Jim Shepard - Flights

“That’s horrible,” Biddy’s mother said. His father was laughing so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “And that’s someone you think Biddy should be playing for?”

“Well, shit,” Dom said, his smile fading. “He’s not Juan Corona. He’s just a crazy guy.”

Ronnie Pierce found his seat at table 20, the table adjoining number 8. He could not have been closer to Cindy had he sat at her table. They were back to back with their left shoulders nearly touching. Dom put his hand over his eyes. Biddy’s mother wondered in a fierce whisper how they could have put them together like that.

“They probably assigned them by number,” Ginnie said. “They probably figured eight and twenty were far enough apart.”

“Somebody forgot to look at a floor plan,” his father said.

When Sandy and Michael arrived, Biddy returned to his table and took his place beside Cindy. He would have liked to have said hello to Ronnie but wasn’t sure whether or not he should. As far as he knew, Cindy and Ronnie hadn’t acknowledged each other.

Everyone rose to applaud the parents of the groom, who were making their way to their table with a cautious, gracious clumsiness, and then the parents of the bride, and finally the bride and groom themselves, introduced after a dramatic pause as one couple, using the bride’s new name.

They remained standing for the toast, all eyes turned to the head table. Cindy and Ronnie stood shoulder to shoulder beside their seats. Neither moved or flinched. The best man, thin and awkward, adjusted his glasses and began by mentioning that he’d culled some quotes from Homer but now thought them inappropriate. Biddy’s gaze wandered to his parents’ table, where Dom was looking back in his direction, keeping an eye on Cindy and Ronnie. He had said after the breakup that if he saw Ronnie anywhere near his daughter he’d have both their asses on a stick. But he couldn’t blame them for this, Biddy reflected.

They settled down to fruit cups and then smallish gray-and-white plates arranged with a slice of roast beef, a pile of green peas, and some sort of mushroom-and-onion mix. He ate quickly, the food unremarkable. Cindy ate as though she were very tired. Kristi ate the meat and spooned the rest into the sugar holder. Beneath the crystal, ribbons of onions and slippery sliced mushrooms began to fill the cracks between the sugar packets.

“Kristi, you’re so gross,” Mickey said. She smoothed a leftover brown bit onto her finger and flicked it at him but hit Biddy instead.

“You better put some cold water on that,” Cindy said, and he decided against retaliation and left the table for the men’s room.

He stopped at the door to let a busboy with a tray get by. The band was playing “Sunrise, Sunset,” and the bride was dancing with her father. The air smelled vaguely of melon and urine.

In the men’s room he stood at the sink washing his hands, gazing at the spot on his shirt in the mirror. Two busboys stood at the urinals, heads turned toward each other. Their white coats were dirty. Their voices filled the bathroom. “It don’t matter,” one said. “God’s God. He can do whatever he wants to.”

“Yeah, well, I think like he hasn’t got complete control yet,” the other said, shaking his hips, finishing up. “There’s too much bad in the world.” He crossed to the sink next to Biddy and gave his hands a perfunctory splash.

“Well, my brother’s studying to be a priest and he don’t think so,” said the one at the urinal.

The one at the sink wondered what that had to do with anything.

It was fascinating and incongruous to Biddy, God at the urinals, God while checking the part in their hair. He was encouraged and discouraged at the same time.

“Something wrong, kid?” one of them said, and he realized he’d been staring, and shook his head.

When he returned, most of the tables were empty. The dance floor was crowded with couples shifting back and forth, moving in different directions.

Ronnie leaned back in his seat, turning his head, and tapped Cindy on the shoulder. She jumped.

“How you doin’?” he said.

She said she was fine. After a moment he turned away.

“‘For us there can never be happiness,’” she said.

Ronnie’s head turned. “What?”

“‘For us there can never be happiness.’”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. ‘We must learn to be happy without it.’ What’s-her-name, from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum .”

“What’s her name?” Cindy twiddled a knife, still with her back to him.

“Annette Andre.”

She smiled.

The bride and groom swept by, doing some sort of waltz. “‘Some things are not forgivable,’” Ronnie said, clearly and distinctly. “‘Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable.’”

Cindy paled, lowering her eyes to the tablecloth. “Vivien Leigh,” she said. “Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire .” There was a long silence, the two of them sitting as if they’d never spoken.

His mother leaned over him, her perfume cool and not unpleasant. “Dance with me,” she said. “Your father won’t.”

His alternative was staying at the table. They walked to the dance floor and eased into an open space. She showed him where to put his hands and they shuffled back and forth. The floor was the same deep maroon as the floor of the piano room at school. Relatives occasionally drifted into view, smiling with approval. His mother asked him if Ronnie and Cindy had been fighting and he said no.

The reception was well past the point at which table distinctions and seating arrangements broke down, and those he had been sitting with or near were scattered in every direction, Dom by the head table, his father at the bar, his sister outside. (He’d seen her flash by the dark window, a ghost in her white dress, while he was dancing.) At tables 8 and 20 only Cindy and Ronnie were left, still in their original seats. When the dance with his mother had ended, he joined them. The tables were emptying around them, some people leaving, others dancing. The three of them remained, listening to “Color My World.” The band segued into “Heat Wave.” Ronnie got up and crossed to the head table, congratulating everyone and saying goodbye before leaving by the far door. Biddy wasn’t sure Cindy knew he was gone.

They left before the Lirianos, agreeing to meet at the party that his aunt, the mother of the bride, was having after the reception. From the door he could see Cindy where he’d left her, alone in a sea of tables, her dark blue dress solid and unmoving against the clutter and scattered chairs.

“Drinks,” the mother of the bride said. “Who couldn’t use a drink?” They were sitting around the living room, adults tired and drunk, children tired and bored. The bride’s father was spread over a chair and two hassocks. He looked boneless.

Disappointingly few had been able to come, a ragged few besides the Sieberts and Lirianos. Louis had refused even this second chance. Cindy was in the den. Biddy’s sister and Mickey sat on the sofa nursing sodas, having long since given the day up for lost.

“Well, Sheona should be halfway to the airport by now,” the hostess said. Some of the guests nodded vaguely.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” his mother said.

“Beautiful,” Ginnie agreed.

Someone said that Sheona had looked marvelous.

“Well, we weren’t sure about the gown at first,” her mother said from the kitchen.

“Oh, Christ, were we not sure,” said the father of the bride. Biddy had assumed he was asleep. The guests laughed, and then the room was as uncomfortable as before. There was some desultory talk about the choice of honeymoon spots. Biddy got up, hearing the piano, and went into the den.