The Fourth Wedding
J decides that maybe it’s time to take a break from weddings.
He’s not in the mood for love. He and V have been in contact, but their conversations haven’t been those between lovers.
J is not expecting reconciliation, but even negotiation or argument would be comforting at this point.
Instead, it feels like they are trading Wikipedia entries summarizing their past few days, a bloodless rendition of a world gone right (for her) and wrong (for him).
J is too embarrassed to tell his friends what’s happened, in no small part because it isn’t entirely clear what has happened.
V has not said, “It’s over.” Even though she ignored the song he sent and his darkest-hour questions, she now answers his texts with something approaching promptness, as long as he doesn’t type anything that could be construed as emotional.
He suspects that if he asks her Are you still my girlfriend ?
she will respond Why are you asking me that ?
Or The fact that you’re asking the question should give you an answer .
Or Is that what you called it ? Anything besides a yes or a no.
He tries to tell himself that there’s nothing to worry about, that this is the way they are. After all, he would often leave for weeks or even months of touring, and there wouldn’t be pressure to be in constant touch. Or even significant touch. They had always been chill about such things.
He’s starting to wonder, though: What if that was, in fact, a problem? What if being so comfortable with being at a remove meant there’d been something missing all along?
They liked reaching out for each other when they were close by. But why hadn’t they ever done it when they were far apart? No long phone calls. No postcards or letters. Just a passionate going-away kiss and then a passionate welcome-back kiss, with everything blank in between.
He goes back to blaming the distance. Of course he blames the distance.
V’s only response to Celestia’s wedding was to say, Maybe in the future, you need to insist they build you a bigger cake .
If they were in bed next to each other, he knows the conversation would continue from there— What do you feel my ideal cake size is ?
And maybe then It depends on whether you’re wearing heels, doesn’t it ?
But that’s not how their texting works. They might as well be using a transatlantic telegraph.
Meanwhile videos of him being yanked through the tiers have gone viral, and at first he wondered if his career was over, punch-lined to the curb. Not just his wedding career, but his entire career.
Instead it’s made him more popular. It hasn’t increased streams of his music, but his inbox is now flooded with wedding requests. Most of them involve him popping out of things.
It is very easy to say no to these, and to think he’s taken the wedding gigs too far.
What had his original wedding song said?
True love can be measured
Through these simple pleasures
They are waiting there for you to be discovered
Well, that was then and this is now.
These couples want a canary, not a Cassandra.
J worries that if he attends one more wedding, he will become the person who raises an objection.
Not to the specific couple (maybe), but to the principle.
And maybe not even the principle of being married.
No, to the con job that goes back to Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark—one by one, people giving themselves up to two by two.
What hurts is that he’s pretty sure by now he didn’t do anything wrong with V. He just didn’t do anything right enough.
J knows the sense of power he feels deleting all the requests that come in is pathetic. This, and only this, is something he can control.
No, he will not pop out of a giant éclair.
No, he does not do toddler birthday parties.
No, he does not want to tell a Swedish gossip blogger the “real” story behind the “wedding of the century.” (He suspects this is really Mikhail trying to see if he’ll abide by his NDA.)
No, he does not want to sing a wedding cake shop’s jingle for a radio ad. He didn’t even know that radio ads were still a thing.
He is done with weddings. Done done done.
That is, until Andreas calls.
Andreas is a relatively young guy who loves relatively old things. He and J met when J was looking for a vintage car to use in a music video. “Oh,” everyone told him, “you need to talk to Andreas. He’s the nicest guy in the world.”
Even though Andreas did not himself own a Rolls-Royce, he knew someone who did, and because Andreas indeed turned out to be quite possibly the nicest guy in the world, the owner was willing to let J drive his precious heirloom along the seaside while playing an acoustic guitar and singing about love gone wrong.
Since then, J has returned to Andreas a few times for very obscure items, mostly as props and sometimes as gifts.
In every exchange, Andreas has been the embodiment of kindness and graciousness—the sort of man who would not just give you the shirt off his back, but would then take out a needle and thread to make sure it fit perfectly.
