The Privileges Read Online Free PDF Page B

terms of his capacity for saying the unsayable, five is the magic number.
    Scarcely a minute goes by without a knife clinking against a glass somewhere in the ballroom, first one and then a chorus of them: You made us come all the way here to witness your love? Okay, then—let’s witness some love. The waitstaff bursts through the double doors like a football team and serves a hundred dinners. Conrad eats his salmon without tasting it and then waits, smiling robotically whenever others at his table laugh at something, until the meal is over and the champagne is poured and the moment is finally upon him.
    “I have always looked up to my brother,” Conrad says, eyes down, watching with dismay his own spit hitting the microphone. He memorized his toast but now he wishes he hadn’t, because holding a piece of paper would at least occupy his right hand, the one not holding the champagne glass, the one floating spastically from his pants pocket to his chin to the back of his head. “When we were kids, everything he set out to achieve he achieved, everything he wanted he worked for until he earned it, everything he did set an example not just for me but for everyone around him. An older brother’s distinction, in his little brother’s eyes, is pretty much automatic for a long time. But even when I got old enough to get over that feeling and decide for myself, he has never lost any of my esteem. Until today.”
    The whole ballroom laughs, to intoxicating effect, and when Conrad dares to look up his eye is drawn straight to the bride’s stepsister, Deborah, maybe because her red dress is separated from the cluster of other red dresses by the width of the ballroom; she’s sitting off in the corner, with her grandmother, or somebody’s grandmother anyway.
Just be yourself:
what kind of stupid fucking advice was that? He makes himself look away from her before he loses his train of thought entirely.
    “Until today, because here is where his streak as a self-made success ends, and sheer blind dumb luck takes over. Anyone can see that Cynthia is a woman of extraordinary charms”—a whistle from somewhere in the room—“anyone who’s ever closed a bar with her or hiked the White Mountains with her or smoked a cigar on the deck of the Staten Island Ferry with her knows that she has a sense of humor and compassion and adventure that’s not just rare but matchless. Any man in full possession of his faculties would choose her out of a thousand. But how on earth do we account for
her
choice? What are the odds that such a spectacular girl would be willing to spend her life with a guy who wears those stupid madras shorts he wears; who thinks he’s a comedian but lacks the attention span to tell so much as a knock-knock joke from beginning to end; who believes with all his heart that
near
the garbage, ashtray, or hamper is the same thing as
in
the garbage, ashtray … That’s just amillion to one shot, my friends, and frankly my brother deserves about as much credit for marrying this woman as he would for waking up with a winning lottery ticket stuck to his forehead, the lucky bastard.”
    It is very hard to hold off drinking from the glass of champagne in his hand. He is amazed at how hard everyone is laughing but he still wishes only for the whole thing to be over. Without meaning to he looks up at Deborah again. She’s not laughing, but she is leaning forward intently with her elbows on her knees.
    “Seriously,” he says. “They are a charmed couple. No one who knows them can doubt that they are destined to spend a long, happy, extraordinary life together. And no one who sees that these two wonderful people found their perfect match, and were smart enough to realize it, can help feeling a little more optimistic about our own prospects as we head out into the world. To Cynthia and Adam.”
    Roars of approval, tapping of crystal. In the parking lot the drummer hears the applause and takes two more quick hits off his pre-gig