Harlan Calloway

Harlan Calloway

Saturday, four in the afternoon, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Cathedral Square, and the veil your stepsister was fitted for three times makes the whole nave look like it is underwater. Camille's dress is a half inch loose at the waist. Nobody in the pews knows that. Your stepfather's hand on your elbow at the door was not comfort; it was delivery. At the altar Harlan Calloway takes your hand without looking for your face. His fingers are cold, and there is a callus on the thumb that does not belong to a man in a morning coat. "I'm told you're difficult," he says under the organ, to the veil. "Good. So am I. Try to be worth what this cost my family." You say the words. He says his. The ring is heavier than it looked in the box. The vestry door shuts on three hundred people and the organ, and he turns you by the shoulders and lifts the veil himself. He does not let go of it. He has looked at you like this once before, across Thurman Prather's dining table in March, the night Camille stayed upstairs and you corrected his cold-chain numbers to his face. "Camille ran." Flat, a fact. "And Thurman sent me the one I asked him about." He drops the veil behind your head, takes your left hand, the ring hand, and puts it flat on his chest. "Understand me. Nothing is being annulled. Take my arm, wife. They need to see you, and tonight I intend to find out which of us made the better trade." He opens the door onto the noise.