1057. Oh You Pretty Things

Ziggy and I climbed into the shower together with much fumbling and giggling. I don’t even know why we were laughing. I guess because we were trying to be sorta discreet and quiet, which makes me tense, and then because we were both klutzy, me from being hungover, him from general punchiness.

At one point I hugged him like a wet seal, standing there with the water running over us, skin against skin. The water revived me quite a bit and took the edge off my headache.

“Where’s brunch?” Ziggy asked, as we were trying to towel off without getting too much water on the floor.

“No idea. Court’s just been telling me where to show up and what to wear all weekend.” I wrapped my towel around my waist. Ziggy did the same and we ventured out into the hallway to go back to my room.

We met Claire as she was coming up the stairs. So much for discreet. She gave us both a wide-eyed look. “Well, Mr. Moondog, I see you must have been a late arrival last night.”

She was talking to Ziggy, not me. “Claire, how lovely to see you,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her on the knuckle like he was standing there in a tux, not a towel. “Indeed, business in the city held me up, but I didn’t want to disappoint your baby girl on her big day.”

“Who you calling baby!” came a shout from the far end of the hallway. Court stuck her head out into the hallway, halfway through doing her hair. “I hope you brought something suitable to wear.”

“I’ve got clothes in our Back Bay place,” he said. “How fancy do you want?”

“We’re having brunch at the Boston Harbor Hotel,” she said.

Ziggy appeared to be doing some kind of calculation in his head. “Is that more or less fancy than the Four Seasons?”

“On par with,” Court said. “Mom, come help me with my hair.”

“On the way, dear,” Claire said, and sailed past us as if us two damp, half naked men were not worth one more whit of attention. Ziggy and I grinned at each other as she disappeared into Courtney’s room.

In my room I found she’d laid out clothes for me, including a white button-down shirt with a black stripe along the placket and no collar to speak of. I didn’t recognize it, but it fit pretty well and looked good under a black blazer.

Ziggy decided to raid my closet to see if he could save himself a trip to the apartment. In the end, with a little help from Chris, who had a skinny black tie that had been lying around unworn for the past ten years, he put together something rather upscale Bohemian.

There were close to a dozen people at brunch. Everyone from the Allston house, Carynne, Bart and Michelle, a guy friend of Court’s whose name I forgot. I wasn’t surprised to see Albert.

I was surprised to see Jonathan. He was flying solo, doing a quick trip through Boston and then planning to go back through Providence to attend to his Brown reunion.

Which got me wondering. “I guess I’ll never go to a RIMCon reunion since I didn’t graduate.”

Bart clinked his champagne glass against mine. “It’s a reunion every time you and me are together,” he said.

The months without drinking had taken a toll on my tolerance, but in the end I think maybe that was a good thing. Because it meant that at the party the night before I didn’t actually drink anywhere near as much as I would have in the past. Thus, my hangover was actually nowhere near as bad as it had seemed when I had first sat up. By the time there was food in front of us, my stomach was even ready to take incoming deliveries.

I usually think of brunch as a fairly high-energy meal for some reason, possibly from a few too many boisterous outings to IHOP in my past…? But the thing about a truly ritzy place like the Four Seasons or the Boston Harbor Hotel is that it’s actually one of the quietest meals you’ll ever have. The service is ninja-like, and you only ever hear a raised voice when there’s a raised glass. It’s all very placid and refined.

Or it is until a group like ours starts to get a little rowdy, but, you know, nothing like the night before. Just maybe a bit much compared to their usual WASPy rich families. We drew a few looks. We ignored them.

Various folks had brought gifts for Court, many of which were in the form of gift certificates. She seemed quite pleased with that.

I could see a few other families going through a similar ritual around the restaurant. Our group had perhaps the fewest actual family members related by blood compared to the number of people we were. I suddenly wondered how Janine was doing. And Lilibeth. And Digger. Wow. I’d successfully managed to forget about the lawsuits for a couple of days.

Claire managed to hold off having a meltdown until after she was back in Allston. I got to miss it because I was at the Back Bay apartment with Ziggy, ostensibly packing up our stuff.

We ended up having to do another round of laundry on the bedclothes there. Because of course we did.

And we put off talking about New York or lawyers or touring all the way until the next morning.

—
(I picked this one. I’ve been waiting to use this song and this was just too fitting. -ctan)