52

The valets are dressed for the wedding in polo shirts and khaki shorts. Alicia didn’t want them wearing red, white, and black, looking like waiters from a cheap restaurant, so she bought them outfits. Mark has been complaining for weeks, saying that the degree of planning that the wedding has required is obscene, though I know he actually envies Alicia and Jonathan the storm of attention.

I leave the car with the valets and cross the lawn. I make it as far as the enormous copper beech tree when I hear my name. Eveline! Alicia is peeking through the vertical window in the foyer. She looks perfect from far away, girl-like, like a wife in an advertisement for diamonds. As I go to her, I feel the burden of every step and inside something waning. I look at my new shoes. They seem inadequate, like they cannot possibly be counted on for support.

The house is cool, bustling but organized. Girls in satin A-line shifts with bouquets of sweet William surround Alicia, bucking coyly, like a pack of does. They are pretty in taupe and pink and with the pillbox hats Alicia made them, though it’s hard to tell the difference from girl to girl. The taupe of the dresses is the same taupe Jack’s mother wore to the funeral. Taupe must be the color. Alicia’s cousin Mirelle is wearing the dress that had been made for me before I dropped out. I wave and smile, saying thank you for helping out, and how pretty she looks.

Alicia’s raven hair is parted in the center, just as she likes it, flat to mid-skull, where cumbrous braids accumulate into a type of turban or hive in which six blood-red roses are enwreathed. During discussions with the florist, Mrs. Ross had suggested pink or yellow, but Alicia had refused. When my opinion was solicited, I just said that Alicia was an artist, and she knows about such things. Mrs. Ross, always an adoring mother and art enthusiast, was satisfied with that. I’m glad now about the red; Alicia looks beautiful—truly, she is an artist. Her neck is bound in a choker of freshwater pearls, at least ten strands thick. Her beaded gown is fitted at the bodice, becoming full at the hips. The beads catch light, making motion. With her high forehead and hollow cheeks and ravishing stillness, she looks like a black-figure silhouette in an Etruscan tomb painting.

Tears fill her eyes. “This feels bad,” she says. “Unbelievably bad.”

I scrape a square of glitter from her cheek. What has she been glittering? Menus maybe, or gifts for the kids. She’s that way. It’s unfortunate that Jack’s suicide has touched her wedding, but that is life and she is part of the living. Marriage of all things has to withstand its share of troublesome associations. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do. She seems to think I can do something.

“What you said yesterday at the funeral, about normal people with the need to please, people with a false face—”

I wave my hand, stopping her. I can’t tell her the truth and I don’t feel like lying. It would be nice to think that her super-social sensibilities will lead her to some place of relative freedom and self-empowerment, but I’m not sure they will, and besides, such sensibilities didn’t exactly help her father. I reach into my pocketbook and withdraw a piece of onyx onto which I carved a flower.

“For you,” I say. “For luck.”

She clings to me. In her dress she feels stiff, like underneath is corrugated stuff, like a hurricane could not raise her. Maybe that’s the point. In a gown the bride cannot get away. She cannot turn back. She belongs to man, to family, to community. Like a hot air balloon moored by sand and ropes. “I wish you would stay for the reception,” Alicia says.

Mrs. Ross taps us apart. “That’s enough, girls. Evie, dear, go sit.”

Jonathan’s brother, Evan, meets me at the base of the center aisle. Evan didn’t want to be a groomsman. He wanted to play guitar during the service and sing “Turn, Turn, Turn,” but Mr. Ross said no. He’d have enough on his mind without having to worry about a goddamned minstrel.

“Sorry about your friend,” Evan murmurs as we walk, him leading me, grand and slow. In the middle of the section on the left is Rob. Next to him, Rourke. My body becomes desirous, though truly I mourn. Jack was right to call me feral. I force down the life of me, like snapping a whip at a beast. I think of Elizabeth eating meat and Jack staring. I tell myself, Jack is staring.

Evan delivers me to the second row, to a padded white folding chair behind Mark’s grandparents, who are so small I have to lean to kiss them. As I lean, I am completely conscious of Rourke and Rob, mute and upright, eight rows behind me, observing the supple arc of my spine. The string quartet begins Mozart’s “Minuet in G,” and Mark and Alicia’s cousin Sam and his second wife, Abby, who is seven months pregnant, join me. Abby is not in taupe, she is in teal. A teal net hangs off her teal hat. Abby and Sam own a baby furniture company on the Upper West Side. One of her gloved hands touches my arm. “We heard about your friend last night at the rehearsal dinner. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

Sam leans over. I see the map of his goatee, the grand plan of it. “We’re terribly sorry.”

