Chapter 8 Wedding Season
WEDDING SEASON
The day after the Central Park date with Ollie is my Sunday afternoon West Coast Swing class while Hannah takes Taekwondo.
It is starting to be a favorite part of my week.
Ben, Helen, Jody and I have formed a little team of singles: we look after each other, trade tips, and step up whenever a quick pairing is required, since we form an equal number of leaders and followers.
We have all decided to continue dancing through June as well—though Ben acknowledges he’ll quit after his mid-June wedding.
“How is the planning going?” I ask him when we take a brief break in the middle of class.
His eyes take on the thousand-yard-stare weariness of someone in the middle of a Himalayan trek. “It’s been pretty rough.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
He breathes a long sigh. “Paige’s family has more money than mine, and they’re footing the bill for the wedding, so my parents offered to pay for the rehearsal dinner.
But now the place my parents picked is not fancy enough to satisfy Paige’s mother, so her parents want to pay for the rehearsal dinner, too, but my mom got insulted. ”
“You should have the rehearsal dinner at a biker bar,” Jody says from next to us. “There are a ton of those on Long Island.”
“If only,” Ben agrees. “And apparently, the song Paige wanted to dance to, Disturbia—” (As if any of us could forget that particular choice.) “—got nixed by her parents, and they gave us a list of approved songs. All by Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. So we have to choreograph our first dance all over again.”
We offer sympathy with varying degrees of sincerity. I suspect Jody finds Ben’s plight amusing, though she is nice enough to tell him that she has a friend who manages a fancy restaurant out in the Hamptons, if he needs a connection for the rehearsal dinner.
“He’s a bit of cokehead,” Jody says, “but he’ll hook you up.”
“Thanks.” Ben looks sincerely grateful. He’s a good guy in his quiet way. I wonder if this makes him an easy target for manipulation by his wealthy fiancée’s parents.
“Well, whatever song you pick, you are going to knock Paige’s socks off with how good you’re getting at dancing,” I remind him.
He looks down. “I just don’t want to step on her feet. She’s under a lot of pressure, and I want to make her happy. This is one of the few things I can control.”
Helen looks thoughtful. “It must be hard when her parents are paying for everything, mustn’t it? Because if you put your foot down, they can threaten not to pay. But if this is the pattern for the whole marriage, they will use money to control you.”
“I know that. I think they think I’m not good enough for her or I could pay for the whole thing myself.”
“What do you do for work, Ben?” Jody asks.
“I’m an investment banker.”
“Are you kidding?” My jaw drops. “What the hell would be good enough for them?”
“An investment banker with inherited wealth,” Jody replies, then softens and pats him on the arm. “Come on. We’ve got you. We’re going to make sure you literally sweep your bride off her feet.”
Eliana Macri’s return to New York is the talk of Manhattan Swing.
I hear someone chatting about it in the hallway when I’m refilling my water bottle, and then again after class when our instructors are talking about scheduling.
Apparently, Connor Yung, Eliana’s partner for the last few years, has moved on to yet another new partner—some Finnish woman named Jaana who is a rising star on the European circuit—leaving Eliana with no one to dance with, only a few weeks before a big swing competition and a couple of months before the nationals.
“Connor thinks being national champion will help his dance studio,” the pink-haired young woman at the front desk is saying to Maria as I walk past after class. “And he doesn’t think he can get there with Eliana.”
“Ouch,” I hear Maria reply.
The young woman sounds thoughtful. “Do you think Ollie has forgiven her?”
I’m at my desk on Monday answering painfully dull emails when my phone rings.
“I’d like to take you swing dancing this weekend.
” It is Ollie. We have seen each other at work a couple of times, once in a meeting to prep for our ‘off-site’ next week, and twice in crowded elevators, but we haven’t spoken.
It’s gotten both easier and harder to see him around the building: easier because I finally know he’s attracted to me, and harder because there’s more that we need to hide.
I take a breath. “As long as you are aware that I have had a grand total of about six hours of experience and I’m not going to be very good.”
“Oh.” There is a pause. “Never mind, then.”
He hangs up on me. Funny.
I wait a long moment before the phone rings again.
“Yes?” I say, torn between amusement and annoyance.
“I’ve thought it over and I think you’ll be acceptable.”
“I’m going to murder you,” I reply.
There’s a pause, and I feel like I can see his smile over the phone. “Is Saturday evening an acceptable night for murdering me?”
