WHY I LOVE BRUNETTES

by Christian Gehman

CHAPTER TWO

“Tom’s Wedding”

When Doc finally woke up again, the third time, from a repulsive

(yet still fascinating) dream about a dark-haired woman – not Diana! – hanging

naked in chains (a dream not that much different, really? – than what nice guys

do to women every day):

Even before Doc opened his eyes, and for what seemed a tedious

long time, he felt Death glaring at him with a baleful but incurious uncertainty

compounded of cheap wedding Champagne and Morgon and cigarettes and Irish

whiskey – Irish presbyterians! for God’s sake – topped off by a sad-eyed lady

with a camera.

At the wedding of a friend.

Such a pity Champagne causes terrible headaches!

Maybe lying absolutely motionless would aid the process of non-

thought?

What Doc knew kept creeping in:

He knew he should not be lying on a white couch in the center of a

white room up at the Photocrat Gallery in Charlottesville – without Diana.

He knew it was raining.

The demon headache, Doc believed, had been caused mostly by

Tom’s cheap wedding Champagne.

The Jameson, he felt quite sure, had not done any damage.

Maybe all those cigarettes?

Doc lay on Sarah’s white couch fighting off despair and listening to

the rain drum down and cataloging physical sensations:

(right ear: cold;

left ear: warm;

left arm: stiff;

legs: far away;

bladder: full;

stomach: nauseated;

the headache: promising much worse if he moved).

He might have been a Swedish meatball lying stiff and greasy in a

pool of vomit: Morgon and cheap Champagne.

He lay there pretending he could still hope that he didn’t know

exactly what kind of trouble he had gotten into, even though he did remember all

the details.

After that, he lay there hoping Sarah hadn't photographed him

passed out dead drunk snoring on her white couch with her snow-flake quilt

thrown over him.

He lay there trying to believe he couldn’t quite remember all the

facts – because, as Tom liked saying, “Wallowing in facts can only make things

worse.”

Why did Champagne cause such terrible headaches?

But really, it had been the Beaujolais, and the pack of Camels, and

the Guinness – not the cheap Champagne. The Jameson, he still believed, had

done any harm.

Unfortunately, all the worst damage had been caused by a sad-

eyed woman with her camera, damn it.

At the wedding of a friend.

Doc hoped continue hoping Sarah hadn't really photographed him

dead drunk, snoring on her white couch with her snowflake quilt thrown over him,

he felt by turns a little smug and then a little sick at heart”

Fairly sure he might get caught?

And if he didn't want to think about sweet Sarah’s sad eyes or her

fascinating mouth; and if he didn't want to think about the way her breasts had

trembled like ripe peaches – downy and warm from the sun – or how her lips had

taken on such interesting textures when she kissed him, or the deep drowning

smell of her sex, or how it really had been just before it started, when he still

couldn’t quite believe that this was happening to him, and then again – and

again, each time wanting and getting a little bit more; and if he didn't want to think

about the first step: when Sarah allowed him to drown in the pools of her eyes,

meanwhile adjusting the seam of her blue jeans on his knee: well, that was only

because he still hadn't figured out (yet) how all that could possibly fit into the

movie that he was making with Diana.

That movie (Why I Love Brunettes) starts with a catalog of bubbles:

Diana coyly splashing in her bath, enveloped by huge drifts of bubbles from her

mother’s little shop in Xochimilco: Diana reaching toward a cake of soap, we see

her arm dripping bubbles, a cascade of soapy water, bubbles the color of pearls

on each breast, so startlingly firm and free; she washes under each breast

carefully, then leans back in the bubbles, stretching her legs up to wash her

knees, left leg, right leg, great splashing cascades of bubbles.

