Wedding Night

by Peter Swanson

I met Alex Dahl on the first night of my honeymoon. He was sitting at the bar, one of those guys who turns toward the door every time someone comes in. He looked right at me and raised his head a fraction in greeting and I didn't have the heart to go sit at a table by myself. Besides, Robin, my bride, was bedridden with a stomach flu she had picked up on the plane coming down here, and I was lonely for someone to talk to.

I sat two stools from him and said hello. He was drinking a tropical drink with fruit suspended from the rim and a purple umbrella. It looked like a stupid drink to be drinking alone, but when in Mexico I guess it was the thing to do. I ordered a Corona with lime in it, which is as much fruit as I like to touch my alcohol.

“You staying at this hotel?” he asked, and there was the slight trace of an accent. English or Australian. He was a handsome man. Ink black hair that was slicked straight back. He had a widow's peak, his hairline forming an exaggerated V in the center of his forehead. The skin that covered his cheekbones was flushed a bright red.

“Yes, I got here today. Tonight, really.”

“I thought you must have since I hadn't seen you. I've been here near a week and I've seen everyone. I've seen them come and go.”

“It's a small hotel.”

“That's true.” He took a sustained gulp from his drink. “Only place with a little character on this stretch of beach.”

If by character he meant the spidery cracks across most of the tiles on the floor, and the maid I saw smoking pot by the dumpster, then I could agree. I nodded.

He raised up his glass and took another long pull, then began to rummage around in his clothing for something.

It's not that I mind small talk. I actually like it. It's just that small talk with strangers can sometimes turn into a confessional for two if you don't look out. I was not in the mood for that. I hadn't planned on spending my honeymoon in a bar with a stranger, but since that fate now seemed unavoidable, I certainly didn't intend on spending it listening to a drunk recount a lifetime of indignities.

There was a stir behind me as three laughing couples came into the bar. They took a big table near an unoccupied piano. The waitress, who had been sitting at the end of the bar drinking a soda, got up and went over to them. My new friend at the bar asked the bartender something in Spanish and the bartender produced a package of cigarettes from beneath the counter. He proceeded to slap the fresh pack against the palm of his hand, before slicing the plastic off with his thumbnail. The beer I was drinking went down like soda and I finished it quickly and ordered a second.

I had gotten married the day before. The last few weeks had been a blur of parties, and fretting, and constant people, and now here I was suddenly alone in a hotel bar in Mexico where no one knew my business or cared. I wished Robin were with me, but one of the many reasons I had married her was because she was the kind of girl who, when she was in dire intestinal distress, preferred to do it alone.

“Cigarette?” My friend had finally managed to extricate the pack from its wrapper.

“Thank you.” I leaned across the empty seat and took one. I had been a regular smoker for years, and been a non-smoker for months, but something in this situation demanded a little leniency on my resolutions.

“My name is Alex Dahl,” he said as he lit my cigarette. The first drag went down almost as easily as the beer.

“Michael Keyes,” I returned and we shook hands.

“Business or pleasure, Michael?”

I explained to him that it was the first night of my honeymoon and my bride was sick in the bridal suite.

“Unbelievable,” he said, and shook his head. “That's too much.”

I had expected a string of jokes on the subject of consummation. Some wedding night, eh? Probably not what you had in mind? Wink, wink . I was glad when they didn't come. Instead, he asked me a surprising question.

“Is she from Chicago as well?”

“How did you know I was from Chicago .”

“I'm good at accents. You're a dead giveaway.”

“Right,” I said. “And you're from Bristol , the east part of Bristol .” I had no idea where Bristol was, or what a Bristol accent might sound like, but it sounded like the appropriate thing to say. We both laughed.

“No. I'm from London . Originally. But moved to Boston when I was a boy. I kept the accent. I get laid more often with it.”

I laughed as I caught the bartender's attention and ordered another beer. “How about you?” I asked my friend.

“Sure. Another.” He said, then slid his pack of cigarettes closer to me across the bar. I graciously accepted another one.

***

Sometime later, out of the guilt born of having a fairly good time, I walked back to my room to check on Robin. She was fast asleep, slick with sweat, but cool to the touch. She had put on a short, silky thing that had ridden up around her hips. I thought of waking her, just to check in, but didn't have the heart. I sat and watched her for a while, her easy breaths lifting and dropping her ample chest. One of the silky cups of her nightdress had fallen to the side to reveal half a deep brown nipple.

I went into the bathroom to pee and then splashed cold water on my face. The light in the bathroom gave my pale skin a yellow tint, and darkened the shadows around my eyes. I told myself that I should go to sleep but I wasn't particularly tired yet. A few more at the bar couldn't hurt.

