Jack with a Twist (18 page)

“T
his sort of thing really doesn’t come under the umbrella of what a bride should do for her wedding videographer,” I say through the double-thick, bullet-proof glass.

“I didn’t want to call my regular guy,” Jay says, from the other side of the glass, “and the way I see it, you owe me a solid.”

Great. Now I owe one to a mobster. According to Wikipedia, “soldiers” are low-level players in the mafia family. To get to be a soldier, you have to “prove” yourself as an associate to the family first. [Insert dramatic music as you ponder the question: “What exactly does one
do
to prove oneself to a mafia family?”] I really wish I wasn’t an obsessive lawyer who just
had
to look that one up.

“But, you’re not a paparazzo,” I say, holding the phone about an inch away from my ear, for fear of catching something here at the Manhattan Detention Center.

Jay shrugs.

“So, what exactly were you doing rifling through Monique deVouvray and Jean Luc Renault’s garbage?” I ask. I’m calm and cool and collected when I ask him this—I say a silent
thank you
to the gods above that I’d told Monique to start shredding all of her documents on the off chance that paparazzi would start going through her trash. Otherwise, this situation would have been stressful in many, many ways. More so than the obvious, I mean.

“It’s public property,” he says into the telephone.

“Actually,” I say, “it’s not. That’s why you got arrested. Monique and Jean Luc own the property their townhouse is situated on, which includes the alley you were skulking around. That’s why they had you arrested for trespassing.”

“I wasn’t skulking,” Jay says. “Anyway, all they really had in their garbage was chantilly lace and thick silk.”

“Ooh,” I say, “you should keep that. It’s really expensive.”

“So, can you get me out of here?” he asks, looking around.

“First, I have a few questions I’d like to ask you,” I say. I fail to mention here that I can absolutely get him out of here. Right this minute, I might add. When I got to the Manhattan Detention Center, I met the prosecutor who’s holding him—an old friend of mine from law school who said she’d take care of this for me. Which is good, since I really just want to get Jay out and go—taking him on as an actual client would be a conflict of interest with my other, more important, more law-abiding client, Monique. So, I thank my lucky stars that the prosecutor is someone I know.

Do I have to invite another old law school friend to my wedding now? Under Jack’s strict orders, I’ve been trying very hard not to befriend anyone new, since I’d like to keep my wedding to a modest count of just under six hundred people.

“Whaddya wanna know?” Jay asks, looking around the visitor’s center.

“Well, it’s just that,” I start out. All of my stammering must have caught Jay’s attention—or annoyed him at the very least—because he turns to me and fixes his eyes on mine. I realize that it’s the first time that we’ve actually made eye contact and I don’t really like it. I divert my eyes downward.

“Did you get anything on Miranda Foxley?” I blurt out.

“She is one fun girl,” he says, leaning back in his chair. The phone cord barely extends as he flips his head back with a smile.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, trying not to look judgmental. Or jealous.

“She likes to indulge in a little activity known as the afternoon delight,” Jay says, rubbing his hands together.

Afternoon delight? What’s afternoon delight? Is that some sort of drug I haven’t heard of yet? Is that what all the kids are doing these days? Just when I figure out the difference between E and Special K, now there’s some other drug I need to worry about my future children getting peer-pressured into taking?!?

“She does drugs?” I say, sotto voce, leaning in to the double-thick glass. I’m hoping that by whispering, the guards who monitor the conversations in this room won’t notice that we are blatantly talking about drugs.

“Haven’t seen her do drugs yet,” he says, “but you never know what’s going on during those afternoon delights.”

“What?” I ask, “I don’t get it.”

Jay laughs and leans back toward me. “Sky rockets in flight…” he sings.

“Most people don’t really feel like a sing-a-long when they’re being held as a guest of the state at the Manhattan Detention Center,” I say, looking around to the other lawyers all gathered on my side of the glass. No other lawyer seems to be getting a serenade like I am.

“Gonna find my baby,” he sings, low and sultry into the phone, leaning closer into the glass as he does so, “gonna hold her tight…”

This is getting to be inappropriate. Surely in just a minute, he’ll make a play for the glass and try to escape with me. I’ll have to call the guards who will then call my emergency contact who is my fiancé, Jack. How am I going to explain how I got here? Well, let’s see: I’m planning our perfect wedding, honey, but along the way, I decided to have the wedding videographer spy on you for me, so I had to hire a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my father’s, who just so happens to be a made man, who thinks I owe him a solid, who is now in jail, who is now inexplicably serenading me. Which really happens to brides-to-be more often than you’d think.

