A Wife of Noble Character (19 page)

“The
der-ma-tol-o-gist
,” Blad mouthed.

Vivienne nodded. “Randal, this is my friend Bladimir.”

Blad reached over. “I recognize you from your billboards,” he said, vigorously shaking Randal's hand. “I work at a spa, so we both work in skin.”

Randal crossed his arms and sat back in his chair, chuckling. “Then you understand the importance of exfoliation. No one gets it but girls and gays—'scuse me. You tell a man to exfoliate and he'll think yer light in the loafers.”

Blad looked exultant. “You're an exfoliating cowboy!”

“Best compliment I got in a while,” Randal said, and held up his beer. “Exfoliation's not just for the face either.”

Vivienne noticed Preston then, caught among a parade of waiters. He looked around—
For me?
Vivienne wondered. No, he was locating an exit. She followed his progress—deeper into the onion he came, stopping to shake hands with someone. Vivienne was sure she hadn't sat him this close; she clearly remembered placing him near the back (
not
beside a pretty girl, despite her promise). Finally he stopped in front of Timmy, who stood and bear-hugged him. Then he pulled out a chair—Vivienne raised her chin to see over the heads in her view—and sat down between Karlie and Bucky, in just the seat she had reserved for herself.

She seized Blad's hand. “Get up. Follow me.”

With Blad behind, she strode back to table two, her eyes burning into Karlie's shimmering shoulders. She felt the eyes of every man track her as she advanced. When she got there, she gave those shoulders a little squeeze. Karlie turned around and, seeing Vivienne there, curled her lip.

Vivienne waved at Preston. “Can you scoot down a little for Blad and me?” she said to him. Preston looked jubilant, his expression countering Karlie's in every aspect. “We can fit in two more.” She signaled to the waiter to make two more settings.

“Wait a second, Viv,” Karlie said.

But Preston was scooting, nudging Bucky, and soon Reis was scooting too, everyone making room. Vivienne sat beside Preston, and Blad beside Karlie. Vivienne took a sip of wine and smiled, right into the faces of her friends. Blad squeezed her knee under the table.

Dinner was served: bacon-wrapped filet mignon, red potatoes au gratin with smoked Swiss, and brussels sprouts in a venison-butter glaze. Timmy suggested an after-party at his and Karlie's house, in their new game room.

“This guy made it for us,” he said, toasting Preston.

“To Preston!” Blad said loudly, like a queen. Vivienne knew he did it on purpose and loved him for it.

Everyone held up their glasses halfheartedly, except Bucky. “This table is for the wedding party,” he said to Preston.

“He's my date,” Vivienne said.

“I'm just here for the water,” Preston said, toasting up his water glass and drinking. Blad and Timmy laughed.

“Then who's this guy?” Bucky said at Blad.

“He's my date too,” Vivienne said. “I have two dates.”

Blad thrust his hand over the table to introduce himself. “I'm Bladimir Caro.”

Bucky looked at Blad's manicured hand, like a dog unsure what to do with a ball, and then took it as he might a woman's, squeezing Blad's fingers.

Reis rested her hand on Bucky's shoulder. “It's fine, babe.”

During the toasts, Vivienne took the microphone beside Waverly and Clay and spoke right to them, offering a brief, sincere toast to their happiness. Karlie followed with a ten-minute tearful declaration of love for her besties, the Fitchersons. Bucky came next, looking ruffled under the lights. He told Clay that his taste in women was just as exact as his quail shot.

The cakes were cut. German chocolate in the shape of an igneous rock with grass sprouting around its recesses for Clay, and a teetering four-story lemon cake with iced yellow rose of Texas petals cascading from its peak for Waverly. A reporter from the
Chronicle
tapped Vivienne's shoulder and asked for her comments on the wedding. “A fairy tale,” she said. Then she drank the teacup of coffee placed before her and listened as Karlie told the reporter about her blog. She only exchanged pleasantries with Preston but felt him beside her as a grand tree, sheltering her from a cold wind.

