The Completionist Read online

  Because I missed the rehearsal entirely, and also did not arrive what you’d call early to the party, I missed a few things Fred had arranged: a receiving line with the family, a toast. I suppose in reality the party planner arranged them, but Fred’s still angry, whereas the party planner has been paid to treat me like I’m some kind of minor prince. The party planner’s name is Sophie, hired by the Walkers, the family Fred’s marrying into. She has bright red hair. She is weaving through the crowd, toward me, with a smile tipping the corner of her mouth. So I’m watching her mouth, to keep myself from watching the drinks she’s carrying, one of which is for me.

  “Here you are, Private.” She slides the glass into my hand. Ice—real ice. Music, conversation, a cool breeze through the window, red hair, a black dress. I’m not even sure how I got here.

  “Thank you, Sophie.”

  She leads me by the elbow toward a potted plant the size of a couch stood on end. There’s a low plush bench next to it, and my gratefulness index is now skyrocketing—my feet are killing me. The shoes. They’re high-cut, and with every step the sturdy, expensive, handcrafted-in-hell imported leather is now slicing into the undersides of my anklebones. The toe box is cramped, too, and the inside corner of the nail on my right small toe has cut a bloody slit in the side of the toe next to it. My combat boots and I have been through worse together, but these fancy, unyielding new wedding shoes are something else. I can barely walk.

  “Do they really call it debriefing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She’s winking at me. She’s paid to—motivated to—treat me a certain way, as Fred’s brother, but a semiprivate drink with me under the plant seems to be her idea. “In the army. Do they call it debriefing when you bring a soldier up to speed on a mission? Or am I not using that term right?”

  “I was in the Marines. You’re using it right.”

  “Well, Marine. Let me debrief you.” Now the act she’s putting on is so obvious that we both have to laugh. So nothing’s on between me and Sophie the Party Planner after all. It’s too bad. She is a beauty, pale skin in a black dress with that red hair, some fun in her eyes, a drink in her hand. We’re sitting next to each other on the bench now, and she’s crossed one leg over the other, in my direction. She’s wearing heels, and with her legs crossed like this, her shoe hangs a bit loose from her foot so that her instep is visible. I could reach down and cup her instep, or better, her ankle, and from there, slip up the black-stockinged calf to her knee, to her skirt hem, to the inner line of her leg, to her waist, up, up. Left breast. Collarbone. Behind the ear. Now I’m rethinking the same trajectory, only this time with my mouth. Gentle pressure, relentlessly applied.

  Sophie takes the merest sip of her drink and her eyes are amused. I’m embarrassed. I might even have been panting. Half my drink is gone already.

  “I do know how to behave myself,” I tell her humbly. “At a thing like this. I apologize for being late. I must have put you in a tight spot with Fred.”

  “Oh, Fredericka has been wonderful. I’m so grateful to Mrs. Walker for introducing us. I really hope she’ll remember me for the birth parties and the rest of her Care Circle events,” Sophie says warmly. She might even mean it. Fred can be charming when she wants to be. “So let me tell you what you missed, Private. By the way, were you supposed to be in your dress uniform? You and your father both?”

  “Hm.”

  “Hm. Funny, that was what Captain Quinn said, too. I think Fredericka hoped to show off her two handsome men a bit.” More likely, Fred was concerned that Pop and I wouldn’t have nice enough suits to wear. And we don’t, as I can see by looking around at the men here. But the shoes are right, at least.

  “My dress blues are at the cleaner’s.” As a point of fact, as a grunt-level general discharge, I’m not allowed to wear dress blues to anything less than a full-color parade in my honor, and there isn’t one currently scheduled anywhere on the planet. But I don’t see the point in explaining regulation to a pretty girl who’s just trying to do her job.

  “Not a problem. But I know she’d like you to wear them to the ceremony. Where was I? About forty-five minutes into the evening, there was a brief toast by Mr. and Mrs. Walker, welcoming guests and inviting them to join a receiving line to say hello to the bride- and groom-to-be and meet the families—”

  “I’m truly sorry I was late.”