I walked across the concrete path that connected the string of rooms to the main building of the hotel, a large cupola that housed the front desk, the breakfast buffet, and The Blue Parrot. When I entered, I saw that Alex had someone new to talk to. She must have come in sometime when I had been gone, since I would have noticed her, even being a married man like I was. She had long, dark, straight hair, the kind of style that seemed to go out with hip-hugging bell-bottom jeans, plus wide-spaced blue eyes and a deep, brown tan that perfectly covered the ample amount of skin she was showing. I sat down at the other side of the bar because I was sure Alex had no more need of me. He saw me, however, and called me over.

“Michael, meet Katrina. Katrina, this is Michael, and it's his wedding night.”

I told her the story and we all laughed. Katrina told me how she was down here alone. The man she was supposed to go with had disappeared from her life two weeks before the vacation. But she still had the tickets and fuck it, she wasn't going to let some cocksucker like Roger ruin her good time. Alex, meanwhile, was having the bartender produce shots of the best tequila in the place.

“To love and marriage,” Alex offered to me.

“Screw that,” said Katrina. “To rebound relationships.” She giggled and looked at me.

“I'll drink to both.” I said, and did.

The bar was filling up and people were starting to dance to the tinny reggae music coming from the speakers. Alex and Katrina hit the dance floor and I watched them for a while, Alex surprisingly terrible, shuffling his feet out of time, Katrina surprisingly good, all hair and hips. Twenty four hours earlier Robin and I had danced our first dance together at my parent's club, to “Someone To Watch Over Me.” I had picked that song. I guess Robin and I, having been together for only three months, never had time to get our own song.

Alex and Katrina came back to the bar as I was polishing off another ice-cold beer. They really did go down like sodapop. Alex, lighting a cigarette, then jerking his head back to hurl a sweaty forelock from his forehead, looked like a has-been long distance runner at the end of a race. Katrina looked like she was just getting started, bouncing up and down on her toes in the rhythm to the next song pulsing from the speakers.

“Dance with her,” Alex breathed. “Please, for the love of God.”

“No, I can't.” I put the palms of my hands up in surrender, and Katrina grabbed my wrists.

“Come on,” She said. “One dance.”

The floor was crowded and sweaty, and as Katrina and I danced we were repeatedly pushed together. It was an odd sensation. When one gets married, one of the regrets is the inevitable end of nights such as this, nights that result in stories. Still, I was looking forward to regaling a healthy, washed-out Robin in the morning with my tale. I was also, sorry to say, enjoying the moment.

The song ended and immediately transitioned into a much slower reggae version of “Say You, Say Me. ” I started my departure from the small dance floor, but Katrina, already pressed against me, held on. “One more dance?” She asked.

“I can't,” I said. “I'm married.” Saying that line was a thrill in itself.

“I just want to dance. Alex won't dance with me, and the rest of the men in this place are dogs.”

The truth was, we had already started dancing. She had her hands loosely knit behind my head, and I put my hands on either side of her waist.

“Why won't Alex dance with you?”

“I just know he'd refuse. I've known him four days now, and I'm not sure he likes girls that much. I mean, not to be vain or anything, but he gave me a massage one night in my room, and nothing happened.”

“Maybe he was being a gentleman.”

“Fuck that,” she said and laughed.

***

I don't know when Alex left but he did. Katrina and I danced some more and drank some more. I told her the story of how Robin and I had met, and I told her about the wedding, hoping to knock Katrina off course a little bit. When she began to order more shots I told her I wanted to go. She hopped off her barstool and said she would go too, and could I walk her home.

For the purposes of this story, I have declined to describe myself, but I realize now that I might be coming off a tad more handsome than I really am. With the young bride in the bedroom, and the statuesque Katrina in my reluctant arms, you might be misled, but I am not handsome. I am extraordinarily ordinary looking, if that is possible. When I realized how bland I was, back in high school, I chose not to try and make up for it. Instead of buying a beret, or dyeing my hair, or becoming a communist, I chose a conservative path, and took to wearing Oxford shirts, and getting my hair cut short. I think my prep-school look, and my general anonymity, has helped me in the financial world, where I have made a lot of money.