As Jay gets to the part in his song about rubbing sticks and stones together, my cell phone begins to vibrate. I’ve got it set to vibrate since you’re not allowed to bring cell phones into a detention center and I used Jack’s little inside pocket trick to sneak it in. I excuse myself to run to the ladies’ room for a minute, and answer the phone.

“Where are you?” my mother says. “You sound like you’re in a mental institution or something. Why is there an echo?”

“Long story,” I whisper into the phone. “My wedding videographer got arrested and I’m bailing him out.”

“You have time to bail your wedding videographer out of jail, but you don’t have time to come wedding dress shopping with me?” she asks.

I have no response to this.

A few minutes later, I come back to the glass partition and Jay is busy laughing and joking with his fellow inmates.

“I’m back,” I say, “sorry about that.”

“No problem,” he says, “we were all just talking about how much we could use an afternoon delight right now.”

“Do you really think you and your fellow inmates should be talking about drugs while you’re in the slammer?” I whisper into the phone.

“This ain’t the slammer, lady,” Jay says, “this is a detention center.”

“Whatever,” I say, “the point is—”

“An afternoon delight is sex in the middle of the afternoon,” Jay says. “It has nothing to do with drugs. Unless, of course, you’re into that sort of thing.”

“Which I’m
not,
” I quickly say, looking around to the guards, so that if any of them have overheard the conversation, they’ll be able to see how innocent and law-abiding I look.

“Perhaps your friend Miranda is,” he says, leaning into the glass. “Every afternoon at around three, a town car is waiting for her outside of the Gilson, Hecht offices. She hops in and goes up to the Upper East Side—a dingy little walk-up on 91st Street between 1st and York.”

“To do what?” I say, riveted by Jay’s tale of the seedy underbelly of the city.

“Play chess,” he says, as I stare back at him with my mouth hanging open. “What do you think she’s doing?”

“I don’t know!” I say. If he thinks that I’m the sort of woman who would know what people are doing when they go to dingy little walk-ups on the Upper East Side in broad daylight, then I need to seriously reconsider my entire wardrobe. Possibly my makeup, too.

“Lots of men who work in the city keep little apartments uptown so that they can sneak out of work during the day and meet up with their girlfriends.”

“They do?” I ask and Jay shakes his head knowingly. “
Married
men?”

“Grow up, Brooke,” Jay mutters back into the phone. “Just grow up.”

“Who was she meeting?” I ask.

“I didn’t get the chance to find out yet,” he says.

“Thank God my father always worked on Long Island,” I say under my breath.

“Your father’s the best,” Jay says, breaking into a smile. “I love that man’s chops.”

“I’m partial to the sirloin,” I say, “but his chops are quite good.” Jay nods his head in agreement.

How confused are the guards who are monitoring our conversation right now?

“By the way,” Jay says, “I never asked you. Where’s your honeymoon?”

“I don’t know yet,” I say, “but we’re thinking Hawaii. Why?”

“If you make it Mexico,” he says, looking around at the other inmates to make sure no one is listening, “I could make it worth your while.”

“Um, what?” I say. And then, so as not to appear rude, I add: “No, thank you.”

“Won’t you want some honeymoon video footage?” he asks, gesturing with his hands. “I’ve got some errands to run down there and I could do both at once.”

How dare this man invoke my honeymoon! Doesn’t he know that the honeymoon is the most sacred part of the entire wedding? Screw the ceremony—the honeymoon is where couples have their true religious experience! And he wants to besmirch it with his mob errands? This I cannot abide.

“I have a right mind to leave you in here for a while to stew in your own juices,” I say, pursing my lips, “and think about what you’ve done wrong.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, “honeymoon’s off the table. But are you actually trying to
threaten
me?” He’s leaning in and looking me dead in the eye as he says the word
threaten.

Oh, God. Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God. I am going to sleep with the fishes. I am going to wake up with a sawed-off horse head in my bed.

Do not piss off the mobster. Do. Not. Piss. Off. The. Mobster.

“No,” I say, using the same soothing voice I’d use with colicky babies or rabid animals. “Why on earth would I ever do that?”

“Look, do you want me to shoot you or not?”

