevening, Henry you lucky old Bajan bastard!”
It was here, in the roar of acceptance by each person in the room, when they held their glasses up, that the knock brutalized the apartment. Its suddenness made them notice it. But they had no suspicions. Boysie said, still with his glass raised, “Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, it is some poor suppliant wanting the warmth of this nocturnal congregation.” And he moved away, towards the door, his drink still in his unsteady poetic hand, to invite the person inside to partake of the hospitality. Bernice went to Agatha to fix the veil on her dress. She therefore, fortunately, blocked Agatha’s vision of the police officer at the door, with his hand on his holster. Boysie didn’t lose his aplomb.
The police officer was very polite to him. “Break it up soon, buddy. The neighbours are complaining about the noise. And it’s past midnight.”
Boysie was going to offer the officer a drink, but he thought better of it.
“Don’t let me get another report to come back here, or hear that you making noise, eh? Break it up, soon.”
Boysie did not move from the door until the officer of the law walked back to the elevator; and he did not move until the officer got into it; and Dots, by this time (she had put on a record on the player the moment she heard the officer’s warning), was standing beside Boysie like a doorpost.
“And the poor girl’s enjoying herself so much. And on her wedding day? Jesus Christ, these people is real savages, man! You mean to tell me that they could do this on the girl’s wedding day?”
Boysie put his arm round Dots’s new shiny, almost bare shoulder, and he squeezed her a little bit, and said, “This party can’t done! Let that son of a bitch come back!” Boysie left her. He went to Bernice and whispered something in her ear.
“The police?” Bernice said, almost too loud; and immediately she grew tense. “Only me — and now you — and Dots know. So keep it dark. We got to go on. How the hell could we ask people to leave. Not now. How would Agaffa feel? How would Henry feel on his wedding day, to boot?”
But Boysie and Dots and Bernice made certain that Henry and Agatha did not feel the tension that had begun to creep into the party. It was impossible to recapture the gaiety and the enjoyment that was present before the policeman knocked on the door. Dots would have had the guests leave immediately, just to save a disgrace; even after a respectable time, the time it would take to serve another drink, she would have insisted on it, because Agatha and Henry had to leave for their honeymoon in Niagara Falls. But Boysie said no. “This
