The Napkin

Ryan didn't know just when he'd started to hate wedding bands. Probably it was just him. Otherwise the day was perfect, no need for the precautionary canopy, a long greensward swooping down to the water's edge, fir trees spiking on the far side of the lake. Ryan was alone at his table, as most of the guests had got up to dance, to the dulcet strains of Billy Joel, God help up us. Ryan had played in his share of wedding bands back in the day, and had played a lot of the Billy Joel catalogue, or whatever anybody requested. The tips were great and of course there were no end of succulent benefits around the fringes of a wedding, especially for a not-too-ugly musician. Tucker, cheerfully drunk at his own wedding, might well call him up, Ryan realized, and he thought about spraining one of his fingers, imagining the hollow pop the joint would make. At the next table the woman was also alone. She was too tall for most people--even sitting down--she hunched like a tall girl wishing herself smaller and picked at a ring on her left hand like a scab. Misery was coming off of her in waves.

God save me, Lia thought desperately, from one more guy who thinks any woman alone at a wedding is good for a bang in the bathroom. God strike him dead before he gets over here. Ryan set down two glasses on the table, leaving an empty chair between them.

"I'm not going to dance with you," she said.

"I'm not going to ask you," Ryan said. He switched the glasses like a three-card-monte dealer. "Bourbon. Champagne. Bourbon."

"Whatever." She picked up the champagne and drank half of it. "This drek music," she said. "God, I hate this song."

"Look at that," he told her. "We do have something in common."

She only stared back at him with her large wounded eyes. She wore a simply cut black dress, slingbacks, no stockings he noticed with a little jolt. She had a couple of freckles on her shoulders, and a light gold chain strung with little red stones, garnets maybe. Her hair was a deep wet red, the color of the blood inside your body. For some reason it was hard for him to hold her eyes.

"Fine," she said. "You want to make small talk."

"I know you're unhappy," Ryan said. It was one more of his useless abilities. To her incredulous outraged stare he responded, "I just do." He pushed his glass away and stood up.

The band was lurching to the end of "Honesty," or maybe it only seemed that way to Tucker, thanks to one toast too many. He'd been dancing spooned against his bride's white satin rump, circled by a number of appreciative revelers. As a cymbal tingle ended the tune he leaned over and kissed her under the ear and stroked a hand across her belly. "Be ri' back," he told her.

He tripped on the riser and caught himself on the band-leader's shoulder, then, with a smooth enough recovery, began muttering in his ear. "Sure, fine, whatever you want," the bandleader told him, and Tucker turned to the mike stand.

"Ryan. Hey Ryan......" He searched the people milling on the portable dance floor, but no, there he was, laying hands on that gloomy stork Lia, of all possible bad choice, but don't even think the word "Marshwiggle" when you look at her--remember how pissed off Amy got?

Her relief that he had given up so easily was soured by the discovery that he had only moved around behind her too-small uncomfortable white folding chair--that he was planning to actually touch her with his big spidery double-jointed hands. She could feel his intention in two points of heat and light on the inside of her shoulder blades, almost exactly where the pain was. When he did touch her she didn't feel the shape of his hands but a wave of warm compassionate energy rolling all the way down to the soles of her feet, soothing her like sinking into warm bathwater, after you've taken all the pills but before you've noosed the plastic bag handles around your neck to be certain you'll sleep permanently. The irresistibility of the healing touch unstrung her so completely that she began to cry. Ryan felt her shoulders heave, saw her snatch up a napkin from the table and bury her face in it. Tucker was calling him for maybe the fourth time. Now it was too late to break a finger.

Please not "The Wind beneath My Wings," Ryan thought as he walked toward the stand, please not "I Love You Just the Way You Are," while his mouth smiled and said "What can I do for you?"

"Whatever you want," Tucker said, and threw back his head with that easy freedom that Ryan remembered he had once loved. "Let your spirit be your guide." Ryan was so surprised and gratified that he kissed Tucker on the corner of the mouth--he hadn't known he would do it, but Tucker didn't take it amiss, and no one else seemed to have noticed. There was a shimmering warmth in his hands that had echoed back from the center of Lia's body, and just that easily he knew what to do, something that might not collapse into self-parody. A John Hyatt song, sort of obscure, recorded by Marti Jones, but he knew he could cross it over. He veered away from the piano and picked up a guitar. Against his body it would look absurdly small, like a ukulele. The song was clean and simple and had a kind of sincerity that would be difficult to corrupt. He looked beyond her to the sunset crimson on the lake, thinking maybe the song would reach through her, like the warmth of his hands had done, carrying no particular message.

Like a never-ending wave

I'm gonna live the dreams I've saved

If I can love somebody...

Lia unwound, the black twisted knot inside of her beginning to unravel. She didn't move much, only straightening her legs and spreading her hands out on the table, raising her head just enough to put some space between the bones of her back. She sighed and took a deep draft of the cooing air, and shrugged her shoulders as she stood up. Damn, she was tall, Ryan thought. The walk was touchingly just short of graceful -- she reminded him of an elegant hunting dog, the kind with the feathery tail. Bare in the slingbacks, her heels were cracked, and the backs of her calves a little mottled. There were no rules to attraction, he thought. She was walking away from the wedding. He'd reached her for a second, he knew, but now he'd lost her.

A patter of applause as he put the guitar back on the stand, then people turned back to their conversations. People patted his back as he passed through, and said things to him, and he said things back. Soon he was sitting alone at her table, finishing the bourbon in a couple of quick hits. He rolled the crumpled napkin between his empty hands, then smoothed it out. The names of the bride and groom were printed there in fat red cursive. He could ask around, he knew, get her coordinates, call her up. There could be movies and dinners and walks, probably some uneasy mistrustful sex...they might spend weeks, or even months, constructing a failed relationship.

He ran a finger across the red names. Amy and Tucker. She had turned back, he remembered now, with the odd halting grace that somehow got to him, and tossed the balled napkin onto the table, and she'd looked at him as she did it, too. He had been feeling his way through the end of the song, and looking through her at the sunlight on the lake. When he opened the napkin he found tearstains on the inner fold, and a smudge of mascara, but her phone number was written there too, above a crooked lipstick smile.

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