Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) by Yona Zeldis McDonough Read Free Book Online Page B

them in a way that stretched, broke, and entirely remade him. And Angelica he loved most of all.
    He put the phone away. She was not going to call back, not now. But he would keep his word and speak to Gretchen. Right away. Now if only Caleb would get here already; Lincoln was mighty tired of waiting.
    Just then something shifted in his mouth, and a piece of the tooth broke off; he felt a sharp edge scraping the surface of his tongue. Discreetly he spat the fragment into his palm. How worn and yellowed a bit of bone it seemed. The sight of it made Lincoln want to cry. But of greater concern was the now-jagged edge of broken tooth in his mouth, as well as whatever raw pulp or nerve might be newly revealed. The Advil had blunted the pain, but Lincoln knew the respite would not last long. There were not that many capsules left in the bottle; he’d have to replenish his supply.
    Tucking the fragment into his pocket, Lincoln looked around at the milling crowd. JFK was now foreign turf; he had not lived on the East Coast in more than a decade, and he seldom visited. Several times he was jostled by the people hurrying past, and the strap of his carry-on bag—secured the night before with duct tape—broke, so he was forced to tuck it under his arm, which was awkward at best. His only other piece of luggage was the garment bag that contained his tuxedo; he handled the rented garment with slow, exacting care. When he got to the motel, he would steam it out in the shower. Even though the place was sure to be a dump, he had no desire to stay with Betsy, despite the offer.
We’ve got so much space, after all,
she had said, and he’d thought,
Rub it in a little more, why don’t you? And how about adding a little
salt
too?
    Betsy had finally landed the big kahuna, the one she’d wanted all along, a rich guy who could afford the fancy spread in Great Neck, along with a pair of his-and-hers Mercedes—no kidding, the vanity plates read
His
and
Hers
—as well as maids who washed her delicates by hand and cleaned up after the snappish, noisy little dog that she had acquired. He knew all these particulars from Teddy, who, though not averse to sharing in his stepfather’s largesse, nonetheless enjoyed poking fun at the to-the-manor-born pretensions of both his mother and her second husband.
    Lincoln cautiously began circling the lounge in case Caleb had come in and he’d not spied him yet. In addition to being in pain, Lincoln was also ravenous, for he’d never actually eaten that granola bar. He badly wanted a coffee but was worried the heat would cause the tooth pain to spike, so he settled for an overpriced corn muffin purchased from a vending machine. In vain he attempted to peel back the film of hermetically sealed plastic as his frustration mounted. Finally he clawed the damn thing open. Once the sticky-surfaced, doughy-centered blob was revealed, he took a big bite, avoiding the side where the broken tooth lay in wait. He looked at his watch—again—and then anxiously scanned the waiting area.
    Still no sign of Caleb. He quickly finished the muffin, which was bland and gummy; when he looked down, he saw a festive sprinkling of crumbs all over the front of his shirt. He brushed them off. The tooth fragment was still in the pocket, and he pulled it out to inspect it more carefully.
    It could have been a piece from a 3-D puzzle; the companion piece was in his mouth, still attached to his gum, still a blessed part of flesh and bone—
his
flesh,
his
bone. This broken bit was the future, though, an intimation of what was to come: decay, loss, the inevitable shedding of the mortal skin. He ran a pinky over the fragment one more time before pinging it into the trash. It didn’t even make a sound when it hit. Yeah, death awaited him, like it awaited every single other living creature on the planet. But not today, damn it. Today Angelica was getting married. Woo hoo! Now where the
hell
was Caleb? Lincoln was just about to pull out his