19

A NICE DAY FOR A WHITE WEDDING

IT WAS late morning on October 4, 1982 when Jack Horowitz, the Man Who Would Be Death, rang the doorbell of Reginald Solar’s house and asked him to be best man at his wedding. Reg, now the father of two sons and a daughter, took one look at the familiar pockmarked face on his porch—who, as you might remember, he believed to be long dead—and promptly fainted. When he regained consciousness half a minute later, Horowitz was crouched over him, fanning him with a handkerchief.

“Goodness, I thought I scared you to death. It would have been very awkward if my master had arrived to reap you. I called in sick today. Hello, Lieutenant.”

“You’re dead,” Reg said, staring up at Horowitz’s ghost, which looked remarkably alive. The scars on his face were red and pitted and far more inflamed than the skin of a ghost should be. Could ghosts even have skin?

“Quite the opposite.” Horowitz extended his arm. Reginald didn’t take it, instead remaining stationary on the floor.

“I don’t understand. You were murdered. You drowned in a river in Vietnam.”

“Oh no. I was down there for some time, though. They tied me tight, you see. I was down there fumbling around in the rocks, looking for one sharp enough to cut my bindings for quite some time indeed.”

“You . . . Why are you here?”

Horowitz smiled serenely. “I find myself in the position of needing a witness at my wedding. A best man, if you will. You were the first and—I hope you’ll forgive me for admitting this—only person I thought of. I don’t have a great deal of friends.” Horowitz glanced at his still-extended hand. “Do you intend to spend the rest of this conversation horizontal?”

Reg let Horowitz help him up, then said, “Best man? Horowitz, you don’t know me. We only met once, the night before you died.”

“Yes, but you mourned me. You fought for my honor to be reinstated. I suppose I have developed something of a soft spot for you, Reginald Solar. And since the state requires there be a witness at my wedding—someone who knows who I am—I would like for that person to be you.”

“I thought you’d been murdered on my watch.”

“Alas, as I tried to explain to you in 1972, I am very hard to kill.”

Reg, of course, still did not believe that Horowitz was Death’s apprentice—even if his survival was remarkable. Still, he invited him inside and they drank milk together as Horowitz explained that Death, too, could love, and indeed, he had swiftly fallen for the young Vietnamese woman who’d discovered him floating facedown in the river, too weak to swim to the bank after several days of trying to free himself.

“Several minutes, you mean,” corrected Reginald.

“I assure you, Lieutenant, it was several days.”

Reginald shook his head and poured them both another round of milk. Horowitz continued. It was frowned upon for the Grim Reaper to take a lover, he explained. During his tenure as Death, he would be granted long life and immunity from the messy business of dying for as long as his term of service lasted, but his partner would not. This, as you can imagine, had caused some problems in the past. Horowitz couldn’t confirm it for sure, but there was a rumor that the Black Death of 1346–53 was the direct result of the Reaper becoming depressed at the sudden and unexpected demise of his young boyfriend, who was killed in a freak accident—the kind that even Death cannot predict. Plagued by despair, he walked the streets of Europe for seven years, rats infected with the Yersinia pestis bacterium scuttling behind him by the dozen. In his state of mourning he touched the cheeks of young lovers as they slept so that they, too, might know his sorrow.

Horowitz described the ordeal as a “logistical nightmare.” Still, he loved the woman, Lan, and every single person who dared to love risked losing their beloved anyway, so why should he be any different? He thought himself very unlikely to go on a rampage if she died, and besides, she was young and fit and healthy, so why should she perish anytime in the next fifty years or so? He would remain a young man while she aged, and then, when she passed peacefully in her sleep surrounded by her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he would train an apprentice, and then retire and join her in the afterlife. Even as Death he’d have to die eventually, but he’d get to choose how and where and when—one of the few perks of the job.

The two men spoke until early afternoon, mostly about the war and the years that had passed since it ended. Reginald showed Horowitz pictures of his wife and children, and Horowitz showed Reginald pictures of the little white house he’d bought in Santorini. It had blue window frames and a blue door, and a small goat grazing in the yard, perfect for making cheese. Lan, his betrothed, loved olives and sunshine and waking to the sound of waves crashing against rock, so that was what Horowitz was giving her.

“You’ll be happy there, I’m sure,” said Reg as he handed back the Polaroids.

“I must ask you, Reginald, to keep a terrible secret for me.”

“Uh . . .”

“My beloved, she . . . Well, she doesn’t know who I am. Or what I am, rather. I know it’s deceitful of me not to tell her, but who could love such a thing as me if they knew the truth?”

