Sideways (35 page)

“Sorry,” he said.

I sat for a minute and stared expressionlessly through my spiderwebbed windshield. The way it altered the landscape in front of me seemed to mirror my fractured life appropriately. I bowed my head, dropped the shift lever into drive, and headed off.

We arrived late in the afternoon. Jack’s future in-laws lived in a Mediterranean-style house perched on a sloping grass-covered knoll. The rising semicircular driveway was gridlocked with cars, so I pulled up to the curb and braked to a halt. Seeing us approach, Babs and her extended family rushed from the house and fanned out over the massive lawn with the ragtag appearance of an unsupervised tour group. They surrounded the car, gasping and uttering
Oh my
s and
You poor thing
s. I helped Jack out, handed him his crutches, and turned him over to the care of his future bride. She and the others were grouped around the front of my 4Runner, examining its sorry condition. Coupled with Jack’s scary appearance, it was determined then and there that the rehearsal would be a run-through without Jack and me. They seemed to accept our lame, but well-rehearsed, explanation for the accident, focusing more on all the planning and money that had been poured into the wedding. I got the impression they were desperate to prevent it from being postponed.

I didn’t hang around long enough to find out if my presence was needed or desired. Wanting to get settled, I climbed back into my car and wandered out to the freeway, where I found a Motel 6 and checked in. The room bore all the traditional features of any depersonalized budget-motel. After an hour of staring at the white walls and reflecting on the past week, I got up and rattled off in my car to find a restaurant.

I ate alone at a franchise steak house in a relaxing silence. Tapering off, I had two glasses of a good local Zinfandel and called it a night.

Back in the motel room I tried to watch television, but quickly grew restless. I called Jack and gave him the number where I was staying. He told me that Babs’s dad had arranged to have a rental car at the house that I could drive back to L.A. after the reception. Paranoid that he was possibly being eavesdropped on, he cut our conversation short.

After I hung up, the silence in the tiny room grew oppressive. I drifted out to the concrete balcony and watched the traffic hurtle past on the 101. Red lights astream one way, white the opposite. With the exception of an occasional 18-wheeler laboring up the grade and grinding its gears, the noise was an unremitting drone.

Back inside the room, I fiddled around with the business card that Maya had scribbled her phone number on earlier in the week. Screwing up my courage, I dialed it. Her voice mail answered.

“Maya, it’s Miles. Hey, I’m up here in Paso Robles. The big wedding’s tomorrow. I understand you and Jack talked about your maybe coming and, anyway, I’m holed up here at the Motel 6, give me a call if you feel like it, um, maybe you’d be interested in breaking some plates with me, I don’t know. Hope to hear from you.”

I gently replaced the receiver on the cradle and switched the lights off and lay in the dark fully clothed.

The next thing I remember was the phone ringing. It was Jack. He spoke in sober, confidentially lowered tones from his cell phone. “Hey, Homes, are you okay?”

“I was sleeping,” I said groggily.

“I think they bought the car accident.”

“Congratulations.”

“You’re coming tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m up here, aren’t I?”

“Did you call Maya?”

“Yeah. Left a message. She didn’t call back.”

“Do you want me to call her?”

“No. Don’t. Please.”

There was a belated pause. Finally, he said, “I had a great time.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Do me a favor tomorrow, will you?”

“What’s that?”

“Dance with Babs. I’m out of commission. I want to see you dance with her.”

“You’re going maudlin.”

“Fuck, I’m not going maudlin.”

“Okay, I’ll dance with her,” I said to shut him up.

“I love you, man.”

“Jesus! Cork that bottle. Good night, Jackson.” And I dropped the phone on the cradle.

A few minutes later, just as I was dozing off, the phone rang again. Thinking it was Jack with some more paternalistic counsel, I answered crossly, “What?”

“Is this Miles?” Maya’s voice woke me.

“Yeah. Maya?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“A little worn out.”

“I can imagine.” She laughed uneasily. Then, after an awkward silence: “You called?”

“Do you want to come to Jack’s wedding reception tomorrow? I realize it’s pretty last-minute. Of course I would

She didn’t laugh. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m working.”

