Read Online Robert B. Parker by Love, Glory - Free Book Online

Everything fit them. I was afraid, sitting blankly in the back nearly anesthetized. What if I fainted? What if I went crazy when I saw her?What if I cried? When she came down the aisle she looked as she always had, tanned, perfectly made up, poised, and full of controlled power. My deep numbness worked. I sat without expression and almost without feeling; the part of me that could feel was already beginning to dwindle, more and more of me was callus tissue. Inside my thickness I watched them meet at the altar, watched them kneel, watched them rise, watched him take the ring from his brother and put it on her finger, watched her brush her veil back, watched them kiss, and watched them walk up the aisle together.
    The reception was in a long, rambling, wasp, white country club on the Marblehead-Swampscott line. The orchestra played things like “The Anniversary Waltz,” and the leader sang “Because God made thee mine,” with his mouth very close to the microphone. There was an open bar. I ordered a shot and a beer. Jennifer stood with her husband in a receiving line. I didn’t go near it. I drank my shot and washed it down with beer and ordered another one. Merchent was tall and blond with a golden tan and athletic shoulders. Someone told me he’d been captain of the tennis team at Cornell. He had blue eyes and a cleft in his chin like Cary Grant. The diamond he’d given Jennifer looked like a paperweight. All the guests looked like their clothes had been made in Paris, and all the older women talked with that Northshore honk that distinguished broads whose husbands were successful. I had another shot.
    “Friend of the bride?” the bartender said.
    “What makes you think so?”
    “I work a lot of weddings. Most people drink champagne. A shot and a beer ain’t happy drinking.”
    I didn’t answer him, I just held out the empty shot glass. He shrugged and put some blended whiskey in it. The bottle had one of those little chrome spouts in it, and he turned it nicely when the glass was full so none dripped.
    There were flowers banked around most of the room—huge arrangements spilling out of big vases, roses, and a bunch of others that I didn’t know the names of. The bridesmaids in their yellow and the ushers in their white splashed among the crowd. The bride and groom danced. The son of a bitch danced so well that he was able to make Jennifer look good. I knew she couldn’t dance a step. Or she didn’t used to be able to. Things change. I leaned my back against the bar. Without looking, I stuck my shot glass back at the bartender. No one else was at the bar. They were all drinking champagne and nibbling canapés from trays that circulated.
    “ ’Nother beer too,” I said.
    The hot booze was insulating the small feeling part, layering in more protection. I felt full of novocaine.
Here comes the fucking bride
, I murmured to myself.
All dressed in white. Christ, I never even fucked her
. As they danced, Jennifer looked up at her husband. She looked at him just as she had looked at me, and I knew he felt just like I had, that he was all that Jennifer was interested in. She must have looked at Nick Taylor that way.
Poor bastard, no wonder he’d been walking around with a ring in his pocket. Like me. He believed her
. Even drunk I knew it wasn’t quite fair to Jennifer. We were talking about different things when we talked about love, my definition didn’t have to prevail.
    There were tall windows around the open dancefloor. Outside, trees moved in the summer wind and beyond them people played golf on a green rolling course that seemed eternal. The room was air-conditioned and cool, and high-ceilinged.
The rich are different than we are. Yeah, they’re cooler
. The colored dresses and the flowers were beginning to blur and the room was starting to look like an impressionist painting.
I better stick to beer. No more shots
. The beer had lost most of its taste. I sipped it from the bottle.
    “Boonie, how nice