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  ‘Oh, boy!’ Elliot said. ‘Will there be a family feud?’

  ‘With guns,’ Brice added hopefully.

  Kate ignored the two of them despite her gratitude. ‘We have to get Bina out of here before the rest of the rabble,’ Kate told the two men.

  ‘You aren’t kidding. Just look at her.’ Elliot tilted his head toward Bina.

  Kate had to agree. Bina’s makeup was mostly smeared off her face, and mascara had run down her cheeks. Kate gestured and Elliot tapped Brice on the leg.

  ‘Time to go now,’ Elliot told Brice.

  ‘No fucking kidding,’ Brice responded. ‘The last thing Bina needs right now is to have rice land on her face. It would stick.’

  Elliot scrunched up his face in disgust at that thought. ‘Then let’s strike the set,’ Brice suggested. Elliot and Kate nodded enthusiastically and they crept as quietly as they could out of the pew, out of the foyer, and out of the church.

  They were lucky to snag a passing cab – not so easy in a borough dependent on car services. They piled out at Carl’s of Carroll Gardens, where everyone in Brooklyn, it seemed, had their wedding reception.

  ‘Well, here we go,’ Kate said as they stood before the entrance. Kate gave Elliot a nervous smile and they linked their arms and went through the revolving doors, followed by Brice and Bina. Thankfully, the reception area was empty except for a few bustling waiters who had seen a lot worse than Bina’s ruined face.

  ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ Brice whispered in Kate’s ear. ‘I’m going to take Little Miss Three Mile Island in for a makeup makeover. She’s had a serious meltdown.’

  ‘It’s down the hall, to the left,’ said Kate. She had been to this banquet hall many times in the past. Maybe a dozen people she knew had got married here, but it would be a quiet day at Andrew Country Day School before she ever would. Assembly line wedding, with the same music, the same guests, the same MC, the same cake. ‘Take her away,’ Kate said. ‘And Brice, darling, please be gentle.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Brice said and started to push Bina from behind. ‘Come on, honey. Time for some surgery from Dr Brice.’

  Kate heard Bina’s nasal protesting voice trail off as she and Brice disappeared down the hall.

  ‘Well,’ said Kate, turning her attention to Elliot. ‘Are you ready for your first Brooklyn reception?’

  ‘Oh, Katie! This is going to be so much fun,’ Elliot said with a smirk.

  ‘Cut the Katie before you get your tongue cut out,’ Kate warned him. ‘I’ve got a mission. Let’s see where we are supposed to sit, change it if we can and then avoid everyone until we’ve regrouped.’

  ‘Sure. I’m happy just to gape.’ Elliot craned his neck almost the way Linda Blair had in The Exorcist. ‘Where do they get these smoked mirrors? Are they left over from the sixties or can you still buy them?’ he asked, his voice low. It was kind of like Halloween in Greenwich Village. Then he looked down at his watch. ‘Kate, I’m starting to worry about what Brice is doing to Bina. Let me go and find them. I’ll be right back. You wait here for the resurrection.’ Elliot darted off in the direction of the bathroom.

  Once alone, Kate walked over to the gift table and placed her box from Tiffany’s right in the center. She knew it wouldn’t be the only one there wrapped in distinctive robin’s-egg blue, but she was fairly certain the beautiful cut-glass bowl would be the only gift that actually came from Tiffany’s. Those blue boxes were often more highly prized than the contents they carried and were passed around over and over, filled with gifts from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, or Pottery Barn.

  The reception area was beginning to fill up. But where the hell was Elliot with Brice and Bina? Kate could hear the cars pulling up outside. It wasn’t only Bina who would be tortured at this event. Kate was definitely not in the mood to deal with all these people – well-meaning or not – asking her about her ‘love life’ and whether wedding bells were in her future, too. People from the old neighborhood neither thought deeply personal questions were off limits nor took notice of how she had managed to add a ‘Dr’ before her name. All everyone here would talk about was when there would be a ‘Mrs’ in front.

