Page 31 of Endless Summer: Stories
Frank Sinatra Drive
(Read withThe Perfect Couple)
Let’s say it didn’t happen that way.
Michael Oscar Uxley, known exclusively as “Shooter” since his senior year at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, where he ran a dice game in a dark third-floor dorm hallway referred to as Lost Arden, is in the business of making dreams come true. He’s the founder of a company called A-List that brings executives from overseas to experience the best of what America has to offer. He likes to tell clients that he can make anything happen. You want a spot with Jimmie Johnson’s pit crew during the Daytona 500? He’ll make a call. An eight o’clock Saturday night reservation at Le Coucou in New York City, impossible to get if you’re a mere mortal? Shooter can arrange it in his sleep. Access to any experience is just a matter of knowing the right people.
Shooter wonders if it’s possible to work a little magic on his own behalf. He wants to try.
Let’s say Thomas Winbury is able to keep his on-again/off-again affair with Featherleigh Dale a secret—or, better still, let’s say Thomas ends his relationship with Featherleigh the morning after his first date with Abby Freeman, when he has a pretty good idea that Abby is someone he would like to get serious with. (Thomas loves Abby’s snub nose, her Southern sorority-girl accent, and the aura of easy entitlement that comes from being the daughter of the sixth-richest oilman in Texas.) If this were the case, then Abby Winbury, fifteen weeks pregnant with a boy who will no doubt be named Thomas Charles Winbury IV, would have no reason to drop Greer’s sleeping pills into anyone’s water, and chances are Merritt Monaco would still be alive.
“Chances are” isn’t quite good enough for Shooter, however. Because there’s still the slight possibility that if Merritt had chased the silver lace thumb ring, which fell off while she was rinsing the cut on her foot, into deep enough water, she might have been held hostage by the weight of her wet jersey dress and the exhaustion that comes with early pregnancy, especially at that late hour.
So… let’s say Merritt and Tag Winbury do have a brief affair—face it, they are destructive magnets to each other’s moral compasses—but Merritt uses birth control like a reasonable, responsible twenty-nine-year-old single woman. She doesnotget pregnant and she doesnotthreaten to tell Greer anything about their liaison. By the time the wedding weekend is upon them, the fling is over. Do Tag and Merritt still harbor feelings for each other? Maybe so, but the only outward indication is a few sly glances.
There, Merritt is safe.
While Shooter is at it, why not make things better for Karen Otis? What if her secret isnotthat she illegally acquired euthanasia medicine off the internet from the mysterious Dr. Tang but rather that she has been part of a clinical trial at St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that has put her cancer into remission. She hasn’t yet told Celeste because she doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but the fact is, she feels stronger.
Okay,Shooter thinks.Great.His work here is done.
Now it’s time for the happily ever after.
When they get back from town the night before the wedding, Celeste heads upstairs. It’s a quarter after one; she sets her alarm for five thirty. As she crawls into the bed in Benji’s room—a bed with the most sumptuous sheets one can imagine—she looks at her wedding dress, which is hanging on the back of the closet door. Does she feel any regret about not wearing it?Regretis the wrong word. Mostly, she’s sorry for the pain and heartbreak she is about to cause—to Benji, certainly, but also to Greer and Tag, who have been so generous. They have paid for everything, down to the monogrammed cocktail napkins, and they’ve asked for nothing in return except for Celeste to show up and say, “I do.”
Celeste doesn’t worry about anyone else. The other guests are about to have a story they can dine out on for the rest of their lives.
Celeste sends Merritt a text:When you wake up in the morning, I’ll be gone. I’m fine. I’ll explain later.She doesn’t worry about Merritt. Running off the morning of her wedding to be with someone else falls squarely in Merritt’s wheelhouse.
Celeste falls asleep, then wakes up and is dismayed to see that it’s only ten past four. She has another hour and twenty minutes. Her blood tingles with the spice of her escape. She wonders about Shooter. He’s in the first cottage with Benji, but she doesn’t dare text him. If she were to text him, she would say,Are we doing the right thing?Because it’s crazy, their plan. Run off, fly to Vegas, get married later today? That won’t happen, she decides. They will get to Hyannis, rent a car, drive back to New York. Maybe they’ll take a trip; Celeste doesn’t have to be back at work for two weeks.
Her parents, though. Celeste needs to talk to her parents. She slides out of bed, tiptoes down the hall, and opens the door to their room. They’re both sound asleep, of course; Bruce is snoring.
Celeste eases down next to Karen. Karen’s face is twitching; she’s having a dream. Celeste gently touches her mother’s shoulder, and Karen’s eyes fly open.
“Aaaaahhhh!” she cries out.
“Shhh!” Celeste says. “It’s okay, Betty, it’s me. I need to talk to you.”
Karen blinks rapidly. Celeste watches her regain full consciousness; it’s as though she’s breaking through the surface of water. “Darling,” she says. “What’s wrong? Never mind, I already know.”
“Youdo?” Celeste says. She doesn’t want to sound like a teenager, but she’s quite sure her mother doesnotknow. Celeste has done far too fine a job of pretending for anyone to know the truth. Hasn’t she?
“You don’t want to marry Benji,” Karen says. “You’re running off.”
Celeste stares at her mother and feels very, very exposed.
Karen takes Celeste’s hand. She has grown frail since she’s been sick but her grip is strong and warm. “It’s okay,” she says.
“Running off is only half of it,” Celeste says. “I’m in love with Shooter.”
“Ah,” Karen says. The skin above her eyes—where her eyebrows used to be, before chemo—lifts. “That I didn’t know. I mean, he certainly seems like he’s crazy about you—that comment he made earlier tonight gave it away—but I didn’t realize the feeling was mutual.”
Celeste nods. Suddenly, the ugliness of her situation is magnified, like she’s looking at it in a fun-house mirror. “Aren’t you upset?” Celeste asks. “Aren’t you… I don’t know…horrified?” She has long suspected her parents love her so much that they would forgive her for anything—murder, grand larceny, arson.
“Everyone has secrets, Celeste,” Karen says.
“You don’t,” Celeste says. “And Mac doesn’t.”
