Jason looked over at Toni. She wasn't sure that she ever before noticed the sprinkle of golden brown on the edges of his green eyes. When had they come from?
"So, I was thinking," he began.
"When I ordered you to be asleep?"
"I think better than I sleep," he said. "What if -- and hear me out on this because I think this is the idea of ideas -- we sneak out of the house and elope? Nathaniel and Amy can be our witnesses. That way, no matter what happens, we are married."
"Sweet idea," Toni said, who immediately visualize the best- and worst-case scenarios. It would make for a hell of a story. "But absolutely not. We are doing it live."
"Bridal order?"
She nodded. "Afraid so." She had worked too hard preparing this weekend to have anything -- including romance -- get in the way.
Toni had attended too many weddings where the guests tapped their feet and checked their watches, waiting for the ceremony to end so that they could finally eat something. Their priority was not the two people in front of them, joining their lives together. They did not take note of the carefully written vows and dove releases. They just wanted cake. She knew because she had been often the one eyeing the melting fondant, her dress clinging to her skin in the summer sun as well-meaning couples uncomfortably recited the same few Bible verses about how love is patient, how love would cover over a multitude of sins, how there was no fear in love, how God is love, how no man could separate them if God had done the joining, how love lifts us up where we belong, how all you need is love. No one meant these, she thought, just included them to appease some aged relations.
She would not allow that impatience. She planned a potluck barbecue before the ceremony. That way, the guests would have had sated at least one of their primal needs and would, she hoped, be fully present for the main event. This was also, though she would not admit it aloud, a hedge against their friends' general flakiness. She figured a two-hour buffer before the ceremony would assure that fewer people would miss the wedding entirely -- though, no matter how she planned and what promises they made, some would still manage to make their excuses.
She especially would not admit that, aside from renting this property for the weekend to allow for a more leisurely process, it was also so that she knew the location of her most of her wedding party at all times. 98% of her trusted that they would crawl over broken glass to be here, but there was that 2% that trusted no one -- not even herself -- to be 98% trustworthy.
Her pessimism about the reliability of their friends and family also meant that they had enough food to serve twice as many guests as they had invited. Jason had assured her that the Cervantes clan were like goldfish: they would eat until their intestines exploded, so long as there was still food available.
She did not believe they would get their deposit back if the owner had to contend with viscera.
In the living room, Amy bickered with Charlotte and Alex. Toni doubted that the couple was aware that they were arguing, only promising to clean up a mess. Still, Toni knew the low, reasonable tone her sister assumed whenever she wanted plausible deniability for her nagging.
At a glance, it was no mystery as to the direction of Amy's annoyance. It was considerably worse than Toni had thought. The living room sparkled in a way that looked magical when the belly dancers were undulating the night prior but, in the subdued light of the rain, better resembled the collision between a kindergarten classroom and the dressing room of a strip club.
Most of the wedding guests would not be permitted in the house. Yes, it would need to be cleaned before they all left tomorrow if they didn't want to irritate the owner, but it was not a task that had to occur this morning.
Only, to Amy, it would have to because it was imperfect. Imperfection -- like belly dancer glitter -- tended to spread into other corners where perfection had been comfortable until this moment. Amy needed the living room to become perfect so that it would not be infectious.
Toni walked back to the kitchen, treading on something slightly bouncy. She lifted her foot and saw, attached to it, a misplaced pasty.
Toni palmed it and walked into the argument about the best way to purge a room of glitter -- Toni believed that only fire would accomplish this, but it would more than void the security deposit. She handed it to Alex.
"Ah." Alex looked at it carefully, the light flickering over the iridescent stitchwork. "I don't think its owner will be coming back for it. Consider it a wedding present?"
Toni looked down at its missing sequins. "I'd rather it gift wrapped... and unworn."
"But it's blue," Charlotte helpfully said. "You know, 'something borrowed, something blue.' It's both."
Toni assured Charlotte that she was free to keep it as a souvenir, then. Only then did she notice the capillaries branching out from the corners of Charlotte's eyes. "You don't look well."
"Hangover," Alex said for her. "Charlotte had a big night of drinking. She's a lightweight."
Charlotte squeezed Alex's hand in a way bereft of affection. "Allergies. Probably to stripper glitter."
"Belly dancers are not strippers," said Alex. "And theirs is organic and biodegradable; you can't be allergic to it."
Toni excused herself from the reviving of a conversation they had revisited enough for the texture of their voices to go threadbare. How often did a couple have reason to argue about the allergenic properties of glitter? Though Toni was not the one who could summon belly dancers with a call. There was a vast world of experiences out there.
She returned to her room to change. Not into the clothes that she would wear at the reception and not her fairy princess wedding dress -- some cliches needed to be permitted for there to be a happy ending -- but something comfortable and light that she would not mind stained with sweat as she finished the last few chores.
There, sitting on the bed, the drizzle broke. Toni didn't know for how long -- it almost didn't seem her business -- but she held her breath for fear that it would notice the flicker of optimism in her bosom.
