Ethan and Eileen arrived thirty minutes early. Bob was getting dressed upstairs when he heard the doorbell; he came down to find Connie and Eileen standing face-to-face and making their greetings while Ethan lurked to the side, wearing another tailored suit, and staring blankly at Bob. He made a drink gesture, and Bob made a follow me gesture, and they moved to the kitchen, where Bob poured them each a tumbler of whiskey. Ethan bolted his, and said, “Thanks, I needed that.” He held out his glass for a refill, which Bob gave him, and which he again drank down. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Bob.
“Nothing. No, something. It’s hard to say. I’ll admit to a degree of disorientation, but that’s as far as I’ll go right now. Let’s talk about something else, maybe.”
“All right,” said Bob. “Why are you so tan and how many suits do you have now?”
“I’ve been in Acapulco and I’ve got seven suits.”
“Why were you in Acapulco and why do you have seven suits?”
“I was working as a waiter in a resort there; Eileen’s family has a tailor.”
“Why did Eileen’s family’s tailor make you seven suits?”
“It was my idea that I should have a suit, for the wedding. But Eileen said that every man should have seven, and I went along with that, because why wouldn’t I.”
“Who’s paying the tailor?”
“The father, I think.”
“What does he do?”
“Something with boats.”
“Shipping?”
“Anyway there are ships. Maybe it’s that he builds them. I can’t get to the bottom of it because it’s hard to talk to Eileen’s father because he’s such a hateable little pigman.”
“And what does he think of you?”
“Not so much, buddy. But he says he’s not that worried about me because he’s met my type before and that we always come to a bad end.” Ethan shrugged, as if to say that time would tell. Bob corked the whiskey bottle and he and Ethan went in search of Connie and Eileen and found them seated at the dining room table, and they were drinking red wine and Eileen was saying, “Ethan was our waiter at the resort. And he was not very good at recalling our orders or bringing us what we wanted in a timely style, but he was good at seducing me, which he did without any sort of shame whatever, and in broad daylight, isn’t that right, Ethan?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Ethan answered.
“Wait,” Connie said. “I’ve missed a detail or two. How is it that Ethan was working in a resort in Acapulco?”
Ethan raised a finger. “One day in the market I was approached by a headhunter working for a hospitality firm with ties all over Mexico, and who offered me a job as a waiter in a resort down there. It’s seasonal work, and the deal is, they bring down a fresh crop of young men for three-month stretches. We’re assigned ten tables each, three meals a day, and a lot of the customers stay for weeks at a time, so you wind up getting to know people fairly well.” Ethan made his hand into a gun and shot Eileen. “I never really did get the hang of the job, it’s true. All the bowing and hurrying. You’d think a lukewarm egg was the end of the actual world.”
Connie asked Eileen, “Were your parents impressed by this news of your plans to marry a waiter?”
“Oh, no, it’s been a terrific scandal,” said Eileen. “Mother slapped me right across my face! I did mention that, didn’t I, Ethan? About Mother slapping me across my face?”
“You mentioned it, yes,” said Ethan.
“And Daddy kicked over the cocktail caddy in protest, then walked across broken glass and there were little bloody footprints all over the veranda. Did I tell you about the cocktail caddy, Ethan? And the little bloody footprints all over the veranda?” Ethan was filling Eileen’s not-empty wineglass. He placed the glass in her hand and she drank without awareness she was drinking. “Mother did admit,” Eileen continued, “that if she were younger it would have been her running through the cane with Ethan. I think that’s sweet, really, don’t you, Ethan? She recognizes your value as a male specimen. Oh, but Daddy can’t hear Ethan’s name without spitting. Mother says he’s after disowning me but it’s too late, because I’m of age, and I’ve already received the bulk of my legacy.”
“And have you mapped out your plans?” said Connie.
“So much as they can be. Marriage first. We want to get that over with right away.”
“Will you have a large wedding?”
“Oh, yes. My extended family is sizable and they all want to get a good look at the cad I’ve given my person to. After the wedding, we’ll get out of that hovel of Ethan’s — which is where we’ve been staying, if you can believe it — and find a house in the area. Decoration and renovation while we honeymoon, and when we come home, then we’ll start our family. I want five children.” Ethan was again topping off her glass. “Yes, it’s quite full, Ethan, thank you.” She held her hair back and bent her head to sip at the wine without lifting the glass, which she could not have done without causing a spill. “We’ll have to find some sort of career for this layabout,” she said, “but so far we can’t name what that might be. Have you thought any more about what that might be, Ethan?”
“I haven’t,” said Ethan.
Eileen asked, “Don’t you think you should think about it?”
“I think I probably should,” Ethan said, sensibly. He turned to Bob. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re early. We’re waiting on the neighbors.”
It was only recently that Bob and Connie had established a rapport with the colorfully named Chance and Chicky Bitsch. They were genus Suburbiana: jolly drinkers and avid bridge players and bowlers; they chain-smoked Pall Malls and entertained nightly or nearly nightly. Chicky was the bartender and ashtray-emptier while Chance posted up at the stove, speaking through a veil of cigarette smoke, one eye clamped shut as he prepared his signature dish, a pepper-heavy boulder stew. Chance was a veteran of the Second World War, and while he rarely discussed his combat experience, Bob and Connie got the impression he’d seen extravagant grisliness there and now was devoted only to his comforts and leisure. Chicky was devoted to Chance and was not displeased by her earthly position, but still and she suffered regrets, a feeling of missed opportunity that comes to so many taking part in the matrimonial custom. When the Bitsches finally arrived they were fifteen minutes late, ice-clinking drinks and cigarettes in hand, apologizing for their tardiness, asking what they had missed, wondering if they should ever be forgiven for their rudeness and furthermore whether or not they deserved forgiveness. They were introduced to Ethan and then Eileen, who instantly asked after the origin of their surname. Chance, sitting, said, “My grandfather’s name was Heinrich Bitschofberger. He immigrated to the States by way of Dresden in advance of the First World War. Arriving in San Francisco, a helpful customs clerk pruned the name down for him. The clerk’s identity has been lost to time, sadly. I know my father would have liked to speak with him. He, the clerk, told my grandfather that Bitsch was a ‘good, strong, American name.’”
“You believe the clerk was being intentionally comical?” Eileen asked.
“I believe he believed he was being, yes.”
“Have you considered changing your name back to the original?”
“I’ve considered it. But when it comes down to actually performing the deed a defiance rises up in me and I elect to stay put.”
“And why?”
Chance sat a while, wondering how to put it. Looking at his wife, he said finally, “We are the Bitsches.”
Chicky explained that their being late was due to her immersion in an article she’d been reading in Time magazine, an exposé of the raucous and scandalizing goings-on at an East Coast liberal arts college that stoked and enflamed her sense of missing out. “These kids have it all sussed out,” she said. “They’re screwing in bushes.”