Chapter 40 Dante
The Roadhouse is three deep at the bar by eight.
I came to not think. That’s why I’m on the stool at the near end, by the kitchen pass, working a bourbon. To be in a loud room full of people who make sense. A night off from the one problem I can’t solve. Benji’s next to me. Mickey’s next to him, chair pulled to the rail, his hand on Benji’s knee.
“There’s a cooler in a truck bed out in that lot and a man standing next to it who’s sure he’s fine to drive,” Mickey’s saying. “I could write tonight’s report from my desk right now. Out-of-town plates, somebody’s brother-in-law, a fight by midnight over a bar stool.”
“Listen to him,” Benji says to me. “Mickey can’t turn off cop mode.
We went to dinner the other night. Lovely place, candles, sunset.
I look up from the menu and my fiancé is running threat assessment on a table of retired dentists talking about dental implants.
Dentists, Dante. One of them was wearing a cardigan.
I’m trying to plan the most beautiful wedding this coast has ever seen with a man who asked me if our string quartet had been vetted.
They’re four women from the Pensacola symphony.
The cellist is seventy-one. What is she going to do, Mickey? Tell me. What is Dolores going to do?”
“It’s always the ones you don’t suspect,” Mickey says. “You can’t be too careful.”
“It’s exhausting being married to you and we’re not even married yet. Dante, back me up. Tell him a wedding doesn’t need a security detail.”
“Let the man count exits if he wants to,” I say. “He’s earned the right.”
“See,” Mickey says. “Dante agrees with me.”
“Fine,” Benji says. “Neither of you are invited to the cake tasting anymore.”
Sheila comes down the bar and leans on her elbows to look straight in my eyes. “You still mad at me about the tasting menu, baby?”
“I love you,” I tell her. “You’re my family. How could I ever get mad at you?”
She pats my hand. “The expression on your face when I handed you the bill was the most fun I’ve had in years. Plus, it got a big laugh out of Levi. Something tells me he hasn’t been doing much of that lately.”
“I’m not here to talk about Levi,” I tell her.
“I knew that before I walked over here, baby.”
Benji takes the wedding planning book out, a heavy tabbed binder, three inches of it, color-coded, a ribbon marking the seating chart. He opens it on the bar and Mickey’s hand comes off his knee to hold the corner flat, automatic, like they’ve done it a hundred times.
“Now, about the rulings,” Benji says. “I made rulings at two in the morning and you’re both going to hear them.
One. The ceremony is out there on that deck at five-forty-two, because sunset is at six-oh-three in October.
Twenty-one minutes of light that makes everyone look like they’ve been in love their whole lives, and we’re getting married in the middle of it.
Five-forty-two. Not five-forty-five. If Tex runs long, I have a signal worked out with the harpist to cut him off. ”
“Tex will run long,” Mickey says. “I’ve told you this a million times. Trying to squeeze Tex into a time limit is impossible. You’re setting yourself up for failure timing the wedding down to the minute.”
“I’ll handle Tex,” Benji says, waving a hand. “He promised he’d keep it short. All he needs to say is…dearly beloved, we’re gathered here…blah, blah, blah.”
Mickey turns and raises an eyebrow at me like he expects me to step in and do something. All I do is shrug.
“Two,” Benji continues. “The aisle runs the length of the deck. Thirty-eight steps. I walked it four times. Thirty-eight steps is twelve seconds for the music to build and enough time for every person in those chairs to be crying before I’m halfway down, which is the purpose of an aisle.
Three. There will be a display cake and an eating cake.
The display cake is for the photographs and the eating cake is for the reception, and before either of you objects, this is not extravagance, this is logistics.
You can’t photograph a cake at five that guests are eating at nine.
I’ve seen what this humidity does to buttercream. ”
“How much is the cake nobody eats?” Mickey asks.
“Irrelevant.”
“Benji.”
“It’s not a cake nobody eats, we’ll stick it in the freezer and eat it for weeks, one slice at a time.
It’s a photography asset with a service life, and when the wedding album comes back, you’re going to apologize.
Four. The send-off. We’re doing a formal send-off for us even though we’re only going upstairs to the loft same as we do every other night.
” He flips to a tab with a fabric swatch clipped to it.
“Sparklers are a fire-code violation and glow sticks are a rave, so I found battery tapers that don’t look like a vigil.
That took nine vendors. At full dark, everyone lines the deck rail with a candle, and Mickey and I go down the ramp to the red carpet placed on the beach and out under two hundred little lights while everyone we love loses their minds.
And before anyone says one word about the ramp, the ramp is not getting plywood and a prayer, which is what every venue on this coast thinks a ramp is.
I’m having it custom built. Cedar. Wide enough for the two of us side by side, wrapped in lights the whole run, and it stays for the Roadhouse when we’re done.
It will be the most beautiful ramp in the state of Florida and every other venue should be embarrassed. ”
“I asked for plywood,” Mickey says.
“And you got me instead,” Benji says. “Deal with it.”
His highlighter gets away from him mid-flip and rolls up the bar, out of reach.
Before I can move, Mickey’s hand leaves the binder, palm flat on the wood, and he pushes himself up out of the chair — up, holding, easy — stretches the length of a stool to catch it, and lets himself back down slow.
No shake in his arm anywhere. He hands it over and takes his corner of the binder back.
Benji takes the highlighter. “Also, while I have witnesses.” He doesn’t look up from the binder.
“This man has therapy twice a week that I fought an insurance company for, and he still comes home and does whatever he likes. There are parallel bars in that loft. I had them installed. Stormy bolted them into the floor. And Mickey won’t touch them, because he’d rather lock the chair in a doorway and haul himself up on the trim. ”
“Bars are in the corner,” Mickey says. “Door’s on the way to the kitchen.”
“The door frame is not equipment.”
“Held so far,” Mickey says. “What about the rice?”
Benji frowns at him. “What rice? Please tell me you don’t mean rice for throwing on us in our send-off outfits? That went out decades ago. Guests throw bird seed but we’re not doing that either. Not with Sheila’s aggressive pet seagulls swooping over our heads, screaming. Now, where were we?”
He flips back to the seating chart.
“Which brings us to the chart, where we still cannot put my aunt Lorraine next to your sergeant. I have a lifetime of data on Lorraine at open bars. At my cousin’s wedding she gave a toast no one asked for, in a tuxedo jacket she hung in the coat closet in case a toast opportunity arose.
Lorraine will propose to that man by the salads, and he’s married. ”
“Lorraine’s a catch though,” Mickey says.
“He has a wife, Mickey.” Benji turns to me. “Dante, do you hear what I’m marrying?”
“You picked him,” I say.
“You’re right, I did and I’d do it a million times over.
He’s perfect, it’s a nightmare.” Benji kisses the side of Mickey’s head and goes back to the binder, and for a second, smoothing the chart flat with one hand, the show drops off him.
“I’ve built these weddings for years for other people,” he says.
“Down to the minute, for strangers, and then I drove home. I get to keep this one.” Mickey’s hand finds his knee again and squeezes.
Benji picked a man who counts exits in a room full of dentists and he’s marrying him on Tex’s deck in twenty-one minutes of good light.
These are the people I chose, and who chose me right back. It should be enough to keep my mind clear. The bar crowd’s loud and spending money two-fisted. The deck doors are open to the water. For about an hour it works and I don’t think about Levi.
Then a man walks in the front door.