Page 178 of Levi

“He’s got warm skin,” Levi says. “Gold under it, not pink. You keep the cold stuff away from him. No icy blue, no slate, nothing washed-out. He’d kill in something deep and warm with red in it. Wine. A good dark burgundy.” He shrugs, a little shy with the table looking at him. “You’re getting married in sunset light. That gold hour you planned down to the minute? Wine catches fire in it. Put your groomsmen in burgundy and he’ll look like he stepped off a magazine cover. Trust me on it. I’ve watched people get dressed for a living for eight years.”

Benji stares at him like he has witnessed a small miracle. “Bordeaux,” he breathes. He writes it down. He underlines it twice. “Mickey. Mickey, are you hearing this? We’ve had Levi barely a month and he’s already worth ten of that florist. What are your thoughts on Bordeaux? The color, not the wine?”

Mickey looks up from his plate. “What I’m hearing,” he says, “is my opinion getting asked again. My opinion has been asked four hundred times since June.” He sets down his fork. “So here is the one opinion I actually own, and everybody at this table is a witness.” He points the fork at Tex. “If you talk for thirty minutes, I’m leaving my own ceremony. I’m the only man on that deck with wheels. I’ll be at the county line before anybody’s worked out which direction I went. That is my entire contribution to this event.”

“My remarks will run exactly as long as they take,” Tex says, which everybody at this table knows is not a number. “And not one minute over.”

“Thirty minutes, Tex. I’ve timed the exits. Both of them.”

“Don’t worry, babe, I’ve had a signal worked out with the harpist since March,” Benji says, patting his hand. “You’re covered.”

“I don’t want the harpist, Benji. I want a stopwatch.”

“Fine. Stopwatch granted. And while we’re taking suggestions—” Benji pulls the binder over and flips to a tab. “The reception playlist. Nine pages. Curated. It builds, Mickey. There are eras.”

“You said my opinion was covered.”

“On the ceremony only. The reception is a separate document.”

“Then here’s my separate opinion,” Mickey says. “Motown. My mother raised me on the Temptations, and a man only gets married once.”

“There is Motown in the arc—”

“A reception with an arc is a seminar with cake.”

“If you two don’t settle a song list by October, I’ll marry you in silence and you can both hum,” Tex says.

Then Stormy speaks, which silences the table all by itself. “Give me the playlist, Benji. I’ll line it up on the jukebox for you.”

“All nine pages?” Benji says, already unclipping them from the binder.

Stormy nods once.

“And the Motown,” Mickey says.

Stormy nods again, takes the pages, stands up, and takes them to the kitchen.

“I love a resolved conflict,” Benji says.

“Settled,” Mickey says, and goes back to his plate.

Sheila comes back out with a pitcher of tea and sets the news down like one more platter of food. “Two more of them came by this morning, baby,” she tells Levi. “Press people. One from Atlanta, one wouldn’t say where from. I told them we’re closed Mondays and I’ve never laid eyes on you in my life.”

“Either of them leave a business card?” Mickey asks, and the deputy comes up in his voice.

“They’re on the register.”

“I’ll run them after supper.”

Two days back Levi blew his life open. There are reporters from two states hunting for him this afternoon. And just now, he stole a tomato off the serving plate with his fingers and Tex swatted his hand without breaking stride in his story, like he’d swat any of us.

He’s one of us now. He’s not watching the exits with his back against the wall. He’s just here.

It’s Levi who hands Tex the opening, without meaning to. There’s a lull, forks scraping plates. Levi takes the entire table in, the food, the faces. I watch him lock up.

“Thanks for having me,” he says to Tex. “For letting me crash the table like this.”

“Crash the table,” Tex repeats, like it’s the funniest line he’s heard all week. He sets his fork down. He settles back in his chair, and everybody else at the table settles too. They all know exactly what’s coming. When Tex has a point to make, he takes the scenic route to get there, and you might as well get comfortable.