“Oh.”

There was another silence. Sentences formed and then broke apart unspoken before I finally said, “Maybe I’ll stop by in Buellton after the reception and say hello.”

“What do you want, Miles?” she said plaintively, rather than coldly, tired of bullshit.

“I’d like to see you.”

“Why?”

“Because I enjoy your company.”

There was a pause on her end. I pictured her puzzled face and pretended it was different. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.

“Oh,” I replied, pierced by the rejection. “Okay, so I won’t, I guess.”

“You live three hours away, Miles. That’s not going to work for me.”

“I understand.”

Neither of us said anything for a minute. I heard traffic, but that was it.

“I don’t think a relationship is what you’re looking for anyway,” Maya finally said.

“How’d you reach that assessment?”

She cleared her throat. “I think you’re still hung up on your ex-wife and all women are but pale reminders of her and will never be enough.”

I didn’t say anything, frozen in place.

“Am I wrong?” she asked, after my silence had grown excruciating.

I looked up at the ceiling. “Perhaps not. But I’m trying to let her go. It hasn’t been easy.”

After a pause, she said, “Is that why you’re drinking yourself to death?”

I didn’t like having my face pushed into my own shit and my voice sharpened: “I don’t know. I thought you admired that ability of mine.”

She collected herself. “I like the Miles in between sober and drunk, when he’s still comparatively happy and believes there’s hope for life.”

It was like a second curare dart and I hung my head and stared at my feet. If I were capable of tears, they would have come then. “That’s an elusive Miles,” I finally said.

“I would like to think not,” Maya said, her voice flat.

“Sorry I called. I didn’t mean to presume there was still anything between us.” I tried to bite down on my addendum, but couldn’t: “Or ever was.”

Neither of us said anything, but neither made the move to hang up. I could hear her breathing on the other end, waiting for something.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Your friend’s wedding must depress you, huh?” she asked perceptively, shifting to a softer tone.

“I guess, yeah.”

There was another awkward silence. Traffic roared on the other side of the wall as if closing in on me. The beginnings of an anxiety attack started to gather momentum as my bleak feelings snowballed. I hoped she would keep talking, would say anything at all.

“You really want me to come to this thing?” she finally asked.

Relief briefly washed over me, and I brightened. “You wouldn’t be any more unwelcome than I am.”

She rasped a chuckle. “Give me the details.”

I gave her the details.

“All right, I’ll think about it,” she replied, more as if she wanted to conclude the call on a ceasefire note than as if she were really considering coming.

T
he wedding was held in a large Mission-style church in the heart of old Paso Robles. It was one of those high-ceilinged places with dark wood crossbeams, painted frescoes, stained-glass windows, pilastered walls, burnished pews, and baroque religious iconography decorating the apse. As the two hundred or so guests filed in, Pachelbel’s “Canon” thundered from an upper-level organ. Sunlight rayed through the colored windows, painting the church in an iridescent splendor.

In an effort to diminish the magnitude of his various infirmities, Jack stutter-stepped in discreetly from the wings and took his place at the base of the altar next to me, he in his formal black tuxedo and me in my Burgundy-colored, velvet eyesore. We stood shoulder to shoulder, but he refused to look at me. I knew he was afraid I was going to start cracking up, and then that would make
him
start cracking up. With his ankle cast, raked face, and broken nose, it was a surprise to me that the entire congregation wasn’t already in hysterics. It was fitting, however, that he

When the wedding party was all in place and Pachelbel’s “Canon” had ended, the priest intoned a few words, then music filled the church again, signaling the beginning of the wedding processional. Sensing something momentous in the ceremony, Jack and I both turned and watched Babs in her traditional white gown, complete with beaded veil and flowing train trailing over the tile, glide to the altar escorted by her proud, imperious-looking father. I glanced furtively at Jack; the big lug was wiping away tears with the back of his hand. Tears of relief, I assumed.