  “You’ll make it up to me, I’m sure. But you did miss the first half of the cocktail reception as well as the entire receiving line, which means I have a short list of people I’m going to bring you around to, so that they can meet you before the ceremony. All right?”

  “And here I’ve been hoping we could just sit all night under this magnificent . . . palm tree, is it?”

  “Dieffenbachia,” Sophie says briskly, glancing up at it. It’s fake, of course. Not even the Walkers are that rich. “I’m afraid not. But I’ll try to make it quick.”

  “You haven’t finished your drink,” I point out. My own is gone, but I’m holding the glass close, for the ice alone. I’m not sure when I’ve ever had the pleasure of slurping a piece of whiskey-soaked ice into my mouth. Something I’ve seen in old movies but never done.

  “That’s where I’ll need your help.” She hands her drink to me. “I’ve only taken a few sips. But I don’t have cooties, promise.”

  It’s all I can do not to lean over and kiss her. “Thanks.”

  As I wet my lips with her drink Sophie gives me an appraising look. Still amused—that seems to be her baseline—but it’s easy to detect something like triumph, too. Clearly Fred has told Sophie the Party Planner exactly how to handle me, and while she might not have been sure how far her charm and two drinks with real ice (real, actual, frozen H2.0—they might as well be serving drinks with straws made out of peacock feathers) would travel with a hardened veteran of the Wars, I’m making this all too easy for her. Sophie’s report to my enraged pregnant older sister tomorrow should be mollifying: He was an absolute teddy bear.

  “You must be so happy,” Sophie says to me, smiling.

  “I must,” I agree, even though I’m not sure what she’s talking about. Because you brought me a drink? Then she continues.

  “It’s a miracle. A real miracle. And how often do you get to see a miracle, in these days?”

  “Almost never.” It’s the best I can do.

  “It’s incredible. You know,” she goes on, “I read that there have only been about thirty-five thousand unassisted pregnancies in the entire country this year—it’s down even from the year before, although—” Here Sophie stops herself. She’s about my sister’s age, I realize. From her perspective—from anyone’s—Fred must seem staggeringly blessed. Here she is, marrying into a family that’s one of maybe a hundred in all of New Chicago that could easily afford Insemina for her, if Fred and her guy were in love and wanted to try for a baby so they could get married and raise a family together. But Fred doesn’t even need Insemina, because somehow, against every kind of odds, she’s having a baby anyway, the old-fashioned way, so she and this guy, the father, can apply for marriage. The new-fashioned way.

  But even with Sophie’s appreciation of bona fide miracles, I don’t see much to feel good about in Fred’s situation. Maybe it shows. Sophie’s expression has gone peculiar with the effort of forcing herself to shift gears. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to talk about that. It seems like bad luck somehow.” She flashes another smile, apologetic now, and stands. “Shall we? You can bring your drink.”

  “Liquid courage,” I say, pouring the ice from the first drink into the second. I slurp at the edge of the glass to keep the overflow from sloshing out, then stand slowly and tip my drink in Sophie’s direction, to which she responds with a sweet half curtsy.

  I am, I will allow, a little drunk. I sat at the bar this afternoon until way too late, then got a taxi uptown, to my father’s apartment on Paulina Street, where I’ve been staying since I got back. Traffic. Horrible heat. The driver shouti
ng and stinking, with me in the back, watching the time, powerless to do anything about the merciless way it kept moving forward, unlike the taxi. My father had already left for the Walkers’ by the time I arrived, so I sani-ed, shaved, dressed, and got another taxi (driverless this time, and quiet as a ghost) to the Lake Rises, but there’d been no time for dinner, and I like to have a beer while I’m getting ready to go out, so by this point I’ve entirely lost track of how much I’ve had to drink so far today, and the number can’t be good.

