Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb Read Free Book Online Page A

propitiation, to smile.
    “Nick is now tying the knot,” Rob went on, and I noticed his entire body shifting slightly forward and then back like a freighter caught in the steady, rolling motion of the sea. “The phrase ‘tying the knot’ would seem to refer to the closing off of something. It could mean, for example, torniqueting off a flowing vein. If that were the case,” he finished pitched slightly forward, “that vein would probably finish somewhere near the heart of my sister.”
    There was a single snort of laughter from somewhere in the room, which seemed mainly to underline the sudden silence. In the tradition of best-man speeches, Rob was clearly determined to give me a good razzing. As for Belinda, she’d refused the event entirely, and hadn’t even responded to the wedding invitation. In that, there was little surprise. Over the last years since our extended post-college fling, she’d been completely silent, indifferent to both my occasional phone calls and heartfelt letters.
    “Just look at the man,” Rob said, putting his glass down and waving a meaty hand in my direction. “Behold the groom!” I was beginning to feel distinctly ill at ease. “Nicholas Framingham is not a homosexual, that’s the first thing to remember. He’s merely got what the Buddhists call a mild heart.”
    An unhappy mutter coursed through the room. “Mainly what I want to say”—Rob drew himself up, seemed to recover his self-control suddenly—“is that we’re here to celebrate love. Love!” he cried. “The immortal binder of human souls! Nick’s soul called out across the fields and meadows of the world like a baying hound. Arf arf! And the beautiful Lucy’s soul responded with its birdlike tweet tweet!” I thought I saw a large, balding member of Lucy’s family getting to his feet, shaking his head. “At such moments as these, my friends, when the cup of life runneth over, let us remember the words of the blessed Chekhov, who said, and I quote, ‘Don’t get married if you’re afraid of loneliness.’”
    The balding man was now striding toward the stage. Rob, seemingly moved by his own speechifying, clasped his hands to his chest as if in supplication, and cried, “All I really want the world to know is that I love you, man! I just love you with all my broken heart! You’re the best”—he seemed to take a swing at some invisible tormentor—“so, hey, l’chaim !” he cried. “ Sláinte, cincin, bottoms up, baby, because…”
    He leaned forward in the manner of sober diagnosis and added, “It’s all downhill from here.”
    He sat down to the sound of Mac, and Mac alone, clapping loudly.
     
    A YEAR LATER, WITH L UCY PREGNANT WITH OUR first child, Belinda passed through town. The two of them had first met each other years earlier, in my college dorm room, when Belinda came calling one weekend, and had loathed each other on the spot. Now Belinda showed up at our house for a “drink” and made a point of being perfunctory with my then-blooming, gorgeous wife. In fact, during the entire visit, in which she drank a whole bottle of wine while retailing—because I’d asked—stories about Rob, she seemed to be smothering a laugh of some sort, a high-handed snigger. Without ever saying anything, she managed to make Lucy furious, and we had a terrible fight in the wake of her departure. Two years afterward, with Lucy pregnant again, the same scenario ensued. “Why does she hate me so?” Lucy cried when she left. “And why do you let her near me?” In her mind their enmity was something archaic, even tribal, a mystical symbol-war fought with real feelings.
    I didn’t want Lucy hurt, and in the aftermath of that second visit, I swore to myself I’d never see Belinda again. But as the passions of the marriage rapidly cooled and settled, helped in part by the wonderful, indispensable, eros-shattering advent of children, I began to reconsider. Belinda, after all, represented to me a unique path back