Part 34 (1/2)
Magnolia stood up and smoothed her ruffled dress as best she could. She grasped the bouquet, holding it tightly in front of her gal loping heart, and walked out of Abbey's bedroom. The rooms at the end of the hall were silent. A blur of faces turned to look at her as she walked toward the candlelight. The guests had parted, leaving a wide swath. The chapel of love, Abbey's dining room, seemed fifty miles away.
As Magnolia walked closer, she saw that Veronique, Abbey's brother and sister-in-law, and Abbey's college roommate were each holding a pole that supported an embroidered Spanish shawl that usually hung on the grand piano. Under the canopy, Daniel stood next to the older man she'd seen with him before-now, his best man.
Matthew Hirsch, in a black velvet yarmulke and a tallis over his Armani suit, winked at Magnolia as she walked toward the chuppah.
Daniel bowed to her slightly and offered a half-smile. A white rose bud was now in his lapel.
The pianist changed to ”Here Comes the Bride.” Magnolia hadn't taken her friend for the sort of woman who would want that song played at her wedding, but it certainly got everyone's attention. Every eye turned to Abbey as she proceeded through her living room, twin kling like a small star.
Later, when friends asked Magnolia to describe the ceremony, all she could remember was that Abbey circled Daniel seven times, there were vows in three languages-English, French, and Hebrew-and the bride and groom each sipped from a tall silver goblet of wine, pre sumably poured from an excellent Rothschild vintage and a very good year. The rabbi spoke of fate, of people coming together, and used the word beshert. Magnolia glanced down to see if her red bracelet was still there. It had disappeared. ”When the job is done, the bracelet will be gone,” she remembered Malka as saying. But she couldn't contemplate what the missing bracelet might mean, because just then Daniel stepped on the gla.s.s and kissed Abbey like the actor in the favorite movie of Magnolia's mother, A Man and a Woman. Shouts of mazel tov and bonne chance echoed through the apartment.
As the piano played Cole Porter, waiters circulated with champagne and more champagne. There was dancing, singing, and shrieks of joy.
The pianist struck up ”Hava Nagila,” and Rabbi Hirsch grabbed Mag nolia by the waist for several loops of the hora. Abbey broke away from Daniel, took both of Magnolia's hands, and began twirling with her in the center of a circle of clapping friends and relatives.
”If you expect me to do the cancan, forget it,” Magnolia said.
”Thanks for being so sportive about wearing the dress,” Abbey said. ”It didn't come from the flea market, by the way.”
”Oh, really?” Magnolia said, half out of breath as the two of them whirled.
”It was Daniel's mother's. Couture. From her trousseau.”
”Do I have to give it back?” Magnolia said. ”I like it better now.”
”It's yours,” Abbey said. ”The least I can do.”
At midnight waiters brought out a four-layer wedding cake of chocolate iced in white fondant. Chocolate piping replicated the embroidery from the shawl that had doubled as the wedding canopy.
The couple cut the cake and fed each other pieces, and then everyone gorged on cake, profiteroles, and lemon squares. Well past 1:30, the bride and groom bid the crowd adieu and guests started to drift away.
Magnolia found her boots-which she'd pulled off hours before and left in a corner-and went to Abbey's bedroom to put them on.
Ringlets stuck to her face. She looked as if she'd been to a hockey game, not a wedding.
”Magnolia Gold, I don't believe I've ever seen you this ripped,”
Cameron said as she walked out of the bedroom.
She'd danced with him hours before. Then he'd switched to Veronique as a partner, and Magnolia had got into a long, inebriated conversation with Daniel's father, who promised Magnolia an invita tion to the Cohen villa in St. Tropez, providing she didn't keep her bikini top on like a typical American. Magnolia had agreed.
”Hmmm,” Magnolia said to Cameron, swaying in the boots, which felt staggeringly high. ”I might have had a little too much to drink.”
Feeling at risk of falling, she put her arms around his neck.
In Abbey's hallway, as a clock chimed, she suddenly gave him a sloppy, lingering kiss. He kissed her back. His tongue tasted like chilled champagne.
”C'mon, Mags,” he said, grabbing her around the waist. ”I'm walk ing you home.”
A fine rain fell as they strolled, wordlessly, down Central Park West, then past brownstones on the side streets where more sensible people had gone to bed hours before.
