Read Till the End of Tom for Free Online Page B

upon it, found enough, and lifted the phone to invite Sasha for dinner.
     
    M ACKENZIE RETURNED HOME before Sasha, and he opened the door when she rang. He bowed low, ushering her in. She carried an enormous bouquet of pastel ribbons and bows. “You look positively bridal,” he told her. “Is there something we should know?”
    She did look bridal, as long as we were talking about an alternate universe where wedding day attire included capes lined in fake leopard-skin and covered in brilliantly patterned patchwork worn over fire-engine red combat boots, a skirt that looked more like a long tutu with layers of chiffon in purple hues ranging from lavender to amethyst, and a black, loosely knit long-sleeved top that left one shoulder bare. She looked great. I wondered what my mother would say if I wore the outfit, including the bouquet, for my wedding. It would save us so many phone calls and questions and also take care of the “something borrowed” part.
    My future mother-in-law’s taste in clothes and color sense was perilously similar to Sasha’s, and I wondered if having both of them in the same room at the wedding would blind people.
    At five-eight, I’m not at all short, and I’m happy with my auburn hair and green eyes, but all the same, when I’m around Sasha, I feel undersized and under-colored. Sasha is vivid: six feet tall, with big and curly black hair, extravagant gestures, and outrageous clothing. Her credo has always been, “Since I’ve got it, and lots of it, I will indeed flaunt it.” It’s a fine philosophy.
    Mackenzie murmured something Southern and annoying about “girl talk,” and excused himself to study while the sauce simmered.
    “Um, pasta,” Sasha said. “Except I shouldn’t. Carbs. I want to be svelte at your wedding.”
    “Is there anyone in the world not on a diet?” I asked. “And since the answer is
no,
how come we all keep on having to be on a diet?”
    “How come we’re not all mentally serene and jolly and living happily ever after in romantic bliss?” she asked. “There sure are enough books about how to get that way. It’s because we don’t listen, and because I’ll have the pasta, thank you.” She thrust her ribbon bouquet at me. “What color do you want as your scheme?”
    Before this wedding business, when I thought “scheme,” I thought plot, preferably nefarious. I still did, though I didn’t bother to say that. “Why does a shower need a color scheme?”
    “I want to do this right.”
    “Are we going to have to dress in the color I choose?” I tried to keep the horror out of my voice, to remember what a nice thing she was doing, having the shower at her condo.
    She shook her head. “Of course not, but I want to give favors—souvenirs. Little picture frames into which they’ll put a group photo I create digitally even as we shower away. I’ll print them out while you’re still tearing wrapping paper and making the bouquet of bows and—”
    “Sweet.” She was too involved in my life and spending too much of her exceedingly small cash reserves on this event. “But . . . would you think I’m awful if I asked that we avoid wedding talk this evening, including shower talk? I find it daunting.”
    “Typical.” She settled on the sofa, chiffon petals floating into a purple haze around her. “It’s the jitters. The cold feet.”
    “The boredom. The utter nonsense. The phone calls. The fact that they’ll be here to make me insane in person next week. It’s the overblown significance of the show of it—the public part, the—”
    “Okay. I concede, but if we avoid wedding chatter, what’s left to talk about except me?”
    “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk about.”
    “Me?”
    “The man you gave my number to. Tomas Severin.”
    Her dark eyebrows pulled toward her nose. “I thought you guys were always looking for business.”
    I sat down next to her. “I didn’t want to say this over the phone, and there isn’t any easy way to