Mark’s father made the announcement at the rehearsal dinner the night before. The dinner was at 1770 House, a historic inn and restaurant on Main Street in East Hampton, which the Ross family had taken over for the weekend.

Mr. Ross explained to family and bridal party members that a friend of mine and Alicia’s had died, and that due to my particularly close relationship with the deceased, it would not be appropriate for me to participate in a wedding just one day after the funeral.

I didn’t hear the announcement; I was at my mother’s. But I’d come to the Ross house to finish the place cards hours before the wedding, and Mr. Ross informed me of what he’d said. By the time I arrived there, Mark had gone to play some tennis with Brett, and the bridesmaids were lined up waiting for stylists. I opened the shoe box of cards I’d finished two weeks earlier and added all the table numbers. Mr. Ross waited patiently. As soon as I wrapped up the calligraphy pens, he said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Mrs. Ross suggested I stay. “She’s had a rough week, Richard. She might like to be included in the styling session. I don’t know what we could do with that hair, Eveline, but how about nails and makeup?”

“Don’t be conniving, Theo. She has no intention of staying past the ceremony.”

“Richard, I—”

“We’ve been through this a dozen times. She’s leaving after the ceremony. Besides, have you seen these girls when they come out? They look like hookers.”

Mr. Ross and I strolled past the fountain and the newly erected tents. I was relieved to think that the tents were not the same ones used by the Flemings. Had the events been separated by more than one day, it might have been possible. All those sedimentary tears, caught in the vinyl, dripping down and around the wedding party.

I’d given away my bridesmaid dress to Mirelle, so I had to stop by Mark’s cottage to collect a spare dress and a pair of shoes for the ceremony, and when I did, Mr. Ross waited for me in the hallway. Though the cottage was in fact theirs, he and his wife had always afforded us the strictest privacy. In the three years I’d lived with Mark, they’d never stopped by without an invitation, though Alicia would walk in all the time.

My suitcases were in the center of the room. I hadn’t seen them since I’d packed to leave the city after the fight. I ended up going without them when I got the news about Jack, just taping a note to the top and heading for Penn Station.

Took a train to my mother’s. My friend died. Eveline.

Mark brought the luggage out with him on Thursday. He said he assumed it was for Italy. My graduation present. He’d planned for us to leave directly from East Hampton on Monday morning. A car was coming. No matter what he said, I knew he suspected otherwise.

The sight of the luggage brought back memories of the fight, of Rourke being beaten, of him beating back, of the screams of the crowd, of my run down the desolate boulevard to the Greek diner, of the cab ride home, of packing and Dan’s phone call, the little silver clock and the mad wind. These elements fused in my mind so that no detail could be removed without collapsing the memory as a whole. Just as flames, smoke, and heat mean fire, the suitcases meant Jack is dead.

“You okay?” Mr. Ross called up.

I called back that I was. “Want something to drink?” I asked from the landing. “A glass of ice water?” At breakfast he’d had three coffees.

He was lighting a cigarette. “I’m fine,” he said, distractedly.

I jogged down the steps, and he held the door for me. We paused by the pool, where he hooked my dress for the wedding on the crosspiece of an umbrella, then we walked in the opposite direction of caterers, florists, and landscapers.

“I hope you don’t mind my having said anything at the rehearsal dinner last night,” Mr. Ross said, “but Mark has had a solid week to inform people. You were up-front and timely, and your choice is honorable. Considering the quality of your friendship with our own children, Theo and I would be fools to want it any other way.” He extinguished his cigarette against a fence post. “I’m not happy that Mark waited until the last minute. Not happy at all.”

“He was hoping I’d change my mind.”

“He wasn’t hoping anything. He was entrapping. I’m not sure what Mark’s up to. I hope this trip to Italy will be a good thing,” he said, not sounding particularly convinced. “It should be nice for you to get away.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise, so we continued to walk lingeringly, with him making inquiries into the memorial, and me describing the things I’d heard and said. I told him about sitting with Jack’s mother, and he liked to hear about Father McQuail.

The BMW Mark had given me sat waiting on the front lawn, balmy and adorable, lanolin-green like chewing gum. Mr. Ross attached my dress to the hook above the rear passenger door and thoughtfully scooped up the bottom, laying it across the seat. At the driver’s door he took both my shoulders and he kissed me on the forehead. I could smell the stale nicotine on his breath and I felt my heart swell. I recalled my own words from the funeral about Jack never having been forced to become something he didn’t want to be. Some people live their entire lives holding true to the promises they’d made to those who depend on them.

“We’re kindred spirits, you and I,” Mr. Ross said. “Poets.”

