Once and for All(72)
“I’m sorry?” I said, as our waitress paused by my elbow, refilling the tiny bit I’d already consumed.
“It takes a lot of balls to just assume you are the only form of life in the universe,” he explained, taking off his baseball cap and smoothing back the dreadlocks beneath it. “That’s what my talk is about this weekend. The full title is ‘The Hubris of Earthlings: How Narrow-Mindedness Endangers Our Understanding of the Universe.’”
His aunt, Florence, had mentioned he was in town for a conference at the U. That’s what I got for being so worried about the bet that I didn’t ask questions. When she said he was my age, a nice guy, and looking for someone to hang out with, I’d just jumped right in.
“So you’re, like, an expert,” I said now, as he checked his phone—prominently between us and lighting up with messages regularly—on the table. “You must be, if you’re speaking.”
“Well, anyone can give a talk if you sign up early enough,” he said, typing some response while not looking at me. “But, yes, I consider myself a scholar when it comes to outer galaxies. We should all be students of the greater world, though. It’s our duty. To do otherwise is, frankly . . .”
He looked down at his phone again as a new message came in.
“Arrogant,” I finished for him. He didn’t hear me.
After the entrees arrived, I excused myself to the restroom, where I took as long as possible washing my hands and reapplying lipstick. If I had to kiss a few frogs to find another prince, I was definitely working my way through the amphibian world. Why was it so hard to find someone I actually liked to talk to? Although really, at this point, I would have taken just some continuous eye contact. Or, well, attention.
Just as I thought this, my own phone beeped. When I pulled it out, I saw a text from Ambrose. CHECKING IN, he wrote. We’d agreed on this, for safety’s sake, as it was a date not at a party or with another couple. YOU GOOD?
HE LIKES ALIENS, I responded.
WHO DOESN’T?
I sighed, ignoring this, then put my phone in my pocket and headed back to the table. I knew the drill now. All I had to do was get through dinner, politely decline dessert, and then offer a firm handshake before heading home. I had to admit, though, that even week and three dates into the bet, I was already kind of over it. But I couldn’t quit, after all my big talk. Even if August seemed ages, even galaxies, away.
“How’d the airport go?” Ambrose asked.
I sank into one of the leather chaises of the office, letting out a big breath. “Excruciating. But they are on the plane. I went into the terminal and watched the screen until it said DEPARTED, just to be sure.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “When she unpacked her entire carry-on searching for her passport and it was in her hand, I thought for sure she was going to just bag the whole trip.”
“Oh, we had, like, two more incidents like that while en route,” I told him, rubbing my eyes. “I’m starting to think it’s a good thing she never goes away. I don’t think I could take it.”
“But she’s gone,” he said, wrapping a rubber band around the stack of place cards he’d been counting and dropping them into the bin at his feet. “And we have the weekend off. Just as soon as we finish all this.”
I looked at the arrangement of vases, guestbook, cake toppers, napkins, and other nuptial-related items piled on the table in front of me. It had all been purchased for the Margo Wagner Wedding, which had been booked for the next day. A moderately expensive, mid-size double hander with a shabby chic theme, it was to have been the kind of event my mom and William could do with their eyes closed. And it would have been lovely, I was sure of it, if Margo’s fiancé hadn’t called it off with a little over a week to go.
It was too late to get back any deposits or return stuff, even if she wanted to, which she did not. In fact, the specific orders, delivered by her grim-faced mother, were that she “never hear about this unpleasantness again.” We could always use extra supplies for emergencies, but there was still something sad about boxing up all this stuff that had been bought, I knew, with such great plans and hopes. I reached over, picking up the cake topper: it was a groom holding a bride in his arms, both of them grinning.
“I’ll wrap up the candles and candleholders,” I said to Ambrose now, getting to my feet. I ripped open a box of tissue paper, pulling out a piece, and picked up a small blue votive. The colors for the wedding were to have been yellow and blue, the bride and groom’s favorites, respectively. “But to be honest, I never liked the whole green idea.”
Ambrose glanced over at me. “Green idea?”
“The tablecloths,” I said, nodding at the stack of them on a nearby chair. “My mom hates anything but white. But Margo was all about the symbolism, you know, of merging yellow and blue together. So for the reception, she wanted a lot of green.”
He laughed. “Man, in this business people can find meaning in everything. Even the color wheel.”
“Weddings make people do weird things,” I told him, wrapping another votive. “That’s the one truth that never changes.”
“I’m starting to understand that,” he replied.
As we worked quietly for a few minutes, I thought of Margo Wagner, a girl fond of heavy makeup and statement necklaces whom I had met a couple of times at the office. All brides tend to be obsessed with their events, but I remembered her being mostly focused on her huge engagement ring, which she was constantly turning to catch the light. Perhaps, I thought now, it was like a crystal ball, and looking into it she saw everything turning out perfectly, with yellow and blue and then all that green. Or she just liked the way it shined. Maybe both.