Henrique knocks Paul’s finger away. “Oh-ho! Better, you say!? She deserved better? And what does this ‘better’ look like, Paul? No—don’t walk away. Please, tell me this. What does this better look like? Does it look like you, Paul? Or Alice? Is that what your mother deserved? Because…”
But his voice becomes just another sound in the knotty maze of the music, so Paul stops listening. He watches Henrique’s mouth move, but he relieves himself of all responsibility for making sense of what he’s saying. Instead, he does the only thing he deems logical—the only thing that, in his compromised state of consciousness, where reason is reduced to dos and don’ts, to eithers and ors, makes absolute sense: he whips out his dick and starts pissing on Henrique. He had to go anyway, he figures, and what better place to go than this.
The English rose screams, but Paul doesn’t stop; he believes it’s always better to finish what one’s started. Soon, though, he senses a greater commotion gathering around him: the bartender, rushing out from behind the bar; patrons shouting, pointing; a chair being knocked against a stuffed stag head; and finally, Henrique’s fist, clocking him squarely on the left side of his jaw. He feels the vague and far-off chatter of his teeth rattling and of the room spinning away from him; as white glacial light closes in around him, Henrique’s piss-soaked suit sinks farther and farther into the distance. He falls backward, then, as his vision becomes a pinprick of something resembling the truth. And within it all—thanks be to karma, or to a God Who Understands, or to that strange and imperfect force that governs when sunflowers bloom in August and when lilies die in fall, there’s a final and unexpected touch of grace: in the split second before Paul’s head smashes miserably into the cold wood floor, the lights—blissfully—go out.
Alice
July 11
“I don’t think I’ve ever bailed anyone out of prison before.”
Alice shuts the door of the Peugeot, buckles her seat belt, and slips the keys into the ignition. But she doesn’t start the car.
“I’m sure that’s not true. And it’s not prison. It’s jail.” Paul leans his head against the window and gazes forward at the small, squat police station where he spent the night. Alice can still smell the whiskey on his skin; she’s pretty sure he’s still drunk.
She says, “You’re right. Sophomore year of college I bailed Jackie Rubenstein out of jail in West Hollywood after she handcuffed herself to a lamppost on Santa Monica and Robertson. But that was different. Jackie was protesting changes to the water rights legislation in the Central Valley. I should have said that I’ve never bailed someone out for peeing on a man.”
The clock on the dashboard reads 8:05. She’s due at Horwood Hall in an hour to get her hair and makeup done with the rest of the bridal party, and she still hasn’t showered. Paul just keeps staring at the window. A bruise is starting to bloom along the right side of his jaw, where Henrique clocked him.
“No one’s going to press any charges,” Alice says. “I mean, you got drunk and pissed on someone in a country that’s full of drunks who piss on people. The woman at the front desk in the station hardly batted an eye about the whole thing. This is standard fare for these folks.”
“Fuck,” he says, and rubs a hand over his face, like he’s trying to erase it.
“You’ll be okay.”
Finally, Alice starts the car.
“Did you hear what Eloise said?” Paul asks.
“I did.”
She thinks back to last night, the rehearsal dinner, when Eloise approached her. Alice had been huddled over an empty cocktail, digging through her purse for a Klonopin, when her sister grabbed her arm and dragged her into a bathroom. I think I just did something terrible, she’d said.
They’d spoken about it again this morning. At a quarter to six, just as the sun was beginning to crest the low eastern hills, Eloise had crept into Alice’s room at Tenderway Glen and woken her by gently shaking her shoulder.
“What the—” Alice blinked and rubbed her eyes.
“I have a key,” Eloise said, and then climbed to the other side of Alice so she could lie down next to her and stare at the ceiling. “I’m worried about Paul. He’s not in his room.”
“He’s probably just licking his wounds somewhere.” She was still half asleep. “Does Mom know you’re here?”
“No.” Eloise reached behind her for a pillow and held it over her face. Releasing it after a few seconds, she said, “Do you really think he’s okay? I can’t believe I said all that to him. God, I hope he’s okay.”
“I mean, what he said to Ollie’s parents was insane. But yes. I think Paul is okay. We’re basically just surrounded by a bunch of sheep. What could possibly happen to him?”
“But still, what I said was awful.” She picked a feather from the pillow and turned it over on her palm.
Alice said nothing. Instead, she watched as a sliver of light stretched across the room’s western wall. As it grew, she thought of what Jonathan said to her two nights ago, how he’d written her off completely. She thought of her phone, currently balanced on the windowsill—a two-inch-thick piece of wood—because that’s the only place in the bedroom where she gets any service, and, until she finally fell asleep last night, she was still toying with the notion that Jonathan might call back to apologize.
Jonathan. She replayed their conversation again, turning it over in her mind until the words lost their meaning. She remembered the part where he implied that she was some sort of whore; she remembered loathing herself enough to believe him. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Before she could stop herself, she said, “Do you think I might be able to talk to Ollie about that job still? Just to find out more about it, I mean. Like, does that offer still stand?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Well, I’d like to, if it’s okay with you.”
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
“That’s not why I’m doing it,” Alice said.
“I thought you said you liked L.A.”
“I was kidding myself. It’s an awful place. I’m tired of the beach.”
“Ollie—both of us—we just … we thought it would be a good fit, you know. No one thinks you’re not capable—”
“I know. I realize that. I’m grateful.”
They lay there on the bed together for a few minutes longer, afraid that if they rose they’d disrupt the mutual understanding of each other into which they’d just stumbled. And now Alice suspects they would have kept on lying there—not speaking, just listening to each other breathe—right on through that afternoon’s ceremonies had Paul not called (collect) to inform Alice of his whereabouts.
“You can go back to your normally scheduled wedding,” Alice said once she hung up the phone. “Our brother’s just in jail.”
Back in the Peugeot, she cranes her neck from side to side and squints into the sun.
Next to her, Paul says, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“What was I going to do, let you rot away?”