Now we zoom in toward the deep brown curl of the Sargasso ... the

splash sounds fade while, coming up from nothing, something like the white

noise of blue wind the color of an airplane, and over that we hear the sweet

Virginia burr of Wickham Oldknowe almost chanting his melodious voice over:

… And now think of toffee, caramel: the light brown that is almost

blonde. Light chestnut brown. Or Baltic amber. And the scent of chocolate,

coffee, cinnamon. The rare ambergris. The chameleon brown that's always

changing, sometimes almost blonde but sometimes quite brunette indeed. Or

mousey brown, the brown girls always wish away. The clear translucent brown

of poplar honey in the jar. Russet brown, a thrush. Or dark brown kindly eyes.

Ah, she has the brown hair and the brown eyes of Earth Mother. Pocahontas.

Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” … who knows the truth, who talks to critters.

And the way brown nipples crinkle under tongue. The khaki brown of military

uniforms. The deep brown color of tan skin on beach girls wearing string bikinis,

dark against the light blonde sand. And far away, the blue horizon. Earth tones:

banks of brown and brown-red loam and yellow and brown ocher, under the

green hillsides and the sky. The rich wormy brown of deep garden soil. The

rusty brown of windrowed autumn leaves in clear air with a rising plume of smoke

and red small flames in ribboned clusters on the pile. The clear nut-brown of

English ale. Bubbles and her dark brown hair. The French bread brown of

crusty fresh-baked baguettes warm under your jacket. The brown baked eggy

custard skin of crême brulée. Or baked rice pudding with a hint of nutmeg and

cinnamon. The crisp savory brown of well-roasted beef, a joint, perhaps a gigot

crisp and sputtering, with small brown baked potatoes, of lambies roasting on a

spit. Grilled steak. The Dark Bar’s flaming shishkabobs. Ancho chilis, browned

by the sun from the dark green of Poblanos. Texas chili savory with cumin, salt

and anchos with no vegetal reek of red tomato. The black gray-brown of pine

bark, dark brown mahogany. The forest brown of hickory nuts, the tan of acorns.

Walnuts, green until they turn a black dark brown. The brown mulch carpet of

the beech nuts under beech trees. The furry brown of coconuts. The bronze

brown of the oak's beginning in the spring. Saddles and a bridle: old brown well-

oiled harness leather. Brown Redwing boots. Brown varnished wooden chairs.

The comfortably dusty brown of old leather moccasins. Chocolate. The grizzled

brown of ash tree trunks. A dark bay mare: almost black against the green grass

of a meadow. Espresso coffee, sugared in the tiny cup, covered with light brown

foamy crema. Brown leather chesterfields. A leathern writing table. Brown

sheepskin slippers. An old scuffed football. Brown teak decking under sail. The

old brown cork from a bottle of Chateau Latour. The light brown of Amontillado.

Single malt Scotch glinting in a crystalline decanter. Irish whiskey. Kahlua.

Mulatto chili peppers purple brown. The brown garnet edge of old Bordeaux.

Brown sherry or some raisiny Madeira. Bacon browning fragrant in the pan.

Glazed roasted fat on a Virginia ham. Roast goose with small, split, browned

potatoes. Dark brown-black pumpernickel bread with goose fat, salt and pepper

sprinkled over. Pancakes. The brown edge of an omelet or a crepe. Brown

eggs.

Diana’s brown eyes, brown nipples and her dark brown hair.

Possibly the vision of her face framed by brown hair intensifies

empathic bonding. Brunettes might thus be easier to love. Or possibly the

hormone melatonin (which controls hair color in the blonde to black continuum)

helps harmonize a brunette's personality, reducing fits of the irrational, can’t fix it

temper. Its absence – as in redheads? – may help create the whirlwind?

Think of Mona Lisa, the Madonna: these women radiate the

qualities of inner warmth, compassion, tenderness – and something else ... a

certainty? You feel sure she might not be impossible to please?

Therefore: the possibility of peace?

She'll be the one you should have married, or the one you always

miss?

The question “Is it true blondes have more fun?” is an advertising

slogan: patently untrue.

