Promise Me

Loren waited.

“That,” Edna Skylar said, “was a huge mistake.”

“I’m still not sure I understand.”

“Neither do I. But this time…” Her voice faded away. She swallowed, looked down at her hands before turning her gaze to Loren. “Just because everything looks okay, maybe it’s not. Maybe Katie Rochester needs help. Maybe this time I should do more than just let it go.”

The promise in the basement came back to haunt Myron at exactly 2:17 a.m.

Three weeks had passed. Myron was still dating Ali. It was the day of Esperanza’s wedding. Ali came as his date. Myron gave away the bride. Tom — real name Thomas James Bidwell III — was Win’s cousin. The wedding was small. Strangely enough, the groom’s family, charter members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, was not thrilled with Tom’s marriage to a Bronx-born Latina named Esperanza Diaz. Go figure.

“Funny,” Esperanza said.

“What’s that?”

“I always thought I’d marry for money, not love.” She checked herself in the mirror. “But here I am, marrying for love and getting money.”

“Irony is not dead.”

“Good thing. You’re going to Miami to see Rex?”

Rex Storton was an aging movie star they were repping. “I’m flying down tomorrow afternoon.”

Esperanza turned away from the mirror, spread her arms, and gave him a dazzling smile. “Well?”

She was a vision. Myron said, “Wow.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

“Come on then. Let’s get me hitched.”

“Let’s.”

“One thing first.” Esperanza pulled him aside. “I want you to be happy for me.”

“I am.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I know.”

Esperanza looked into his face. “We’re still best friends,” she said. “You understand that? You, me, Win, Big Cyndi. Nothing has changed.”

“Sure it has,” Myron said. “Everything has changed.”

“I love you, you know.”

“And I love you.”

She smiled again. Esperanza was always so damned beautiful. She had that whole peasant-blouse fantasy thing going on. But today, in that dress, the word luminous was simply too weak. She had been so wild, such a free spirit, had insisted that she would never settle down with one person like this. But here she was, with a baby, getting married. Even Esperanza had grown up.

“You’re right,” she said. “But things change, Myron. And you’ve always hated change.”

“Don’t start with that.”

“Look at you. You lived with your parents into your mid-thirties. You own your childhood home. You still spend most of your time with your college roommate, who, let’s face it, can’t change.”

He put up his hand. “I get the point.”

“Funny though.”

“What?”

“I always thought you’d be the first to get married,” she said.

“Me too.”

“Win, well, like I said, let’s not even go there. But you always fell in love so easily, especially with that bitch, Jessica.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Whatever. Anyway, you were the one who bought the American dream — get married, have two-point-six kids, invites friends to barbecues in the backyard, the whole thing.”

“And you never did.”

Esperanza smiled. “Weren’t you the one who taught me, Men tracht und Gott lacht”?

“Man, I love it when you shiksas speak Yiddish.”

Esperanza put her hand through the crook of his arm. “That can be a good thing, you know.”

“I know.”

She took a deep breath. “Shall we?”

“You nervous?”

Esperanza looked at him. “Not even a little.”

“Then onward.”

Myron walked her down the aisle. He thought it would be a flattering formality, standing in for her late father, but when Myron gave Esperanza’s hand to Tom, when Tom smiled and shook his hand, Myron started to well up. He stepped back and sat down in the front row.

The wedding was not so much an eclectic mix as a wonderful collision. Win was Tom’s best man while Big Cyndi was Esperanza’s maid of honor. Big Cyndi, her former tag-team wrestling partner, was six-six and comfortably north of three hundred pounds. Her fists looked like canned hams. She had not been sure what to wear — a classic peach maid of honor dress or a black leather corset. Her compromise: peach leather with a fringed hem, sleeveless so as to display arms with the relative dimensions and consistency of marble columns on a Georgian mansion. Big Cyndi’s hair was done up in a mauve Mohawk and pinned on the top was a little bride-and-groom cake decoration.

When trying on the, uh, dress, Big Cyndi had spread her arms and twirled for Myron. Ocean tides altered course, and solar systems shifted. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Mauve with peach?”

“It’s very hip, Mr. Bolitar.”

She always called him Mister; Big Cyndi liked formality.

Tom and Esperanza exchanged vows in a quaint church. White poppies lined the pews. Tom’s side of the aisle was dressed in black and white — a sea of penguins. Esperanza’s side had so many colors, Crayola sent a scout. It looked like the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. The organ played beautiful hymns. The choir sang like angels. The setting could not have been more serene.

For the reception, however, Esperanza and Tom wanted a change of pace. They rented out an S&M nightclub near Eleventh Avenue called Leather and Lust. Big Cyndi worked there as a bouncer and sometimes, very late at night, she took to the stage for an act that boggled the imagination.

Myron and Ali parked in a lot off the West Side Highway. They passed a twenty-four-hour porn shop called King David’s Slut Palace. The windows were soaped up. There was a big sign on the door that read now under new management.

“Whew.” Myron pointed to the sign. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”

Ali nodded. “The place had been so mismanaged before.”

When they ducked inside Leather and Lust, Ali walked around as though she were at the Louvre, squinting at the photos on the wall, checking out the devices, the costumes, the bondage material. She shook her head. “I am hopelessly naive.”

“Not hopelessly,” Myron said.

Ali pointed at something black and long that resembled human intestines.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Dang if I know.”

“Are you, uh, into…?”

“Oh no.”

“Too bad,” Ali said. Then: “Kidding. So very much kidding.”