“Please don’t shoot me,” I quickly say, eyes darting around for the prison guards. I know that this is only a detention center, but where are those guards when you need them? This is just like one of those mob films where the regular everyday person is just going about his or her day, ends up in a mix-up involving the mob, and then they come after her and her entire family. I’m too young to die!

“Shoot your
wedding video,
” he says.

“I knew that,” I quickly say.

“Then get me out of here
now.
” He points his finger on the table for emphasis.

“Guard!” I say, “Mr. Conte is ready to go.”

M
any a bachelorette party has been thrown at Mangia e Bevi. (And I should know, since I’ve been to quite a few of them.) It’s a tiny Italian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen where, on any given night, you can find a gaggle of girls celebrating someone’s impending nuptials by dancing on chairs (which, at Mangia e Bevi, is strongly encouraged) and drinking their drinks through penis shaped straws.

In the winter of 2002, it was Tandy O’Donoghue’s bachelorette party. The bride-to-be danced on a table, while wearing a hot-pink boa, to “You’re the One That I Want” from the
Grease
soundtrack, with her maid of honor, Jen Moss, lip-synching the Danny lines to her Sandy. She refused to wear the veil with tiny penises hanging from its every inch (she insisted that they were no match for her groom-to-be’s), but gleefully drank from a penis-shaped water bottle (which she insisted was more “true to size”) and indulged in the penis-shaped cupcakes that were served for dessert (by that time, she was too drunk to form an opinion either way about the cupcakes). Tandy got herself into quite a bit of trouble when she accidentally drunk-dialed the Best Man on her way home that night.

In the summer of 2004, it was Eileen Massey’s turn. She and her entire bridal party showed up in tiaras and bedroom slippers and danced on their chairs to “Come on Eileen.” The girls that were there still talk about the scandalous dance that Eileen’s maid of honor did with a huge blow-up penis (similar to the big Bozo blow-up dolls that were popular circa 1979), right in front of Eileen’s fourteen-year-old stepsister. Eileen’s stepmother was in attendance that evening, too, and Eileen spent most of the evening refusing to eat anything but salad, for fear of not fitting into her wedding dress and, perhaps more importantly, her stepmonster’s watchful eye.

In the fall of 2006, Emily Carlson was the one we all came out to toast. She and her bridesmaids went crazy and decided to have a co-ed bachelorette party. The men all parked themselves at the bar to watch a baseball playoff game, while the girls stayed at the table and danced on their chairs to “I Want Your Sex.” Only the groom-to-be joined the actual party and played along with the evening’s festivities, even drinking his banana daiquiri out of a penis-shaped straw. That simple act of boldness earned him an impromptu lap dance from all of the bridesmaids, which quickly brought out the “angry drunk” in the bride. She decided that the best course of action would be to drag the groom-to-be out of the party and into the bathroom to have sex. (This is also the story of why we don’t use the first bathroom on the right at Mangia e Bevi.) Said groom-to-be came out of the closet three weeks before the wedding.

This year, it’s my turn, and Vanessa has the entire place rented out for the night since the guest list is so huge. The super-top-secret plan that’s supposed to be a surprise is this: first, we start out with appetizers. Trays of bruschetta, stuffed mushrooms and fried calamari will be passed around as the guests enter and get comfortable. The restaurant brought in trays of mini hot dogs especially for this occasion, too, since my mother insisted that you simply could not have a girls’ night out without them. Bottles of white and red wine will already be set out on the tables and to get mixed drinks, you’ll simply have to go to the bar.

For the main course, you’ll grab a seat wherever you like (take that, sisters Solomon!) and start out with a plate of salad, topped with fresh tomatoes and even fresher mozzarella (dressing on the side, of course). You’ll then eat either chicken marsala, vegetable lasagna or veal scallopine. I’ve already decided on the chicken marsala.

Next, Vanessa and my mom will announce with clever little smirks that it’s time for dessert, only they’ll say the word
dessert
as if they’re saying something really naughty, like
ménage a trois,
or, in my mother’s case,
paying full retail price.
The waiters will roll out an enormous four-foot-tall cake that all of the guests will ooh and aah over. A very tasteful male stripper will jump out of the cake and dance around with us.

Is it any wonder my father’s seven aunts have not been invited to the party?

