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to have a dozen bridesmaids and groomsmen in the bridal party. But the bridal couple—sweethearts since they were seventeen-year-old classmates at a Cuernavaca ­academy—have a great many friends, and they feared offending those who couldn’t be included in a bridal party even that large. So they decided on just three bridesmaids and groomsmen and all of them relatives except for Jessie, whom Luz Sosa insisted on including.
    She and Jessie had met in a freshmen English course at the University of Texas at Austin. Luz was delighted to learn that Jessie had relatives living in Mexico City, though to this day the only Mexican Wolfe she has ever met is Rayo. Their friendship was rooted in their mutual writing ­ambitions—Jessie in journalism, Luz in fiction—and in their love of modern dance, and they took several writing and dance classes together. In their last two years in Austin they were roommates in an off-campus apartment. Luz’s first book, a trio of novellas published in Mexico a year ago to uniformly good reviews and currently being translated for paperback publication in the United States, includes an acknowledgment of Jessica Juliet Wolfe’s “invaluable critique” of the manuscript. Trio and his older brother Aldo, serving as his best man, and Luz’s younger sister and matron of honor Linda, also earned their degrees from the University of Texas. Trio was at UT for the same four years as Luz and Jessie and majored in petroleum engineering, as did Aldo, who graduated a year ahead of them, and the two brothers are now managers in the engineering division of their father’s oil-rig company. Linda, a year younger than Luz, graduated a year after the other four. She studied fashion design and today owns a studio in the Zona Rosa. During the three years all five of them were together at UT, they called themselves the Mighty Handful.
    It was near the end of Jessie’s junior year that she and Aldo had their “thing,” as she calls it. They had agreed to be weekend sex buddies, but the arrangement had been in effect for only a month before he started pressing her for weeknight trysts, as well. She steadfastly refused, her weeknights strictly reserved for coursework, and his pouts, which at first amused her, soon began to grow tiresome. When she had to beg off one weekend because of the need to finish an important paper due on Monday, he angrily demanded to know if she was fucking somebody else. She wasn’t, but didn’t say so, telling him only that it was none of his business. But he persisted in his accusations and so she put an end to their thing then and there. For about three weeks afterward he made such a point of ignoring her whenever the Mighty Handful got together that Luz barred him from the apartment until, as she put it, “you pull your head out of your ass.” Which he finally did just a few weeks before the end of the semester, telling Jessie he was sorry and admitting he’d been an asshole and asking her to forgive him and please come to his graduation ceremony. She did both. In the five years since, they have exchanged Christmas cards every season and a few e-mails of chitchat, but they hadn’t seen each other again—not even on Jessie’s previous visits to Rayo, when they each time got together with Luz and Trio—until the wedding rehearsal.
    Francisco Belmonte sees Aldo and Jessie coming through the crowd and says, “Hay están,” and Oscar Sosa says, Good, that’s everybody. Make our good-bye.
    A post-reception after party at the Sosa residence has been arranged for the bridal group, but first comes a formal farewell to the guests. Mr. Belmonte mounts a dais fronted by a microphone and thanks everyone for the great honor of their attendance on this happy affair. He wishes everyone good health and prosperity, reminds them that his house is their house, and invites them to stay and enjoy themselves for