Father danced with daughter; mother danced with son. Sisters made tearful speeches in which they both spoke the truth and lied through their teeth in wishing the happily couple nothing but the very best. Brothers told what light-blue stories they could of George’s love life before Sara (the story of his serial kindergarten proposals came up in both their speeches).
And then Jacob unfolded his hotel stationery and smoothed the wrinkles out against his sleeve. A big cough, a steadying look in George’s direction, and a good throat-clearing.
“This is just something — Sara asked if I’d read something brief. A poem. Anyway. This is part one, of, I think, three parts, about what was maybe the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Which was meeting these two people and following them here. Anyway.”
And he began to read, “‘We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died…’”
He went on and on. George had never heard anything like it from Jacob before. Was it technically even poetry? It wasn’t exactly brief. His mother was looking around as if someone were supposed to flash the lights, but others were laughing, and Sara was crying for the first time all night — oh well, she’d almost made it. The poem (if it was a poem) was about them (all of them) as they had been before. She could hardly remember when it had been like that.
When Jacob finished, no one quite seemed to know what to do, so George stood up and loudly cheered and clapped, and it being his day, everyone else followed his lead. Jacob took a bow, and then a drink, and dessert was served.
Six tiers of alternating Opera and St. Honoré Cakes with a vintage topper from the 1920s, obtained on eBay after a vicious auction in which Sara had left several competitors eBleeding on the virtual floor. The cake was served with the special-roasted coffee (with a shot of Napoleon brandy added by those in the know) and then a series of passed postdessert munchies: champagne wine gelée, a sour cherry-filled soufflé, and a perfect madeleine stamped with an M.
Dancing late into the night, for hours without slowing down, as the older folks steadily said their goodbyes and returned to their rooms, the young folks felt more and more free. All past time seemed to disappear, and friends who had long ago dated and ended things awkwardly were seen boogying to the band’s cover of Sisqo’s “Thong Song” in utter violation of all normal rules of engagement. At one point Jacob somehow successfully swung Sara between his legs during “Take the A Train,” and he and George got up and did their old air guitar routine to “Paradise City,” and when the lights, finally, blasphemously, came up after Zacharie’s fifth warning that they were past their contracted usage of the space, there were cries from all around to keep the party moving — to grab their wedding favors (custom-monogrammed shot glasses) and take the action down the road to the Turtle Bay Saloon or the new Midtown 3015 nightclub.
But George and Sara knew it was time for them to call it a night and let the others go on without them. She got out her bouquet, and all the single women crowded around to play catch, but Sara expertly rocketed the flowers right where she wanted them to go: over Eddy’s head and into Beth’s waiting hands. Bull’s-eye.
Then Sara grabbed George’s hand, and they left: barraged in their exit by catcalls, cheers, well-wishes, and charmingly lewd comments. Someone (top suspect: Jacob) threw a condom at George, which missed and got lost in a chandelier. It was up there with William’s hat, flung excitely during “Under Pressure.” Zacharie was on it already. Sara had already made both Jacob and William agree they’d all get together soon after the honeymoon so she could give them their souvenirs. There was talk of brunch, and George knew she would make it happen.
Then alone together at last in the elevator, George and Sara fell into each other’s arms, kissing rhapsodic and hungry, chasing the tail end of the evening’s high, fumbling with the cuff links and hairpins that still restrained them. They managed to find their way blindly into the bridal suite, which had been cleaned and filled with fruit baskets and flowers and chocolates and two more bottles of champagne in ice buckets. They bypassed these and found, finally, the enormously wide bed; the last hook on her gown; the buckle on his vest; the wedding night underwear, so carefully picked out by Sara’s sisters — soon removed and flung far in their flurry. Grasping, giddy, they pawed at each other’s bodies as if they were brand-new. Floating on an ocean of down comfort and the scent of lilacs and the wide constellation of city lights outside their flagrantly opened curtains, George and Sara made love as they hadn’t in months — or honestly, years — love like neither of them could specifically recall having made in the early days of their relationship but that they were equally certain they had made. And as they pressed their heads together on the pillow and closed their eyes and lost sight of the other for the first time since the morning, they both felt that things were right and good, and that everything they’d been through had led them to this place at last.
• • •
It was still dark in the room when Sara woke up. Lights from the neighboring buildings shone through the open curtains and made gray shapes upon the bed. Which was empty, except for her. She rose slowly and walked to the door, which had been carefully closed just to the point where the latch didn’t spring into the hole and make a noise that might wake her. She eased it slowly open. A flickering light cast on her bare toes and the rug beneath them. She looked up, knowing what she was about to see because she had seen it before so many times. The television was on, volume down low to a commercial for dish soap in Spanish. There on the couch, completely naked, empty bottle of complimentary champagne beside him, was George — her husband, George — sound asleep. And on the couch beside him, under one of his arms, was the dull metal urn containing Irene’s ashes. Just as she did most nights, Sara tiptoed into the room, willing herself not to cry, and gently lifted George’s arm from the urn. In the morning he wouldn’t remember taking it out of the bowling ball bag, just as most mornings he didn’t remember taking it off the mantel and putting it on the couch cushion beside him, as if she were somehow watching.
• • •
From his blue beach towel, George spent hours watching the yachts and cruise ships moving back and forth across the glassy surface of the Golfe de la Napoule. Every fifteen minutes Sara’s cell phone would vibrate, and over on her own adjacent blue towel, she would rotate. Once an hour she would sit up and apply a fresh coat of lotion to her arms and legs, wordlessly leaning over toward George so that he could do her back. That morning she had gone for a five-mile run on the beach, except she’d gotten caught up in it and done seven. After a quick dip she’d eaten half a sandwich for lunch and plopped down onto the towel to rest and try to get some color. George tried not to stare at the topless French women just down the beach. The white sand was almost polka-dotted with rosy little nipples. You sort of got used to it, after a while. Sara wondered how many more lavender lemonade spritzers the waiter boy would have to bring before she’d unhook her bikini top. “I don’t see the problem,” George had said an hour earlier, maybe two, as he’d reapplied her lotion. “Personally I like a nice tan line.”