“Come on!” Lila says to Phoebe.
And so Phoebe joins. Phoebe has no other option left but to join—she tried to opt out, tried to sit on the sidelines, tried to leave this world. But she is still here. So she walks into the group, and they celebrate her arrival, clap and twirl around her. She feels silly at first, but they make it so easy. They are generous with their enthusiasm. They give it all to Phoebe, hold her hands and bump her hips, and by the time the song is over, Phoebe feels so overwhelmed, so part of the group, she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She looks in the mirror.
I am here, she thinks.
“Shots!” Lila exclaims when Phoebe returns.
But Marla doesn’t understand. “What’s the point of doing shots at this age?”
“I believe the point is to get drunk really fast,” Phoebe says.
“Right. But why? Haven’t we all been drunk before?”
“If you don’t want to get drunk really fast, then I can’t ever explain it to you,” Nat says.
“Come on, Marla!” Lila says. “Be my sister.”
Marla seems touched.
“Okay,” Marla says, like, What the fuck, why not? I’ll be a sister. Marla takes a shot. Then another. “Let’s get drunk really fast.”
“I can’t believe I’m getting married!” Lila screams, and they all go back to the dance floor. Lila flips her hair, shows off moves learned from a childhood of dance recitals. She is the happy bride again, so girlish and excited with her friends, and it’s good to see.
But then the night is over, and the Uber can’t come for an hour. Too many people trying to get a cab at the same exact time. A man on the sidewalk chucks a glass at another man’s face, and it explodes everywhere.
They walk home. It’s a longer walk than Marla made it sound. By the time they reach their street, Lila takes off her veil. In the quiet space of night, with the courage of her drunkenness, she confesses that she knows Thyme was right about her.
“Right about what?” Suz asks.
“That I have no personality,” Lila says.
“She said that to you?” Nat asks, like there is no graver insult.
“She said, ‘My dear, you are a thousand different people orbiting around a pole,’” Lila says, in a French accent.
“She wasn’t French, though,” Marla says.
“Aren’t we all that pole?” Suz says. “I feel like that pole sometimes.”
Phoebe does, too. “Though sometimes I’m not sure there is even a pole.”
They laugh. Lila looks lighter. Relieved. But Nat looks at them all, disgusted. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you straight women?”
“This has nothing to do with us being straight,” Lila says.
“Yeah, what does this have to do with us being straight?” Suz asks.
“I just spent my whole life trying to determine who I am and what I like so nobody does it for me,” Nat says. “It’s important to me. But it’s like, none of you even bother to do that. You don’t even bother to think about who you are and what you might actually like.”
Nat is angry. Nat looks like she’s been wanting to say this for years.
“Well yeah, like I just said,” Lila says. “I have no idea who the fuck I am.”
Lila is stunned into a kind of silence by her own confession. Nat, too. It makes Nat burst out laughing, like she’s thrilled to have finally said what she’s always wanted to say. She puts her arm around Lila.
“We’ll figure it out,” Nat says.
Then it is silence, the sound of cobblestones and heels, all the way back to the hotel.
IN THE LOBBY, Lila seems startled by the lights of the hotel, even though it is mostly soft candlelight. She leans on Phoebe for balance.
“Shit,” Lila says. “I’m going to be sick.”
Lila vomits in the plant pot near the stairs. She keeps her face at the trunk of the olive tree. She laughs. She says, “Who put dirt in this bowl?”
Softly, from behind the desk, Pauline says, “Me.”
PHOEBE IS THE one who walks Lila back upstairs. The other women seem grateful. They seem very tired. Ready for bed. Six days is too long for any wedding.
But Phoebe is not tired of Lila. Phoebe is not tired of anybody. Phoebe feels like she has just returned from somewhere very far away. Phoebe is here.
“Ugh. My key is not working,” Lila says. “It must be your key.”
“Is your key not in your purse?” Phoebe asks.
“I don’t know. I’m too drunk to find it. I’ll just call Gary. I gave him an extra key.”
Lila leaves a message on his phone asking for help. When she hangs up, Phoebe is about to suggest that she search through Lila’s bag or go downstairs to get another key, but Lila slides the key into Phoebe’s lock.