  Kate put this all out of her mind because she had a goal to achieve. She had to get over to the table where the seating plans were and make sure her party of four was at the same table. Then she had to get into the closed banquet hall and move the place cards on that table around so that Bina would be tightly cordoned off from attacking hyenas, the type that tried to take down a straggler or the weakest member in the herd.

  She approached the assignment table with complete authority. If she didn’t she might get stopped by one of the staff. They were used to unmarried women putting themselves beside bachelors, bitter aunts removing themselves from tables with their relatives, even parents who moved their kids to other tables so they could eat dinner in peace. Kate quickly spotted the two important cards. Miss Katie Jameson and guest. Table nine. She shook her head. Not only had the ‘Dr’ been omitted but she didn’t even get her full name. She hated being called ‘Katie’, but Bunny and her mother wouldn’t care about such subtleties.

  Two cards above her own was Miss Bina Horowitz and Mr Jack Weintraub. That was something Kate knew she couldn’t afford to let Bina see. Bunny’s mother obviously hadn’t remembered about Jack’s trip. Kate picked the card up, turned it over and, using a black marker she had put in her purse for this very situation, she wrote Miss Bina Horowitz and guest on the back of the card and replaced it. She hoped that Bina wouldn’t turn the card over and that Elliot and Brice were smart enough to pocket them. They’d probably want them as scrapbook souvenirs anyway.

  So far, so good, Kate thought. Next, and last, was getting to the actual table to manipulate the place cards. If Bina was seated next to Bev or Barbie she wouldn’t last five minutes. Of course, they might be seated in the traditional boy-girl-boy-boring arrangement. Kate sighed, thinking of one more dinner beside Bobbie, Barbie’s excessively dull husband. She walked to the closed entrance of the banquet hall and, as luck would have it, a hassled-looking waiter came out. She grabbed at the door closing behind him as he departed with an armful of linens and stepped into the room.

  A sign said ‘Tromboli–Beckmen Wedding Saturday’. Under it was ‘Eisenberg Bar Mitzvah Sunday’. Kate surveyed the room. The interior of the hall was Bunny Tromboli’s dream come true, amazingly close to Kate’s nightmare. The decorations, the centerpieces, the candles – everything was a middle-class version of photographs Bunny had been clipping and saving from society pages since she was ten. All of the Bitches, except Kate, had done the same. Kate sighed deeply. If she had ever allowed herself to imagine the elements of a dream wedding, the major emphasis had been on the groom, not the flatware.

  Yet despite the inconceivably garish tablecloths and place settings – hot pink and orange, a combination Kate saw no use for in either clothes or furnishings, along with black dinnerware and centerpieces that looked like patent leather with flourishes of net – there was something lovely, calm and even … magical about a vacant room prepared for but empty of revelers. She allowed herself to pause for a moment to take it all in. Then her mission moved her forward. She found table nine, looked it over and saw that she was right on the money not only in checking it out but also ‘editing’ it. She moved the cards so that the line-up on their side of the table was Elliot, then Kate, then Bina and, lastly, Brice. She had to juggle Bobbie and Johnnie, Barbie and Bev’s husbands, to get it to work out, but in a few moments it was done. She pulled out the four chairs for her party and leaned the backs against the table – a very déclassé way to show the seats were taken and to ensure that nobody re-edited her editing.

  The noise of new arrivals outside the banquet hall had gotten much louder and then, without warning, the doors swung open. The guests began to pour in. Kate, not wanting to be found alone in the room, a target worse than a lonely duck before the hunter’s blind, decided to make her way out to the terrace that ran
along the east wall of the room. She would wait outside, get a breath of air and a bit of privacy before the onslaught. Once her crew came back there would be enough people and enough noise to allow her just to slip back inside the French doors, find the ‘Trouble Trio’ and begin the minimum required mingling. She’d mingled at dozens of weddings before, and she could do it again, she told herself.

  Out on the terrace Kate had a moment to reflect. She was overwhelmingly glad that she had not invited Michael to the affair. She would have been self-conscious and, although she shouldn’t be, rather ashamed. The clothes, the accents, the loudness, the … well, the vulgarity of it all, made her wince. She was used to it, and loved many of these people, but did not want to have to translate them for Michael or anyone else. At the same time, she wasn’t enjoying how much Elliot and Brice were enjoying their Brooklyn visit. It was too much like a visit to Great Adventure Safari Park. They were observing the wildlife with the detachment of another species.