What can any blonde be, really, but the after-image, pale and hazy,

of which a brunette is the original?

When Doc finally opened one eye, clear streams of water were

rippling across the huge front window of the Photocrat Gallery, now spangled

with driven rain through which a grey green light was filtering. Doc's ear was

cold, his head hurt, and he knew it wasn't nearly late enough to call Diana, who

was certainly still sleeping.

She would, of course, be coldly furious no matter when he called.

Because he hadn't telephoned! Of course not. No. He hadn't bothered to even

call her from the damned rehearsal dinner of a man she hated, hadn’t called her

after that, hadn’t even called her from Tom’s wedding breakfast, hadn't called her

later on from the reception, and he certainly hadn't called her from wherever the

hell he ended up after that;– No!

He had waited until the next morning to call, with his voice like a

broken piano, his terrible head, and the damp sour smell of his clothes.

Doc didn't want to start the day by lying to Diana: Hi love, things

are fine … Of course I drank … red wine, as usual, and then Champagne, of

course I drank Champagne, then finally I passed out on the couch at Bill's

apartment. Well of course I didn't sleep with someone. Things are fine. Except

this killer headache, prob’ly that's why I sound strange. Of course we're fine. I'm

off to Iowa, but you agreed that I could drive Tom's furniture out there, and things

are fine. You know I love you.

(The truth however, was a little more like: Yes, we both know things

have been impossible. Let's not go into that. Not on the telephone. It is just a

couple of days. A week. Ten days, maybe. A short break was your idea, before

Tom asked me to drive his van to Iowa. You said“I need some space.” Some

time and distance? Time to think?)

What Doc could never think about, was how he might break up with

Diana when they were both still totally in love. He kept hoping he could just walk

in the door and find Diana at the reading distance, with her blue eyes as big as

saucers:

Hello, Diana, I still love you.

Doc. I love you too.

The words, the reading distance, all that warm and whirly stuff that

happens in the game of crazy eights between two pairs of eyes.

That warm whirly stuff was how it had been always.

Until suddenly it wasn't.

Wasn't like that. No. Not much at all.

Quoth the raven: Nevermore.

Doc really didn't want to think about:

That Nevermore.

And so despite the way the Death kept glaring at him with incurious

uncertainty, Doc kept trying to believe he could still return to his own innocence.

When that failed, he tried persuading himself that he could probably return to

being innocent just as soon so ever as the killer headache went away, because:

True love creates a kind of innocence.

Which has a corollary:

What you do from true love cannot really be wrong.

And Doc still found it easy to believe that “what happened” with

Sarah had been done truly by that part of him which had been totally in love with

Sarah long before he ever met Diana.

Funny how some dreams, you don't let go.

They smolder in your heart until the old flame flares above the

dying embers, incinerating all your best new dreams.

That stuff about incinerating dreams reminded Doc of something

Bill said once: “The Eighties were the abbattoir of dreams: sort of an elephant's

graveyard where dreams became Japanese cars.”

Again Doc had the feeling that, if he had gotten his degree on time

(and then a job), or if he had just even finished his movie, why, things might still

be possible.

With a major cash bump, maybe?

Even now he still hoped things would soon go back to being

possible again just a little way off in the future.

I just need time to think, he told himself.

Because I still believe “True love creates a kind of innocence?”

And I still love Diana?

Another spangling of rain against the glass reminded Doc his ear

was cold. Hunching down under Sarah’s handmade snowflake quilt, he

deranged Sarah's gray cat Nuts, who yawned and stretched and manicured his

claws before resettling against Doc's knee. Closing his eyes, Doc made another

vain attempt to mitigate the glare of Demon Headache by lying absolutely still.