In the heavily contrasted light beneath the trees, it became clear to me that he was thinning. I considered attributing the change to a haircut and new eyeglasses, but I confronted the possibility that he was sick again. I hoped someone was paying attention. I couldn’t bear to lose one more person. That’s why it was a relief to me that Denny had settled down. One night, before Denny and Jeff made a commitment, Rob had had to get Denny out of a bad situation over on Gansevoort Street, and afterward all Rob had said was, It’s a good thing I took a gun.

“Yes, Mr. Ross,” I said. “Poets.”

I twisted the side-view mirror and observed his return to the house. As he neared the porch, Alicia and her girlfriends rushed to the window like he was a celebrity and they were his fans. They knocked on the glass, calling and laughing. He waved in feigned annoyance as he mounted the steps, and when he opened the door they engulfed him. I watched Mr. Ross rededicate himself to the monster kinetics of family life, allowing himself to love and be beloved despite the private concessions of his heart and mind.

Mark had shown up at my mother’s house at seven o’clock Friday night, one hour before the rehearsal dinner to try to pressure me into attending. I’d just returned from Jack’s funeral. We all had—Mom and Powell, my father and Marilyn, Lowie and David, Denny and Jeff, Dan, Troy, Smokey, and Jewel, Dr. Lewis and Micah, and several of my mother’s friends. Mark came upon us in the living room, a disheveled black circle.

He had met most everyone over the years but never all at once and never with them sober and nicely dressed. Usually when Mark visited, he would get this look of unfolding shock, as though viewing a particularly revolting striptease. But that evening, like a politician suddenly recognizing the voting power of a marginal constituency, he walked in and worked the room, shaking hands, offering condolences.

“Thank you for being there for Eveline,” he said as he passed from person to person. “I would have been there too, but my grandparents flew in from the coast for my sister’s wedding, and I had to pick them up at JFK. Considering the tragic circumstances, I should have sent a car for them, but my grandfather’s ninety, and my grandmother has Crohn’s disease.”

In the kitchen, Mark sat at the table, in the chair nearest the stove, the place he’d sat the night we met four years before. As it happened, I was standing where I’d stood then, against the counter in front of the sink. Like dominoes, the days fell flat; I returned to the time when I knew what I wanted but had no means of achieving it, as opposed to having the means to achieve without the knowledge of any exceptional end.

“Do we have to sit in here?” Mark wanted to know.

Looking in his eyes, I could see the things I’d missed when we’d first met—the undisclosed designs, the skimmingness about the mind, the restless arrogance. Before going further, I was visited by a second memory—one of Rourke—in the same room, back on that same night, and me, caught in the crucible of adolescence but braver than I’d ever been. The memory of Rourke was so positive and tactile as to clear my mind. I felt a gaping sorrow, elegant and actual. Me thinking, Oh, what I’d lost, what I’d become.

Sensing crisis, Mark changed directions. It was amazing, how well he knew me. “You’re going to break my father’s heart if you don’t come to the dinner tonight. Never mind the wedding tomorrow.”

I called upon the only authority I possessed—artistic instinct and imagination. I established a scene, and I entered it. The kitchen, so overrun with memories of family and friends, became something purely physical, a set or stage, something onto which Mark and I had been thrust. He took on the look of a puppet, only not innocuous, and the things of which we spoke began to sound stilted. I could interpret his script. I could see that his promise to shelter me was based upon the premise of my homelessness. I wondered what was it he wanted from me in exchange. What did I possess that he needed to take away?

My feet were bare; I set them firmly into ground, all points touching. Though it was June, the floor was cold. It was the same coldness that had always been. The coldness that belonged to my mother’s house, and so to my memory and perception of it and of me. That coldness was precisely what I needed to name; it was the paintable thing. And in my head there was a quote my mother used to say that always made me think of facing facts. It was T. S. Eliot’s, I think.

The ways deep and the weather sharp. The very dead of winter.

I walked myself through the years. I had attended college and I had a job in an art gallery. Mark and I shared an apartment on West Sixtieth Street, and there was a car for me to drive. In the bank I had eleven thousand dollars. Any time I paid for something during my time with Mark—books, food, gifts, clothes—the money reappeared in my account.

I tried to think of Saturdays, any Saturday. I had some fractional memory of him on the grenade-green leather couch in the living room, phone in one hand, channel changer in the other, pulling me down to join him. And Saturday places—restaurants, nightclubs, benefits, Nantucket, the Vineyard, Cape Cod, East Hampton. Balding men, spidery women, the superfluous sounds of sex from his friends in adjoining rooms. Mark’s sex was silent. It was stealthy and habitual like some dark routine, like he was addicted to the feeling of getting his money’s worth.