After cake, the lights dimmed and the band returned. Vivienne lost track of Preston but danced with Blad to a sing-along of “Friends in Low Places,” and then Waverly rolled the lace garter down her firm satiny leg and tossed it back, into the eager clutch of Greg Garfield. To her surprise, Vivienne caught the bouquet. She felt like a pageant queen; the other single girls, even Reis, surrounded her in congratulations, as if she'd accomplished something. She took part in the clamor, accepted their hugs, and pressed the flowers to her nose, drunk with their fragrance and the occasion they afforded her to shine. As the novelty faded, Vivienne was left standing there, wondering what to do with a bouquet the size of a basketball. She noticed Preston watching her from the table, drinking coffee, and ducked away down a hall into the restroom.

How embarrasing that he'd seen her shameless relish of the bouquet. She ran her fingers over the petals, calla lilies and hydrangeas, all sweetly wilted, and felt a tremendous warmth for them, that they represented beauty and love, the things she wished to build her life around.

A soft knock came at the door.

“Just a sec!” She flushed the toilet with her shoe, dabbed the oil off her face with a monogrammed hand towel, and opened the door with an aim to appear refreshed.

It was Preston, his face in a sort of limbo, as if he had a thought but couldn't form the words.

Vivienne overcompensated, immediately hugged him. “Hi,” she said, smiling.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Hello,” he said, his tone three notches lower.

Her face was heating up. The charge between them felt like a million twiddling fingers beneath the surface of her skin. His hair was longer than it had been on Memorial Day, just at his ears, parted to one side and at the top smoothed over but very imperfectly, as if he didn't know how to use hair gel. She was taken aback by how cute he was. He'd taken off his tie, its bright tail peeking out of his pants pocket, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. She wanted him to smile, wished he'd returned her hug with enthusiasm, but his eyes, while warm, shone with that reticence she could never place.

“Did you follow me to the bathroom?” she asked.

“I guess I did. I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “I felt strange talking at the table. It was a weird dynamic.”

“Are you having fun?” she asked.

He jangled some change in his pocket. “I'm not not having fun,” he said. “Think the clock has struck, though. Bracken and Blad just did the ‘Boot Scootin' Boogie.'” He crossed his arms, a gesture of evaluation. “Thanks for moving in back there. I was mad at you for a minute, because I thought you'd put me there on purpose.”

“Karlie put you there,” Vivienne said. “That was my seat. She moved me and put you next to her.”

“That Bucky guy…” He paused. “He's not your boyfriend anymore?”

“No,” Vivienne said.

She watched him mull on this, noticed the little razor spots on his neck. He was looking down at her hands.

“You seemed happy about that bouquet,” he said.

“I had a feeling you were going to tease me about that. I saw you looking at me.”

“I thought maybe you were happy because there's a guy in the picture, that you'll be engaged soon.”

It killed her, his power to see through her girlish notions while at the same time holding her to them. He trapped her into seeing things in a new light, without letting her step out of the old one. And she loved it too. But she couldn't bring herself to give him the satisfaction of knowing this, wouldn't. “Did it seem like I'm with Bucky? He's with Reis now.”

“I wasn't sure if I was getting in the middle of something. Last time I saw you—”

“It's over,” she said. “I threw dip spit in his face.”

Preston looked delighted. “Not your own, I hope.”

From the ballroom came a spectacular chorus of applause and whistles: the departure of the bride and groom. She should have been there, but Waverly was too happy to notice.

“There they go,” Vivienne said, toward the noise. Then she rolled her head along the wall and faced him.

He reached out and cradled her chin, and kissed her. Gentle, individual kisses, each kiss in amazement of itself. She let her body slacken and kissed him back, harder. He wrapped his arms around her waist. Into her ear he whispered, “I've been wanting to do that for so long.”

Vivienne didn't know what to do. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for being kissed by a man with whom she couldn't see her life spelled out, should she choose to spend her life with him. His kiss opened a door in her mind, as most kisses did, except she couldn't see past the door into the next month and year and decade. She couldn't even see the next day—not even, she realized, the next hour.

And yet she felt alive with thirsty force, her hands weak, her bones loose.

The clacking of heels came around the corner and behind it a group of girls, arm in arm.