He lay there rigid, semi-conscious, on a white couch in a room

whose white walls were strewn with brightly colored photographs that reminded

him of monarch butterflies clustered on a treetop at the summit of a black

volcanic cone deep in the Sierra Madre – lay there on a white couch in a white

room near a low green hill in Charlottesville, welcoming the rain because it cut

him off from everything, and most of all from what he wasn't ready – yet – to think

of as a “spiritual breaking point” because it had been manifested in the real world

only by some physical sensations.

He lay there trying not to think mere physical sensations might

indicate a total change of heart.

He knew that there had been a moment when what he believed in

shifted – when he knew he was wrong. By his own rules. And then pressed on

anyway.

He told himself that it meant nothing, really, after all. It was only

just laying some old ghosts to rest. In any case ... it was done. No point

wallowing in facts. And even if it does mean things are over with Diana, it's still

done. And I don't really care exactly how or why it happened or what difference it

may make because it was just something I had to do – to go on being me.

And truth is, I have always been in love with Sarah. For how many

years? Since before I even met Diana.

But Sarah always was in love with Tom – my good friend Tom, so

prominently on the non-snake list of truest friends.

And even now that Tom had married someone else, Doc knew he

had been snaking Sarah, because he still Sarah was Tom's girl. And even Sarah

asked about it.

“Doc, you don't care about Tom?”

“Tom just got married, right? He's moving out of town forever,

right?”

Fuck Tom.

But now Doc lay there on the morning after with her snowflake quilt

clutched over him, surrounded by her brightly-colored photographs, trying to

remember where he started going wrong, like maybe tracing back to the

beginning was the best way to figure out what he had now become.

Like when he thought it through, the ending might be different.

There might be an apotheosis at the end of it, or an epiphany.

Not just this murdering headache.

Maybe he wanted to savor his memory of all those physical

sensations ... while at the same time wallowing in the fact of his own guilt.

Sarah.

Jesus.

What have I done?

He couldn’t quite escape the smug manly pride that went with lying

on Sarah’s couch. Because, against all odds, it had been a great spell of

fucking; not just something he had dreamed about for years.

And that pride kept him lying there recalling how the whole thing

started: with a haze of sunshine washing through the apple trees along the west

wall of the garden at Tom's wedding party.

Good old Tom.

Remembering an old song by Carl Phillips:

Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo.Now let me writhe … on Sarah's pillow.In the green shade of … a weeping willow.

Doc had been standing on the back porch of the Colonnade Club at

the University, lounging up against a huge white Doric pillar, which Bill the

architect insisted on calling a Doric column, drinking oceans of the good vin rou'

because the bridesmaids in their crisp silk dresses seemed so unapproachable.

So young! How come these girls could seem so young? And so untouchable?

And yet so damned appealing?

Doc's understanding, which he had acquired from Tom, was that

Cassandra had given each of her bridesmaid a gorgeous and expensive set of

peach-pink silk from Victoria’s Secret: teddy, negligee and bustière,

supplemented by a matching cotton sleep set that included an ultra soft sleeping

brassiere, soft lacy peach, a comfortable tee shirt, and some mid-thigh sleeping

shorts. All in the orange peach-pink color of your wildest dreams.

The groom’s men, including Doc, all received enormous black Mont

Blanc pens.

Doc stood watching the happy wedding party crowding the

Colonnade Club’s formal garden: academics, artists, crafters, townies,

supplemented by a sprinkling of good country families, all of them drinking,

chattering and hurling down gobs of crab dip and buttered biscuits filled with thin-

sliced country ham.

Doc had been listening (for too long, he thought) – to the pure

unamplified twinkly strings of a country wedding banjo fiddle band: and then,

exactly at a moment of intensely drunken clarity, as the band struck up The

Tennessee Waltz:

Doc suddenly felt out of place, like he didn’t belong – in that

garden, with Tom's other wedding guests.

But damn it! He had been Tom’s best man. His hands had

shaken. Tom's had not.