Of course I walked Katrina home. She was at the next hotel, comprised of a string of bungalows along the beach. The night was impossibly warm and completely black. We could hear the rhythmic surge of crashing waves, but my eyes could barely discern between the water and the sky. Above, dark clouds were rapidly moving, causing the sensation of imperceptible movement just out of your eye's reach. Behind the clouds was a sky filled with a multitude of stars. Any nervousness I might have felt being in Katrina's presence, especially since she was walking in great hip-swaying strides and kept bumping up against me, was obliterated by the alcohol in my bloodstream. It was that clean sort of drunkenness that feels as though you could exist in such a state forever, and never suffer the consequences. I was explaining this very feeling to Katrina when she spun and kissed me. I haven't had too many first kisses, but this was by far the most exclamatory, instantly wet. We tussled slightly in my bid to extricate myself, and the thought passed my mind that an onlooker might see me as the aggressor, and not her. At last, she stood with her arms by her side, analyzing me.

“I got married last night,” I managed to say.

“I know. I'm sorry.” She thought for a moment, then punched her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I'm stupid. Stupid. It's just that this has been such a humiliating vacation, and I've been such a ...”

Then she started to cry, or, I should say, she burst into tears, because, for the first time ever, I understood the accuracy of that expression.

***

Katrina's bungalow was nice but small. I stood gamely in the doorway as she checked around her bed for spiders. She had stopped crying, and had taken to sheepishly grinning. I was smoking a cigarette I had purloined off of Alex before he left the bar. I was itching to go. It was still black and quiet outside, but I sensed the presence of dawn waiting to make its appearance. Katrina, apparently satisfied, floated my way and deposited a heavy glass ashtray in my hand before I knew what it was. I stared at it for a moment and realized she was still trying to get me to stay. I handed it back.

“I'm going to go now. It was nice meeting and I just wanted to say that if I wasn't married, if I had come down here alone, I think you and I...” I left it at that.

She nodded, and I backed out of the door, hoping she would shut it. She did not immediately, and I turned and walked back to my hotel, and my sick wife.

***

They arrested me in the morning. We had both slept in, my wife, still ravaged and exhausted from a night of being repeatedly sick in a foreign country, and me dazed and hungover and guilty. All morning I had been alternating between fits of sleep, punctuated by nightmares, and a wakefulness that kept bringing snatches of last night's activity into my consciousness. My face was popping out in sweat.

It was simply three knocks at the door. I listened for a moment, then swung my legs out of the bed. I was wearing briefs and nothing else. My pants were on the floor next to the bed and I pulled them on as my stomach lurched with the movement. There were three men at the door and two of them showed me badges.

“We would like for you to come with us,” the largest Mexican said. “We have questions for you.”

“What about?”

“You knew Katrina King?”

“I don't know who you're talking about.” I wiped some sweat off my forehead.

“Katrina King. She's staying at the hotel next door. You had drinks with her last night.”

“Yes, I'm sorry. I met her. I don't know if I know her, exactly.”

I heard Robin stir behind me. “What's going on?” she said from the edge of the bed.

“Please,” said the other man who had shown me his badge, “Please, let's do this down at the station.”

***

At the station they questioned me in minute detail about the activities of the previous night. Naturally I left out some aspects of the kiss, out of fear that Robin would hear about it more than anything. But they seemed to know all about it. I didn't find out exactly what had happened to Katrina until, in an exasperated fit, I tried to leave the station. It was then that they arrested me for her murder.

***

I've been here a week now, and there's no telling how much longer I'll be here, but my lawyer's eyes, Robin's eyes, my parents' eyes, they all tell me it will be a long time. Katrina King died the night we met. She had her skull crushed in by a large glass ashtray. My fingerprints, of course, were on it. I tell my story again and again. I now tell it completely truthfully, even the part about the kiss on the beach, and how I lied to her, told her that under different circumstances, we could have been together. It all sounds terrible, especially on someone's wedding night. But I didn't kill her. I admit now that it's been established that I don't remember everything from that night--the bartender confirmed this--but I remember all of the end of the night. I was walking home to my wife on a beach in Mexico , and there were a thousand stars above me, and I had a clear conscience.

The police never found Alex Dahl. I'm not sure how much it would have helped had they found him, but he could have told them that he met me before the crime, and that I did not seem like the kind of man who was about to commit murder. I was a happily married man on my honeymoon. I asked Robin this morning if she had ever known or heard of Alex, since they were both from Boston , and she looked at me like I was crazy. Obviously, I realize Boston is a good-size city, but it was worth a shot.

I think a lot about the time Robin and I met. She was dining alone in a restaurant I ate at every night and she was having trouble reading the menu. That was almost four months ago to the day, and everything that has happened since that night now feels completely unreal to me. Before I met Robin my life was ordered and plain. It's funny, because, as she tells it, before she met me her life was very disordered. I guess you can't count on anything. I'm just glad that, no matter what happens, Robin will be taken care of. Financially, that is.