Then, we will all get up on our chairs and dance to “You’re the One That I Want,” “Come on Eileen” and “I Want Your Sex.” Vanessa’s also requested that they cue up my favorite eighties song, “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off.”

There will be no penis-shaped straws.

Just when everyone thinks that the party is over and it’s time to go home, Mangia e Bevi will dim the lights and the bachelorette party will turn into a co-ed after-hours party, with all of the guys coming in as a surprise. Vanessa, with a lot of help from Jack, had to orchestrate an entirely different e-vite for the boyfriends, husbands and assorted male friends, and then swear each and every one of them to secrecy. I think that the signing of actual legal affidavits may have been involved.

I know all of this because I helped my mother and Vanessa plan said festivities. We’ve all been fast friends since the lobster incident at the bridal shower and had to band together in order to take control of the bachelorette party. Without our intervention, my mother informed us, the bachelorette party would turn into a Hitler Youth Rally—and, as my mother informed Vanessa, it wasn’t just the Jews that they were rallying against—Hitler was none too fond of black people, either.

Vanessa had to make up some very clever story about how I was traumatized at a bachelorette party that I once attended (by the penis-shaped straws, no doubt) and how I now had to help plan the party with Vanessa and my mother, and
only
with Vanessa and my mother. Vanessa said that it wasn’t easy to get the sisters Solomon to back off at first, but then I reminded her of her sacred vow as a maid of honor, and she did what had to be done to make sure that she, my mom and I maintained control of my bachelorette party.

“So, how did it go today?” I ask Vanessa as we sip our Diet Cokes through penis-shaped straws.

“Fine,” she says, “it was totally fine. Wear this.”

I allow her to place a Hawaiian lei on my neck and she puts one around her neck, too. These are not your typical brightly colored plastic leis that you’d find at a party store. No, these are seriously fancy Hawaiian leis, made out of beautiful silk flowers, keyed into the color scheme of my flowers for the wedding. “I wanted to come with you.”

“I know,” she says, “but Marcus was there and I just didn’t want anyone else there. You know?”

“Of course,” I say, “I just want you to know that you’ve got tons of support through every step of this thing.”

“Well, that was the last step,” she says, tipping her lemon into her Diet Coke with the penis-shaped straw.

“So, is it final?” I ask, taking the straw out of my drink and placing it onto the nearest table.

“Yup,” she says, sipping the rest of her Diet Coke down, “I’m officially divorced. Let’s go get something stronger from the bar.”

“Was it okay being there with him?” I ask as we walk over to the bar. “Did he make a scene or anything?”

“No,” she says as she motions for the bartender to pour us shots of Southern Comfort. “He did look ridiculously hot, though.”

“Marcus
is
ridiculously hot,” I say, as the bartender pours us our shots. For some reason, the shot glasses at Mangia e Bevi seem to be twice the size of a normal shot glass. Vanessa counts down from three and we down our shots at the same time.

“I know,” she says. “It’s weird. After you’re with someone for so long, you kind of forget about what they look like. Good or bad, I guess. You just get used to them and the way they look. I haven’t seen Marcus in so long that I think I forgot how
freaking
hot he is.”

I turn around from the bar and see a waiter helping my mother hang a sign that reads: “Let’s Get Lei’d!”

“What, so now you want him back?” I say with a laugh as I pour us each a white wine from the nearest table. Vanessa laughs without smiling.

“That looks perfect, Mimi,” Vanessa yells out as she runs over to my mother. “Can we get it a touch higher?”

“This ‘Let’s Get Lei’d’ theme is very clever,” Jack’s sister, Lisa, says as she walks over to me.

“Thanks,” I say. “It was my mother’s idea.”

“She’s adorable,” Lisa says, looking over at my mom. “It must be so nice to be close to your mother like that.”

“It is,” I say, “although most of the time, I’m ready to kill her. But that comes with the territory. Are you close to Joan?”

“Where’s Patricia?” Jack’s sister Elizabeth asks as she walks over to us. As she stands side by side with Lisa, I recall that Lisa is the youngest of the three and Elizabeth is the one in the middle. Patricia is the oldest.
I actually remember who is who!
A waiter comes over with a plate of fried calamari and I grab a piece and dip it into marinara sauce to congratulate myself on being so darned smart.

“Probably off somewhere bossing someone around,” Lisa says with a laugh and Elizabeth laughs, too. I give a tiny laugh. I’m not quite sure if I’m allowed to laugh at jokes that disparage one of the other sisters Solomon quite yet.

