Ezra
He’d long been a believer that the space a person resides in matters.
Architects understood this concept. Structure and design could enhance the human experience: inspiring education in institutions, justice in courthouses, and faith in places of worship.
There were reasons prisons were designed as monolithic blocks, and why the Library of Congress paid homage to Parisian opera houses and Notre-Dame to the imagined gates of heaven.
“I can’t believe we sold them on the oyster farm tour,” Holly said.
“Bait and switch!” Linus quipped.
“The mother looked suspicious, but the bride loved the Instagram potential.”
“What did the bride call it?”
“Oyster aura!”
“Fire.”
An eruption of laughter followed.
“Here. Both of you.” Greta stood in the doorway with a tray of small bites. “Since cocktail hour has been moved off-site, someone needs to finish the leftovers.” She set the tray on an overturned bucket.
Ezra helped himself. There were buttery clam puffs, still warm, and crisp bruschetta with eggplant. He was half stuffed when he noticed tiny deviled eggs topped with caviar. He popped two in his mouth.
Oliver, who’d kept pace alongside, grew suddenly quiet.
“She’s an excellent chef,” Ezra said, reaching for a final egg.
“She’s excellent at a lot of things,” Oliver said wistfully.
Then, suddenly, the second storm made shore.
The shuttle returned. Voices and music spilled back to them from the patio as Oliver and Ezra and Paul manned the lobster pots and steamed the clams. Water boiled.
Lobsters went in. The kitchen spun into Grand Central as staff swept in and out.
Soon dinner service was underway. Greta’s voice carried out the screen door through all of it, reassuring, calming, insistent.
No sooner were clams sent out than the lobsters were pulled from the pots.
At one point Ezra burned his hand when boiling water ran off a lobster’s tail and down the tongs he was holding.
“Let me,” Oliver said, quickly relieving him of the crustacean. “Go in and run it under cold water.”
Inside, Greta set aside a saucepan, some kind of fragrant wine and butter melt, and directed him to the first aid kit.
A red blister was already bubbling up on his palm, but Ezra barely minded.
Bandaged, back out he went, where he found a pretty young woman in a pearl-pink dress standing in the side yard with Oliver. The bride, Ezra decided.
In her frothy dress amidst the thick smell of boiling shellfish, she seemed wholly out of place.
Through the steam Ezra saw her reach for Oliver’s hand and tell him something.
A moment later Oliver withdrew it. And not a second too soon, because a young man appeared around the side of the house, dressed in a seersucker jacket.
A matching piece to the puzzle of the young woman: the groom, Ezra thought, heart quickening.
He looked between Oliver and the young woman before hasty introductions were made, hands shaken.
Ezra returned his attention to the pots, and Oliver returned by his side.
“An old friend,” Oliver said without looking up at him.
“We should get the last lobsters out,” Ezra replied.
When he turned, there was Greta, holding a tray; he wondered for how long. From the look on her face, long enough.
Ezra stayed on until the last pot was emptied.
By then he guessed his cheeks were as red and ruddy as Oliver’s, his button-down shirt stuck to his skin.
He lowered himself onto an overturned bucket, suddenly overcome.
He’d been pulled into the chaos unawares, leaving him no time to prepare himself, to guard against the neural signals that he knew triggered emotion.
He’d engaged. He’d helped out and accompanied and taken orders and made small talk and burned his hand.
In one happenstance evening all the dormant social pathways of his brain had been stimulated, all the rules broken.
When the final smelly pot was dumped, Oliver took them all around the side of the house to be hosed down. Ezra went into the small bathroom off the kitchen. He ran the water cold, and with his good hand splashed his face and neck clean. It was time to go.
On his way out, he saw Greta bent over the range, scrubbing down the elements. Paul stood at the sink, washing pans. Servers, moving like molasses now, passed through the swinging door with empty plates. Only Oliver, returning for soap, noticed him.
“Thanks for all your help, Ezra,” he said, extending a hand. “I hadn’t realized you’d be working with us tonight.”
“Nor had I.” Ezra shook his hand, not noticing the perplexed look on Oliver’s face.
With what little energy he had left, he needed to find Holly. He wandered out to the foyer.
Through the patio French doors came the trill of a party.
The lilting of happy chatter, the clinking of glasses and music.
Ezra turned his face to it, reminded: Of Amy’s rehearsal dinner, of families gathered.
Of a bone-tired contentment that came from gathering and feeding loved ones, of being taken care of and of taking care. Holly was busy doing all of it.
As he made his way slowly to the front door, he spied Bruce lying on the porch beside a rocking chair.
A woman’s hand reached down and rubbed the dog’s head.
As Ezra stood on the other side of the door, Bruce’s eyelids fluttered, delirious with pleasure.
“Traitor,” Ezra whispered through the screen.
The bride did not see him come through, her gaze was so fixed on the man seated beside her.
It was the groom, his expression tight, as he stared at the bride.
“What do you expect me to do, Harold?” she snipped. “Move the whole family to another hotel?”
“Well, it’s something you might have mentioned before,” Harold retorted. He glanced over his shoulder toward the patio. “My frat brothers are here. My boss is coming. How do you think this looks?”
“Nobody knows Oliver and I were engaged.”
“Until tonight, neither did I!” Harold cried. “And frankly I don’t relish staying with my fiancée’s ex-fiancé on the weekend of our wedding!”
“You’re so dramatic.” The bride hopped up from her rocker, sending it pitching to and fro. “Come on. We’re needed for photos.”
Ezra slipped by, just an old man, invisible to the squabbling lovers.