London Is the Best City in America

“Who are you talking to?” Josh asked. He was standing in my doorway, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, a short-sleeved shirt with the word WORD on it over that. The car keys were already in his hands.

“You may want to change into something else.” I pointed to the thermometer as my proof. “It’s going to be a million degrees outside today.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said. “You ready?”

I was standing by my bed in the ripped T-shirt that I’d slept in, nothing on my feet, and it was all I could do not to ask, Do I look ready to you? But he was keeping his voice low, and I knew he was afraid we were going to wake our parents. So I just held up my hand to indicate that I needed another minute.

Josh nodded, disappearing down the hall, and I opened my closet, searching for the lightest pieces of clothing I could find. In lugging my fishermen’s wives tapes inside, I had left behind all but a backpack of belongings in the car, figuring I’d just wear what I had in my closet this morning. It was a slim selection, to say the least. I settled on a yellow sundress, a pair of old flip-flops, and a beat-up cowboy hat.

I stood in front of the dresser mirror with the hat on, pulling my hair into two low pigtails. It wasn’t a great look. My cheeks were still sallow from lack of sleep, my eyes too wide.

“I look like a little girl,” I said to my reflection.

“You look fine,” Josh said, appearing once again in the doorway, apparently out of nowhere.

“Stop doing that,” I said.

“Doing what?”

“Materializing.”

He motioned for me to follow him, and so I did, reaching for my pocketbook and then tracing his steps out of my bedroom and down the upstairs hallway, down the main stairs, out the front door. He didn’t talk to me again until we were outside.

“I left Mom and Dad a note saying we were going to the city to spend the day with Meryl,” he said, walking quickly. “I said that they could call your cell if they needed us for anything.”

I tried to keep pace with him. “What did you tell Meryl?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean where exactly did you tell Meryl you were going to be?”

“Meryl’s going to be busy doing her own thing today,” he said. “Everyone’s in town. She has some sort of last-minute outing with Bess and the wedding planner.”

By some strange twist of fate, Meryl had ended up hiring the same wedding planner I had been using to help plan Matt’s and my wedding. Tiffany Tinsdale. Tiffany Tinsdale, who worked out of a townhouse on the Upper East Side, whose messiness she would apologize for—as soon as you walked in the door—knowing good and well the only thing ever out of place was the piece of paper she placed on the floor to pick up while she told you how sorry she was for the messiness. I thoroughly disliked Tiffany Tinsdale. And the feeling was mutual. She wanted me to care about all types of things I couldn’t seem to care about at all: place settings, bridesmaid’s dresses, party parting gifts. Those things didn’t matter to me normally, and the way things were going with Matt, the wedding planning came to feel like an uncomfortable reminder that the wedding had become a show, a too-large production. And I didn’t even know why I was putting it on anymore.

Tiffany. I could only be thankful now that there would be no visiting with her this weekend. When Meryl realized she had also worked on my nonwedding to Matt, she let Tiffany go and hired someone named Bethany instead.

I looked carefully at my brother. “So you’re not worried?” I said. “That Meryl will be suspicious?”

“No,” he said.

I kept looking at him, waiting for the rest of it. I knew there was a rest of it because he was refusing to look back.

“I left her a voice mail that I’m spending the day with Berringer and to call his cell phone if she needs me, okay? And no, Emmy,” he said, anticipating my next question, “I don’t think I’ll get caught.”

This made me think. First that he was wrong, and he was going to get caught. And, then, that he wasn’t wrong. That he had done this before, so many times by now, that he knew exactly how to manage it.

He clicked open the car doors, and I got into the passenger side, watched as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“You know, I’m not sure I like you so much right now,” I said once he closed the door.

“Well,” he said, “if it’s any consolation, I’m not sure I like myself.”

The quickest way to Rhode Island from our parents’ was to take 287 to I-95 and then just stay on it, straight, all the way along and through Connecticut, one long boring shot. If everything went as scheduled, this would land us on my edge of Rhode Island in a little over three hours, on Elizabeth’s edge—I was guessing—fifty minutes or so after that.

When we hit 287, I rolled down my window and put my hand outside, the wind pressing up against it. I knew that things were supposed to look better in the morning, but I was still waiting for better to kick in. I was nervous about meeting Elizabeth, nervous I wasn’t going to like her, and even more nervous that I would. And more than anything, the absurdity of this—the rush, rush of it—wasn’t quieting what I felt just under the surface. That as soon as we stopped, there was going to be all kinds of unhappiness.

I was guessing that Josh felt it too. Because he was driving un-characteristically slowly, cars speeding past us on the left: two matching green Saabs, an SUV, a minivan full of kids, who waved at us as their parents passed.