“And rich people will juddddge you!” Neck Pillow sings.
“Let’s hear it for Newpooort, Newpooort, Newpooort!” Lila adds.
The three Portsmouth Abbey girls laugh hard at their song, and for the first time since Phoebe met them, she feels the shared history, the fact that High Bun and Neck Pillow are really Suz and Nat. Lila’s best friends from high school, curling their hair before parties and doing Tae Bo workouts in the mornings and making blueberry muffins on Sunday afternoons and menstruating at the same exact time and being so proud.
“I can’t believe we’re here!” Suz shouts and Nat adds, “Woot, woot, bitches!”
“What?” Marla says, turning around. “I can’t hear you over the music!”
“I just said, Woot, woot bitches!” Nat says.
“Hoot hoot?” Marla asks, then looks to Juice for help, but Juice is silent and humiliated against the door. She just shrugs, returns her gaze to her green toy.
I want to slam it with my hard cock, Robert writes.
“Turn right,” Waze orders.
At some point, Marla suggests putting the top up so they can all hear each other better, but Lila says that defeats the point of renting a convertible.
“We already have cars with tops,” Lila says.
Suz agrees immediately. “That’s true. All my cars do have tops.”
Phoebe heads down Ocean Drive and everyone squeals, hands in the air. Phoebe is quiet but is glad to be in motion. The wind makes talking almost impossible. Though Suz keeps trying anyway. Suz shouts something about convertibles being fun. And Phoebe can feel it, too. Some kind of satisfaction feeling the car sticking to the road as she rounds the curb a little faster. She never drove her father’s car like this.
“Jesus, slow down!” Marla says.
“I’m going the speed limit,” Phoebe says.
The child is in the back, entirely silent, traumatized. Her face looks comical in the rearview mirror—exactly the same when in motion and not in motion. Sort of like a dog. Phoebe wonders when the child will speak, what she might possibly report from the depths of her consciousness. Juice reminds Phoebe of herself when she was younger, always silent in the car. Silence is her communication.
“No, go faster!” Lila cries. “I love it. I just love it.”
But when they approach downtown, they hit traffic. A long line of red taillights in front of them. Phoebe can’t see the end of it. She slows down, and the car keeps lurching just enough to make them jostle. She is not very good at being in first gear, but nobody complains.
“I can’t believe we’re actually here!” Suz says.
The nurse, despite all she has seen these past two years being a nurse, lives in a constant state of disbelief about the most ordinary things.
“I feel like we’ve been planning this forever,” Nat says.
“We seriously have!” Suz says.
But Lila is concerned they are going to be late to the boat. “Does Waze say how long the traffic will be?”
“Twenty minutes,” Phoebe says.
“Guess this is what happens when you plan a destination wedding,” Marla says.
“This isn’t a destination wedding,” Suz says. “They live here.”
“Anywhere farther than thirty minutes in Rhode Island is a destination wedding,” Marla insists.
“We were actually thinking of doing a destination wedding in Germany, until Covid,” Lila says.
“Why Germany?” Nat asks.
“They got engaged there!” Suz says.
“I only vaguely sort of remember that,” Nat says.
“Ooohh, tell the story!” Suz says to Lila, clapping her hands. “Tell the story.”
“We’ve heard the story,” Marla says.
“Well, I don’t know it,” Nat says.
“Neither do I,” Phoebe says.
So Lila tells the story.
“Six months after we met, Gary and I decided to take a big trip to Europe because my father was doing really well,” Lila says, leaning forward. She sounds very excited to tell the story, and Nat and Suz are excited to hear the story, and Phoebe imagines they could probably listen to it a thousand times the way that her father could watch Vietnam War movies over and over again. Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do. Why they are willing to sacrifice who they are and a good night’s sleep for the noble cause of defending democracy and Lila and Gary’s love.
“Germany was our last stop,” Lila says. “We went to the Black Forest to see the Walt Disney Castle.”
“Oh, wow, you actually went to the Mad King’s Castle?” Phoebe asks. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“No, I said, the Walt Disney Castle,” Lila clarifies.
