Page 26 of Before We Say Goodbye
“Maybe that’s all it is,” Sparrow said. “Let go and live a little. Your dream is coming, and we’ll all be by your side.”
He realized he’d lost his breath and drew in a heap of oxygen. “Okay, enough of that. I don’t like being exposed.”
“So no dancing naked on the table?” Paul asked.
“You first.”
“Fine then.” They all watched with wide eyes as Paul popped to a stand, shucked his clothes, and then leaped onto the table as if he were light as a feather. With his private bits hanging free for all the world to see, he held out his hands and looked up toward the sky. “This is me,” he called out. “Paul Murphy, in all my glory.”
Sparrow stood on the bench right between Otis and Rebecca, and Paul pulled her up to the table. She tore off her dress, revealing every bare inch of herself, and then she wrapped her arms around Paul, and they danced naked in the moonlight.
Otis returned to the safety of the mannequin body that he knew all too well, too stunned to move, too stunned to look away. The next thing he knew, Rebecca stood on the bench and offered her hand to Otis, pleading with him to climb aboard this madhouse ship of naked loony tunes. He shook his head in a way that made his case clear: There was no way in the flipping halls of Satan’s dark den that he was about to drop his drawers and dance on a table. She didn’t push and instead took her place on the table and lifted her dress up over her head.
Did no one wear underwear in this country? For a slick moment, he enjoyed the absolute wonder of Bec’s body, the delicate feline curves moving in waves a body could only move in if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Only for a moment did he worry that everyone—including Lloyd—could see every kibble and bit of his lover, but he let it go and found a sense of joy in watching his partner in life express the absolute essence of herself, letting go like only so few could do. God bless herfor starting to shake off what happened to Jed and break free from her difficult childhood, and God bless her for not worrying about dreams at all, but simply finding joy in the here and now.
Dammit if Otis didn’t end up being the only one of those fifteen who didn’t shed his clothes. When the table started to shake under their weight, they all hopped off and spun and danced naked together in the grass. Otis had never been more mortified. No amount of drugs and alcohol on earth would allow him to feel so free. Perhaps he could undo a button or two, perhaps kick off his shoes, but his trousers would stay on, and he wasn’t about to join them, clothed or not, in this wonderful yet terrifying baring of their souls.
Late in the evening, after some of the clothes had made it back onto their bodies, everyone lay on the ground in a circle formation, making wishes upon the stars. Lloyd said, “Give me a case of ’45 Romanée-Conti, the last vintage before phylloxera set in. To me, that is the holy water of the church that is Burgundy. I’d open a bottle right now and pour you all a fat glass.”
Paul wished for a good harvest; Sparrow hoped for world peace. No, really, she did. After a few others, it was Otis’s turn. “Oh, c’mon, fuck world peace. Want me to be honest? I want a place like this of my own, vineyards that weep into the bottle. Before I die, I want to one day make a great bottle of wine.”
Rebecca, lying next to him, took his hand. “It will come.”
The desperate hope for such a wine rattled him inside. “How about you, my love?”
She winked at him. “I want to marry you and start a family and give our children what I didn’t have growing up.”
Otis almost made a joke but bit his tongue. Her sincerity filled his heart.
No, the hell with it. He had to make a joke. “So Rod over there wants a Corvette. Lloyd wants a case of one of the most coveted wines on earth. Sparrow wants world peace. And all you want to do is marry me? God bless you, deary. I must teach you to set the bar higher.”
Laughter ran around the circle of bodies.
Rebecca sat up and then pressed her lips to his. “You’re like a Rolex priced at ten dollars at an estate sale, but I know what you’re worth. You know what? I’m living my wish right now. You’re my destiny, Otis Till.”
“Wow!” Paul said, sitting up. “That’s a whole lotta love right there.” He began to clap, and then everyone joined in.
Otis became serious. “Okay, okay. Well ...” Otis searched his fiancée’s eyes. “My biggest wish is that I one day be worthy of being your husband, because I ...” Fear ran up through his spine and teased his tear ducts. “I don’t know that I feel worthy right now.”
They looked at each other as if they were the only two people on earth. “You might not feel it, but you are,” she whispered. “And I will be by your side till the day I die.”
He pressed his eyes closed and felt the tears squeeze out and drip past his temples to the ground.
“I guess now’s a good time to tell them,” Paul said, bringing Otis back to earth.
“I agree,” Sparrow said. She waited until she had everyone’s attention. “Paul and I would like you to get married here. Otis, you’re eighteen in August, right? You should get married on the eve of harvest. What could be more magical?”
“You’d do that for us?” Bec asked, nudging her way deeper into Otis’s legs.
Paul pulled a joint from his mouth. “We’d be honored, but that means Otis has to spill the beans to his folks.”
“I know, I know. Believe me, I know.” His father was weeks, if not days, away from Berkeley alerting him to what his prodigal son had done. One way or another, Otis was running out of time.
Chapter 7
Escalating Discouragement