  Across the room, as I stand, I glimpse my sister, our Fredlet. Her long hair is black and glossy-slick in the light from the glass lamps overhead. She is wearing a royal-blue dress, long enough to sweep the floor, with short sleeves and a high collar. It’s a severe-looking dress, a little futuristic even, like something an alien princess might wear to the opera, so it suits her. Her face is flushed—hot in here—and her dark eyes are bright. She’s listening to an older man, some friend of Mr. Walker’s probably, and the older man’s wife is standing too close to her, which Fred is absolutely furious about—I know her, I can see it in her set expression, although anyone else looking at her would think she was just listening closely, her eyes intent on the person speaking, her mouth a bright straight line across her face. Fred has a sharp face, and she’s tall and lean like me and our pop. Gard took more after our mother: smaller, rounder, curly-headed. Our family, all circles and lines. Fred’s height and her straightness make her pregnancy a bit startling to look at. Even if it weren’t as rare as it is, the effect is weirdly like a dewdrop caught on a long stem. Again, something I’ve seen mostly in movies.

  The older woman who is standing too close to Fred is just staring at Fred’s belly, the perfect round ball of it, the way Fred’s expensive blue dress displays the fact of it, the miraculous fact of it. It is incredible. There’s something incredible in the room, something we can hardly even believe that we’re seeing, and the woman just wants to be near it for a minute, just stand close and let it remind her of something she used to know.

  Fred is so angry. It’s taking everything she has not to swat at this woman and her longing. I really can’t help but laugh. Even though she won’t so much as look at me. It’s all right. I’ve fucked up. I can’t blame her for being angry. I could blame Fred for a lot of things, maybe, but not for that.

  Pop is nowhere to be seen.

  Gard, where are you?

  My feet hurt, my heart hurts, my head hurts, and I’ve had a bit too much.

  Sophie understands. She takes my elbow, the elbow of the arm not holding the drink. “We’ll take it nice and slow.”

  • • •

  “It’s better, the way things are done now. I know I shouldn’t be saying this. Young people have all these ideas about how it used to be. Marriage. Before the . . . all the . . . you know, the Protection Laws.”

  Here the guy acknowledges me with a tip of his bottle, so I nod somberly. I’m one of the young people, I guess.

  “Young people think they should just be able to get married! Because they’re in love! Without having to prove they’ve got a bun in the oven first!” His face is huge, made huger still by a leer I’d just as soon not have directed my way: Real men, we would never fall into a pussy trap. “But think about it this way, Soldier: Really, now, we’ve just gone back to basics. This is how men and women have gotten together from the dawn of time! Isn’t it now? You have to admit it, right? Don’t put the cart before the horse, don’t buy the cow without the milk, don’t count your chickens—isn’t that right?”

  I have no idea how long this man, some family friend of the Walkers’, has been talking to me. I have no idea who he is, or where Sophie has gone off to, or where Fred or my father are. But clearly this guy and I have been in conversation for long enough that he has decided I might not mind hearing my sister’s marriage discussed in barnyard terms. I’m controlling myself by pretending he’s my CO, even though this guy wouldn’t have lasted a week in the service. It’s a game I play sometimes to remind myself how to act, even when I want to punch someone in the face.

  My problem is that I can’t walk away from him, because my feet are now throbbing and my ankle is red agony. The goddamn shoes. Like bear traps. It’s all Fred’s fault. I have to be careful not to shift my weight as I’m standing, so that the shoes don’t rub against the raw skin. As much as I would like to get away—find my plush bench under a potted tree—right now there’s a drink in my hand, an engineered beer (no more ice, I heard), and I take a long swallow.

  “This way, at least, both sides know what they’re in for. And they don’t waste any time. In my parents’ day, people would get married and not get around to having children for five, ten years. We don’t have time like that to waste anymore.” He’s getting maudlin. “Jesus Christ, if we’d only known.”

  I don’t have anything to say to this.

  “And you know,” he adds abruptly, swaying a bit, “back in my parents’ day, they had the party, the reception, after the wedding, not before. Weddings meant there were alllll these wild parties. People cutting loose. Before they tied the knot. Different now! For sure! All the ladies getting married now—they can’t drink! Ha! How’re you feeling, Soldier? Another drink?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He signals a passing server. A cool bottle is pressed into my hand, the old one taken away. “Least I can do for a veteran.” He nods gravely, and I can see what he’s winding up for. “How long were you out there?”

  Surely I’ve put in my time at this event, surely I’ve earned out by now. Where is Sophie? Where is Fred?

  “You can talk to me about it, son. I come from a military family myself. My brother. In the First Wars.”