And me, there with him, imprisoned by the impregnability of his position, lost in a world purged of sincerity and rife with conceit. Like him and every other member of his society, I was just another creaturely thing, defined outwardly by my appearance and inwardly by the ungainliness of my aspirations, the ugliness of my compromise. I was rendered most precise not by what I possessed, in fact, but by all that I had not yet attained. In the end, I was left only with an obscene sense of having participated in one long masquerade.

Mark was reminding me of my obligations to his sister, his parents. “They have to supersede,” he said, “any conceivable obligation you might have had to this, this—”

“Jack.”

He was right. My obligations to Alicia and to Mr. and Mrs. Ross did supersede my obligation to Jack: they were living and he was not. They had treated me as family and I had agreed to be a member of the wedding party. However, these obligations did not supersede my obligation to myself—and this was something I needed to understand: the ongoingness and the wholeness of the self regardless of external circumstance. I tried to think about what I wanted. I considered the toll of my continued avoidance and denial: I’d lost everything—home and Jack and Rourke. Though I might have been passive, beneath my passivity there had been agency. My life had never been Mark’s version versus mine—rather, it had been one of my creations versus another. Nothing had happened that I had not allowed to happen. I had been stronger than I’d realized. Now I felt like I needed time. The coincidence of Jack’s death afforded me exactly that. Jack would not have minded. He would have insisted. Part of me wondered if he had not arranged the entire thing.

“I’m sorry, Mark. I just can’t.”

When Mark left, everyone in the living room took a break from telling stories about Jack to discuss Mark.

“What a straight shooter!”

“He’s not so bad!”

“And I always thought he was kind of an asshole!”

Except for my mother, who hadn’t spoken more than a few dozen words since my speech at the memorial. From midway up the stairs, she brought conversation to a halt when wearily she stated, “If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to bed.” Then she turned and went, moving uncharacteristically slow as if there were marbles in her shoes, as if she dare not move as she usually moved, as if she feared shooting off to someplace faraway.

Jonathan and Mark appear from behind the ivied trellis. They are joined by the groomsmen who had been ushers. Mark looks like a movie star in his tuxedo. He winks. Poor Mark, with Rourke looming directly behind me. Rourke, I think, clinging to consciousness, trying not to drift.

I fix my dress, flattening the thin cross of ribbon that binds the bodice. I’m in gray, dove-gray, like a bound dove. He likes me in gray, though I didn’t think to make him like me. I didn’t intend to think of Rourke today. I don’t want to live any more of my life in absentia. Such living is cruel to those who need you truly. When the service commences, I listen carefully. I never want to forget how close I’ve come.

Outside the tent, guests assemble loosely before forming a line to congratulate the families. Musicians disband and begin their exodus to the patio near the pool so that the ceremony tent can be reconfigured for dessert and dancing. The wedding planner and her staff appear, dressed like the parking attendants in white oxfords and khakis. They move us out with false smiles and stiff backs and stretched-out arms as if they belong to the Secret Service. Mrs. Ross asks me to escort her parents to the kitchen, where they can rest until the reception.

“Thank you, darling.” Mr. Sacci’s head goes in circles like it is following the trail of a tightly flying fly. He grasps for his wife’s hand, and she grasps for his, both of them missing repeatedly. I take a hand of each and walk them slowly behind the altar to the kitchen, the province of tea and cookies, and Consuela.

Unlike at the funeral, there are children—wearing pluffy taffeta dresses and little-man suits, running, swinging, climbing. Jack did not know any children or anyone with children. I suppose in his circle he was the last child.

After the memorial service cleared out, Jack’s mother had summoned me privately into the house and given me a shoe. A baby shoe. White with a soft graying lace and scuffs by the heel and toe.

“For you,” she’d said breathlessly. One foot remained on the lowest rung of a stepladder, and in her hand was a half key. On the edge of the closet shelf was an opened fireproof box. “For the Blackfoot hunting grounds. If you ever make it out there. Something of Jack’s to bury.”

I’d turned the shoe in my hands. I’d wondered if it was a gift from Jack or from her. No matter, the message was unmistakable—in it I could see the stubborn will to walk.

“Take it,” she’d insisted. “I have the other.”

“Yes, Mrs. Fleming,” I’d said, and we’d embraced for the last time, the shoe in my hand, and my hand resting on her shoulder. When I got to Denny’s car, he and I had waved, both of us. And driving off, we’d waved once more, leaving her alone at the head of the driveway.

Rourke has already said congratulations. He is not far from the end of the receiving line. His suit is a midnight-blue with fine white stitching, cut flat to his body. Beneath is a light-blue dress shirt. Both the blue of the suit and the blue of the shirt have considerable red in them, giving him an electric appearance. He’s laughing with Rob and Denny and Jeff, his head modestly lowered. The right side of his face is bruised black and inflamed. I can’t make out his eye. I wish I could go to him, to them, to my friends, but I can’t. There is still so much to do. Besides, I feel kind of groundless and spinning. Like Mark’s grandparents, grasping blind, one hand for the other.

