Wedding Season Read Online Free Page A

Henry loves weddings. I’ll get no sympathy from her.”
    “That’s great,” Luke tells Henry. “Congratulations.”
    “You get all decked out, drink free booze, and watch people French kiss in front of an audience.” Henry lifts her glass to us. “What’s not to like?”
    “Magical thinking on an epic scale?” I put a finger to my chin. “Let’s see, now: shameless kowtowing to outdated traditions. A total lack of imagination and foresight. Mass delusion, did I mention that? Oh, and perjury.”
    “Whatever.” Henry rolls her eyes at me, unfazed. She doesn’t take it personally. We’ve been through all this before.
    “Perjury?” Luke scratches his jaw. “How do you mean?”
    “The usual. Lying under oath. Anyone who gets married knows the divorce rate is higher than fifty percent. The occurrence of adultery is even higher, of course. So these people vow until death do us part, forsaking all others, and so on—knowing full well these are promises that they have less than a fifty percent chance of keeping. In essence, they’re willfully lying to their lucky new spouses, and to themselves.”
    “That is a staggering leap in logic, Jojo.” Henry sloshes down the dregs of her martini. “I applaud your bold disregard for nuance. Barkeep! Another round for me and this, this, this
ridiculous
creature I call my best friend.”
    “Who’s the lucky girl?” Luke asks Henry.
    “Delia Banks. You remember her?”
    “It would be a miracle if he did, you slut,” I tell her.
    “No, no, I do,” Luke says. “Pretty African-American girl. The composer, right?”
    “Yes! And Luke, guess who’s going to be my best man?” Henry turns a beatific smile on me.
    “You’re kidding, right?” I shake my head at her.
    “Not kidding.” Henry gets down on her knees and grabs my hand. “Little bundle of Joy, please, please be my best man? I can’t get married without you.” She covers my hand with kisses. “You can’t say no to me anyway. You’ve already agreed to be a bridesmaid for everyone else.”
    “Henry, I’d be honored. Please get up now. You’re making a scene.”
    “It’s what I do best!” Henry hops up and throws her arms around me.
    “Hello, darlings!” Joan, who has appeared beside us, takes off her coat and makes kissing faces in our direction. “Don’t want to get lipstick on you, girls. Luke, darling, be a doll and make me a Manhattan. What’s new, all?”
    “Joy is going to be Henry’s best man,” Luke says. Joan laughs her hoarse laugh and pulls up a bar stool. She’s a classic Tough Broad, raven-haired and hourglass-shaped and possessed of this very 1940s quality that she plays up to great effect. Joan is not an especially good-looking woman, but by sheer force of will, and that preternatural sexual confidence usually seen only in European women, she’s brought the world around to a general consensus about her desirability. She carries an air of sexual allure around with her like a formidable designer handbag with which she might whack anyone at any time. We met when I was in law school and she and Henry were working together as editorial assistants at some fashion magazine. (This was before Henry quit to become a Latin teacher, of all things, at a private high school in the West Village.) Joan kept her shoulder—and her sharptongue, and her ferocious ambition—to the squeaky wheel of journalistic endeavor, and now works as the executive editor at
X Machina
, an online magazine of literary erotica.
    “I can hardly wait to hear your wedding toast.” Joan lights a cigarette and gives me her wicked grin. Her incisors stick out a little, and they give her smile a predatory aspect.
    “Oh. God.” I feel myself go pale. I am very much less than fond of public speaking. Very much less. In a subzero kind of way. In my family I’m known as Silent Silverman. To see me with my friends you might not guess it, but I’m shy. Or socially anxious. Whatever. I get pathologically