She signaled him back a little. “
Hiiii, Vivienne
,” they cooed down the corridor as they passed. Their high collective voice carried with it all the prescriptions Vivienne knew for how to live well.

Preston was calm, his eyes two quiet blue pools, but he held her firmly. “Come with me,” he said. He took her by the wrist and started away through the turns of long marble hallways. Each looked the same to Vivienne, with skinny side tables pressed against the beige walls, supporting bouquets of bird-of-paradise and fern in ceramic vases, and nothing else, never anything else. She knew these halls well.

She took off her heels, scrutinizing Preston, wondering whether she should trust him. “How do you know your way around?”

He smiled. “I used to sneak in here and play basketball. Come on.”

Barefoot now, Vivienne felt lighter, freer. She followed him faster. They turned onto a carpeted hallway, beyond a Pilates room visible through a plate-glass window, and past a vestibule dividing the locker rooms. Vivienne smelled the chlorine and eucalyptus and stopped. “No way,” she said. “We can't go to the pool.”

“Yes, we can.”

She laughed. “You're crazy. I'm the maid of honor.” She said this while he kissed at her, between pecks on her cheeks, her neck, her left ear. She pulled back.

“The wedding's over,” he said, and kept going, out the double doors to the pool.

Vivienne fully wanted to go with him, but she couldn't admit this, or recognize it, so she told herself she had no choice but to follow him: She had to convince him that swimming wasn't a good idea. She trailed behind, out the double doors and down the pebbled footpath lined with monkey grass, to the wrought-iron pool gate, where he waited. The pool was dark.

“It's locked,” he said, then hoisted himself up and over it. Vivienne noticed his shoulders beneath his shirt. Something in her flinched, receded, like an arrow drawing back before release.

Fear rose up and rolled over in her stomach. “I think there are cameras out here. Let's go back. I'm sure someone will look for me.”

“Of course there are cameras out here,” he said. “There's security all over this place.”

“I can't climb over in my dress. It'll tear. It's worth more than my car.”

“I'll help you.”

She hoisted herself up and he took her under her arms, to ease her over. But on the way down she tried to find the ground as he backed up, and the hem of the dress caught the rails and they both stumbled. Vivienne hit the gravel on her hip. Preston was on his bottom, leaning to one side, trying not to laugh. He stood up first, rubbing his tailbone, and helped her up.

“Is this dress really worth more than your car?” His eyes were sheepish, but he sounded charmed by his own mistake.

Unnerved, Vivienne shook her head, fiddling with the torn hem, frowning. “You're probably secretly happy the dress tore.”

He laughed. “I am not. Why would you say that?”

“Because it represents everything about my life that you find annoying.”

He went around to the open pool house and grabbed two towels from a polished metal cart.

“Those towels are for wiping sweat off the sun chairs,” Vivienne said.

He was unbuttoning his shirt and then his pants, until he stood skinny in his plaid boxers at the pool's edge. She liked his body; it was lean without being too lanky. It had an innocence about it that belied his whole persona in her life. “Are you getting in?” he asked.

It seemed he deliberately put her in these places where he knew she would struggle to make a decision, for which he would ultimately judge her either way. There was a right and a wrong answer; the trouble was, Vivienne's mind was masterful at the gray areas, worn deep with the angles by which her actions might be interpreted. Each option—to swim or not—involved risk and sacrifice. Either was a gamble.

The water looked like black glass, but in the dim halo of the perimeter lights she could make out the colors of the tropical landscaping—blue plumbago hedges, yellow coleus beds, and, beyond, the dark jungled bayou. The evening being particularly humid, the toads were busy holding a celebratory concert. Clouds were passing over fast, cutting over the half-moon. There was the noise of the city, the freeway hum, but a sticky breeze was picking up in the direction of the wedding, rustling away the sound. In this quiet, the party and all its regalia felt like a recollection, a story from another time in her life. That it was actually happening then and there, while Preston waited by the long rectangular pool in his underwear, didn't quite make sense.

“Here,” he said, tossing her his undershirt. “You can wear this.” She caught it as he cannonballed in, breaking the water in two and sliding beneath. He surfaced with a grin. “Jump in!”