What He's Been Missing

The cameras around me started rolling again as Scarlet tried to get down on one knee to ask Ian to marry her.

Shocked as he was, Ian’s mouth was just as wide as mine had been in the lobby earlier, but he didn’t let Scarlet get down on her knee. He pulled her back up: “Will you marry me?” she asked.

I was standing there praying to God and everything holy that Ian said yes. Really, I’d actually seen this a few times in my years working in nuptials, and when a woman proposes and a man declines, there’s simply no savvy recovery. She leaves there let down and goes to the insane asylum and then from there to her grave. I didn’t want him to marry Scarlet, but to say no right then would ruin her and the dreams of every woman in that room. He could say yes now and then no later.

And when I looked at Ian, I knew this was what he was about to do—the first part, anyway—because he was looking at Scarlet like she was all new and smelling like spring again. His color was back. His hands were confident at his sides. He looked, well, happy.

“Yes,” he said. “I will marry you.”

It would take me some years to understand that Ian didn’t say yes to Scarlet just because he couldn’t say no. Birds of a feather flock together and, as I was looking for love, Ian wanted to believe he was already in love. That the feelings that had him rolling up that poor little book weren’t real doubt, but real fear—something that would dissipate, go away, once he realized that he was doing the right thing. Right or wrong, so many of my clients, so many of my friends, had gone to the altar using the same logic. Thinking that the love they wanted would conquer all. I wouldn’t admit it myself, but if I was in the same position—ready to get married and had the person I thought I loved standing in front of me asking for my hand in marriage—I might’ve done the same thing.

In the end, only time would give the answers in Ian’s case. As the crowd of awkward smiles closed in upon him and Scarlet, cheering, I realized that the time for questions was over. I picked up a champagne flute and joined in. Kissed Scarlet on the cheek and winked softly at Ian. Posed for pictures, slid off my heels, and walked to my car, vowing to never again bring up the escape plan we’d discussed in the bedroom at the W Hotel.

2

“No ‘Settle for’ Man”

#IlovewhatIdobut: But when you love love like I do, it’s hard to listen to two people who probably aren’t in love and shouldn’t be getting married, explain why they’re in love and are getting married.

“I would fucking kill someone for her! You know what I’m sayin’? Shoot a nigga right between his eyes, yo!”

Alarm Clock is a rapper who seems to like to remain on my client list. After Journey and Dame introduced us a few years ago, I’d arranged every detail for his first two marriages to a backup dancer and video model respectively, and now he was in my office for our first consultation to plan his third.

I’d opened the meeting by asking the pair how they met. Donnica, a beautiful girl with a body that made me promise myself that I’d go to the gym as soon as I left the office, was a nail technician where Alarm’s last child’s mother (not a wife) was getting a pedicure in Miami. She’d volunteered to give Alarm a shoulder massage in a back room while he waited for his baby mama.

My second question was why they’d fallen in love with each other.

Alarm always seemed to equate love with murder. He knew he was in love with his first wife because he was going to kill her if she tried to leave him (he eventually left her), he knew he loved his second wife because he’d die trying to protect her from harm (he didn’t), he knew he loved Donnica because he’d kill someone for her.

“Know what I’m saying?” he asked me.

“Well, no. I actually don’t know what you’re saying” I said, sitting on the opposite side of my desk in my midtown office with Alarm and Donnica. They were my third of four consults before lunch and I was getting tired of nodding along. Actually loving the couple whose wedding you’re planning is kind of like finding a really great book you know you’ll forever cherish and remember. When it happens, it makes the less likable and “well, I could’ve done something much better with all that time” books bearable and actually a great litmus test through which to determine how much you actually love what you love.

I actually liked Alarm Clock. While he seemed infatuated with murder in both his music and conversation, he was like me. He wanted to find love and still believed it was possible. After four children and two failed marriages, he was still willing to say “I do.” It wasn’t the most gangster thing he could do with his time, but he was trying.

“What about you, Ms. Grant—Donnica?” I turned to the bride with the two-million-dollar ring on her airbrushed French manicured fingernails. “Why did you fall in love with Zachariah?” (Rappers always have the funniest first names.)

“He real good to his sons. I ain’t got no kids, but grandmamma always told me that if you want to know how a man will treat you, watch how he treat his mama and his kids.”

And although Donnica’s grandmother’s advice seemed to assume every man her granddaughter would meet would already have children, it was sound rhetoric that made me believe these two had a chance, so I said, “That’s great advice. Now tell me: how do you two envision your wedding day?” I already knew what Alarm envisioned, but I didn’t want to bring up the past—and then this happened:

Donnica: “We got to have a chocolate fountain! Fruit at a chocolate fountain.”

Forget the music, forget the women, forget the pants hanging down below their asses—the only problem I have with rappers is how they spend their money. Yes, you can get a Maybach if you have the money, but don’t get Burberry’s signature print spray-painted on the hood. Yes, you can move into an eastside estate, but your first order of business need not be to install inside and outside basketball courts and a pitbull kennel. Yes, you can get married at Musha Cay, the most luxurious and expensive private island in the southern Bahamas, but no, you won’t have a chocolate fountain—not if I’m planning it. Golden Corral has a chocolate fountain. My home church in Social Circle had a chocolate fountain at the Easter revival. They sell chocolate fountains at CVS. It’s over. Let it go.

“I saw a chocolate fountain on Real Housewives of Atlanta, and I wanted one at my wedding,” Donnica went on.

“Will you shut the fuck up about that damn chocolate fountain?” Zachariah spat out, sounding more like Alarm Clock. “I told you my girl Rachel gonna plan everything. Keep shit classy. Fucking chocolate fountain is mad ghetto. Tell her, Rachel.”

Alarm sat up and pointed at me.

“Well, no,” I delicately answered, looking at Donnica, who was holding onto Alarm like she and I were two hens in a house with one rooster. “I wouldn’t say it’s ghetto to want a chocolate fountain. I’m just sure we can come up with something a little more sophisticated together.” Something that speaks to where this couple is going (a divorce paper fountain?). “To where you’re going, Donnica.”

“What you mean?” she asked.

“Well, sweetheart, you’re about to be married to one of the most powerful performers in the world,” I said. “You won’t be trying to snag a rich man like those allegedly married women on all those reality shows. You’ve got one. You’re it. You’re better than a chocolate fountain.”

Alarm grinned while Donnica looked into nowhere at the possibilities.