It sounds to me like a week of far too many things to do, but then again, it’s a wedding. A wedding is not a vacation; it’s a fuckton of work for everyone, especially the couple. And their fathers.
“I did buy a new dress but Adrienne’s wearing a suit she already owns.” Why I can’t wear a suit I already own is beyond me, but Kelsey has decided that her dads simply must wear matching suits in a particular shade of blue that looks more like a tropical bird’s plumage than any menswear I’ve ever owned.
“Plus, Daddy got us a great deal at the retreat, so it’s really not that much more than a regular vacation would cost.”
Victor’s had a rather varied career but he’s been a well-known yoga and fitness instructor for about a decade now and leads yoga retreats all over the US, Mexico, and South America. Of course he got Kelsey and her fiancée a deal on the retreat package. He’ll probably teach most of the yoga sessions during it.
“How’s Barnaby?” Kelsey asks. “Is he looking forward to his trip to the spa?”
“You know he’s not.” My retired greyhound has a complicated relationship with Kiki’s Pet Spa. On the one hand, I’m pretty sure he’d rather I engage an in-home pet sitter so he didn’t have to walk all the way to Kiki’s and all the way back home when I pick him up. On the other hand, he absolutely loves the owner, Elsa, who lets him drool all over her and sleep in the big bed she has set up in the back of the kennel.
“He’s fine, though,” I continue. “He loves that crinkly sloth you bought him.” I adopted Barnaby a year or so after Kelsey left for college but she considers him as much her dog as mine anyway.
The tailor steps back and surveys her work, then gives a satisfied nod. “I’ll have it ready to pick up on Tuesday,” she says. I step down from the riser and she gathers her pins and tape measure before ducking around the curtain so I can change back into my regular clothes.
Kelsey is quiet on the other side of the curtain, probably absorbed in her phone. Speaking of phones, mine buzzes and I pull it from my jacket pocket. There’s a text from Julian Adeyemi, an opera singer I’ve known since grad school, and first tenor in the Saint Sebastian Six, the vocal ensemble we co-founded a dozen years ago when we were both looking for new professional challenges.
Still think we should open with the Byrd. Think about it.
I put the phone back in my pocket. We’re not opening with the Byrd for our spring concert. We’re opening with Tallis and closing with Gesualdo and Julian knows this because we’ve had this argument three times already, and he’s wrong, and he’ll come around. He always does.
I sweep the curtain aside and Kelsey looks up from her phone. “Well?”
“It’ll do,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “It’s gorgeous and you know it, Dad.”
Two
Victor
I’m mid-flow when my phone rings.
Not during the live stream, thank goodness. I finished that forty minutes ago and I’m recording another yoga session, but at least the fifteen hundred people who tune into my Tuesday intermediate flow class are not watching me fumble the transition from warrior two to triangle pose because my phone is buzzing against the hardwood floor of my home studio. I glance at it.
Adrienne.
I hold the trikonasana pose for the count of five, then stop the recording and pick up.
“I’m in the middle of recording,” I tell her.
“You answered, so you must not be,” she says pleasantly.
I adore Adrienne. She represents major media companies and a handful of Hollywood moguls, and she argues for sport. I’m also a little afraid of her, which I would take to my grave before admitting to Kelsey.
“I’ve got a lot of shit to do today,” I say.
“And I’ve got a meeting with a producer in an hour. Can you take a break? I’m downstairs.”
I look out the window of my apartment at the street three floors below, where Adrienne is standing on the sidewalk with an insulated mug in one hand and a paper coffee cup in the other. She raises the paper cup in salutation.
“All right, fine, come up,” I say.
The intercom buzzes and I press the door release, then pull on sweatpants and swap my damp tank top for a dry T-shirt. I reach the door just as Adrienne’s heels click up the last set of stairs.
“You look sweaty,” she says, handing me the paper coffee cup as she passes me into the apartment.
“I was doing yoga. Did I mention that I was in the middle of recording?”