So maybe it was just the oceans of vin rou' that made him start

wondering how – perhaps because of his long sojourn with Diana down in

Richmond (only sixty miles away, but so impossibly different in spirit that no one

from Charlottesville ever goes there of his own free will, except maybe for a

concert or to look at paintings in The Virginia Museum) – he had managed to

become “the old friend,” that shadowy and insubstantial character whose

presence at a wedding calls to mind old memories (perhaps unpleasant

memories) of good and bad times when the bridegroom was care-free.

Then suddenly the sad-eyed lady with her camera, Sarah – lighting

on the porch beside him – told Doc she had decided to reveal her dreams.

She called them photographs, of course.

And what she really said was that she’d like to have a show – of all

her photographs of Tom. Doc thought of them as dreams because, like all her

photographs, those he had seen possessed a dream-like quality that made them

seem to waver in and out between the real world and what only might have been,

reminding you of the rare moments when you see things clear enough to

rearrange them in new constellations which take on new meaning and create a

bright significance that promises to last and last.

Not fade away.

And what she really said was only: “Doc. I have been thinking I will

show my photographs of Tom.”

And Doc replied, “The whole shebang? Some show. Think Tom

will come? I'll drink to that.” He hefted a bottle of Tom’s Beaujolais, which was

now half full.

Sarah held her cup out; Doc refilled it.

“Were you invited to this wedding?” Doc asked. He felt damn

curious about the facts.

“Tom asked me to take some photographs.”

“Well, allright then ... here's to photographs.”

“Ah, no,” she said. “To Tom, and how we're all going to miss him.”

“You're not going to miss him.”

“No,” she said. “Not much.”

She touched the bottle with her cup.

They both knew she was still in love with Tom. In spite of all the

bad stuff. Or maybe she was still in love with him because of all the bad stuff?

Love can be confusing.

Especially on this day when old Tom had married someone else.

Was Tom’s bride really beautiful and innocent and true?

Tom certainly believed it.

And yet …. It's funny how some loves you can't let go.

You can't just forget about them.

“You know, he might come back,” Doc said. “Most people get

divorced. They say you never leave this town forever. Tom might find it's not

that easy to escape from being shipwrecked in the Southern Mountains.”

Squinting up through apple blossoms at the sun’s now bright,

uncompromising glare, Sarah asked: “Why do people serve such terrible

champagne?”

Doc answered, “But the bad champagne is perfect for a wedding –

just a quick buzz filled with bubbles, followed, grandly, by an agonizing

headache.”

Sarah’s camera focused on the young man in his rumpled blue

seersucker suit. The motor-driven shutter clicked three times. “Do you

remember when I got divorced?” she asked.

“But of course,” Doc replied. “What a party that was. You were

there with Tom. Of course. We drank Meursault and roasted oysters all night

long. And Bill brought a case of that lovely champagne. The Schramsberg Blanc

de Noirs.”

“We drank too much of it, I think.”

“Diana loves it.”

“You'll come look at the photographs tonight?”

“Tonight?” Doc asked, astonished.

“I can’t look at them alone. I can’t decide which ones to burn.”

And Doc was just about to say, But Don’t Burn Any!, when the huge

wedding cake sailed down the porch steps on a silver platter borne by a trio of

uniformed girls, who set it on a table near the fountain.

Now the bridegroom, Tom – a tall dark handsome fellow –looked

around the garden for his bride. He caught Doc's eye. Doc nodded toward the

upstairs window, where he’d left Cassandra with old Bill.

Sarah’s camera now re-focused on the young man in his rumpled

blue seersucker suit: she took five shots, using the motor drive: aziz, ziz, ziz, ziz,

ziz. Swapping lenses, she took several telephoto closeups of the bridesmaids

and the cake. She put the lens cap on decisively and then looked pensively

around.

“Tonight?” Doc asked again.

She came back with an effort. “What?”

“Tonight? What do you want, really?”

“I want to show you some old photographs.” Bemused, she looked

him in the eye again, smiled hesitantly, and then shrugged.

