Sarah nodded.
“Here it is: rehearsal dinner. I was thinking we should do something totally different, basically the opposite of the wedding. Like you don’t want a fancy meal, you don’t want place cards and tablecloths and all that, you want fun, light, festive, delicious. You want Mexican!” She paused, triumphant.
“I already called Ventaja,” Lauren went on. “They’ve got a private room, holds up to forty very comfortably, and we’ve already done a menu. Tacos, guacamole, that sort of thing. And I was thinking, because we don’t want to go too crazy the night before, we could do churros for dessert. Anyway.” She reached into the pocket of the coat perched behind her and handed Sarah a piece of paper. “Here’s the menu we did. You can nix anything you don’t like obviously. Or the whole idea. I don’t know. I put down a deposit, but it’s refundable. So be honest, like, if you hate the idea.”
Sarah was surprised. She took the piece of paper, didn’t read it. She looked up at Lauren. She still had a trace of the tan she’d replenished on their trip. “You know, technically, the rehearsal dinner is the groom’s family’s deal. Ruth had some idea, I can’t remember the details. But obviously your plan is going to be a million times cooler than whatever she’s cooking up.”
“Who cares about technicalities?” Lauren shrugged. “Don’t worry about your mother-in-law. I’ll talk to Dan. I’ll take care of everything. If. I mean, if you’re into it.”
Sarah had been so mad. It didn’t disappear, but it no longer seemed fair to be mad at her, or as mad. “Thank you.” She meant it. “Thank you.”
This is Lauren’s way: disappointing, and then far exceeding, expectations. Even now, Sarah still doesn’t get it—why she’d fuck someone, not just someone, a stranger (and, as she’d admit only to herself, as she’d never say out loud: a waiter, it’s worse that he’s a waiter), and turn what was supposed to be a trip about the five of them, together, having stupid, harmless fun, into something about herself.
“Any favorites?” Willa looks down at her, expectantly.
Sarah can’t remember how any of them tasted, particularly. She chooses the vanilla. She likes that pretty little slash of red in it.
She’s taken on more shifts at the store, lately. One of the longtime employees has left and they’ve frozen hiring. Sarah doesn’t mind, in fact enjoys having more demands on her time, since she’s shifted so many of the responsibilities—finding the tent, ordering the cake, checking the response cards against the invitation list, figuring out the outdoor lighting scheme—to Willa.
It’s a dead time for retail, but a boom time for their store: People deaccession once-prized possessions to make room for their holiday loot. Paper bags full of books in particular, but also: vases, unwanted pillows, lamps, picture frames, the occasional painting or sculptural oddity. The pink sale was her brainchild, and it’s proven a success in the two years past: The store transformed into a sea of pinks and reds, a nod to Valentine’s Day. She poured pink foil-wrapped chocolate kisses into a Blenko bowl ($400) and stationed it by the cash register. The first day of the sale, an interior designer came in and swooped up two thousand dollars’ worth of stuff, destined, she told Sarah, for the bedroom of a teenage girl whose parents are renovating their five-bedroom in the Apthorp.
Sarah still needs to find a tuxedo for Dan. She needs to coordinate with her future mother-in-law the details for the postwedding brunch on Sunday afternoon, which she’d like to have in this bistro on Park Avenue South that has a lovely, sky-lit garden room. She’s bought a small weight, ten pounds, and curls it up toward her head, sixty times on each side in the mornings, before her shower, hoping to tame the subtle wiggle of her upper arms. And there’s honeymoon research: She’s trying to figure out the best time of year to go to Botswana. She’s reading Norman Rush in preparation.
Understaffed as they are, she knows they need her, but today something more important has come up. She telephones the store, tells Jacob that she won’t be in that afternoon. Jacob is flustered but she is impatient and thinks, for the first time ever, Oh for Christ’s sake, it’s only a shop. She’s so overwhelmed, she doesn’t pause for more than a second to feel satisfied by the fact that they do need her there, after all.