TinkerX

It was, I suspected, the last time I’d have coffee outdoors that fall. The sky was a wonderful shade of crisp blue you only get after the leaves start to change, and the air was tart from an early frost.

“I’m going to kill him,” Michelle hissed, mouth hovering over the lip of her chai soy latte.

“What’s he done this week?” I asked. Todd and Michelle – not their real names… or maybe they are… you don’t know them, so who cares? – have been engaged for nine months.

“This week,” she replied, rotatingthe cup in her hands to keep them warm, “He told me that he should have as many groomsmen as I’m having bridesmaids.” Her grimmace suggested Todd may have shot in the head and rendered “slow witted” like Harrison Ford’s character in “Regarding Henry.”

I shook my head in sympathy. You see, for some reason, I’ve worked mostly with women my entire adult life. Lots of jobs, lots of companies, hundreds of women. And I’ve been happily married that whole time. So I have become, for many of these women, like the brother you turn to when things aren’t going well.

“You want me to talk to him?” I asked. My coffee was gone and I was trying to figure out what to do with the rock-hard remains of my biscotti.

“Not about that,” she said. “I already let him know there isn’t room at the head-table for eight bridesmaids and eight groomsmen.”

Dear Lord, I prayed silently. Please, don’t let him suggest she should drop a couple bridesmaids…

The biscotti snapped in my hand. She raised an eyebrow, but I stammered out, “What did he say?”

“Something lame about how he couldn’t get a hold of Lance anyway.” She waved her hand around like it wasn’t important. Which meant I knew I had to reach Todd before they talked again or he was a dead man.

“The thing is,” she went on, “We’re china shopping this Saturday.” She tapped her nails on the rim of her mug.

“And…”

“And he said he’s not coming. He’s ‘got a thing.’”

I nodded. Todd was a good guy, but still just a guy. “I’ll take care of it.”

She smiled at me, then. One of those rare, brilliant smiles that redheads release about twice a year. Did I mention she was a redhead? It didn’t make the day any warmer, but it gave the autumn leaves real competition.

I knew their schedule well enough to know where he’d be on a Wednesday night; catching a quick drink and some darts at the Brazen Head Pub. I popped in, ordered a Sam Adams and slumped down next to Todd in the booth nearest the boards.

“Andy,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a bit. How’s it going.”

“It’s good, it’s good,” I replied. “Things are heating up for the holiday push.”

He made a scary face. “Yow! Yeah. Michelle is incredibly busy. What with the retail stuff and the wedding details and everything. You think she could’ve planned better around the Christmas rush, eh?”

I counted to ten in my head. Michelle loved him. He wasn’t a bad guy. He had nice hair, didn’t drink too much or cheat on her or make jokes about how big his penis was or shout at the TV. He was OK. And she loved him.

I took a sip of my beer and said, “I hear you guys are going china shopping this weekend.”

He shook his head. “She is. Not me. I don’t give a rat’s ass about china.”

“It’s your funeral, brother,” I replied.

“What? What? It’s china. Dishes. Tea cups. Who cares what pattern is on them?”

I motioned for him to come close. Like I was going to reveal a secret of the universe. Which, in a way, I was. I put an arm around his neck and held the beer so that we were both smelling it. This is a very strong male bonding position. It is a “sharing of the brew-space.”

“Todd,” I asked, “why do people get married?”

“Uhhh… to spend their lives together?”

“Good answer. It’s a commitment. It’s about forever. It’s about sticking together when things get rough. Like maybe she gets sick. Maybe cancer. Real bad. The kind that eats your guts away slowly…”

“Geez, Andy…” He tried to pull away. I didn’t let him. I kept him in the beer-lock.

“You see, she’s putting in sixty hours a week at work and twenty hours a week planning this wedding and she asks you to come along for what? Two hours of looking at china? And you say you’ve ‘got a thing?’ You can’t even come up with a real excuse?”

“I… er… mean… it’s not like…. “

“Todd. How can she know you’ll hang in for three years of chemotherapy if she can’t count on you for two hours of china shopping?”

Todd stopped struggling to get out of the beer-lock. “It’s… like a test?”

“Ba-da-bing. You got it in one.” I let him go and finished my beer.

He straightened up and looked like he’d just figured out a complex math problem in his head. Which, in a way, he had.

As he turned to go, I asked, “You really want to ace the test?”

He nodded, clearly delighted with the idea. Not such a bad guy. Teachable after all.

“When you’re shopping, don’t wander around. If you can’t be interested in the china, be interested in her. And whatever questions she asks, do not, I repeat, DO NOT utter the words, ‘I don’t care.’”

“Why not?”

“Because when men say, ‘I don’t care,’ women add the words ‘about you’ in their heads.”

Todd nodded, concentrating. He’d remember.

“And one last thing, Todd. She gets as many bridesmaids as she wants. And you get as many groomsmen as she says.”

“But…”

I just shook my head.

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He may just make it to the church as a groom and not a corpse.