Doc knew he shouldn't go there; she was Tom's girl anyway, and

he was having trouble with Diana. Both those reasons meant he really shouldn't

go there. No matter what wasn't going to happen.

And then he told himself: “I've been in love with her for years. And

nothing ever happens. Or maybe at the most I rub her shoulders.”

Down the garden, Tom, who had been waylaid by some cousin of a

bridesmaid's mother: Tom: ... suddenly lunged up the porch steps, stumbling

when he first saw Sarah, who had been concealed behind the Doric column.

Tom glanced quickly through the doorway, caught himself, then

swept Sarah into his arms and kissed her passionately on the lips.

Doc decided he would look at photographs. No matter what wasn’t

going to happen.

Tom plunged inside.

Doc threw an arm around Sarah, whose knees were wobbling,

supported her against him while he carefully refilled her cup, and said, “Now

Sarah, Morgon may not cure everything, but it can help …”

Holding the cup to her lips, Doc kept talking gently, to distract her,

about “the influence of chance on all intangibles” and how “your timing has to be

exactly right in contact sports,” about “the meaning of rainchecks and ticket

stubs,” about “the one-horse logic of Italian cars (which wear out suddenly at

15,000 miles),” and then he finished with a homily about the way true courage

means your heart just has to keep on beating, sometimes, even when the world

stands still.

What he meant was, true courage in love.

He meant, sometimes you just have to hang on a little bit longer.

When two spots of color finally reappeared in Sarah's cheeks, he

asked, “Now – what about these photographs? What time shall I come over?”

“For what?” Sarah answered, still dazed. That was a tear running

down one cheek?

“Sometimes Morgon confuses me,” Doc said. “I thought you

wanted me to look at photographs.”

In the garden near them, some ancient cousin of a bridesmaid's

mother was insisting Wickham Oldknowe should admit that marriage would be so

much easier if men weren’t all such jerks.

Sarah held her cup out for more Beaujolais. A far away look

reappeared in her eyes. “You know I got that job for him,” she mused. “That job

in Iowa. And now he's going there without me.”

Well, Doc thought, that might be true enough. But you didn't really

want to go to Iowa. Certainly not after you caught Tom parking in your bed with a

cute waitress from the Dark Bar. Even though he was dead drunk. And you

cutting up those paintings made it totally impossible, especially after he glued

them all back together on slabs of imperishable half inch plywood with your name

attached.

“He’s only marrying that bitch to spite me.”

Doc was never sure Sarah really said that. Maybe it was just

telepathy?

As Doc poured her cup full to the brim with Morgon again, she

looked toward the rumpled man, glanced at the sky, and looked back at Doc,

saying, “Tonight?”

“What time?” Doc asked.

“Eight thirty-five?”

In the garden just below them, Wickham Oldknowe was protesting

“But men aren’t the problem. That's not it at all. People are so different – you

can’t predict what will work and what won’t. For me, the fourth year, really. Has

always been my biggest problem. If I could just get past the fourth year, maybe I

could make it last. But women, nowadays, just get so restless. Someone else

seems more appealing. And divorce is relatively easy.”

Doc swallowed off a long pull of Morgon.

“Are you coming?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,” Doc said: a change in plans. “I'll be there. Count on me.

Eight thirty-five.”

She looked at him hard, to be sure.

Very well then, Doc concluded, I can go to dinner at the New

Atlantis. I can call call Diana from there … or from The Dark Bar. Sleep at Bill's,

then split for Iowa right after breakfast.

Returning Sarah’s glance, and scarcely daring to believe or hope

her invitation might mean she was planning more than looking at old

photographs, he said again: “I'll be there. Sarah.”

That's how it always starts. You say “Yes” when you should have

said “No.” Maybe you even tell yourself “nothing will happen.” But that nothing –

that's not the point. The point is that you want something to happen. And

therefore, you should have said “No.”

