Aftermath of Dreaming(50)

I stand in front of Matt for a paragraph before I interrupt his reading by saying, “I know, I look like a walking floral rectangle.”

Matt lowers the paper. “No you don’t. You look…Pretty.”

“In a bathroom-wallpaper kind of way, yeah. But it’s her day, and at least she’s paying for it. She’s probably going to use it later to slipcover an armchair.”

“That’s the sisterly spirit.”

Matt moves his newspaper off the hot-pink tufted velvet love seat so I can sit down. The dress pools around my shoes.

“So, how are you? Seeing anyone? Are you happy?”

Pink walls will never be exempt inside a bridal store, but those three questions should be. Though I know Matt means well, and I like that he adopts a brotherly role.

“Work’s going well. I got a new store.”

“That’s great.”

“Thanks, and the commissions keep coming in, so I figure the next step is another boutique, and then a department store really is my goal, and getting into another magazine. A national would be great, so even with Momma’s money winding down, if things continue as they are, I should be okay.”

“That’s good,” he says, but without the same enthusiasm as before.

I can hear the financial-planning lecture Matt is calculating whether to give me or not, so I decide to keep the conversation moving along. “And I sorta started seeing Michael again.”

“Michael?” IRAs and bonds are still cha-chinging in Matt’s head. “The guy who drank out of his own flask at our Christmas party?”

I wish he’d forget that. “That was Rick. No, Michael, remember? We ran into y’all at the movie theater?”

“Oh, Michael. Radio, right?”

“Right.” Recalling Michael’s work is good. “So, anyway, it’s nice.”

“Right, this is the guy who canceled dinner after Suzanne cooked seafood gumbo all day. Now I remember, okay. So you’re seeing him again—and he’s actually showing up?”

I want to be annoyed that Matt mentioned that—didn’t I bring Suzanne a flowering plant to apologize?—but I like having shared history with him.

“There you two are.” Suzanne appears carrying two child-sized wedding dresses. “What do you think?”

“Yvette’s seeing Michael again.” Matt shoots me a look as if he got an extra turn picking Saturday-morning cartoons.

“Oh, that’s nice, honey.” Suzanne hands me one of the dresses to hold up. “Okay, which one? Now consider the music that will be playing—it all has to match.”

“What, in God’s name, are those?” Matt has finally noticed the objects of his intended’s concern.

“The child bride’s dress,” my sister announces in a voice that I know means, “We’ve discussed this before.”

“It’s an old Southern tradition,” I say for Matt. “A child bridal couple walks down the aisle first in the processional, symbolizing—what, Suzanne, do you know? I mean, other than the obvious.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care; it’s sweet.” Suzanne puts down the dress she was holding and takes the other from my hands, holding it in front of her, as if it somehow could fit. “Which one?”



Driving away from the bridal shop in my truck, I have a wild impulse for a cigarette—I haven’t had one in years, but a longing for the taste is there instantly. I have to keep telling myself that I don’t really want one and definitely don’t want that habit again. I know that desire is just to distract me from where I’ve been. Then an image appears in my mind of a long white coffin nail, as Daddy used to call cigarettes. It is lit, and the cherry at the end glows bright red. Then the long whiteness of the cigarette transforms into a bride with an aura of smoke obscuring her face.



Michael and I have turned the corner onto Fairfax Avenue, or Kosher Canyon as he calls it, and are walking toward Canter’s Deli for a meal. It is Saturday night and the environment is divided—God’s darkness pushed far above by L.A.’s lights bright below. I haven’t seen Michael since Steve’s gallery opening on Wednesday night. Since, all right, one night after I went to the theater and saw Andrew. Not that I’m thinking about him. I’m thinking about Michael, his hand in mine, as we walk down Fairfax on this gentle night; I just seem to have lost track of what he’s talking about.

But before I can figure it out, what grabs my attention is the absence of clothes. In the far corner of Canter’s parking lot is a man who appears to be in his sixties, each tired, difficult, meager year is collected on his pale face and paler body, which, save for a pair of dull baggy underwear, I can plainly see.

“Oh, my God, he’s nekked.” My hand flies to my eyes to save the man from disgrace.

“Naked,” Michael replies.

“What?” I peek through my fingers. Maybe it was an apparition, a ghost from the street’s past, but the man is still there, his body so white it looks practically lit from within like a battered-up lamp you never notice until it’s turned on. The man is busy, precisely folding imaginary clothes, engaged in that most comforting of rituals—getting ready for bed.

“It’s pronounced ‘naked,’ not ‘nekked.’”