“If you haven’t told her, I certainly won’t,” Reg said, even though he believed that a person had a right to know they were probably marrying a basket case who had delusions of being the Grim Reaper. If the woman hadn’t figured out by now that Horowitz was delusional and possibly psychotic, he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

Horowitz’s wedding took place the next afternoon, in the town’s local chapel. Lan wore a pale pink sundress with a strand of pearls at her throat, and the Man Who Would Be Death dressed in a lavender tuxedo with shiny white shoes and a ruffled shirt. Reginald thought the supposed Reaper really ought to have more style about him, but then again, Horowitz was born in the South and raised on a farm—or so he said—so style wasn’t exactly expected.

Esther’s grandmother, Florence Solar, also attended the wedding, though Esther never got the chance to ask her about what she thought of the Reaper and his bride; she died the very same night her grandfather first told her the story. Esther wondered if she knew Horowitz was Death. Wondered if, at the moment of her last breath, she was shocked to find the pockmarked young man whose wedding she’d attended almost three decades earlier come to collect her immortal soul.

The two men parted ways again after the wedding, Reg Solar still no more convinced that Horowitz was indeed Death but glad to know that he was alive and stable and happy, for the time being.

While Esther told her story, Jonah absentmindedly weaved a crown of cornhusks and placed it atop her head. “Queen of Death,” he said when she finished. By then, the sun had sunk low and the drone’s battery had run out and the corn was still whispering, urging them to leave.

“Do you want to go on that date now?” she asked him, and he said yes, so they did.

•   •   •

“THERE ARE FOUR STEPS to wooing the ladies,” Jonah explained to Esther an hour later. They were standing in front of a Mexican food truck called Taco the Town. “First I buy them Mexican food, then I buy them beer, then I take them to my favorite place, and then I whip out my secret weapon.”

“I sincerely hope the secret weapon is not your genitals.”

“Ugh. Get your head out of the gutter, Esther. Honestly.”

“Wait, are you saying you’re trying to woo me right now?”

“I’ve been trying to woo you since elementary school. You’re just too distracted to notice. You think I’d reupholster a couch for just anyone?”

“Abandoning someone and not contacting them for six years is hardly an optimal wooing technique.”

“Touché.”

“Where did you go by the way? You haven’t told me.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“I’m asking now.”

“It’s a long story that involves time travel and a failed attempt to kill Hitler. Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

They ate their burritos while sitting in the gutter next to the taco truck, then drove until they got to the WELCOME TO sign on the outskirts of town. They sat on the other side of the sign, huddled close to keep warm, officially outside the boundaries of the place that held them in like a black hole. It was amazing—Esther could breathe there. No more than two feet beyond the edge, and the straps around her chest had loosened, the metal plate that encased her brain had dissolved.

“Salud,” Jonah said, passing her a warm can of beer from inside his jacket.

“Does this technique really work for you?” she asked him. He didn’t answer. Instead they cracked open their drinks and watched the highway that led out of town, all the cars that moved beyond the event horizon like it was nothing, nothing at all, the easiest thing in the world to escape. Esther didn’t have to ask Jonah why this was his favorite place. They stared at the cars, each one plunging off into an unknown that they wouldn’t know for years. Might never know.

Esther thought about what she wanted for herself after school, but as hard as she tried to visualize herself as a college freshman, or maybe traveling through Asia on a shoestring budget with nothing but a backpack, all that kept coming back to her was a single thought: Eugene. Eugene was an anchor. A small, dark part of her knew that he wasn’t stable enough for college, and wouldn’t be able to leave home after school. As long as Eugene was sick—as long as the curse had him—she was going to be stuck here.

Esther wanted to save his life, but she also wanted to give herself a chance at her own.

“Tell me about your parents,” Jonah said. “What were they like before the curse?”

Esther smiled as she thought of Rosemary and Peter as they had once been. “My dad’s favorite things in the world were poetry and Christmas. Just so embarrassingly nerdy. I’ve never seen a grown man so excited for Christmas morning. And the poetry—he used to recite limericks to us every morning on the drive to school. A new one, every single day. I have no idea if he wrote them himself or found them on the internet and memorized them, but they were always terrible, and they always made us laugh.”

Jonah smiled. “And your mom?”

“Mom used to grow plants in boxes outside our windows. Said they were gardens for fairies that would keep us safe while we were sleeping. She still works as a horticulturalist, but it’s not the same. I mean, she used to be able to grow anything, anywhere, without sunlight or water. She used to be magic. I was obsessed with that woman. We went everywhere together, and she used to talk to me about everything. She was my best friend. And then . . . nothing. Bit by bit, she kind of shut down and fell away and left us on our own.”

Jonah reached out and held her hand, and she was too tired to stop him, too tired to stop herself from wondering if this was what people felt in the beginning, if this is what she’d felt like before, when they were children. Esther had loved him once, in the way kids love, of that much she was sure. For a small amount of time, he’d been the bright light in the darkness.

