But she reprimands herself; today, no matter who cares to deny it, is not just any day. She feels the faint echo of her own terror in the hours before her first wedding, a terror that was partly sexual, which counts as a bond between them even though her daughter’s sexuality is a subject she has long since lost the fortitude to go near. “So,” she says, trying for a conciliatory tone. “This is your special day.” And Cynthia turns around, mouth open, and laughs-a laugh Ruth has heard before, the only solace for which is a retreat into memories of when her only child was a baby.

Behind them, the digital clock on the microwave blinks silently to seven-thirty. In the living room, Deborah, having woken herself with her own snoring, makes a little groaning sound that no one hears and pushes her face deeper into the gap between the cushions and the sofa back. At the Athletic Club, the weekend desk clerk consults the computer printout in her hand and dials the extension for Adam’s room. She’s seen the Daily Events schedule and recognizes his name as that of the groom; to the scripted wake-up greeting at the top of the printout she adds best wishes of her own, because she saw him last night and he’s cute.

“Thanks,” Adam says, and hangs up. He too goes straight to the window to check the weather. His window faces the alley, though; he’ll probably get a better sense of the day’s prospects from the TV. He turns it on with the sound down but then lies back on the bed, fingers laced behind his head, and forgets to watch.

He hates sleeping alone and maybe for that reason he spent the minutes before the phone rang in an extravagant dream, a dream about driving a car with no steering wheel in it, a car that responded to his slightest weight shifts, like a skateboard or a sled.

One hour until breakfast in the hotel restaurant with his parents and his younger brother and best man, Conrad. Having thought of this, he tries to forget it again so that he can be genuinely blameless if he shows up late. He’s a little hung over from the rehearsal dinner, though others, he reflects, will have cause to be a whole lot more hung over than he. Too early to call Cynthia, who’s probably still asleep. What would really calm him down is sex with her-as it is he starts most mornings that way; it scatters the vague anxieties with which he wakes-but today that’s not going to happen. With sudden inspiration he arches his back and pounds on the wall above his headboard, the wall his room shares with the room where Conrad is staying.

Conrad doesn’t hear; up for an hour already, he is standing in the shower practicing his toast. It was the only duty that gave him any pause at all when he accepted the best-man role. He blushes and shakes whenever he has to speak in public; and how relatively easy it would be to pull this off in front of a ballroom full of strangers, as opposed to friends and family with their license for pitiless long-term teasing, people before whom there is no question of pretending even for a few minutes that he is anyone other than who he is.

“They are a charmed couple,” he says, because this is a phrase over which he’s stumbled in earlier rehearsals; and it’s too late now for a rewrite. “They are a charmed chouple. Fuck.” And he starts from the beginning.

Waking in the other rooms on the second and third floor of the Athletic Club are friends of the bride and groom-couple friends, friends who have brought especially serious or promising dates-almost all of whom find themselves acting, at that hour, on a sexual impulse that’s unsettlingly strong even for the bloom of youth. Some are laughing, and some stare into their partners’ eyes with an urgency the memory of which will have them avoiding each other’s gaze an hour later. They are not used to the licentiousness of hotel rooms; and the knowledge that on this particular weekend they have not just infiltrated this stuffy club but taken it over gives a subterraneous group sense to each intimate encounter, a sense of orgy that makes them want to offend strangers, to exert themselves until the walls of that place come down.

Indeed there is one couple that knocks the headboard against the wall behind Adam’s parents’ bed so loudly that his mother just prays she doesn’t know them. She even tells her husband to call the front desk and complain, but he’s in the bathroom and hears, as a rule, what he chooses to hear.

At eight-thirty Marietta ’s car rolls into the Harrises’ driveway. Inside the kitchen she and the still undressed Cynthia kiss like sisters; “Jesus, it’s fucking hot out there,” Marietta says. “Oh hi, Mrs. Sikes. I mean Mrs. Harris!” It’s more than Ruth can bear; she smiles premonitorily and withdraws from the kitchen.

“So shall we go do the hair thing?” Marietta says, but then all of a sudden Deborah is in the doorway, hair matted, face pebbled from the rough upholstery of the couch, looking at them both with tribal hatred.

“Your phone’s ringing,” she says to her stepsister, and turns and leaves.

The phone is on the bedroom floor, underneath the jacket Cynthia wore to the rehearsal dinner. Marietta follows her through the living room.

“Thanks for bringing it to me, there, Debski,” says Cynthia, though Deborah has disappeared into the bathroom. “So, you didn’t bring your dress? Where is it?”

“In the freezer,” Marietta says.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby. Haven’t you heard? It’s my Special Day.”

“Well, that’s my point. You’re the bride. Still well within your power to change the whole dress code to, like, beach casual.”

“Wear a tank top to your own wedding, slut,” Cynthia says. “That’s not how we roll here in Pittsburgh.”

“I’ve got that not-so-fresh feeling,” Marietta says. “That’s all I’m saying.”

In his chair watching CNN as they pass behind him, Warren hears all this and, though he would still like to be a kind of father to this young woman, knows that for the moment the only dignified course is to pretend that he is not even in the room at all.

Cynthia smiles at Marietta and takes the phone out on the deck. “Isn’t this bad luck?” she says, sliding the door shut behind her.

“I saw your dad in the lobby last night,” Adam says. “I recognized him from his picture. He seemed in pretty good form. Have you called him yet?”

“No,” she says, and her heart races a little bit. “I will in a while. Hey, what time is it?”

“Quarter to four.”

“Very funny. I mean aren’t you supposed to be at breakfast with your parents?”

“Maybe.”

“Well don’t leave Conrad alone with them, for God’s sake. You know how they get. Plus he’s got the rings so let’s not antagonize him.”

Adam smiles, waiting for the elevator in the empty hotel corridor. “Can you believe we’re doing this?” he says.

The boards on the deck are already burning her feet. “Not too late to back out,” she said, “if that’s why you’re calling.”

“Well, I still have seven hours to think about it, right?”

“Me too. Tell you what, if I’m not there by, let’s say, ten of four, you just go ahead and assume I’m not coming, okay?”

“Fair enough. Seeing how everything’s paid for and all, if you don’t show I’ll just wave one of the bridesmaids up and marry her.”

“Which one you have your eye on?”

There is a pause. “I missed you when I woke up this morning,” he says.

Her view of the golf course from earlier that morning has now been erased by haze. She closes her eyes. “Me too,” she says. “You won’t forget pictures, right?”

“Two-fifteen in the Trophy Room. Conrad’s carrying around a little schedule.”

“Okay,” she says. “See you then. Enjoy your last few hours of freedom.”

“Gotta go,” he says. “The hookers are here.”

She hangs up on him, smiling. In the living room, Marietta stands uncomfortably, while Deborah, back on the couch, watches her like a guard dog, like some emissary from the underworld of the socially damned. Marietta can read her hatred only as jealousy, which softens her own attitude a bit.