It’s humid and overcast when I get up, having slept two hours. Still drunk. No sleep. Ex-girlfriend getting married. Nice fucking combination. I dress up in khakis and a green turtle-neck, then opt to change for a much lighter, and much more wrinkled faux-silk paisley short-sleeve, button-down shirt that Doc Filth says makes me look like Hunter S. Thompson. I tuck in the tails so I look like less of a slob. Then I pull them back out. I figure, why hide it? Call a duck a duck, right?
I give serious consideration to taking Chloe with me. I might need a little emotional support on this, the eve of my destruction. I shake her twice with no response. She could be dead, for all I know. She’ll start to smell in a few days. With this heat, maybe only two.
The church is only a quarter mile from my house, so I hoof it. The heat isn’t blazing yet, so it won’t leave me sweating too badly. I don’t have to worry about arriving Kilgore Trout style, bathed in grime and filth, a savage messiah, come to undo this farcical divine union.
I don’t recognize any of the four guys in tuxedos lounging outside the great, hunter green vaulted double doors. Probably the groom’s family or best chums from his glory days on the football field back in high school. A guy almost short enough to be a midget with a little sandy goatee wrapped around his mouth asks me if I’m with the bride or the groom, and leads me to a pew in the back, where the bad kids go to fool around, make fun of the preacher, smoke cigarettes, and masturbate to the pictures of the Virgin Mary down on her knees, begging to pay her dues to a cruel master. I’m trying to look inconspicuous, and avoid having anyone notice me, but I guess I’m not good enough. Even beardless Zoe’s mother spots me and comes running over, beaming at the sight of me. “Rubin!” she cries, sliding into the pew in front of me. “I’m so glad you could make it. I was going to mail you an invitation, but Zoe insisted on delivering it by hand.”
A wry grin slides across my face. “Yeah, she made sure I got it.” Zoe’s mother is a sweet woman, and I don’t want to upset her. Certainly don’t want to blurt out, ‘I fucked your daughter five days ago.’ I mean, I do, I want to scream it loud enough for everyone to hear, but not to Zoe’s mom. She rallied for me. She fought long and hard after we broke up. She fought for me even after I stopped fighting. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I say in a voice so rasping and dry that even she can’t miss the sarcasm.
But she does. “That’s good. I was afraid you would still be upset.”
“Well, it’s unlike me to hold a grudge,” I say.
She leans in over the back of the pew as if she is going to tell me the most important secret in the world. “I wish it were you up there instead,” she says, and I can hardly believe the sacrilege.
“Yeah, me too,” I answer in a damn-near monotone. “Oh well, as long as she’s happy, she’s made the right choice, huh?”
“So what are you doing with yourself these days, Rubin?” she asks, and I can hear how desperate she is for me to be successful, to be rich, to be bigger than Russell, and it gives me a glean of sadistic pleasure to know that my answers will not be sufficient. She wanted to leave here and say ‘Look what you could have had. Look what Rubin has made of himself. Look at how you were wrong.’
“I’m a bill collector!” I say proudly, letting the words ring like a sword being drawn from its scabbard.
Her eyebrows droop, oh so slightly, and her nostrils flare almost imperceptibly. “A bill collector?” she repeats, as if the act of saying the words again will make them untrue. “Oh.”
“Not for long though. I have a feeling they are going to fire me on Monday,” I say, almost as proud. “After that, I’ll probably bum around for a while, have some fun, do some writing, maybe try to write that elusive bestseller.”
“Really?” she asks, perking up. “How has your writing been going for you? Any success there?”
I shake my head. “All the magazines across the country think my work is too dark, too unconventional, or just plain not good enough. I’ve been struggling to get published, but they all think they are better off without me. So I struggle.”
“Well, keep at it,” she consoles. “You’ll make it eventually.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” I whisper, letting face and tone darken. “I’m a genius, right? Bound for greatness.” Bound to be one of those authors, who will have the spine a perspective reader’s thumb will pass over while they move to King, or Koontz, or Grisham, or Rice. Who wants to read a book about school violence anyway?
