The Third Wedding #6
A love hangover is far worse than the drunken kind, because with a love hangover, you know it isn’t going away in a matter of hours.
J’s head is beginning to pound. He wants to call someone for some sympathy, but he also doesn’t want to make the situation any more real than it already is.
Because if he doesn’t tell anyone, and he and V manage to overcome this, then it will be like it never happened.
No one will ever know. As far as the world is concerned, J and V are still a great couple.
Nobody knows otherwise. Except maybe the people in V’s office, and anyone else she’s told.
His head pounds some more. He has to control himself. He has to get to the wedding. He reminds himself it’s a big deal, and a big paycheck. Then he laughs at himself: Look at him, grateful for thousands when V is playing with tens, maybe hundreds, of millions.
He quickly runs through the last verse of the wedding song.
You’re a Tiffany diamond
You’re a scarf from Dubai
You’re a Burberry trenchy
Bright socks from Givenchy
Moet champagne
A Porter refrain
You’re the best...
money can’t buy!
It’s far from a flawless performance, and he takes his lyrics notebook with him, not trusting himself to remember the way the brand names fall in Celestia’s song, and fearing she’ll have set a trap door for him if he gets her sponsors wrong.
He intends to memorize it on the train ride to B?stad, but he ends up napping instead.
When he catches the bus to Torekov, he is dis-combobulated.
The setting doesn’t help—there’s no particular reason for there to be public transportation in this town, which has a population of under a thousand, except that it happens to be a town where the rich and famous like to cavort.
As J walks from the station, he stares at the large seaside houses and vaguely recalls that one of them is owned by the actor Hugh Grant.
V probably told him this once. How else would he know?
While the wedding is being held in a church, the reception is in a vast tent complex by the beach. When J arrives, he spots some photographers hanging out in front. At first, security stops him, but after he brandishes his guitar and explains who he is, they let him pass.
When he enters the ballroom tent, he nearly thinks he’s entered a greenhouse instead. The large room is a topiary explosion of trees, plants, and vines that must have taken days to arrange.
“Welcome to Eden,” a woman in a green and lavender cocktail dress greets. “Can I help you?”
J says his name and asks if Mikhail is around.
“Oh yes! You’re the missing singer!” the woman says.
“No longer missing!” J clarifies.
The woman talks into a headset he hadn’t even realized she was wearing, and within a minute, a man in an impeccable tuxedo arrives.
From their exchanges, J had assumed Mikhail was in his twenties, but this man looks like he could be George Clooney’s slightly older brother. He thanks J for being on time.
“What do you think?” Mikhail asks, gesturing to the garden Celestia has assembled.
“It’s paradise,” J says.
It’s also humid as hell. As they pass by the tables, J sees all the glasses are sweating.
There are two stages at the head of the ballroom tent, facing each other.
The first is set up for what could easily be a full orchestra.
The other looks like the judges’ table from a singing competition show.
Since there are only two seats, J assumes this is Celestia and Roger’s perch.
A set of six stairs leads down from the platform to the dance floor.
Mikhail explains the run-of-show. An internationally renowned soprano is performing at the church ceremony but will be gone before the reception.
While the guests mingle in the first-six-days-of-creation cocktail area, Celestia will be in her suite changing into her Eve-themed gown (Dior) and taking photos for a popular weekly magazine.
Then at 7:07 p.m. sharp—because seven is Celestia’s luckiest number—she and Roger will make their entrance; J will be offstage and the band will play the couple’s first dance, a new “pop-forward” arrangement of “It Had to Be You.” A Very Famous Action Star (who invests with Roger and was available, like J, for a fee) will then make the first toast. When he is done, he will introduce J, explaining that the song is one of Celestia’s gifts to her new husband, because she is such a believer in both love and the arts, etc.
J will then sing his song. He may take a bow if he wishes; the Very Famous Action Star will then return to the stage and introduce two dancers from the Royal Swedish Ballet, performing a piece that Celestia commissioned on Roger’s behalf, in her name.
It rewrites the story of Adam and Eve, so the two of them get to stay in the garden and become king and queen of all creation.
As J is listening to this, all he wants to do is call V and tell her about it so they can laugh together at the evening’s absurdity. He wants to sneak her into the wedding so she can see it. So they can talk about it for years and years...
