The Fifth Wedding #6
They both stand up and chitchat while they walk to the street. They’re going in opposite directions—J has no place to go but back to the apartment, and Skye is doing the same. J wonders if Detroit is there or somewhere else.
“Thank you,” Skye says.
“No,” J corrects, “thank you .”
“Good lord,” Skye replies, “ come here .”
For a second, J thinks Skye is going to kiss him goodbye. But then their arms open, and here it is, the hug.
And damned if it doesn’t feel great again, to be held for a few long seconds. Held, then freed.
The jet lag doesn’t come, nor does a text from V.
J spends the night grabbing at words. He tries not to be too negative about Detroit, to see things through Detroit’s eyes.
What has Detroit lost over their life? What have they found in Skye?
What makes a person want to reach for the world, even when there’s someone right there in their home, in their bed?
J wonders.
V is aware that right now, J is somewhere in this city.
Lying in bed, she stares at her phone on the bedside table.
She knows that all she has to do is type Come over and he will.
She has not had sex in two months...and who better to break the cycle than the person who she is supposed to be sleeping with in the first place?
She wishes, somewhat, that she were the kind of person who could slide into casual without it feeling like a casualty.
She can’t imagine asking J over without also asking him to stay the night.
Which would lead to lying awake beside him.
Which would lead to the next morning, and figuring out how he fit into her day. Or days.
Sleep is the easy way out, and she takes it.
Perversely, because of the body clock, J sleeps late. Checks his phone. Doesn’t see anything he wants to find.
He has a late lunch with his friend Eric and then drags Eric back to Julia’s apartment to play the two wedding songs for him.
Then he video calls Julia and plays them for her; she is amused to have a concert coming to her live from her own bedroom.
Finally, it’s time for him to change into the charcoal suit he brought for the occasion.
Guitar in tow, he walks through Brooklyn to the performance space.
Before he steps inside, he texts V, to remind her the address.
Three dots appear. Then they go away.
He steps inside.
The bar is packed; J can’t tell whether it’s usually a busy bar on Friday nights, or if people are here for the wedding.
He’s the only one dressed for a wedding, or at least traditionally so.
He catches some glances at his suit and guitar case and makes his way to the room in the back.
Once there, he breathes a sigh of relief; wedding bell streamers have been hung across the ceiling, and Skye is waiting by the door—waiting for J.
When Skye sees him, their face lights with delight; the reaction, J realizes, he’d hoped to get from V the day before.
“The man who made it all possible!” Skye announces to no one in particular. “And looking so dapper.”
For their part, Skye is wearing a stylish blazer over an even more stylish silk shirt. Is it a blouse? A pajama top? A really expensive piece of formal wear? J isn’t sure, but he is sure that it looks fantastic on Skye. J now feels underdressed in comparison.
“How are you doing?” Skye asks, serious now. “Any word?”
J shakes his head.
“Do you think she still might show?”
“Doubtful.”
“Well, as our most honored guest, you get unlimited drink tickets. Or I could offer you some of this.”
Skye takes a silver flask out of their blazer and tilts it J’s way.
J decides to go for the flask over the tickets. He uncaps it, and takes a long swig.
“Honey whiskey,” Skye says. “I save it for weddings.”
J takes another gulp, then hands the flask back.
“If you need it later, you know where to find it,” Skye tells him. Then they head to the stage for set up.
“Do you want to rehearse?” Skye asks. “If you don’t want me to hear the songs, I could wait outside.”
“No,” J says. “I rehearsed earlier.”
With that, the door from the bar opens, and Detroit strides in. He’s not wearing a wedding dress so much as a demolition of a wedding dress—the white and the lace are there, but they’re at all the wrong angles. It’s cleverly made (by Skye, J assumes), but Detroit doesn’t quite pull it off.
“Our beloved songbird!” Detroit cries. J is relieved to be on the stage so there’s a small remove between them.
Otherwise, he suspects he’d be subjected to a bombastic embrace to match Detroit’s bombastic tone.
“Are we ready to start the festivities? Sarah’s out there taking Skittles shots.
We should probably start before she goes into vodka-drenched sugar shock. ”
“Sounds good,” J says.
Detroit strides back out. Skye removes the flask from their blazer and takes a fortifying dose.