But … say No to Sarah?

Was there any man alive who could say No to Sarah?

I’ve been in love with her for what? How many years? And nothing

ever happens.

Behind him now, Doc heard a rustling of petticoats. He turned to

see Tom's bride, white blonde Cassandra, fluttering in the doorway like a white

bird who has been set free.

Damn! It suddenly occurred to Doc: he didn't hardly know the girl.

How friends can change! They grow apart! They blunder off into

unhappy love affairs! Or happy marriages! They move away! They settle down,

they have two kids, they get some life insurance and then ... Damn! you just

don't know them any more.

What Bill said long ago: “One thing we know for sure: True North

can wander. One day you wake up and true North is somewhere else.”

Turning backward on the top step now and catching every eye,

Cassandra tossed her bouquet. One of the serving girls could not help catching

it. Cassandra, on Tom’s arm, swept down the porch steps through the garden to

the wedding cake, where she and Tom cut out the first slice, fed each other,

posed for photographs, removed the bride's cake to a special silver plate, so they

could freeze it wrapped in plastic for their first anniversary. They served slices

from the second layer to the guests.

When Doc turned back to Sarah, she had disappeared.

And that’s what happens, years later. Your heart leaps up, and off

you go to rendezvous–because you want to believe they can't hurt you any more

because you don't really want anything from them.

You want to know you’re still alive?

You want to tell them you are proud you lived through everything

(the pain they caused, the agony, the moments of despair when you believed

you'd never love again), but words are insufficient, or your heart shrinks back:

You can't quite get that message through.

That person is a flame you can't stop circling. And yet you swoop

in toward their light because it is the only beacon.

Shall we remark on the foolhardy courage of moths?

Sarah's pictures, taken with a long lens from the upstairs bedroom

window, clearly show the fountain at Tom's elbow. Set into the ivy-covered

serpentine brick wall, a man's lusty head is spewing out a jet of water like some

medieval drawing of the wind (or Bacchus); you can't help thinking there is

something sinister about the puffed out cheeks and merry eyes of this lead-

colored Everyman: he has the vine-haunted look of someone whose divinity has

not as yet been too much questioned.

Two large Chinese goldfish live in the pool. They are carried

indoors every winter. Before Tom's wedding there had been talk of rigging the

fountain to spew out Champagne. This plan was abandoned “because of the

fish.”

In all Sarah’s photographs, you’ll see long Tom protecting his new

bride; long Tom, his cool white linen suit immaculate, a red tie knotted at his

throat: and his bold eyes, so very blue, revealing all his rake-hell Gable-esque

benevolence. The blaze of sunshine’s always dappling across them through the

apple blossoms:

In these photographs, Cassandra shows up much too pale

(because “white's not her color”?)

And though her hair is blonde as the butter on cinnamon toast, her

lips are gashed a bit too crimson, and there’s a blush as if of fever on her cheeks:

she has the pumpkin-princess look of Cinderella newly-rescued from the ashes.

As Bill said when Tom first met her, “She'll dance/will never dance

(pick one) for you.”

Bemused by Sarah's disappearance, Doc drifted down the porch

steps to the bar, where he commandeered the last bottle of Morgon. Drinking

from the bottle now and then when he thought no one was looking, Doc tried to

speak with everyone he hadn’t met (“Hello, I'm Doc, Tom's oldest friend, the best

man, yes, right, nice to meet you, yes, it's wonderful they're married. Now let's

see, you're? ..... Ah. The bridesmaid's uncle? What a beautiful day, so

auspicious. Apple blossoms and the sunshine. Yes they do … indeed … make

such a pretty pair.)

At then last, with all the other wedding guests, Doc pelted the

newly-weds with bird seed as they escaped from the garden. Tom helped

Cassandra tuck the lacy train of her dress into the front seat of an old black

Packard, rented for the occasion, which had been parked in the lane. A string of

cans wired to its bumper rattled on the ground. Tom got out and, using a pair of

wire-cutters he had providentially stashed in the glove box, removed all the cans.

