“I’ve heard that a hymen can be surgically repaired if need be.”
Shari had rolled over in his single bed so that her back faced him. It was prom night, that night they exchanged virginities. Nick observed the moles on her back. They were foreign to him, scattered with no pattern, like his understanding of her.
“Why would you worry about something like that? I don’t care about those things. And no one will know if you were a virgin before your wedding because I’ll be your husband by then. I mean, we’ll be together and it will be our little secret.”
She had rolled over to face him. Her hand revealed itself from underneath the bed sheet to pet his hair back. She was studying his facial features more closely, before a tear escaped and raced down the side of her face to her mouth.
“Shari, what’s wrong? Aren’t you happy with me?”
“That’s it, Nick. I’m too happy. It scares me.”
Nick shook this memory away as quickly as he spit the burning mouthwash into the sink. He would skip the ceremony altogether and find a way to make a brief appearance at the reception.
In the corner mirrors of parked cars, he once again checked his appearance. He felt uncomfortable in his new green suit, the one his mother had bought for him—her way of making sure at least one person depended upon her. It didn’t fit well, and green was not his color, nor was it one of confidence. He wanted Shari to see him as an eligible bachelor, and not a single ex-boyfriend dressed by his mother.
Nick sneaked in and dropped his money gift in the decorative birdcage, which housed no birds. He caught a glimpse of the trail of her gown. The accented voice of the master of ceremonies shouted into a microphone,
“Sharifa and Yusef Talel!”
A familiar driving beat, like the one heard the night before at the Layliyah, simultaneously announced their entrance. The buzzing chirpings of a lutish instrument in cacophonous unison with a number of other stringed instruments, including a sharp, grating electric keyboard, reverberated against the walls. Nick walked into the hall. The bride and groom had made their way down the isle that split the hall in two, to the middle of the dance floor. It was there that the groom stepped aside. He left Shari alone to perform the ritual belly dance.
As the music intensified with a man pounding a standing drum, Shari gyrated about the floor. In an attempt to bless her with good wishes, older, married women in sparkling dresses, including her mother, chased her around the dance floor, throwing American dollar bills in her direction. The music rose against the primal beats once again, but this time she was not encircled. Instead she glided like a flying piñata about the floor, ready to explode, her hips shaking. Others tried to pin money on her dress. For good luck, he assumed. But she had reached such a speed trying to match the intensifying passion of the music that they would give up and resign themselves to simply blessing her with the money. Nick watched amazed at how an entire hall of people was transfixed by the bride.
After the music stopped, and the crowd of standing witnesses rumbled to their tables, an older woman took the microphone from the singer of the Lebanese band. She walked over to the middle of the dance floor to make a high-pitched scream, which everyone else but Nick applauded. Nick cringed at the repeated, shrilling noise. He remembered a time when Shari invited him to a Lebanese wedding in a neighbouring town, which she knew her parents wouldn’t attend. She was dressed in a black evening gown that night, and the bride had once been her best friend.
“You see that woman screaming, Nick. She is hailing blessings on the bride and groom. It’s an old Lebanese tradition. Isn’t it annoying? So help me God, if I ever decide to get married, shoot me if I agree to have anything like that at my wedding.” That is what she had said that night.
Nick remembered looking over to her. He had found the perfect girl, someone brutally honest even when it meant sounding rude and envious.
“I wish you would have worn your red dress tonight. That’s a turn- on dress.” Nick hinted.
“You don’t wear a red dress to a funeral, Nick. You know that.” She smirked.
Nick took a seat at a table and received polite but uncomfortable looks from the couples already sitting there. In the corner of his eye, he noticed Shari rising alone at the head table to applaud the shrieking old woman. He turned away. Two women with caked on makeup and visible hair on their upper lips were smoking in the classy way reserved for heroines in movies like Casablanca. Nick noticed the extended length of their cigarettes, which split their gaudy, ring-encircled fingers. The hair of the men at the table receded in the same direction, from front to back. They were small-boned, but big-bellied, sporting the customary moustache. The man next to Nick grabbed handfuls of pistachios, offering Nick one.
“Do you know the bride?”
“Yes, I live next door to the Raffouls.”
“Oh, she’s a lovely bride, isn’t she?”
The hall was lavishly decorated with white lace and gold trim, while the head table had been placed far away from non-relative tables, like Nick’s. Nick maneuvered his glance around passing servers to catch a better glimpse of Shari in her bridal gown. He could never imagine her in a bridal gown before. He had always assumed that their connection transcended institutions and the character changes they demanded. Little did he know that it would be the reason for their relationship’s downfall.
“What do you have against marriage?” Shari had yelled above the sounds of Coltrane jazz in a basement bar called The Eclectic. They were having a drink and celebrating the recent engagement of a mutual friend a few months before Shari’s very own engagement announcement.
“If marriage were a religion, I would be an atheist,” Nick had responded.
She left alone, shortly afterwards. He had upset her but thought nothing of it. After that she politely avoided him.
The ornate lady at Nick’s table butted out a cigarette in the full ashtray. Almost immediately, she stuck another to her red lips.
“Can I have one?”
The lady extended the silver box to Nick, and then offered anyone else out of the courtesy she was now forced to show. Nick refused to ask her for a light and lit the cigarette with the floating candle in the centrepiece.
He ate impatiently. The courses and the time required to clear the plates unnerved him enough to visit the bar more frequently. There, Shari’s other neighbour, Mr. Georges, was helping out as a bartender. Mr. Georges was Shari’s Lebanese neighbour, who hailed from the same village Shari’s parents had emigrated from. Mr. Georges didn’t seem too pleased to see Nick. Nick feared that face once before. It was the same face Mr. Georges revealed when he caught Shari and Nick secretly kissing in the basement of her home, when they were ten years old. Mr. Georges was spying on them through the basement windows. Shari had rushed out and begged him not to tell her father. Mr. Georges agreed but always seemed to feel guilty about not revealing what he saw.