Then, the sacramental rite turned serious. The priest solemnly read the vows, the
I do
s were iterated without hesitation, and the newlywed couple briefly kissed. Throughout it all I reflected on my own wedding, sentimentalizing it in my fractured memory. When Jack and Babs exchanged rings I had to look down and bite my lip to keep from bursting out laughing. All I could think of was where those personalized bands were a scant 48 hours ago. Oh, well I thought. Though he was damaged goods, I had delivered Jack to the altar in virtually one piece. Mission accomplished.

As they paraded back down the aisle, passing beneath the nave and atrium with colored light spilling over them and Jack hobbling awkwardly on his crutches in an effort to keep pace, I caught a glimpse of Victoria with her new husband. I hadn’t seen her in months, but she looked sensational in a dark blue designer dress that I’m sure had cost her a fortune. Her husband was a stocky guy with a head of thick wavy hair and a chiseled face that exuded quiet self-confidence.

When the wedding ceremony had concluded and the organ music had faded and the rice had been tossed, I walked alone out to the parking lot. A marine layer had come in while we were in the church and closed off the sky, dulling the grounds and appropriately reflecting my glum mood. A chilly mist came with it and I hugged my chest and shivered.

As I climbed into my wreck of a car and fired it up, I spotted Victoria being helped up into a mammoth black SUV. She had obviously traded me in for a security blanket—although the armored vehicle seemed like overkill. Her new husband closed the door gently on her, making her disappear behind the dark-tinted windows, then strode around to the driver’s side, climbed up into the cockpit, and roared off. I closed my eyes and leaned back, debating whether I should just make the exchange for the rental and blow off the reception, which was likely to be more depressing than I could tolerate. No, I remembered, I had promised Jack I would dance with Babs.

The reception was held in the backyard of the bride’s family’s house, and it must have cost close to six figures because there were Japanese lanterns and a live band and numerous food stations overflowing with platters upon platters of shrimp and prime rib and, of course, all the champagne and wine that Jack and I had picked up in the course of our Dionysian week, and then some.

Once I started drinking I knew it was going to be difficult to stop—under nerve-racking circumstances it always was—so I concentrated hard on pacing myself. I poured a glass of champagne and then worked my way over to where Jack was schmoozing the relatives. In their company he was a changed person. Charming, decorously so, even if

The jazz ensemble started up and Babs came over to where Jack and I were making small talk. Jack elbowed me, so I turned to his wife and said: “Do I get a dance with the bride?”

“Sure, Miles,” she said, swept up in the emotion of the moment. She held out her hand and I took it and we walked out to the middle of the yard where a parquet dance floor had been laid down. We danced to that treacly wedding standard, “The Way You Look Tonight.” It was a slow number so I held her lightly in my arms close to my body. She was a slender, beautiful woman with medium-long hair that was pulled into an upsweep of waves for the once-in-a-lifetime (she hoped!) event. Her silk Dior wedding gown felt quietly luxurious, further emphasizing the gulf that was opening up between Jack and me.

“So, did you two have a good time?” she slyly asked as we stepped to the melodic rhythms.

“Up until the car accident,” I skirted the question.

She laughed and threw back her head and looked at me with the benevolent expression of a gently scolding mother. “How’d that
really
happen?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to read her. “Jack told you, didn’t he?”

“I’d love to hear your version.”

“His is better.”

Surprisingly, she threw back her head and laughed again. Then, she brought her red-lipsticked mouth close to my ear and whispered, in a nastier tone, “Did he fuck anybody?”

“Barbara,” I said, holding her away from me, feigning shock. “Would I allow that to happen?”

She gave me a skeptical look, then erased it with a smile like she didn’t really care. We resumed our cheek-to-cheek dancing position and she brushed her mouth against my ear and said, her voice roughened, “Well, if he did, tell him we’re even.”

Touché.

The band finished the number and I thanked Babs for the dance, kissed her on the cheek, and wished her good fortune.

I strolled over to the drinks table and poured a second glass of champagne. When I turned around, Victoria was standing in front of me. Her black hair was cut shoulder-length and she was wearing a little more makeup than she used to, but otherwise she looked exactly as she had the day I married her, and I had trouble meeting her large hazel eyes.