“Here’s Evie! Evie!” Alicia beckons, and she pulls me to the bridal party side of the line. “Is my makeup okay?” she asks overloudly, her face hovering by mine. “Did you see his eye?” she whispers. “They say it’s never going to be the same.”

I kiss her, then Jonathan. The photographer demands a picture. There is an awkward pause, a flash. Alicia winks at me, then brightens professionally for the next person. I move on to congratulate the others, and finally, Mark.

“It’s been a long week,” he murmurs suggestively as he squeezes me, his hips pushing in, his eyes looking behind me, to see if Rourke notices. Mark says, “We’re going to take a drive to get photos. Meet me over by the limos.” As I walk away, he yells, “Stay out of the sun.”

Rob takes my hand and leads me across the garden, turning the corner by the summer room and going in, standing where Mark can’t see from his position in the receiving line. Rob raises his green aviator glasses to the peak of his head. Beneath the glasses his eyes are green as well, only softer, more receptive. He adjusts the fallen strap of my dress, and gives me a light hug.

“You smell like coconut,” he says.

My chin rests on his shoulder. “My aunt gave me some lotion.”

“Oh,” Rob says. “Lotion. Very nice.”

I push away. I’m crying, and I don’t want to get his suit wet. His suit is cream-colored, a linen ecru, and his shirt is snow-white. His tie is the color of purple irises.

“You look handsome.”

He reaches in his pocket for a tissue, and, taking up a tiny piece, he pats beneath my eyes. “You like the suit, huh? Lorraine picked it out. She’s into fashion now, so I gave her a call. We went to Barneys over in Chelsea. You gotta see her rip through ties. It’s like a special aptitude, like those autistic kids who know Mozart. We went to the Russian Tea Room after. She always wanted to go there, so I figured, What the hell!”

“That’s great, Rob.”

“She’s dating some lawyer now. Short kid—five-eight. He’s got a two-bedroom condo in Jersey City. I go, ‘Rainy, any short guy with a two-bedroom condo is wife hunting.’ And she goes, ‘That’s right, Rob. And any guy living with another guy and a rabid dog in a trailer with no job and a penchant for gambling is not. It took me ten years, but I finally figured it out.’” Rob laughs. “‘Penchant,’ she says. ‘For gambling.’”

“She loves you.”

He looks over my head and sucks one cheek to his teeth. “You all right? You seem shaky. You shaky?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“Suicide,” Rob says. “That’s rough. But what are you gonna do? You can’t change people. Look at my brother. He’s dead. Practically. Soon, he’ll be dead.”

“Anthony?”

“That’s right, Anthony, in L.A.” Rob reaches for a cigarette, removes his hand, and finds a stick of gum instead. “Tony. All any of us ever heard growing up was how handsome he was. Had any girl he wanted, aged fifteen to fifty. A guy like that gets a complex, know what I’m saying, like, Who needs a real job? So Tony goes out West and takes an excursion through the magical world of porn. Strictly straight stuff, but still. I tried talking to him. I tried everything. But forget about it, the money was too good.”

I sit on the rattan sofa. Rob adjusts his tie and sits too.

“That’s the reason me and Harrison stayed in L.A. after college. My uncle was ready to go make Anthony ugly, so he couldn’t shame anybody. I’m like, ‘Uncle, what are you gonna do, cut his dick off?’ I mean, once you start that shit, where do you stop? I asked for a chance to use a little positive persuasion. You know, spend some time, hang around, get inside, pry him loose. I offered to stay on at UCLA—at Anderson, that’s the business school—my mother wanted me to get an MBA anyway, so I figured this way I’d make her happy. My father and my uncle were a little chilly on the plan. They knew I was a pushover where my brother was concerned. That’s when Harrison agreed to stick around too. And then that whole Diane thing happened soon after. Even so, I got caught up. That world sucks you in. Sex and cash. Blow clouds your judgment. That’s what’s up with Mark, by the way. Too much coke. Those Masters of the Universe assholes keep at it all day. It gets to be like popping aspirin.”

At the mention of Mark, we both shoot a glance in the direction of the bridal party. Through the screened walls of the porch, we can see that half the guests are still waiting in line. We’re sitting low, so there’s no way for him to spot us. Rourke is still out there, so Mark won’t think to worry.