I pretend to consider my answer. “I can probably wait that long.”
When I hang up, I turn to see Brant behind me, his eyes narrowed. “You’re murdering who, now?”
“A friend,” I say.
He nods, slowly. “First step to getting back out there?”
“I guess I’ll find out.”
He nods. “Fair enough. One of us should test the waters. See if it’s actually as bad as we remember.”
I calculate when the last time was that I told Brant he needed therapy. Three weeks ago? Four? Is it safe to do again? “Brant? Have you thought about therapy?”
“Nah. People like us don’t need therapy. We’ve pulled back the curtain. Seen the Great and Terrible Oz. Marriage is the disease, not the cure.”
I grimace, hoping it resembles a polite smile.
“By the way,” he adds, “I made sure with Destiny that the off-site would end early enough to get you back here by five. I know you’ve got to get home to your daughter.”
“Thanks, Brant.”
He nods, a strange smile on his lips. “Anytime.”
The location of our off-site is a beachfront hotel near South Norwalk, Connecticut.
The plan is to work on the committee report in a big conference room overlooking the water all day, then take a one-hour boat tour on the Long Island Sound as a team bonding event at the end of the afternoon.
As Brant promised, the boat trip will end at 3:45 p.m. and we will go straight back to the city; even with traffic, this means I should be able to pick up Hannah by 6 p.m., when her afterschool care program closes.
Lana and Niamh arrive for the day in what I can only describe as yachting outfits, matching navy and white sundresses with little scarves around their necks.
They clearly went shopping together, and part of me feels envious.
It’s been a long time since shopping was a fun activity I did with friends instead of a lone, late-night internet search for off-season deals on casualwear.
Brant turns up in a polo shirt and khakis, while Ollie is wearing a pale linen suit that looks as fashionable and buttoned-up as always.
He takes a seat near me in the plush passenger van, and I fantasize about being able to hold hands.
Maybe it’s just as well we won’t be tempted, since Lana and Niamh immediately surround us in nearby seats.
“We should do a warm-up exercise,” Lana announces. “And we have a suggestion.”
“Go ahead,” Destiny says warily.
“What was the most illegal thing you’ve ever—”
“No,” Destiny says firmly.
Niamh smirks. “What about the wildest place you’ve ever been naked?”
“Oh, I have such a good one for that,” Lana says.
“Also no,” Destiny says. “We are here to come up with policies to prevent sexual harassment, remember?”
“Trust me, my nudity was very unsexual,” Lana says.
“How about favorite vacation spot?” Ollie offers.
“Ugh, boring,” Niamh cries. Ollie looks out the window.
“Please,” Destiny says, “no warm-up exercises.” She has the tone of a weary kindergarten teacher.
“I’ve got a compromise suggestion,” I offer. “What is the weirdest thing a client has ever claimed on their taxes as a write off?”
Niamh claps her hands together, delighted. “I have one. I had a guy write off his dog food expenses because he claimed his dog was private security for his home business, which was hand-rolling people’s joints for them.”
“People can’t roll their own joints?” Brant frowns his disapproval.
“No, it gets better. So we do this whole thing, right? Writing up why he needs a security system, and dogs are more effective et cetera, in case he needs to prove the validity of the expense. And then at the end, I ask him what kind of dog he has. It was a cocker spaniel.”
We laugh.
“If he ever gets audited, he’s screwed, but I had no idea!” Niamh insists.
“I had a client who was an actor,” Brant says, “and he said every movie, tv streaming service, or play he saw qualified as research for learning his craft. So his entire entertainment budget was a business expense.”
“I had one like that,” I reply. “Film producer. He wrote off an entire three-week trip to Europe as a location scout because he had a script that required filming in Switzerland, France, and Italy, so he said he needed to explore all three countries to properly do a budget for the film. So I say, okay. You can try this as a write-off, but it will help if you have an established screenwriter and financing for the movie in place, right? I say, ‘Just tell me that it’s not a script written by your wife or something as an excuse to take this trip.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, my wife knows nothing about this. I’m taking it with my girlfriend. She’s the screenwriter.’”
Destiny laughs. “I win this one, y’all,” Destiny says. “I had a client who was a dominatrix. Enough said.”
“Hey, Ollie,” Lana says. “Remember that question about sex toys?”
“Hard to forget,” he agrees.
“Someone thought a sex toy was a write-off?” That’s a new one even for me.