”I can't believe she did it,” Magnolia said, several times. ”It took such guts.”
”Sometimes guts is all you need,” Cam said.
”Guts and roses.”
They arrived at her building. Magnolia was still happily intoxi cated, but not so skunk-drunk that she didn't remember that fifteen minutes before she'd kissed her longtime former employee and cur rent friend. And he hadn't pulled away. Quite the opposite.
As if she were a doc.u.mentary filmmaker shooting from across the street, she saw-in black and white-a man and a woman holding each other. The couple looked as if they belonged together. Magnolia wondered what would happen next. But mist blurred the image, and she was suddenly exhausted.
It was hard to tell whether what she was seeing was real or a cham pagne dream.
Magnolia awoke at noon and forced herself out of a catatonic sleep. She was wearing her underwear and she was alone, which she decided were both good things. She remembered enough about last night to wonder if Cameron would be there and if they'd both be naked. She winced.
Once she'd published an article in Lady that said if you have a hangover you should make yourself a fruit smoothie from a banana, soy milk, and a handful of vitamins. Magnolia opened her refrigera tor. It contained batteries, leftover pad thai, and some rather nasty carrots. She filled a gla.s.s with water, drank it down with two aspirin, and filled it again.
How big a fool had she made of herself ? Enough so that her first instinct was to go back to bed. This is why people have dogs, she reminded herself as she cleaned up Biggie and Lola's mess, to make sure that they don't simply pull the covers over their heads and never get up after they have thoroughly embarra.s.sed themselves. She fell into some jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt, grabbed a raincoat and hat, and attached the dogs' leashes.
”Some mail was dropped off for you, Miss Gold,” her doorman said as she walked out.
More subpoenas? They could wait. ”I'll get it on the way back,”
she said. Magnolia took the dogs to Central Park; the day was surpris ingly warm, with the promise of spring in the air, and the rain stopped the minute she started walking. You weren't supposed to let dogs loose at this time of the day, but what the h.e.l.l-in the ranking of mistakes she might have made in the last twelve hours, the offense was small.
She unhooked Biggie's and Lola's leashes and for a full hour watched them revel in the wet gra.s.s. Her headache faded, she walked back home, and brought up the mail. Sure enough, the thin letter was a subpoena. Bebe and Jock's trial would be starting next week, and she was cordially invited to appear in court.
The second piece of mail was large and heavy, taped shut in a big manila envelope with no stamps or return address. Inside was another sealed envelope, and a handwritten note.
”Magnolia,” it read. ”I've been wanting to show you my book for a long time. My agent called last night to say it sold. If you'd do me the favor of reading it, I would be very grateful. Also, I need some help with the dedication and acknowledgments.”
Magnolia ripped open the second envelope to find a ma.n.u.script of more than five hundred typed pages. The first page had only a few words: A Friend Indeed by Cameron Dane.
She walked to her living room couch, and began to read. Magnolia read through the afternoon, well into the night, and long past sunrise, stopping only for coffee.
At nine, she dialed Cameron's number. His voice mail picked up.
”If you wanted to ask me out,” she said, ”you could have just called.”
Chapter 4 0.
A Goose Is Cooked.
Magnolia slipped into a seat in the remarkably unsupreme courtroom. Elizabeth Lester Duvall, her short hair shorter than usual, had parked herself next to the Post's Mike McCourt, most likely willing him to cover the trial through her own eyes. Darlene Knudson sat behind a row of attorneys-although the lawyer who'd administered Magnolia's deposition was conspicuously absent. Had he been hired by Central Casting, she wondered, to try to unhinge her? On the far right, Felicity Dingle-whose knitting needles were clicking furiously on a long, drab garment-was stationed next to Arthur Montgomery, Bebe's lead lawyer.
”All rise,” said a court officer. As everyone in the courtroom stood, a short, stout woman in half-gla.s.ses waddled to the judge's chair. Mag nolia deflated. She'd been expecting the smash of a gavel and, in the role of judge, was thinking along the lines of Meryl Streep. The crowd had barely taken their seats when ”the defense calls John Crawford Flanagan Jr., CEO of Scarborough Magazines” rang out in the room. Jock-on this, the second day of the trial-strolled to the witness stand for his swearing-in.