Best Man

Best Man

Everyone agreed it had been a lovely ceremony. Insincerity didn't
really bother Megan. She knew it was to be expected at such functions.
"The bridesmaids are lovely." "The food is delicious." "Don't let a
catch like Mark there get away." She barely knew half these people,
even the family members, and none of them knew Mark except her parents.
But the smiles and the glittering eyes of the ridiculously well dressed
and the influx of high-toned compliments was satisfactory for her to
still be thinking that the "best day of her life" was almost
over.
Her heart was done racing for a while. She had cooled it off with some
champagne and cocktails on the plane. Her face was remade. She
reapplied it after her tears (so expected and yet so unnecessary) had
dripped it from the end of her chin to land in mascara-blue splotches
on her white sandals. The air was flowing a little easier now that she
wasn't giggling with Sandy and Lacy and her mom. Then the mood was
dictated by suppressed jealousy and superiority. Now it was all silk
sheets and cool air blowing in through the open window. Sea always
smelled vaguely of romance to her. Moonlight fit over her body, so
deeply relaxed into the hotel bed.
The smile on her face was as handcrafted as a china doll. Sure, she
was a little upset that Mark didn't get the honeymoon suite, but how
could she complain when the room was so spacious and marvelously
appointed? From the simple floral pattern on the curtains to the white
four-poster bed, everything in this room screamed elegance. And
Jamaica! What a surprise! All this time making her think they would be
consummating their marriage in some dreary London fog. This was
definitely more what she was hoping for. The trees and ocean and sand.
The way the whole island has the tropical aroma of bananas and
marijuana. Looking out the plane window at the ocean turning golden
with the setting sun, it was all she could do not to straddle Mark
right there.
Then it was amusing to want him so much. Now she was growing
impatient, satiated only by the overwhelming magnificence of the room.
Her well-intentioned and difficult-to-get-into teddy was going to
waste. New hubby was preoccupied in the john for some ungodly reason.
He had been in there from the second they came back to the room after
their walk down the beach. And it was just one more item in the list of
odd things he'd been doing all day. Megan started again entertaining
the possibility that Mark was gay.
It had gotten so it didn't scare her like it used to. The courtship
would have been only a month from first date to ring if she hadn't
detected it so soon. Not even necessarily homosexuality. Just his
nervous, furtive manner, like he was afraid of getting caught. The sort
of curt way of dealing with everyone he met. This tick almost resembled
the way one might picture a robot handling all interaction as a
business transaction. But there was another component to it. Mark's
sideways glance; cocked head as if he were aiming. And his compulsion
to shake the hand of every person he came into contact with (Waiters?
Who shakes hands with waiters?). These pointed to a suspicion,
searching for each acquaintance's value. A friend-or-foe
mentality.
If he came out of the bathroom right now and shouted, "Honey, I'm a
fag!" it wouldn't even piss her off, so long as he then dropped to his
knees and finished her off for the rest of the night.
With this mindset, she realized she should probably admit that she was
drunk. Probably an entire bottle of champagne to herself at the
reception. Who could blame her, with the family swarming around her?
Mom. Dad. So glad you didn't kill each other at my wedding. Sandy.
Thanks for not fucking my new husband. Uncle Eddy. Thanks for staying
clothed. Glug, glug, gulp. Cut the cake, open a wrapped blender, out in
twenty minutes.
At least she didn't have to bother with one of the normal wedding
fears. She didn't have to worry about Mark's family and hers not
getting along. As far as she knew, Mark didn't have one. In a year and
a half, Mark had not once mentioned his parents without assistance.
She'd ask and he would answer (retired, living in Ireland, still
together), but they didn't call and he returned the favor. He never
flew them in (he certainly had the money), never visited them and none
of them ever wrote. It didn't seem like a falling out, but who could
tell? Megan often had trouble reading Mark.
Thus it was an understatement to say that he didn't have a side at the
wedding. He didn't have a single guest. Josh, his one friend, had
almost been the best man. Josh was louder than Mark, more open and
human. He was attractive as well. In the beginning, Megan had almost
jumped ship latched onto Josh's tightly curved muscles. The deciding
factor was that Josh always seemed to be strapped for cash. Mark
covered for him most of the time. He had even given Josh some pretty
substantial loans that Megan hadn't ever seen him ask for payment on.
They did every thing together. It was beyond normal strange to replace
him with her brother at the altar.
Her eyelids started to droop. Megan surmised that if she didn't move
soon, she would finger herself and pass out. She flung one leg off the
bed. Then she tried the whole body. Awkwardly, she catapulted to the
window. She stumbled out onto the balcony until she was pressed against
the railing, leaning the upper half of her body over five stories of
traditional paradise. The darkness floated picturesque around her.
Ocean crashes rolled up to her ears to get a beat going. She wanted to
just open her legs, grip the railing, and take it however he would give
it. "Hurry up," she called out to a mumbled reply.
The place was so beautiful that she thought they should stay there
forever. It wasn't beyond reason. He could afford it and it wasn't like
he did office work. One might have thought his job was shifty. Most of
his work took place on the phone or the over the Internet. Very little
of it involved relating to humans. He also brought home unrealistic
amounts of money. But Megan had two pieces of information that eased
this worry. One was what an unbelievable nerd Mark was, in spite of or
because of his overly professional demeanor, she couldn't be sure. He
had proposed to her the same way he changed the plane tickets to
Jamaica. "We need to get married." "I need to change these changed to
Kingston." Just straight, and cute in a way.
The other tip-off that he was honest, or at least not accountant to
the mob or something, was that she knew very well for whom Mark worked.
He worked for Megan's dad. He brokered his company's stock. They sold
corporate real estate in downtown Denver. Maybe room for corruption,
but she was pretty sure that farty, flaky father of hers was not a Don.
And Mark didn't have his own activities. He read. He played tennis with
Josh. Mark never did anything more dangerous than fake rock climbing at
the gym.
Maybe he was having some kind of digestive trouble. "Jesus, hurry up!"
Megan said, the sultry gravel falling out of her voice. She walked over
to the minibar. A baby-sized bottle of vodka barely registered in her
throat. But it did make her acutely aware of another more pressing
reason to get Mark out of the bathroom. She stumbled a bit, catching
herself on the back of the chair that her dress was lain across. "Mark,
I really need to get in there."
Off the plane to the hotel, getting a room (he obviously hadn't
reserved anything, total surprise), then a walk on the beach, Megan had
yet to use the restroom. She was so backed up that the muffled clink,
some kind of bang into porcelain, almost didn't register. But it did.
As plain a sound as it was, she took note of it. "Honey, is everything
all right?"
The bathroom door creaked open. The light went off, taking with it the
hum of the vent. The shapely figure in the doorway heaved, messy but
seductive, like a burly blacksmith. In one hand, Josh even had a hammer
to complete the fantasy. The bulge of his veins along his forearm
showed that he was gripping it with force. The large heavy hammerhead
was spattered with blood, chunky, red, and dripping, obviously from the
mashed heap that was Mark in the bathtub. Josh's shirtless chest was in
a similar state as the hammer, glistening with sweat and hemoglobin.
With his free hand, he wiped his mouth, pulling Megan's gaze from the
hammer to his face. He gave a quick wink. He brushed past her on his
way out.
When he shut the door, the ocean sound returned to her ears.