The black Packard turned the corner of the lane and disappeared.

As Doc looked back at the Colonnade Club, a swirl of curtains at an

upstairs window caught his eye. Thinking that it might be Sarah, he wafted

slowly through the crowd and up the porch steps. Then he visited the kitchen

accidentally, looking for the back stairs. The black and white-garbed serving

girls, directed by Cassandra's aunt, were washing plates and silverware.

(Hello, I'm Doc, Tom's old best friend, his best man, yes ....)

Swaying slightly, and gesturing now and then with the bottle of

Morgon when he forgot himself, Doc let himself be buttonholed by the bride’s

aunt, then thanked her three times for everything – firstly, for himself; secondly,

on behalf of all the other wedding guests; and thirdly, for all the rest of Tom's old

friends who, for one reason or another, had only wanted to attend the festivities.

Then Doc apologized for his condition, blamed it on the “scan'alous

good weather;” and after gently fondling each bridesmaid in turn, slipped up the

back stairs. He did not find Sarah in the bedroom, but when he looked out the

back window, she was taking close-ups of the Chinese goldfish in their pool. As

Doc watched, she slipped out the gate and looked down the lane.

Stepping out from the shadow of a holly tree hanging over one of

Mr. Jefferson's famous serpentine brick walls, the young man in his rumpled blue

seersucker suit took Sarah's arm in a way that made Doc want to kill him.

Well, well. Doc thought. Well well well well well.

Lounging on the window sill, Doc finished off the Morgon and then,

extremely buzzed, went down the front stairs and through the heavy white front

door – and stepped out onto The Lawn. The colonnade of columns stretched

away in both directions while the big white dome of Jefferson's Rotunda soared

above him in the tail end of the afternoon.

Crossing The Lawn, Doc wandered slowly toward The New

Atlantis, pausing once, with an uncertain smile, outside the door of Number 8, the

West Lawn.

No one who saw Doc slowly walking down the colonnade in his

black dinner jacket with his bright red wedding sash with his curly brown hair and

his round John Lennon glasses, would have believed that he could ever be much

troubled by the weight of constant sorrow (or by Romance). He was much too

good looking.

He was thinking of the good old days back when the Kinokunst

Gesselschaft (or Art Film Society) was first being born; the good days when he

used to walk down to The Lawn from his apartment on Rugby Road and then to

Wilson Hall, where – every Thursday! – he would show a foreign film of

intellectual or academic merit to the students.

But you and I, mon capitaine, wild tchopitoulas that we are, we're

going to stand here just outside the door of Number 8, the West Lawn, watching

how the clean white dome of old Tom Jefferson's Rotunda gleams above the

shadows deepening like smoke across the green cove of The Lawn. We’ll see

the dome of the Rotunda change as dusk begins to purple into evening; we’ll

watch the catalog of column styles and types of portico change with the shadows

as the east side of the dome reflects the clear blue skies above the Grounds, and

we’ll see the west side of the dome reflecting, orange gold and purple, the sun’s

red ball of glory settling behind the Blue Ridge Mountains at the western edge of

Albemarle.

The shadows and the columns amplify the peaceful stillness of

what you and I – remembering the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge – might

call:

“A holy and enchanted place.”

Or else, remembering a few lines of the poet Baudelaire, we might

conclude that:

La, il n'y a qu'ordre et beautéLuxe, calme et volupté ....

Because no one who wanders in that place can ever quite believe

its timeless promise of unchanging grace and beauty can be less than real.

On the steamy hot days Doc liked the best, the timeless promise of

the columns and the dome – a cool, serene lucidity connected to the world and

yet apart from it – inspires a belief in what, for lack of any better term, we may as

well call:

Man's immortal soul.