  Kate peeked into the room. It wouldn’t take long for it to fill. And then Elliot and Brice would get to talk to the creatures they had been observing at the church. Somehow, while it was all right that Kate thought of these people as strange, outré, or louche, she didn’t like the idea of outsiders observing them in that way, not even Elliot and Brice. Yes, she reflected again, it was the right thing to do to leave Michael out; and how on earth would she have managed Bina without the help of the guys? Kate couldn’t even imagine Michael’s reaction to Bina’s overreaction. Despite the breeze, she actually felt herself breaking into a light sweat. She wasn’t sure if it was the humidity or her discomfort.

  Kate, on the terrace, continued to watch as people entered, rearranged their own place cards, hugged or kissed one another, and went for the drinks. Even through the windows, she could hear them speculating about the estimated per-plate cost of the upcoming meal, where the bride had got the dress, whether there was a bun in the oven and … then Kate saw Elliot, Brice and Bina enter the room. She had to admit it: Bina did look a thousand times more sophisticated with the terrific makeup and more gentle upswept hair style Brice’s lengthy ministrations had created. Kate reached for the handle of the French door to let herself in, only to find that the door had locked itself behind her. She tried the second one, then the third. All locked.

  Stranded. She knocked on the glass and tried desperately to get someone’s attention, but the hall was abuzz with noise. She could make out older female guests loudly declaring the ceremony to be the most beautiful wedding they’d ever seen, while the men called across the room to each other, inquiring about the outlook for the Mets.

  In moments, the room had changed from tranquil to chaotic, from empty to full, and myriad poof skirts and treacherously dangerous high hair-dos blocked her line of vision. She had lost sight of her friends. Kate thought she caught a glimpse of Brice and someone who might be Bina, now on the side of the room opposite their table, but she couldn’t be sure. She ran back down to the remaining doors of the terrace to try to get in but they were all locked. Well, she would just have to wait until someone …

  Just then, a tall blond man stepped out of the door at the other end of the terrace. What a relief!

  ‘Wait!’ Kate yelled. ‘Wait! Hold the …’ but before she could finish her sentence or make a move he had turned away and the door slammed behind him.

  12

  ‘Damn it,’ Kate muttered under her breath. She walked over to the slammed door and tried the handle, but it was locked. Meanwhile, behind her, the guy had moved to the ivy-covered wall and was looking around casually. He was, she couldn’t help but notice, one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. His blond hair must have had a dozen shades in it – the kind of hair women paid hundreds of dollars to salons for but never achieved. He was probably only a little over six foot tall, but his wide shoulders and the way his jacket tapered from them, along with legs that didn’t quit, made him incredibly well proportioned. Kate wondered whether his upper arms were muscled and cut in the way she found so attractive. She could barely see his profile but even from here she could see that he didn’t have the usual pale coloring of a blond. There was a golden tone to his skin that … well, he was altogether a golden guy, the type who is all looks and no substance.

  Then he saw Kate and turned to face her. From a full frontal he was – if it was possible – even more alluring. To her dismay Kate felt a blush rise from her chest to her neck and cursed her involuntary muscles.

  He didn’t seem to notice, he just asked, ‘At the risk of cliché, what’s a pretty girl like you doing alone in a place like this?’ He took a few steps toward her. ‘And you look distressed. Um, in the damsel, not the furniture sense.’ He smiled.

  The smile was the coup de grâce. It was marvelous the way his teeth lightened his face, parenthetical dimples formed around his mouth and his eyes, unlike most people’s when they smiled, stayed wide open. He was what might be called un canon, a living embodiment of male beauty. Kate took a step back. She was suspicious of men this good-looking and with charm as well but she couldn’t help staring. Something about him looked familiar, but she would never have forgotten him if they had met. Perhaps he was a newscaster, or someone she had seen on television. She forced herself to take her eyes away from his.

