“You’re a terrible person,” Schiele said.
“Possibly.”
“My God, you’re in a dark mood,” Schiele said.
“I think orchids make me melancholy,” I said.
“I’M NOT SURE about my hair,” Franny said just before the ceremony. “It seems convoluted, and the man did it so tight, I feel like I’m going to have a stroke.” The updo consisted of two thick braids coiled into a crown around her head. She had wanted the relaxed look of a girl attending an outdoor musical festival, but instead, the braids looked like hairy snakes that were swallowing Franny headfirst.
“Take it down,” I said.
“That’s okay?”
“It’s elegant and rustic,” I said. “That’s the beauty of your theme. You can do what you want.”
She took down her hair. “What would I do without you?”
“You would have hired a different me,” I said. “Maybe one from Portland.”
“I had hoped you hadn’t heard that. Wes was awful that first time we met you,” she said. “He wants people to like him . . . He thought he was impressing you.”
“He made an impression,” I said.
She laughed, and then she put her hand over her mouth. “Oh gosh,” she said. “I’m marrying him so you probably think I’m awful, too.” She paused. “You probably think, ‘How can she love a man like that?’ I wonder it sometimes, too.”
“I like you,” I said. I zipped up Franny’s garment bag, and I packed up her shoes and clothes into her duffel.
“Oh you don’t have to do that!” she said.
“I’m happy to,” I said. “It’s my job.”
“Okay, Jane. Thank you. You’re probably tired of me saying this, but I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. My mother . . .” Franny’s eyes began to tear, but I didn’t want her to cry because the makeup artist had already left. I handed her a tissue.
“Dab at it,” I said. “Don’t rub. Take a deep breath.”
She dabbed. She breathed.
“I read a story about a woman in California,” I said. “She pretended to be a bridesmaid so she could rob the rooms where the wedding parties left their things while they were at the ceremony. I think she robbed maybe fifty weddings.”
“But eventually she got caught,” Franny said.
“Eventually, but it took a long time. It’s the perfect crime when you think about it. Everyone’s so distracted at a wedding.”
“Everyone except you,” she said.
“And half the guests don’t know one another.”
“You’re trying to distract me right now,” Franny said.
“I don’t think you’re even one iota awful, and you should know that people get married for every kind of reason, and love is only one of them and—this might sound cynical—but having done a couple of hundred weddings, I’m not even sure love is the best reason to marry someone anyway.”
“Oh Jane, it’s the only one.”
“Okay,” I said.
“But if I’m wrong about Wes, it seems so permanent,” she said.
“But it isn’t,” I said. “If it turns out you made a mistake, you won’t be stoned to death. They won’t embroider a scarlet ‘D’ on your chest. You live in the twenty-first century. You will call a lawyer, and you’ll leave with what you came in with—give or take—and you’ll change back your name, and you’ll go to some other town, and you’ll start over again.”
“You make it sound easy. What if I’ve had children?”
“That would be more difficult, yes.”
“I sometimes wonder how I let it get so far,” she said.
“Listen, if you truly think you’re making a mistake, I can go out there and I can tell everyone to go home.”
ELEVEN
Wes came by to give me the money I was owed after they’d returned from their honeymoon. “Franny said she would do it, but I said that was silly. Jane’s office is about five hundred feet from mine.”
I took the check and I put it in my desk. “Is it only five hundred feet?” I asked. The nature of my work leads me to concede most minor points, but something about Wes made me feel contrary. The honeymoon had left him tanned and cockier than ever, and he seemed to expect gratitude for paying what was owed.
“Maybe half a mile,” he said.
“Still, that’s more than five hundred feet,” I said.
“Have it your way, Jane,” he said magnanimously. “Franny bought this for Ruby.” He set a plastic snow dome on my desk. It was empty except for water and plastic parts: a nose, a top hat, a carrot, three pieces of coal. “It’s a Florida snowman,” he said.
“That’s very sweet,” I said.
“Thanks for everything,” Wes said. “The wedding was beautiful, and I know your friendship has meant a lot to Franny.”
“It’s been fun,” I said.
He turned to leave. Then he turned back. “Why don’t you like me?”
“I like you,” I said.
“I don’t think you do. Audra overheard you talking to Franny. She said you almost convinced her not to marry me,” Wes said.
“I think Audra’s in love with you. I think she heard half of a conversation, and she’s trying to make trouble,” I said. “Because that’s not what happened.”
Wes nodded. “Is it because I remind you of him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“You can play dumb, but I ran a background check on you before we hired you. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t a criminal. You aren’t—technically. But I know who you are. I know your real name.”
Ruby came through the door. “Hi, Mr. West,” she said.
“Hey, Ruby girl. Nice to see you.” He smiled at her and shook her hand.
“I was showing Wes out,” I said.
“Say hi to Franny!” Ruby said.
“Will do,” he said, and I walked him to the door. When he reached the threshold, he lowered his voice. “You don’t have to worry, Jane. I won’t tell anyone. Not even my wife. It’s no one’s business, and the past is past.”
The past is never past. Only idiots think that. I stepped outside and I closed the door behind me. “I don’t know what you think you know, but you don’t know anything.”
“Come on,” he said. “There’re pictures—”
I interrupted him. “Even if it were true, what does it gain you really?”
“I’m not threatening you, Jane. I imagine, though,” he said, “it wouldn’t be great for a wedding business if people knew you had once been the star player in a sex scandal.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “That’s interesting that you see things this way. Maybe you’re too young to remember—I wasn’t even born yet myself—but in 1962, Robert McNamara, John F. Kennedy’s secretary of defense, gave a speech where he laid out the concept of mutually assured destruction. Are you familiar with it?”
“Sure,” said Wes. “It’s the idea that you’re fine as long as you have more bombs than the other guy.”
“That’s oversimplifying,” I said. “But it’s good that you know it, being that you want to go into politics.”
“What are you getting at?” he asked.
“You think you know something about me. I definitely know something about you,” I said. “I know about Franny,” I said. “Her past.”