Cult Classic(38)

As it turned out, the woman with the lime in her drink had been asking “every twat on campus,” figuring one of them would say yes eventually. It was an insurance policy for a good story. And all this woman really wanted was a good story. Georgette had gotten wrapped up in someone else’s dream. Standing with her at the side of the house, all she could think about was the long drive home and how terrible it would be. But then, as she left, she asked the woman one more time: Do you still think there’s a God? The woman said yes, of course.

“Then I got into my car and never had another romantic feeling about her again. Never missed her a day in my life. This is the first time I’ve seen her since. She looks good.”

Boots blinked as Georgette punctuated her story with a bite of cold steak, licking sauce from her fork so that the back of her tongue got the first taste.

“I think we might be missing something,” he said.

“There’s nothing to miss,” she said, shrugging. “It takes people years to learn what I learned in two seconds.”

“Which is?”

“Everyone is living separate narratives. Marriage is agreeing to live in someone else’s narrative.”

“And to think Jess and Adam didn’t ask you to officiate,” Boots said.

“Listen, she believes a relationship is a good story in the same way she believes in God. People need these fairy tales to function. Let them have them, but I don’t have to live in any narrative but my own. It’s not that I refuse to participate in this”—she made a gesture that encompassed the stars above the tent—“because I don’t want to get hurt. It’s because there’s no such thing as a partner. I’m sorry, but there’s not. What a batshit word for the person whose genitalia you see the most often. There are glorified assistants, glorified bosses, and glorified safety blankets and that’s all she wrote.”

“That’s only slightly cynical,” Boots said.

He eyed a clump of friends in the corner. They would not hurt his brain.

“Do I sound mad about it?” she asked.

“You sound resigned,” I said.

“And bitter,” Boots added, “like a bitter person.”

I winced. There would be no threesomes tonight. Georgette was talking to the one man in the world who was unsettled by this type of logic, who found a fear of commitment to be a character flaw.

“I just refuse to live my life in response to external pressures and stimuli.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” I asked, leaning forward and looking into her eyes until I could make out the reflection of tent lights in them.

“Yes,” she said, as if she knew what Clive had shown me. “You just have to learn how to fight it.”

“Okay, well,” Boots said, slapping his knees, “I’m going to stimulate myself at the bar. Lola, while I’m gone maybe you can decide if our life is a narrative sham.”

“Don’t go,” I said.

“I’m not going. I’m going to the bar.”

He yanked his jacket down. I wondered if I should join him. Was I supposed to join him? I had no interest in being Georgette’s accomplice. I, too, was skeptical of the notion that our life together was a “narrative sham.” But I was not offended by the questioning. That was the difference. Not only did Boots not want to rock the boat, he refused to acknowledge the boat was on water. Or that we were in it.

Georgette and I were the only ones left at our table. Everyone else was dancing. She fished a weed pen out of a pouch in her jumpsuit and offered it to me. I shook my head. She shrugged and inhaled. Guests ambled around the perimeter of the dance floor, following the scent of butter cream. Bridesmaids adjusted themselves for a photographer, hands on their hips, elbows in the next time zone.

“Actually, yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

The smoke was stripper-sweet. I preferred the earthy burn of joints, but this was potent enough. At the bar, Boots was ensconced in a conversation with the groom, being recharged by one of the evening’s celebrities. I knew how that conversation went, a series of familiar nouns being bandied about, devolving into a language textbook. Jess and I just came back from Napa. Did you rent a car? It is easier if you rent a car. I had to pee but the slog to the porta-potties was prohibitive. I wanted to speed up time. How many hours, I wondered, until the post-wedding brunch, which was being held at a nearby antiques store that doubled as a diner, which did not strike me as a hygienic business model.

“And,” Georgette asked, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth, “where are the motherfucking goats? I mean, have you seen a single goat?”

A caterpillar crawled along the edge of the table, swung once, and fell.

“I have no idea. Asleep.”

“You’ll be okay, you know. Think of this like Pre-Cana counseling.”

“Think of what as Pre-Cana counseling?”

“These kinds of conversations. You can’t base your life on fear and guilt. You gotta do what you gotta do because you can’t do it twice. You can’t go back in time.”

“Maybe you can.”

“I’m just saying you’ll be fine, la-la-la-la Lola. Here, watch this.”

She put the pen on the table and placed one hand on her heart and one on mine, her fingers practically at my neck. She told me to be quiet even though I hadn’t said anything.