And God, the way he smelled. She’d bottle that scent and touch his perfume to the pulse slipping beneath the skin of her neck every day if she could. As they drank warm beer, Esther supposed that it would be very easy to fall in love with Jonah Smallwood again. It would be very easy to let him become a part of herself again, and therein lay the problem. Esther had no illusions about who or what Jonah was: he was a pickpocket, a skilled petty criminal, an underage drinker (then again, so was she), a public nuisance, and also—undoubtedly—the very best person she had ever met. Jonah was good in a way that baffled her, and she feared that if she let him get too close, came to rely on him as a shield once more, the way she had before when she was a little kid, that he would disappear again, and she would be left to mend the broken bits on her own.

Esther could have fallen in love with him that night, but it was safer not to, so she did the only thing she could do: she rested her head on Jonah’s shoulder, drank the beer he had brought her, and dreamed about the day she would be flung beyond the event horizon at the speed of light, never to return.

“I’m still waiting for the secret weapon,” she said after a while.

“Just you wait,” he said. And that’s when Jonah Smallwood stood and started dancing in the middle of the road.

“Sweet Caroline, bah bah bah,” he crooned as he moved, “good times never seemed so good. Oh sweet Caroline, bah bah bah. The last girl I brought here was Caroline andIdidn’thavetimetolearnanewsongforyou.” The last part of the sentence he tried to squash into a single word to make it fit the tune.

Esther shook her head. “I cannot believe any girl, ever, has been impressed by you.”

“Come dance with me, bah bah bah.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not, Esther Solar?” Still to the tune of Sweet Caroline.

“Because they did that in The Notebook and it has therefore been done.”

“They didn’t dance like this, bah bah bah.”

“I know. I’m aware. That’s why it looked good.”

“That cut me real deep,” he sang, but didn’t stop dancing. Esther took out her phone and started filming him, which only made him really turn it up. “SWEET CAROLINE, BAH BAH BAH,” he screamed to the night sky. “I WISH I’D LEARNED A SONG FOR ESTHER.”

“You’re embarrassing yourself. I won’t be part of this tomfoolery. Please stop singing that god-awful song.”

“Only if you join me.”

“The people driving past will see me.”

“No they won’t. They’ll see Woman with a Parasol, facing left. Nobody is going to care.”

“I care.”

“Too much. About too many things.”

“You’re a ridiculous human being,” she said, but she supposed he was right. She watched the cars as they passed, and thought about what they’d see if they looked out their windows: a ghost dressed in white, a flash of red hair. Not enough, she hoped, for anyone she knew to identify her. Finally she stood and finished her drink and fell in line next to him. “Don’t watch me.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Then she started line dancing, just the way her grandmother had taught her when she was little.

Esther knew the exact moment Jonah broke his promise and peeked at her, because he collapsed face-first onto the asphalt, his favorite move whenever he found her particularly preposterous. “You dance like Elaine from Seinfeld,” he said a minute later when he could finally speak again through his laughter.

“I hate you,” she said, but she didn’t stop dancing, and he didn’t stop dancing either, not for a while, not until he held her hand and spun her around and pulled her close to him so they were in the waltz position. Jonah hummed as they slow danced, his head resting against hers. Esther liked the way he felt against her. Liked the way he made her stomach flutter like a storm of orange butterflies.

And that, of course, was the problem.

Esther put her hand on his chest and gently pushed herself away. “I can’t do this,” she said quietly, unable to look at him. Her heart felt strange. Painful, somehow.

“Why not?”

“Because . . .” Why? So many reasons. Because she wasn’t good enough. Because something inside of her was rotten and broken and unlovable. Because Jonah would figure this out eventually, and why bother starting something if the end of it was inevitable? Because he’d had to leave once before, and it had sucked, and maybe it had only sucked because eight-year-olds can be real dicks and the bullying that happened in his sudden absence had left its mark somewhere deep in her soul. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t fathom giving anyone that kind of power over her again.

Esther tried to tell him all of this, but some error occurred in the translation of thought into speech, and all she could manage to say was, “Because . . . I just can’t, okay?” Sometimes it was better to not get what you wanted. Sometimes it was better to leave beautiful things alone for fear of breaking them.

“Okay,” Jonah said quietly, and he stroked her cheek with his thumb but didn’t say anything more, because you couldn’t convince someone to love you if she wouldn’t.

The hurt in his voice killed her, because pain was a language she’d learned to speak well, but she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Couldn’t give herself what she wanted either.

“Sweet Caroline, bah bah bah,” they sang together, much softer now, because they were almost the only words they actually knew. “Good times never seemed so good.”