“Well,” she says nervously in a desperate attempt to detach herself from a conversation I’m happy to let her go from. “I really should go and finish the rounds.” She punctuates this with a distressed little chuckle that seems to spasm from her diaphragm. “Have fun!”
“I fucked your daughter five days ago! That’s how bad I am. I’m a failure in life, and she still wants to fuck me once more before she gets married. She’s better off with Russell. He sounds like the kind of guy that would never do that. Be happy she got him and not me. It’s better this way,” I tell her. Or at least, that’s what my brain tells her. My cruel brain. My lips still adore Zoe’s mom, and refuse to part for these words. My eyes know the unpleasant way they would have to see her if those words come out, so they back me up. My vocal cords are largely impartial, but point out that the vote is two against one, so they side with the majority and don’t make the necessary sounds, seeing that it would be a waste of time, with the sounds going to shit, being unarticulated. My face remains blank, with all the other muscles not wanting to get in the middle of the fight between the brain and the charisma of the lips and eyes.
Zoe’s mom wanders off and has regained her composure by the time she strikes up a conversation with the next wedding guest. I watch her absentmindedly for a few minutes. Zoe looks nothing like her. She got all her striking good looks from her father, but they softened into something more plush and feminine.
Her father is standing by the front pew, arms crossed, looking proud. He could have been carved in stone. He has seen me as well, but wouldn’t come to talk. He never liked me. I could always tell. The family always protested, but the truth bled through in his eyes. When you break up, there is always the parent who says, ‘You could do better anyway.’ For Zoe, I have no doubt, it was her dad.
Everyone takes a seat and the music starts. I’d never seen Russell before, but he seems to fit the description in my head. Tall, about as tall as me, six-three or six-four. He has short, curly, strawberry blonde hair, and a bright red Irish complexion. He stands at the altar with a big, shit-eating grin on his face, like he just scored the touch-down that won the big game. That’s right, asshole, you can keep the trophy. It’s almost laughable to see Zoe clad in white, but I can’t say she doesn’t look beautiful. The ceremony is like each one I’ve ever imagined or seen on TV. White streamers, doves, bubbles floating on the breeze the fans create, all the works. It’s lovely enough to warm even this old devil’s heart up a notch from Absolute Zero. The priest asks if anyone has any reason why these two should not be wed. I keep my mouth closed. They exchange rings and kisses, and I feel a slight pain deep in my brain when she says, “I do.” ‘’Till death do us part’ sounds so imposing.
The ceremony ends, and the guests file out like lambs to a slaughter. There will be dining, drinking, dancing, mirth, glee, and it is my penance to bear witness to the grim spectacle. I linger in my seat after everyone has gone, staring at the face of big J.C. up on the cross. I can almost say I know why he looks so sad up there–not because of the pain from above, but from the agony gathered around his feet.
“You all right?” asks Zoe’s uncle, approaching from behind hand perched on the arm of the pew, looking concerned. “You okay?”
I look over at him and raise my eyebrows, wiping away a tear that I didn’t even realize I had shed. I study his face a moment. I don’t think he recognizes me at all. “Yeah, I’m fine. I guess weddings just get me choked up, is all.”
“I know,” he says dreamily, seeming to miss the blackness in my tone. “It was beautiful, wasn’t it? Those two are so in love. They are going to have a long, happy marriage ahead of them.”
“I’ve never met him,” I say. “I haven’t seen Zoe since... Well, since she was with that guy, Valentine. I was shocked to even get an invitation.”
He nods, but even the mention of my name doesn’t seem to help realization. “Yeah,” he says, looking as if he’s struggling to remember exactly who ‘that guy, Valentine,’ is. “I met him once. He seemed nice. Everyone was shocked when they broke up.”
I shake my head. “He was a jackass,” I say. “She’s far better off the way it is now. Valentine had no focus, no future. He would have been a burden to her.”
He gives me a knowing laugh. “It took a long time to convince her of that.”
I nod. “I helped her realize it.”