Rob turns back. “Long story short, two years later, worst morning of my life—grad school graduation and it’s like, Time is up. My whole family’s flying in and I haven’t gotten through to Anthony. All that’s happened is he’s compromised me. Remember I told you about cheaters? Their job is the failure of your character. So I’m crashed on the couch in his, whatever, bungalow, out of my mind high from the night before—from an hour before—and there are scumbags all over the place—girls, guys, guys dressed like girls, and vice versa. And I’m scanning each face. How did these fucking losers ever look okay to me?

“In my mind, deep down, I’m thinking—praying—that Tony’s gonna walk down the stairs in some sharp suit like it’s Easter in the neighborhood and I’m seven and he’s seventeen, and he’s gonna chase everybody out, and he’s gonna say, Let’s go, kid. You got a big day ahead. Or else my family’s gonna pull up, and Joey’ll be there all tight with Pop, with my mother in the backseat of the rental car at the end of the driveway, her hands folded on her pocketbook, and my old man’ll go, ‘Go up and get your brother, boys. Tell Anthony we’re going home.’

“But nothing. Nothing. Nobody wakes up, nobody comes. Hours go by. By nine o’clock I’m freaking out. I gotta go. I gotta go. My heart is speeding like it’s gonna bust, and I want to grab something, a lamp, a golf club. I’m looking to start breaking shit. Get the cops there. Cops would be better than nothing.

“Just when I think I can’t take it anymore, the front door creaks open. Harrison. He doesn’t set foot in the place. Too contaminated. I don’t want him in there anyway. I jump up and meet him at the doorway.

“‘Let’s go,’ Rourke says. ‘You’ve done what you can.’

“I snap. ‘Fuck you, you fucking prick. I’m not leaving.’ I go to him, ‘You don’t know about family because you don’t have one. I’d rather be dead than leave my brother.’ All of a sudden, boom. Harrison hauls back and knocks me down. Full force. Flat. It was like getting hit by a train.

“Then he looks down and says, ‘He’s not your brother. I am.’”

I think of Mrs. Rourke saying, Do you know, I still wonder what “the wrong thing” could have been. I wonder, was it the part about Rob taking death for granted, or the part about the brother, or the part about Rourke not having family? All, possibly all.

“Harrison pulls me up, and I’m sitting there—bleeding and crying on the front steps for—shit, it’s gotta be twenty minutes. I know Anthony fucking heard me. Everybody heard me. All down the street people were coming out of their houses.

“‘If he doesn’t come down,’ I said, ‘it’s gonna be the last time I see him.’

“‘One time is gonna be the last time,’ Harrison said. ‘Let’s make it today.’

“He waited until I was ready. Then he picked me up and took me over to the gym and got me iced and stitched. I couldn’t even stand, I was so screwed up on blow and no sleep and adrenaline. He had the doctor over there make sure my cheekbone wasn’t shattered. It was a double fracture. See?” Rob points to the left side of his face.

I’ve seen it before. I touch it, fingers flat, going over. “This eye is smaller, isn’t it?”

“But the vision’s twenty-twenty. That’s all I care about. I could’ve had surgery, but I don’t give a shit, except for the sinus problems. Besides, girls are into it. So Harrison takes me to our place in Ventura, gets me fed and cleaned up, and we make it to graduation on time. My family saw me, and they practically shit. My mother starts sobbing and Mrs. Rourke goes white, but you know what?” Rob drags his fingers across his lips, zipping. “Nobody said nothing—Harrison was with me.”

Rob looks at me. “Sometimes you love somebody and it’s like you can’t see the top of the building because you’re hugging the ground floor. I know you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“That’s why I give you credit for letting go of your friend—Jack.”

“I’m not sure I did the right thing.”

“C’mon. You were just a kid, and you let go before you had to. Most people wait for a warm bed. Not you. There was no guarantee with Harrison. In fact, odds were against it. But you treated Jack with respect, and that respect probably kept him going more than you realize. Not me. I just hung around with my brother, stealing time. Now Tony is lost. I got off easy with a busted face—my brother’s got the sickness. Last time I talked to him, he was down to 148 pounds from 190.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Rob.”

“I’m just saying, you would think for all that time in I would’ve gotten better results. But you gotta keep your own world pretty fucking tight if you want to control other people’s outcomes. You can’t start sacrificing yourself to someone else’s twisted view. Like Harrison said, ‘You’ve done what you can.’ I think about that a lot. You do what you do and hope for the best. Once you hit a place of diminishing returns, you have to back off, regroup. I couldn’t save my brother because he didn’t want saving. Neither did Jack. Harrison saved me because I wanted it, I wanted to get the hell out. Biggest lesson of my life—there is no family other than the one you make for yourself.”

“Jack used to say that.”

