September 5, 2008
Spilled Coffee, #2
He was in a friend’s downtown loft waiting for the rest of bachelor party to arrive. This was the warmup to his big night, and he had bizarrely mixed feelings about it. Everyone was playing a craps on a borrowed table. He walked away from the game, grabbed an appetizer off a long wooden table, then retreated to the windows and looked out into the Detroit evening.
Wayne, the wealthy brother-in-law to be, pulled away from the craps table a few moments later and huddled next to him. Wayne was married to Steph, the bachelor’s soon-to-be-wife’s twin sister. Steph had the perfect life: no job, living in a mansion, two perfect children. She had the staggeringly elite country club membership and tennis lessons. Everyone in the family joked that everything came all too easily to her, and that everything Wayne touched turned to gold.
The bachelor admired that about Wayne, and in his own way, thought that he would ultimately have these same luxuries by marital osmosis. Or something.
“You know, she wants to be just like Steph,” Wayne said of the bachelor’s future wife. This came suddenly, out of nowhere. On the list of things to say given the festive moods, this was like a bee sting.
“Yeah, probably,” the bachelor said, turning to look Wayne in the eye and smiling.
Wayne put a hand on the bachelor’s shoulder. “No probably.” He smiled cartoonishly wide. “Just so you know.” The smile slowly faded to a plaintive gaze.
“Well yeah. Who wouldn’t?” Anxious laughter.
A pause, still looking at each other. The hand fell away from the shoulder.
“OK then. Let’s go have a beer.”
“Yeah, OK.”
If the subtexts of life’s events had a voice that grew louder in accordance with their prescience, this one would have screamed.
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keep it coming.