New York City,
imagine that
(an excerpt)
Karen spent the first half hour at the wedding saying, “Yes, he’s got ‘flu. Yes, it came on very suddenly. Yes, it is a shame, isn’t it? Still.”
She spent the next three hours wondering what on Earth she was doing in a manicured manor house in Cheshire. She hardly knew the people who were getting married. They weren’t so much friends of friends as acquaintances of acquaintances. She didn’t like weddings as a rule and this was a very weddingy kind of wedding: monumental white dress, sleek burgundy limousines, gazillions of flowers, fiddly favours, organza, speeches, multi-storey hats, bullshit. She always got that song by The Smiths looping in her head at times like this: I want to drop my trousers to the Queen / Every sensible boy will know what this means… She should’ve stayed at Susan’s. But she was here now, so she’d better make the best of it.
“Doesn’t she look lovely?” the woman next to her said at the service.
Karen contemplated the bride. She was a tubby girl and her dress billowed hugely around her: an ecru silk hot-air balloon with pearl beading.
Karen contemplated the bride. She was a tubby girl and her dress billowed hugely around her: an ecru silk hot-air balloon with pearl beading.
“Yes,” she said.
At dinner Karen was put on a table of assorted strays.
“We’ve moved you because your husband’s not here,” one of the bridesmaids explained. “That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
Karen was put next to a man called Derek. He was tipsy when he sat down and he had three glasses of white wine with his starter. Karen had to motion to the waiter to bring another bottle. They finished their starters at the same time and put their forks down in unison.
He turned to her and said, “My wife left me last year.”
“Oh,” Karen said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Derek smiled the faraway hopeless smile of the fatally wounded. “I’m over it now – pretty much.”
“Good,” Karen said. “Excellent.”
For some reason, they had the speeches between the starter and the main course. They were excruciating, worse than usual. Listening to them was like being whacked repeatedly about the head with a blancmange in a leaky plastic bag. As these two young people embark on a life together…I’m sure I’m not the only man in the room whose eye has turned in the direction of the lovely bridesmaids…Karen caught Derek’s eye and arched an eyebrow.
“Christ,” she whispered in his ear, “Love is a disease for which marriage is the only cure. Who said that?”
Published in: The Research Club: An Anthology of New Writing