“Hey, we should get together, don’t you think? The four of us? He’s going to be at my wedding, it would be nice if I got to know him and his dapper shoes before that, no?”
Lauren had been expecting this. Sarah loves a double date. She and Gabe, Sarah and Dan: seeing whatever nonsense was at the Guggenheim followed by pasta someplace uptown, three hours of Matthew Barney at the Film Forum, then drinks and shared confusion at a bar in Soho. Not bad times, even though she never looked forward to them. Sarah was Lauren’s, not something she wanted to share with Gabe and Dan. They made it into something else entirely.
“We just got through Valentine’s Day, man,” Lauren said. “I’m taking him to a wedding. Let’s not tempt the gods, okay?”
Sarah shrugged. “A night out with friends, it’s not exactly meeting the parents, Lauren.”
“Baby steps, Sarah. They’re not all Dan. Some guys, they get spooked.”
“Men.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “God. What if it’s a boy?”
They both laughed.
Lauren likes clothes, but Lauren hates shopping. Why does it make you so tired? The small talk with salespeople, the visual stimulus, the chemical, perfumed smell of department stores or the bouquet of the boutique: flickering fig candles and the proprietress’s takeout, somewhere backstage. There’s never anywhere to sit, unless you’re trying on shoes. It’s a bore.
Of course, she’d swallowed this, fought it, not mentioned it, and gone with Sarah to that appointment at Bergdorf’s. Then another, for good measure, at a smaller salon downtown, then a second appointment at Bergdorf’s. She’s due to go back with her again, for the second fitting. Sarah’s had to confess the pregnancy to the seamstress. The seamstress has seen it all. It comes with the territory. The dress is the right one, though: long but not trailing (what was the sense in that?), sexy but not whorish, modest but not dowdy, modern but not boxy, romantic but not ridiculous. Standing on that little velveteen-covered cube, spinning around, the three-way mirror reflecting her a thousand times over, Sarah looks like a bride, Sarah looks as she should, Sarah looks pretty.
Today: more shopping, and on this, the first sunny day in March, that first day you sense that spring isn’t a delusion but an eventuality. They should be strolling down the West Side on that path overlooking the river, the one that leads to her favorite underattended movie theater in Manhattan. They should buy the paper and then only read the Week in Review and the magazine. They should stop at a diner and order french fries for no reason. That’s the point Lauren and Rob have reached in the relationship; they are not at the clothes-shopping point in the relationship, but here they are.
Rob says he could use a suit. He’s only got one, and it’s harder to button the jacket than it should be. She worries that he’s going to think of her, annoyed, when he’s reckoning with this thousand dollars on his Citibank card. This is about Sarah’s wedding, naturally.
“I like this one?” He sounds unconvinced. The salesman has pinned the pants’ unfinished hem up under itself on his left leg, so they can see how it’ll look. The suit is black, and it looks the same as every other suit he’s tried. They’re all the same, suits; isn’t that the point?
“It’s great,” she says. “It’s the shirt and tie that will make it, I think.”
“And the shoes,” Rob adds. The salesman at the previous store had said this, noting, disapprovingly, Rob’s mottled winter boots.