She waited still, dressed in jean cutoffs and a tank top, listening as the house emptied. Then she waited a little longer, feeling that she deserved all the quiet moments she could get today.
It was eerie to come down the stairs again to no people. The living room was still a problem and, for reasons to which she was not privy, Charlotte and Alex had reassigned themselves elsewhere.
Toni saw Alex on the porch before the empty jars that would serve as vases, though no one else, and went to meet her. From there, she could see Jason, Nathaniel, and Charlotte standing around the two rowboats on the edge of the pond. They seemed to be arguing animatedly.
"What are they doing?" Toni asked Alex, who readjusted flowers in a jar. She reached inside the door, pulled off the binoculars hanging there to get a better view. There, on the edge of the pond, Charlotte was playfully jabbing her finger at Jason's chest while Nathaniel heaved one of the faded boats over.
"Ah, that," she said with a rolling of eyes, having already had this conversation. "Charlotte wondered if those boats are seaworthy. Or pond worthy."
Toni nodded slowly, focusing the lenses. Jason cocked an eyebrow in skepticism, Nathaniel stood with his arms crossed and a burgeoning smirk, and Charlotte looked how Toni imagined a gremlin would: thrilled at the potential malevolent chaos. The three of them were supervised by an imperious stray cat, licking its paw without ceasing to watch them. "How are we testing that?"
Alex inhaled. "Charlotte's plan, last I heard, was to put Jason in a boat and shove him into the middle of the pond to see what happens." She laughed. "It may not be her finest work."
She hoped Jason would not accede to this plan, however effective the showers were. "And if they prove to be pond worthy?"
"I think the idea is that Jason is going to row you out into the middle of the pond after you say, 'I do.' You know, to give the guests time to get back to the tent without blinding you with pictures. When my sister was married, she and her husband went off on this rock far away and just talked for half an hour. My job was to keep the wedding guests away from them, with violence if necessary." She shrugged. "It was not as necessary as I would have liked."
Toni thought about her dress, the lace of it, and the green of the water. As she watched, they pushed one of the boats into the pond, lacking the ballast of anyone she would be marrying in six hours. Jason's eyes went wide as he shook his head wildly. They yanked on the rope to pull it out again.
Alex's pocket buzzed with a text message.
We need four towels and a wine cork, read the message from Charlotte.
Toni took the phone. This is Toni. Why a wine cork?
Our boat has a hole, Charlotte texted back. Think about the charming mishap of a wine-corked boat!
"Do not put my fiance in a boat with a hole!" Toni shouted, surprised to hear her voice echoing. She saw the three of them consulting. In a moment, the phone buzzed again.
The other boat doesn't have a hole. It is ugly. Okay?
She looked up, and the three of them stared up at her. She extended her thumb up and nodded. As she watched, they shoved the boat into the pond with Jason at the oars. It was not elegant or efficient, but the boat didn't begin to sink. In short order, she saw Jason trying to row through the algae.
"Your husband is not a master oarsman," observed Alex.
"I'm not sure he has ever been in a boat before."
Charlotte and Nathaniel shout at him from the shore, trying to give him a remedial course in rowing. Within ten minutes, he had managed to beach the boat on the opposite shore. So that would be happening. Toni considered if she ought to employ a bridal veto, but a part of her liked the idea of it, even if the execution could not possibly live up to how she imagined it.
He ran up the hill to her. His t-shirt clung to his body.
"Did you fall in the pond?" she asked.
He looked down. "Oh, this? No, it was just quite the workout. It's humid." He gave a goofy smile, one she couldn't mirror. "You know what? Why don't I change before the guests get here?"
She patted him on his damp shoulder. "Good plan."
In patting his shoulder, she felt the countdown click its start. She could almost hear the seconds diminishing until she walked down the hill a legally single woman and walked up again a married one. Technically, she would be rowed across a slime-filled pond in between, which she was sure was symbolic for something or other. Then, of course, she would have to sign the marriage certificate that she had checked on a dozen times already this weekend, just to make sure it had not walked off on her. She didn't think it would but remained paranoid that this would make her complacent, so she kept touching it to be sure.
Then she would be a married woman. She thought that she was maybe too young to apply this adjective to herself, though her mother was married and had given birth to both Toni and her sister by this point in her life. Toni had been engaged not even a year, and already the day had come. One of the most important days of her life, one she was meant to remember forever. The notion was too overwhelming, so it felt like nothing. She was in the ocean of this experience, floating in the briny deep of it, and could not begin to open her mouth to take a sip.
She looked back at the light green pond, shallow and entirely comprehensible. The pond my husband -- he would be her husband! -- would row her across. She wouldn't want to take a sip of it, but she suspected that she could jump in and touch her toes on the bottom without dipping her head under.
She would still immediately have to begin divorce proceedings if even a spot of that green got on her lovely fairy dress, but she liked the pond better now.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.