  Kate tried to keep her embarrassment from showing. ‘You could have helped by holding the door open. Now we may have to wait until someone from the Eisenberg bar mitzvah lets us in tomorrow afternoon.’ The words had come out more sharply than she meant them to. He cocked his head and observed her. She felt a trifle self-conscious at the way he looked at her. Not that it was an up and down examination. Merely because it was so intent – as if he were memorizing every detail of her, from her exposed collarbone to her Jimmy Choo shoes. She turned and looked in at the party through the long window.

  ‘Is that such a bad thing?’ he asked.

  At the far side of the room Kate could see Bina, flanked by Brice and Elliot, looking around, presumably for Kate. Oh no, she couldn’t let Bina sit down among their old crowd without her protection! There would be a feeding frenzy. She rattled the door handle. No luck. ‘Merde!’ she said.

  ‘Ah. Parlez-vous français?’ he asked, almost too quickly.

  She turned away from the party to look at him, face to face. This guy wasn’t just an average hottie. He had the smile of a man who knew he was more than handsome and very acceptable to women. It was a well-practiced smile that bathed Kate in warmth. She felt as if she were the first woman in the entire world to ever see such an expression of welcome. The guy was absolutely gorgeous, what French slang would describe as un block.

  ‘Oui.’ Kate blushed, and cursed the paleness of her skin. She might as well have her feelings written in neon on her forehead. ‘Je parle un petit peu, mais avec un accent très mauvais,’ she told him.

  ‘Mais non. Pas mal. Vraiment.’

  Handsome as the guy was – and his accent was perfect – Kate was in no mood to test her skills in a foreign tongue right now, though the thought of his tongue was a momentary distraction from her desperation. She turned and tried once again to open the doors, but they were clearly catchlocks, only openable from the inside. ‘We’re stuck out here,’ she said.

  ‘What an unexpected bonus at an affair like this. Maybe it’s an omen,’ Mr Gorgeous continued. Perfect damn teeth. ‘Maybe we’re not meant to participate in the Bunny Tromboli and Arnie Beckmen nuptials.’ He leaned back on the terrace railing, crossed one foot in front of the other, and gave Kate another appreciative once-over. ‘Personally, I would take that as a gift.’

  Kate was too uptight to flirt or respond to compliments, especially from a guy as practiced at them as he was.

  ‘You don’t look like you’re from around these parts,’ he said, doing a passable Gary Cooper accent. He looked a little like the late actor, too, and probably knew it.

  Kate had always preferred slightly nerdy boyfriends, no matter what Elliot said. They were more rea
l, more sincere. Ever since a really handsome Oxford exchange student had asked her on their first date, ‘How can I possibly keep from falling in love with you?’ and subsequently dated her roommate a week later, she’d been wary of charm. ‘Et vous?’ she asked, just as a test.

  ‘Oui, je suis un fils de Brooklyn,’ he answered with a mischievous smile.

  ‘Your accent is perfect,’ Kate observed admiringly.

  ‘My French accent or the Brooklyn one?’ he asked and smiled again. Looks like his should be against the law, she thought. They could turn the most pedestrian package into someone who seemed special. Despite that thought, Kate couldn’t help taking a glance at his hand, checking for a wedding band. There was none. Not that it mattered to her, she told herself. Kate didn’t know what this guy was about – the answer was probably rien – and she didn’t have the time to find out.

  Turning around, she peered through the glass. She could see that Elliot had found the table where she knew the place card that said Katie Jameson was, now directly next to one that said Elliot Winston. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see Bev Clemenza and her husband Johnnie headed directly toward him. Predictably, Barbie and Bobbie Cohen were right behind them. ‘I have to get in there,’ Kate said in a panic. She grabbed the knob and shook the door frantically.

  ‘Are you a friend of the groom or the bride?’ the hottie asked her.

  She knocked again on the window. ‘Bride,’ she answered tersely. But then realized how rude it sounded. ‘Bunny is one of my oldest friends,’ she added. Through the glass she watched in a paralysis of horror as Elliot shook Bobbie’s hand then Johnnie’s.