“How’s Alan?” I say to Elizabeth and I marvel at how I just remembered which brother-in-law goes with which sister. The words just fell out of my mouth, and after I’ve said them, I realize that I definitely know who’s who! Just as I’m about to ask Lisa how her husband, Aaron, is doing, Elizabeth answers my question.

“You’ll see for yourself later,” she says, grabbing a piece of bruschetta off the tray of a passing waiter. I decide not to take a piece so that my breath won’t be garlicky later when Jack arrives and kisses me hello.

Who knows, we may even make some history of our own in the second bathroom on the left….

“Elizabeth!” Lisa hisses. “Ix-nay on the urprise-say.”

“I know about the surprise,” I say. “My mother’s not good with secrets. I look forward to seeing Aaron later. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to him much.”

“Most people think that all of our husbands are interchangeable, so don’t worry,” Elizabeth says and she and Lisa laugh at the joke.

I join in on the laughter and for a second I wonder if I’ve underestimated the Solomon sisters. I’ve sort of bunched them all together, and maybe I’ve made a real mistake in not making an effort to get to know each and every one of them separately. Their husbands, too.

“Seriously, though,” Elizabeth says, “I’ve got to go and find Patricia before she starts some sort of trouble.”

“She just doesn’t want old Patricia to have any fun, now does she?” Lisa says, pouring herself a glass of wine from the nearest table as Elizabeth goes off in search of Patricia.

“You work in midtown, right?” I say to Lisa.

“Yes,” Lisa says, taking a sip of her wine, “I’m on Third Avenue, too, just a few blocks down from your office.”

“How about we go to lunch this week?” I say, as she pours a little more wine into my glass, too.

“I’d like that, Brooke,” she says. “I’d really like that.”

“We just got lei’d!” I hear in a thick Polish accent.

Now, there is only one person in the world that I know with such a thick Polish accent, and the other is her sister, Devorah. But there is simply no way in hell that my mother thought it prudent to include my eighty-two-year-old grandmother and her eighty-nine-year-old sister to this bacchanal. Surely she realized that such novelty items as a penis-shaped straw and a stripper jumping out of a cake would be lost on two elderly eastern European women.

Lisa and I both turn around. Sure enough, it’s the thick Polish accent of my father’s mother and her sister, Devorah.

At this moment in time, I am extremely grateful that most of my great aunts live out of state.

In my shock and awe at the arrival of my grandmother and Aunt Devorah, it barely registers that Miranda Foxley seems to have come into Mangia e Bevi, too. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her place her lei on top of her head, like a crown on her blaze of fire-red hair. She begins dancing to the music as she walks in and greets everyone with a big fake Southern-fried smile on her face.

Not like I’m jealous of her or anything.

“Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Lisa says, eyes still glued on my grandmother and Aunt Devorah, adjusting their leis and accosting the waiter with the pigs in blankets.

I rush over to my mother: “Have you lost your mind?”

“What?” she says, fluffing out the silk flowers on her lei. Needless to say, she’s got her lei of choice for the evening color-coordinated with her outfit.

I don’t respond. I merely bob my head in the general direction of my grandmother and Aunt Devorah.

“You don’t know your grandmother and aunt like I do,” she says, “You see them as old women. I happen to know that they are going to have more fun than anyone here tonight.”

“There is something wrong with you,” I say and my mother laughs.

“Time for appetizers, BB,” my mother says. “Let’s start sitting everybody down.”

My mother rushes over to the bar, and the bartender hands her a microphone. She announces that it’s time to begin our appetizers and the assorted party guests begin finding their chairs. I see her order a drink from the bartender and then leave the bar with three champagne cocktails.

“Where are we sitting?” Vanessa says. “I tried to commandeer the table in the middle but Jack’s sisters are there now.”

“Let’s sit with Jack’s sisters,” I say, and Vanessa stares back at me. “We’re going to try something different tonight.”

“We’re pretending we’re mature?” Vanessa asks, “I’m so impressed.” We walk over to the table where Jack’s sisters are all seated, every other seat, just waiting for Vanessa and me to fill the gaps. As we pass by my mother’s table, I see my mother handing my grandmother and Aunt Devorah each a champagne cocktail. They all clink their glasses together—I could swear I hear one of them make a toast that involves the word
finally!
—and then take a sip.