Even when they didn’t have any business to attend, J would get a call from Andreas every few months, asking him to drop by his store.
There, Andreas would have an object that he thought would delight J—an old flashbulb from a 1940s camera, or a rare 45 of Al Bowlly and Ray Noble and His Orchestra singing “Hang Out the Stars in Indiana.” The fact that Andreas would never, ever accept payment for these items both endeared him to J and left J a little mystified.
Surely no one could be this chipper, this generous all the time.
They aren’t friends, really. But they’re not business associates, either.
They’re just two guys who every now and then have their orbits connect.
When J sees Andreas is calling, he assumes it’s because another item has fallen into his possession that he feels compelled to pass J’s way.
“I have wonderful news,” Andreas begins. But instead of saying, I found the perfect velvet Elvis for you, or Do you think you could use a lime-green couch in your next video ? he follows with, “I’m getting married!”
“Congratulations!” J replies, even though his heart is still stuck on something akin to You have no idea what you’re in for .
“I had to tell you because Kerstin, my wife-to-be, loves your records. The first time I went over to her house, there was one sitting by her phonograph, and when I told her that I knew you, she couldn’t believe it. It felt like serendipity.”
“I’m glad I could help,” J says, somewhat awkwardly. “When is the big day?”
“The day after tomorrow! We decided yesterday. It’s going to be a very small, very quick ceremony.”
J waits for the request to come, the real reason for the call.
But as Andreas goes on with some of the details of the wedding (hillside, the bride’s sister as officiant), J realizes Andreas has no idea that he sings at weddings, and that this call isn’t meant to be a request in disguise.
Andreas just wanted him to know he played a small part in getting them together.
Which is why J finds himself offering to sing at the wedding.
Andreas replies with genuine surprise and deep emotion.
J explains the whole thing about the wedding song, and at first Andreas says no, no, that is way too much at such short notice.
But J insists, happy to be able to do a good deed for someone who lives by good deeds.
Andreas in turn insists on paying, and J gives him something between the friend fee and the stranger fee.
After arrangements are made, and Andreas has said thank you more than J thought was humanly possible, J hangs up.
Instantly, he is returned to the emptiness of his apartment.
They meet the next day in a coffee shop not far from J’s apartment. Andreas first, with Kerstin to follow.
When Andreas arrives, he is genuinely anguished to find that J has already bought himself a coffee and a pastry.
“It should be on me!” he insists. Then, once he has gotten his own sustenance, he sits down and more than makes up for it with a silver cigarette case he hands J as a thank-you gift.
“I’m not doing this to encourage you to smoke,” Andreas says. “Just to possess beautiful things.”
“You really don’t have to give me anything. You’ve already given so much,” J says.
Andreas waves this off. “I won’t hear of it!”
J knows it’s pointless to prolong the argument, and that he only has twenty minutes with Andreas before Kerstin arrives for her turn.
“So,” he says, picking up his pen and hovering it over his notebook, “a simple ceremony on a hillside?”
“Yes, that’s all we want.”
“But I would have thought...you know.”
“What?”
“Considering all the access you have to props, you could have constructed something elaborate. If anyone in my life can find a horse-drawn carriage at the last minute, it’s you.”
“Yes, but that’s work . Do you think of singing at your own wedding?”
The truest answer is: J thought he’d be together with V for a long time. But he didn’t think they’d ever want to get married. Or, really, that she’d ever want to get married.
“Honestly,” J says, “no.”
“With all the weddings you do? You’ve never thought about your own wedding?”
“I mean, details, sure. We’d say, ‘Oh, we’d never do that .’ Or, ‘Those canapés were a nice surprise. Maybe we’ll make them our next dinner party.’”
“Interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?”
“I guess if I walk in a room and it’s a lovely room except for one really ugly lamp, I’ll imagine the lamp I’d put there, and by doing that I’m starting to imagine living in that room, making it mine.
Not for long. But for a little bit, I role-play every room I walk into. I figured you’d do that with weddings.”