He has to focus. Mikhail is asking if he has any questions.
“This whole thing is being livestreamed?” he asks Mikhail.
Mikhail looks back at him sternly, as if expecting J to object. “This was spelled out in your contract—”
“No, no—I’m fine with it. I’d just love the link to send to my girlfriend, so she can watch.”
Mikhail smiles. “Of course.” He tells J it will be available on all of Celestia’s platforms.
J feels like a liar as he types out the message to V, that my girlfriend echoing in his ears.
You need to see this, J texts. I should go on around 7:30 .
A smaller tent has been turned into a backstage area, and that’s where Mikhail escorts J. Inside there are band members in green suits and lavender suits, as well as ballet dancers in green costumes and lavender costumes.
“Celestia’s two favorite colors,” Mikhail explains. Then he goes to a rolling wardrobe and pulls out a suit composed of green and lavender swirls. J almost expects it to come with a top hat, for in this suit he will certainly look like Willy Wonka crashing the Garden of Eden.
“Go see if it fits,” Mikhail says. “We have two backups if it doesn’t.”
In the changing area, J tries to imagine how much all of this has cost...and honestly can’t. V would have a guess. He goes to call her to ask, before stopping himself. She still hasn’t answered the text about the link. Or any of his texts.
As the guests arrive and the pleasant babble of overlapping conversations resounds from another room, J talks a little with some of the players from the big band and checks his phone constantly.
At 6:52, Mikhail comes back in and says, “Places, everyone!” J picks up his notebook and is about to follow the band when Mikhail looks at him strangely and says, “Not you. You come with me.”
J figures he’s being taken to wait somewhere with the Very Famous Action Star who will be introducing him.
Instead, Mikhail takes him to a small meeting room, where he comes face-to-face with.
..an enormous cake. It’s at least five feet tall, and mercifully neither green nor lavender.
No, this is the most angelic wedding cake imaginable, a pure froth of white frosting and decoration.
“It’s a lovely cake,” J says, not entirely sure why it’s being shown to him.
Three hotel workers wheel in a ladder, and a caterer gingerly steps up the ladder to remove the top of the cake, which is really just a smaller cake placed atop the larger cake.
“Are you ready?” Mikhail asks J.
And J has to ask, “Ready for what?”
Mikhail laughs. Then he sees J is serious.
“No one told you about this in your first conversations? Celestia’s vision?”
J shakes his head.
“You will be making your entrance from within that cake. At first, everyone will think her gift to Roger is the cake itself. But then...it’s you! We’ll have a piano already onstage.”
Slowly, J says, “I wasn’t...aware of this.”
What-is-happ-en-ing? What-is-happ-en-ing ?
“That’s why you were chosen! Celestia saw how thin you were and knew you’d fit perfectly inside the cake.”
“Okay then,” J says. He’s never been inside a cake before.
It will be another thing to tell V.
If she’ll listen.
He’s walked around the cake and finds there’s a very narrow path up the layers for him to walk.
Using the ladder to balance himself, he gets to the top and lowers himself to stand inside.
He must hold his arms above his head in order to avoid touching any icing.
The cake has been constructed around a white plastic container, and when J stands on the bottom, his head is still visible.
Mikhail looks at his watch. “We don’t have much time,” he says. “When you hear the cue, just pop out and say something charming. I promise, it will be a memorable entrance!” Then he pauses, remembering one more thing. “You did get my message about changing the song, didn’t you?”
J has no choice but to ask, “What message?”
Mikhail sighs. “This is why rehearsal is so important! As I told you in my voicemail, Celestia had a change of heart about the song. She decided that especially with the other brand placements already in place, it didn’t feel right to have them in her wedding song.
I’ll be honest with you—she and Roger had a big fight about it, because Roger was seeing it mostly as a financial arrangement, making the customers happy, et cetera, et cetera.
But Celestia put her foot down. She wants you to sing something else.
From the heart. ‘He knows what love is really like,’ she said to me.
‘Have him sing about what love is really like.’ We’ll just pretend you wrote it for them. Understood?”
“Understood,” J says calmly. He has no idea what do to. Except take the next step...into the cake.
Slowly, J lowers himself into a crouching position. It is extraordinarily tight.