“Well, there you go. Smart kid. But there’s math involved,” Rob says. “You don’t just need friends; you’ve got to be a friend. If there’s nobody to track you, to challenge you, to offer resistance, put up a fight, you become some phony fuck doing constant reinvention. Believe me, it’s not easy. My brother Joey is a pain in my ass, we argue a lot, but someday it’ll be worth it. When one of us needs a wall, we’ll turn around and it’ll be there. Other times, there’s no work involved. You got an automatic fortress. Like Harrison. Like—”

“Lorraine.”

“Actually, I was thinking of you.”

We leave the porch and walk to where the limos and the people wait, over to where the bride and groom will pass, where the flower petals will fly. Where I thought Rourke might be, but he’s not.

“I gotta tell you,” Rob says, “I lost it last week when I found out you left the fight. I coulda killed my sister. I told her to keep an eye on you.” He points to the top of his hand. There’s a crescent burn along the length of his knuckles. “Next morning she hit me with an egg pan. ‘Self-defense,’ she told my father, as if I would ever set a finger on her, that she-wolf. My mother bandaged me up and called Mark’s apartment. Mark said you were all right. That’s it. No news about a dead friend. Nothing. I grabbed the phone. ‘Lemme talk to her,’ I said, and he goes, ‘Forget about it.’”

“I left before Mark got home that night,” I explain. “I went back early to pack my bags and leave, but then the call came about Jack. So I just walked out and left my stuff and took the first train to my mother’s.”

“I didn’t expect you to make it through the whole fight anyway, though I didn’t quite count on you leaving the premises either. I just figured you’d sit in the lobby, the car. Not vanish into the dead of night. I keep forgetting who I’m dealing with.”

“Sorry.”

Rob shrugs. “So you packed your bags, huh? How come Mark doesn’t seem to be aware of his single status? He’s telling everyone you two are jetting off to Italy on Monday.”

“I haven’t had the chance to talk to him. I will tonight.”

Oh, there’s Rourke. On the far side of the garden with a redhead—Diane Gelbart. Diane will be sitting at table three with her parents, which I’d hoped would be six away from table nine, where Rourke and Rob will be, but in fact the tables are back-to-back, because the caterer plotted them in loops. I saw the blueprint this morning. It looked like a drawing of intestines.

Diane’s poppy-red hair moves in unison, like it’s covered in plastic wrap. Her flower-print black-and-red wraparound dress reveals perfect knees. She seems to have been plucked from a photograph in a vintage issue of Vogue. She’s like one of those giant fashion models—all clothes, all posture, huge and hard at work. She spies me from beneath the wide brim of her hat. I must be of enormous interest to her, just as she once was to me. Now I feel nothing—not exactly nothing.

I look to the street. “How is he?”

“Twenty grand richer,” Rob says. “So I guess he’s fine.” He kicks at the grass. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you it was a straight fight. Whatever Mark thought or said—”

I wave my hand, silencing him. I knew Rob would never set Rourke up for a loss. Mark only had to think Rob was desperate enough to do that. Mark had been suckered. Of course it had to be a legitimate purse and a legitimate gamble: Rourke works as a trainer for the Olympics. He would never damage the reputation of the organization or the guys he trains. At the Cirillos’ barbecue Joey said it was gonna be the best year ever for U.S. fighters, that thanks to Rourke the team had a chance of taking twelve out of twelve golds in L.A. Rob didn’t disagree. Like the numbers man he was, he just said, “More like ten out of twelve.”

Mark was also wrong when he said Rourke had lied to me. Rourke never lied to me. He didn’t have to. There was nothing a lie could have secured from me that the truth would not have. And as for Rourke, he wouldn’t have wanted anything he needed to lie to attain. The only thing Mark got right was that Rob did need to control outcomes. That’s why Rob relied on Mark’s hatred of Rourke, Mark’s ignorance of true friendship and true love, and Mark’s idea of Rob as criminal and corrupt to help raise the stakes of the match. In the end, need brings you down, Rob had said. Mark’s other mistake was in thinking Rob needed cash. Rob never needed cash. Rob would never even suggest he needed cash unless he was trying to scam somebody; it would have been too much of an implication of incompetence.

“There were, like, six hundred people there,” Rob says. “Harrison still has a huge following, and Vargas is a sweetheart. Everybody loves that kid. Throw Mark and his buddies into it, and forget about it, the money was flying. It was like duck or get hit. Uncle Tudi fronted for licenses, fees, purses in escrow. The take at the door covered expenses three times over. But milking Mr. Tennis Togs was worth the whole thing. The look on his face when those numbers were read—shit. I can’t believe you missed it. Vargas nearly lost his skull in the tenth.” Rob enacts it minimally—hissing and closing one eye, stuttering his head back to the right.