When I go out into the churchyard, the clouds have broken enough to illuminate the scene. Everyone is lined up to shake the hands of the newlyweds and their proud families. I stand off to the side for a few minutes, watching journalistically, trying to decide exactly where I should be. I consider joining Zoe’s older and younger brothers who are off to the other side, trying to keep out of the way of the snapping jaws of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, friends, and distant relatives who circle the crowd in a savage feeding frenzy, trying to tear a pound of flesh from the happy couple.
Knowing what is expected of me, I wade into the pack, bumping noses to deter any shark that wishes to give me an exploratory bite. The line is moving quickly, as Zoe and Russell are being reduced to bone and sinew so fast that it’s almost hard to see it happening. I shake hands along the way, telling each person I’m someone different–Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, Bret Easton Ellis, John Milton, Jack Kerouac–until I get to Zoe. She looks both nervous and relieved to see me. Russell looks tense, maybe having seen me in an old photograph, or possibly just knowing my scent.
“Rubin,” she says. “How are you?”
I find I’m a lot happier than I probably should be. “I’m... I’m what you can expect.”
“You’re alone,” she comments. “Your table is set for you and a date.”
“I couldn’t find a date other than Chloe, and she promised to make a mess of things. I figured it was better to come alone. Don’t worry, I’ll eat both meals.”
“So you’re coming to the reception,” she says. “You’d damn well better. You can’t miss the dance with the bride.”
“I wouldn’t miss the chance for a last dance.” I hug her, clap Russell on the shoulder, and say, “Congratulations, you won.” He just stares at me hatefully as I walk off.
The reception hall is big and air conditioned. There is a four-tiered cake on the table at one end. The open bar is on the other side of the room, next to my table as if intentionally, but it seems hollow and empty. I get myself a rum and coke, but it’s hard to drink, so I just sit at my table at the place marked “Rubin Valentine and guest.’ The other people at my table look at me nervously throughout dinner, but I say nothing. A few of them know me, but they try not to let on. I’m the ghost they don’t want to admit is among them. I’m the history that they are trying to black out, the Loch Ness Monster–or more appropriately, the Sasquatch–who is not supposed to exist except in dreams and fairy tales. They try to look at me only when they think my attention is focused somewhere else. Just when they think they are safe, I shock them by looking right into their eyes, dig out all their sinful thoughts, and make them ashamed that they ever took part in the dark section of Zoe’s past that includes the tragic name of Rubin Valentine.
When the members of the king and queen’s retinue give their speeches, I want to stand up and scream that this is a funeral, not a wedding. Keeping a fresh drink in hand helps to keep my lips sealed. I refuse to get drunk though, just letting my mind stay pacified and mellow, but far from drunk. At the end, I toast everyone at my table and down the whole flute of champagne in one go.
I try to stand back unobtrusively and stay out of the garter toss, but none other than Zoe’s younger brother drags me in. Much to the dismay of several members of the party who would rather I was not present, not to mention myself, the garter bounces off me twice, only to land without question directly in my hand on the third rebound. Looks as if I’m sure to be the next one married, whether I like it or not. How wonderful. I playfully move it up and down the thigh of the stunned girl who caught the bouquet, and then kiss her on the cheek as the game ends. She’s cute. I wouldn’t mind fulfilling the tradition of taking her home tonight, but I’m in no mental condition for that.
At long last comes the dance with the bride. I find my place in line, waiting my turn to drop a few dollars in the hat. Just as I start to walk toward her, the last song ends and “Patience” starts; it almost makes me stop and run away. Instead, I take her hands, and she lets me pull her close–a lot closer than most people here are comfortable with, but I don’t care because it feels comfortable, it feels right, and I haven’t gotten to feel like that in a long time and I don’t know when I’ll get to feel like that again.
“What are you going to do with yourself now, Rubin?” she whispers in my ear.
“I don’t know,” I whisper back. “The only thing I know how to do,” I say. “Keep on keepin’ on. Keep hunting the moon. I thought I found it with you. Maybe I was right. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Keep looking, Rubin,” she says back in a voice that only I can hear above music. “You’ll get your happy ending some day.”
“I’ve never liked happy endings,” I say, and we continue to dance until the song ends.
Go to Chapter 70
Go to Chapter 70
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