  That was my pop’s war, too. I shake my head, take a drink. “What branch of the service was he in?” I don’t really expect him to know.

  And now the guy’s eyes are glazing over. Maybe he’s imagining it, the Second Wars, the heat, the blankness, the raiders, the experimental weapons and their experimental effects (their special effects, as we used to call them, when we were front row at the big show), the unendingness, all of it. Or maybe his own fresh beer is just hitting him hard, suddenly; he’s hit the wall. He’s not fat, exactly, but he’s a big guy, and he’s pale and sweaty now in a way that makes me cautious of standing upwind of him. If I’ve been drinking hard tonight, he’s surely right on my tail. “Wait a sec. I’m sorry.” He sways in my direction. “What were we talking about, son?”

  “We were talking about your brother’s time in the service, sir.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. How long were you out there, son?” he asks me again. His eyes are fixed on mine now, unfocused but loonily intense.

  “Two years five months.”

  He whistles.

  “That was about average for guys in my unit, sir.”

  “They keep you out there. They keep you going.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “They need experienced men.” He nods knowingly.

  “I suppose so.” I’m scanning the room over his shoulder. Red hair, black dress. Black hair, blue dress. I’d even take a nice, soft tipsy old-lady friend from Mrs. Walker’s club. Or, it occurs to me, a dark-skinned, curly-haired woman in nurse’s clogs and scrubs. Where is my goddamn backup?

  “How many, ah, missions did you . . . complete? Over there?”

  “I was mostly on patrol, sir. Just guarding the H2.0.”

  He is disappointed. “So you didn’t get many . . . opportunities.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Or did you?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

  “Well, pardon me for being blunt, but didn’t you get any opportunities to—you know . . .”

  I’m just starting to grasp what he means—he’s asking did I have many opportunities to blow people up; did I get any opportunities to use the experimental weapons everybody’s talking about; did I get the opportunity to be a trigger—and I’m wondering if I can keep myself from hauling
off and knocking the guy down after all. Then a woman bumps into me, and my feet shift under my weight so that my sliced-up, blistered heels bash against the insides of these diabolical fucking shoes, and my anklebone feels like it’s been sheared by a ragged claw, and it’s so unexpected and painful that I let out a startled groan.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, edging past us. “Pardon me.” She’s already moved by. From the back she almost looks like Gard, although I know that whoever she is, she’s obviously not my sister. I get only a brief impression as she moves away. She’s built like her: medium height, a little plump. She’s got Gard’s curls and what appears to be something like her round face, brown like a nut. But the hair is silvery—this woman is older, more the age my mother would have been, although she’s also obviously not my mother. She’s crossing the room toward the windows, and because it’s a dark black night, I catch sight of her and her reflection in the glass, both of them shining together, and then she’s enveloped by the party crowd. Outside, over the black faraway dried-up lake, the lights of a helicopter wink.

  “You all right, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The guy chooses that moment to clap me heartily on the shoulder. The effect is to send fresh pain shooting up my legs. I groan again. I can’t help myself. It’s humiliating, of course, but now I’m wondering, Jesus, how badly are my feet fucked up anyway, and why does it feel like there are hidden razors in my fucking shoes? Because that is what it feels like now, like there’s an army of minuscule imps with pointy ears and teeth who live in my shoes and have taken up a thousand tiny silver instruments to saw and hack away at my heels, my bones, my ankles, my unlovable hairy-knuckled toes, and every once in a while one of them will pause in their sawing to take a big bite.

  “Son, I gotta take a leak. Pardon.”

  I want to hit him so bad.

  In the moment that he is gone, I realize I might not be all right. My ears are ringing, and the hot room is swinging around me like a tower bell. Aside from the pain in my feet, there’s pain in my gut and a mirror pain beginning in my head, which I know is not a good sign. I drink the last of my warm beer, which is probably a mistake, and look for an exit to lurch through. I could use an arm to lean on. A velvety, slim arm attached to a sweet-smelling woman in a black dress. Or in nurse’s scrubs. Natalie B. doesn’t like me, I know she doesn’t, but in this moment I think I’d prefer her to even the lovely Sophie.