“Harrison was down three years, so I had excellent odds. But use your brain, you know he’s gonna take it—his record, his style, his character. He trains fucking Olympians. He’s in the ring every day. He’s got the whole martial arts thing. Add to that the incentive to burn Mark, and, well, let’s just say I kept my mouth shut and made a few bucks.”

“Uncle Tudi too.”

“Sure. He set the odds. And a couple people I had to take care of. My old man, Ray Peña, Joey, Harrison. You.”

“Me?”

“That’s right, you. You know what’s the matter with you? I finally figured it out. Ninety percent of the time you think smart. Numbers and letters. Regular stuff. The other ten percent, I swear, you read pictures in mist or some shit.”

There is more to what he feels he owes me, more he isn’t saying, such as what gave Harrison the “incentive” to burn Mark.

Vivica comes by with rose petals. Vivica is Brett’s new girlfriend, the fifth since I’ve known him. Brett waves to Rob through the thickening crowd. He taps his watch impatiently.

Rob drags his head to one side like he’s annoyed. “I got an hour,” he calls over. “What’s wrong with that kid?” he asks me under his breath. “I got a tip on a horse. He wants to rush over to OTB in Southampton to place a bet. Meanwhile, I could make it all the way into Belmont in an hour. Feel like taking a drive with us?”

“Actually, I’m leaving.”

Rob furrows his brow. “Where to?”

“My mother’s.”

“Oh, sure, right. It’s not right for you to be out,” Rob says, then he laughs. “That’s gotta be killing Mark, you going AWOL in front of Harrison and Diane at the family wedding. He’s one sore fucking loser. You know, I had to take Uncle Tudi to his office to collect for the fight,” Rob says indignantly. “Like somebody stole my lunch money. That’s a seriously nice office, by the way, with the double-paned glass and those carved African heads. What do you call them?”

I shrug. “Carved African heads, I guess.”

“How long has he had that space?”

“A couple weeks.”

“Anyhow, I offered to clear all debts in exchange for the Porsche. He said he’d rather send it off a cliff. My uncle told him that could be arranged—anytime. Tudi was pissed off because he don’t like Wall Street. Besides, Mark ran a check on the licenses and permits, which I figured he would. Believe me, I dotted every fucking i.”

The bridal party is on its way. I can’t see over the heads of people around us, but there’s a cheer, which means they’re on their way. Rob scans the approaching faces. “Damn. If you leave, who am I gonna dance with?”

“You’ll find someone.”

“Last time you said that, I ended up dancing with your friend Dennis all night. I got, like, three guys’ phone numbers.” Rob shoots a glance past me. Mark must be close. “When did you say you’re gonna talk to him?”

“Tonight. Before everyone leaves.”

“Why don’t you come back in the morning?”

I shake my head. “It won’t work. He’ll come find me. He’ll come to my mother’s in the middle of the night when it’s too late for me to object.”

“I suppose I oughta be happy,” Rob mutters. “But to tell you the truth, I got a sick feeling in my gut.”

I feel the compression of the major vessel in my arm as Mark draws me away from Rob, neither of them acknowledging the other. Rob just crosses over to his car, which is next to Rourke’s car, both of which, unlike all the other hundreds of cars going in either direction down the street, are simply parked in the neighbor’s driveway. He lowers himself slowly into the Cougar and takes another look at me. I’ve seen this look on Rob’s face before. Like he wishes he didn’t have to get mixed up with dames. Like he wishes he could just go make a bet and grab a beer. I feel sorry for him. Men hold your doors and pull your chairs and carry your bags when they’re too heavy, but they can’t protect you from the one thing that scares them most—you and another man.

He gets into his car and starts his engine, and it’s like thunder.

Alicia and Jonathan charge through a rain of petals. There is a convivial uproar. Everyone hoots and whistles and claps, except me, except Rourke. He is tall and grave across the way, with Diane at his side, his eyes momentarily on mine, and then they are gone, he is gone, with the white of the veil whooshing past, and the black of her hair, the blood of the roses, the heads going down against the storm of lights. Whoomf. The door. The second and third limos pull forward. These are for the bridal party. They are going to East Hampton town pond to take pictures.

“If you still insist on leaving,” Mark says to me, “the limo driver will take you to your mother’s house after he leaves us at the pond. I’ll have someone pick you up later.”

“I’ll drive myself. Where’s the BMW?”

“I had it parked on the far side of the house. I’d have to have twenty cars moved to get it.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll walk.”

“No,” he states emphatically. “I cannot have you walk.”

“Denny will drive me.”

“Must Alicia lose all her guests? Why not just ask my father to take you?”

The limo driver taps on the horn. Mr. and Mrs. Ross are in the front seat, watching through the windshield. Mark waves and smiles brilliantly, giving the thumbs-up sign.

“C’mon,” he says. “They’re waiting.”