This bride had chosen an anemic rainbow theme for her B-maids, vapid springtime pastels that made us look like little unfound Easter eggs. Faded lumps, lost and forgotten in the autumn leaves. I got stuck with the orange dress—the exact color of that milky, orange, public bathroom soap—because it does really awful things to tawny skin and because, in truth, brides know precisely what they’re doing. They know what will make their B-maids look their absolute, unforgettable, all-time worst.
Yeah, yeah, I know, brides say that’s not true anymore, that times have changed. But—and I say this with authority based on a great deal of recent experience—there are way too many sorry-looking bridesmaids out there for it to be coincidence.
Number eleven wedding was done up in the high style of the new millennium: overblown and overbudget. Six-figures if it was a dime. They staged it on the groom’s parents’ spread, a small kingdom chiseled into the Hill Country just outside of Austin, an estate on its own private hill.
When it was featured in the architectural magazine—the one that never does Texas houses if it can help it—they gushed, and I quote:
With its creamy blond fascia hewn from the chiseled limestone of the Austin hills, with its patchwork of rooftops quilted in the rusty blues of Texas slate, this magnificent home proudly straddles the hill’s rough summit. In the early evening sun, the meandering silhouette forms a miniature golden cityscape, a buttery skyline that peaks and dips in mimicry of the rise and fall of the rock beneath.
Rusty blue? Buttery skyline?
I knew the whole article by heart. It had been recited to me daily, breathlessly, for most of the past twenty-four months. It just so happened that this miniature golden cityscape, this monster mansion with its eye-bugging views of hill and river, lake and sky was more than mere backdrop. It was, in fact, the magic potion, the crucial catalyst that had brought the loving couple together. Love at first sight. My friend had seen the place on the cover of the magazine, had fallen in love first with the house and then, after a period of focused Diamond Girl determination, with its only son. Poor guy. Targeted, pursued and bagged before he knew what was chasing him. I guess if you had to marry a house, though, this one wasn’t bad. As houses go.
I know that sounds harsh but I was all weddinged out. It had been a long year.
There were two radiant white tents: one for the luncheon buffet and one for the obligatory, inoffensive, soft rock band and parquet dance floor. Each was perched in perfect symmetry on different strata of the hill, as though God had been in a good mood and had designed the terrain for just this occasion.
Music, food, a buttery skyline and champagne flowing like the Colorado River below us. It was getting late in the day. There’d been some serious toasting, especially by the father of the groom who was pulling triple duty as expansive host, father of the groom and best man. Actually, quadruple duty. Add financier to that list. Of the wedding and the doorknob diamond. I couldn’t look at the guy without thinking, prime rib. If you stuck a sweaty face—no neck—and some chunky limbs on those slabs of rare meat oozing under the heat lamps in the luncheon buffet, you’d have yourself a genuine replica of the groom’s dad. Should you want one. Which you wouldn’t.
He bellowed congratulations to his son, well-wishes for the bride and public introductions of his many, many attending business associates. And with each new toast, with each lifted glass, you could hear the subliminal scream, “This is all mine, I did all this. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”
Diamonds can be pricey—and I don’t mean for the groom or his family. I pictured the carnage of my poor friend’s life now, with Mr. Prime Rib in charge. Shudder.
Thank goodness he wasn’t my problem. Because, orange-soap dress notwithstanding, I was having an amazing time. I’d danced and laughed, and laughed and danced until finally, breathless, I’d had to sneak off to a deserted corner of the dance tent to have a quick gulp of autumn air and expensive champagne. I held myself perfectly still and let the swirl fall away. The light was magic. I even forgot to be cynical for a minute or two. The hill had granted this wedding a special aura, a fairy-tale touch. And as the sun began setting, the air took on that perfect glow, that golden glimmer of moments you think you’ll always remember.
Oh, what the hell, I said to myself. What if all my best friends were wives and mothers and I was left alone and abandoned, the last singleton in Single Town? Who cares? Sure, I was destined to be childless, struggling to eke out a meager joy from other people’s kids. Smile now, smile for Auntie Dylan. So what? Dancing on top of God’s hill, bathed in that silken light, I was content. And as the band launched into a respectable imitation of a salsa beat, I closed my eyes and tilted my head as far back as it would go to let the last, slow drip of champagne bubbles tickle down my throat.
Then I got one of my feelings. One of those feelings, where the little hairs on the back of my neck prickle out with the creeps. In my head, I saw one of Spielberg’s flesh-eating dinosaurs sneaking up, slobbering, behind me. An arm grabbed me around my waist. The champagne glass banged against my teeth. Hard.
“Dance wi’ me,” it snarled, its mouth pressed into my hair, reptile lips on the back of my ear, swamp breath on my scalp. I knew that slur, had heard it all afternoon. And as he hoisted me onto the dance floor, I knew that the groom’s dad had now become my problem, too.
I am not a tiny girl, not readily hoisted, but I was weightless, fragile in those beefy arms. Centaurs came to mind. Exactly what was it they’d done with maidens they’d snatched?
The thought was pre-empted. With a scowl of fierce concentration, he pressed my arm out to full extension—totally ignoring the crystal flute I still had clutched by its stem—and stuck a dripping jowl to my cheek. We swayed backward to gain momentum and then lunged theatrically forward into a full-body tango. I had to take several quick, ridiculous-looking, little running steps to keep from losing my balance, from being swept, literally, off my feet with my little dyed-to-match orange satin shoes dragging behind me, heels up, across the floor.
“Please don’t do this,” I managed to gasp when I finally quit trying to swallow my tongue in surprise and actually took a breath.
The band, knowing for sure upon which side their bread was buttered—and by whom—gamely switched to a tango. The dance floor cleared in a flurry of self-preservation. People crowded around the perimeter, unable to spare themselves the discomfort of witnessing my humiliation. And as we raced by their faces, I caught the looks of distaste and nervous glances. Groom Daddy was rich, old and male. Somehow this would all be my fault.
When we reached the far edge of the portable dance floor, I saw the guy I’d come with—finally—rushing to my aid, angling in on us for a cut-in rescue. Sing Hallelujah! I didn’t think he had it in him.
But Groom Daddy wasn’t having any of that. Switching arms without loosening his grip even a notch, he angrily executed that one-eighty tango turn, slammed his pot roast body back into mine and sped with long, bent-kneed strides toward the center of the floor.
“I need to…Please stop,” I squeaked out in a pathetic little wheeze. Like a gnat to a rhino, I was ignored.
Okay, okay, think! As my body tried to find some rhythm, some little bit of grace, my mind started whirling with the adrenaline rush. Options, I thought, you have to do something. Scenarios formed in my head. In one, I’d scream, he’d freeze, the band would shut down. As the echoes of my shrieks vibrated in the silence, the sobbing bride would stumble up the granite steps to the looming stone fortress, dragging her ring hand behind…Nope, no good. The bride was my friend, or at least she was before I got stuck with the orange dress. How could I mess up Her Day?
I could swoon and faint, slump against my tormentor in total dead-weight collapse. That might stop him. Oh, great, Dylan! Then they’d all think you’re drunk. You have no choice, I reasoned with myself. You have got to pull this off.
Bracing for further indignities, I composed my face into the amused and tolerant countenance of a good sport. I smoothed the stress from my forehead, brightened my eyes and just as I was working on a sparkly, little laugh,