“Here, pass that over,” J says.
“Gladly.”
Like most alcohol, honey whiskey gets better the more you drink it.
As Skye takes back the flask, they say, “Since this is probably the last time we’ll be alone together, I just want to say...I’m really glad this happened.”
The doors reopen and people begin to shuffle in.
Skye jumps from the stage to greet everyone.
(Detroit, J notices, remains by the bar.) There are no wings to wait in, and J feels a little too obvious standing by his guitar, so he stations himself in the darkest corner.
One last time, he checks his phone. No messages. He turns it off.
The crowd grows thicker—J isn’t sure if it’s because more people have shown up than expected, or if the room is just smaller than he imagined.
Detroit is the last to come in, guiding a woman by the back of her neck over to J.
The woman’s physique is not unlike that of a turkey—her head is small and thin, her middle is round and wide, and her legs look like twigs.
When she opens her mouth to speak, though, she sounds more like a duck—a duck that has smoked two packs a day since infancy.
“So you’re the singer, eh?” she says, offering her hand and then squeezing J’s with all she’s got, which isn’t a whole lot. “I always wondered what it would take to get this rascal to tie the knot. Didn’t know it’d be some random Swedish guy. Life is just so fucked up, am I right?”
J assumes Sarah knows the wedding isn’t real.
“Okay, okay,” she continues, looking at everyone milling around.
“No one likes to wait for weddings to start. It’s always such bullshit—tell you to be there at seven and then you have to sit there like a dumbass for an hour before things actually begin.
It would be one thing if they gave you something to read, but those programs, man—they’re the worst. It’s like, let’s tell you what’s going to happen just so you can see how fucking long it’s going to take, right?
People have no idea. They really don’t.”
With that, she walks up to the stage, turns on the mic, and bellows, “Alright, folks! Let’s do this, okay?
My name is Sarah Burnheart and you better fucking treat me like a priestess before this night is through.
You understand? We’re here for an extremely special occasion.
How often do you get to see two good people make a huge mistake?
All the time, right? Well, tonight we’re going to see Detroit and Skye make a colossal mistake.
It is my honor to help them do this. Now shut up so we can get started. ”
Skye has quietly stepped beside J.
“I wasn’t nervous before,” they whisper. “Now I am.”
J pats Skye on the back, then lets his hand stay there, to give Skye some support.
“It’s a performance,” he says. “Just keep telling yourself: It’s only a performance.”
“Just like every other wedding,” Skye replies. Then it’s clear they don’t like that reply, because they add, “No. That’s not fair. I just didn’t realize how much it would hurt, to have it be fake.”
J wishes he could say, We can stop it . But he suspects that there’s no way Sarah would let them. The audience is here for a show.
“Can the wedded couple please take the stage?” she intones.
J puts down his hand. Skye squeezes his shoulder as they pass.
“Gaydies and lentlemen, let’s hear it for Detroit and Skye!”
The crowd whoops. Some sound more caustic than enthusiastic.
“I am so happy to be joining these two in holy matricide!” Sarah proclaims, then stops for a second to cough.
“In our humble community of artists, it’s always especially touching when two of our own pair up.
Because you know the saying: There’s nothing more stable than two artists dating, unless you count nuclear war.
But I don’t mean to be the golden shower on this parade.
No, anyone who’s ever seen Detroit and Skye together knows it’s meant to be.
..especially if other people are involved!
No, no—oh, I see some of you in the audience nodding.
Pretty good, huh? But wait—the law has decreed that there can only be two of them in this union.
So the rest of you will have to wait for the after party, okay? ”
J studies the couple as Sarah talks. Detroit is laughing, a good sport. Skye looks like they want to disappear.
“I want you to know, I got ordained by the Church of the Internet for this! It’s true—I got the paperwork and everything. You should see the Church of the Internet’s Sunday services. Eighty percent of it is porn. At least.”
A few laughs, but probably not as many as Sarah Burnheart had hoped.
“Alright, you’re not here for me.” (“We’re not!” someone in the back yells.) “Didn’t you get the memo about worshipping me ? Don’t fuck with the Church of the Internet, bro. We can absolve hit-men just as easily as we can marry a pair of queers.”
Now Skye looks to Detroit, who nods and moves forward to get the mic.