While Rachel gives the sitter a few last-minute instructions about naps and fruit and phone numbers, Noah croons the girl's name and tries to seduce her away with Curious George videos. Mike wants to kiss his son good- bye, but he is clearly a fifth wheel. He remembers the tearful scenes that used to precede every exit. He's surprised to find he misses them.
'We'll bring you back a piece of cake,' he offers.
'Don't push your luck,' his wife whispers, and they slip out the door.
The Sunday afternoon traffic is stop-and-go. Mike pulls out around some moron trying to make a left turn on Flat-bush and has to lie on the horn and gun the sluggish engine just to get back into the left lane before he gets nailed. For all that, they get stuck at the light. He still misses his old Fiat, a spry little gem sacrificed on the altar of adulthood. Rachel hated it, insisted it made him drive like a maniac, but you have to drive aggressively in this city or you get crushed. Still, there was no arguing with the fact that a Fiat has no place for a car seat. He couldn't bring himself to trade it in, so for months after they bought the sedan with the four-wheel drive and the good safety rating, he continued to rise at dawn every other day and move his old love to the alternate side of the street. It came down to the fact that at sixteen he had thought a sports car would complete his life, and twenty- plus years later it was hard to let go of the idea.
They inch up the ramp onto the bridge. Sunlight flashes through the cable webbing of the spans, and Mike admires a ketch on the bay below. The sails arch taut, the boat heeled flat against the glittering water. He watches the boat skid toward the Verrazano Bridge, out to sea, and imagines the feel of lines pulling through his palms.
Mike double-parks in front of the restaurant, and Rachel comes around and burrows into the driver's seat, readjusting the mirrors.
'You sure you don't want to come in and watch the rehearsal?' he asks.
'No, Macy's is having a sale on OshKosh. Noah's outgrowing his old ones. I'll be back before six.'
When Rachel pulls out into traffic, he turns and checks his reflection in the plateglass window. His face is still ruddy, a little tan left over from a weekend spent out at Montauk. Behind his glasses, pale lines splinter out from the edges of his eyes, like cracked glaze on pottery. There's also a little silvering at the temples that wasn't there when Caitlin last saw him. You could make a case that the gray hairs go with the suit and the tan. Makes him look successful, he decides. All in all, looking pretty good at thirty-eight, one of the last of his crowd who hasn't gotten thin on top or thick in the middle. The thought that Caitlin must also have changed snags at the edge of his mind, but he brushes it away, tucks his glasses into his breast pocket, and strides through the front door.
The restaurant is cavernous and cool, a former USO hall refurbished with yellow walls and large unframed canvases. Mike steps quickly through the bar and up into the main room. The tables have been cleared away and replaced with rows of chairs leading to a low platform swagged with ribbon and greens. A ponytailed man in leather jeans is standing on the platform, squinting up into the balcony over Mike's head. Suddenly music crashes through the room, a screeching burst of violins and then silence.
'Okay, okay, back it up and lower the volume a tad, hmm?' The man sees Mike and hops off the platform.
'I hope you're Michael. Oh, good, we're just about ready to do a quick run-through. We'll get this out of the way and let Andrea get dolled up. Phillip' – he serenades the balcony again – 'the best man is here. Are you girls ready to go?'
Phil bounds down the metal stairs and lopes toward Mike. He looks different today. Mike can't place why, and then he realizes it's the suit. Phil's a musician who does carpentry on the side; his idea of dressing up has always been an old corduroy blazer on top of the jeans and cowboy boots. Today he is wearing a charcoal gray suit with an expensive Italian drape, a yellow silk tie, the whole nine yards. From the neck down, Phil is transformed, but the face is still too rugged for the costume. Mike is reminded of those photo booths at carnivals, the painted plywood scenes that you stuck your head into, your head on top of the body of a Victorian bathing beauty or an Old West cowboy.
Phil claps Mike on the back and then grins self-consciously, flinging his palms out and stepping back so Mike can take in the full effect.
'What d'ya think, man? I figured I'd dude up a little for the folks.'
The man in the leather jeans is waving at them. 'All right, front and center, boys. Is the music keyed up? Andrea, Caitlin, don't forget to pause on the bottom step for your photo op.'
Handel's
'I feel like I walked into rehearsals for
'You got opening-night jitters?'
'Nah, I'm fine, really man. The way I see it, I married Andy six years ago. I just wanted to see what she looks like in a dress.' Phil falters and tears blink in his eyes. He grins loopily. 'I'm a happy guy, Mikey. What can I say?' Mike throws an arm around his shoulder and they clench each other, as awkward and passionate as teenagers.
Phil has always been a relatively happy guy. Mike envies him his easy luck. Phil never crossed over that invisible line. He's never had more than a bad hangover, never made mistakes he couldn't live with, never threw away something good when he had it.
The music cascades and the ponytailed man sings, 'Okay, Caitlin, that's your cue.' Without his glasses, Mike sees only a thin blurry figure wavering slowly down the stairs. Ten years blink away, and he recalls a riveting woman with Black Irish eyes and a mouth like a longshoreman's, and she is going to spend the night with him and then her life with him and then she decides better of it. 'In case you haven't noticed, the fucking party's over,' the mirage tells him. 'It stopped being fun for everyone else a long time ago.' And then she is gone.
The person coming down the stairs sharpens into focus like an ink drawing, something Japanese, a crane. The weightless line of her body, long fingers clasping an imaginary bouquet at her waist, the dark hair scissored short now. Her eyes are older, and the years have altered her in some other way that Mike can't pinpoint, but she is still fiercely attractive. Mike feels a stab of regret, sharper than it was when she left him.
He doesn't even remember her going. By that time, he was so obsessed with drinking himself to death, a man dredging frantically for the bottom, that he'd felt her absence only as the removal of some obstacle. Suddenly everything solid had dissolved underneath him and he'd felt the bleary rush of getting closer to death. One dizzy exhalation. When he hit bottom, in a lozenge-pink room at Smithers, he'd been surprised to hear she'd left town months ago, gone to Texas.
Caitlin glances up at him, or at him and Phil, he can't tell, but he pulls the corners of his mouth into a smile. He wishes only to float above this moment and see the pattern, see where he might have ended up if he'd made different choices. He hears trumpets and kettledrums.
'And now the bride. You look radiant, darling. That's right, now pause on the stair, let everyone admire you.'
Mike's job, so far as he can remember, is to keep the groom from losing his nerve for another hour and a half. But Phil looks fine, loose-limbed and joking, trading Bloody Mary recipes with the bartender. Mike slips out of the conversation and goes looking for Caitlin. He knocks on a door next to the kitchen.
'Andrea? It's Mike. Can I steal a couple of aspirin?'
The door cracks open, and Caitlin peeks through. 'She doesn't want anyone to see her before the ceremony. Bad luck. I told her that was just the groom, but…' She shrugs. 'You still smoke? I'll trade you for a cigarette.' She holds out two tabs of aspirin, and he shakes a cigarette out of his pack. He is fumbling with his lighter, but she takes it.
'Not in here.'
And she is leading him through the kitchen, past cooks and waiters arranging shrimp and cheese and grapes on platters. His heart is pumping, and he grabs her hand, his own palm so sweaty that his grasp slips. He remembers the first night, leaving a party half in the bag, following her ass out to the elevator. He was like a trained seal, its nose swaying to the rhythm of a herring. God, but she had rhythm, swaying, flailing in the boozy dark. Caitlin opens a metal door and steps outside. What did he say that night? 'I want to make you happy.' What a joke. He thinks to himself that he needs a drink. He pauses and glances back at a waiter, tastes the bite of gin in
