Empire Falls

the size of the area cleared, Miles had the distinct impression that many more people had been invited than attended.
    The band might have been good, for all Miles knew, but they played at a volume calculated to induce the growth of brain tumors. Miles stood off to one side with Bea, whose hemorrhoids were bothering her, and Horace Weymouth, who, as Walt Comeau’s reluctant best man, was stuffed into a shiny tux. Miles hated to stare, but he was pretty sure the web of veins in whatever was growing out of Horace’s forehead was pulsing in time with the bass guitar. Two hours seemed like a decent amount of time for an ex-husband who hadn’t wanted a divorce in the first place to remain at his former wife’s wedding reception, so when the band took its second break Miles found Janine and told her that he was leaving, that he wished her all happiness, that she looked terrific, which she did, though not especially bride-like.
    “You’re not skulking off without one last dance,” she said, her face flushed, and she dragged Miles out to the middle of the floor. The band, determined to have equally deafening music fill the room even in their absence, was playing recorded music through their guitar amplifiers. To Miles’s additional discomfort, almost everyone at the reception stopped and turned to watch them dance. People somehow seemed to feel that they were witnessing a touching moment.
    “I warned you you were going to hate this,” Janine said.
    “I don’t, really,” he lied. “The music’s a little loud, is all.”
    She appeared unconvinced. “You should’ve brought somebody,” she said. “Charlene would have come if you’d asked her.”
    Though Miles could have done without the pitying tone, he was moved to consider the possibility that his ex-wife appeared, somewhat belatedly, to imagine the possibility that he might be lonely. “She’s working, actually.”
    “So you give her the damn night off. You’re the boss, Miles. You could close the restaurant if you wanted to.” After twenty years of marriage and then some, he was still amazed by how quickly this woman could shift emotional gears from solicitude to annoyance.
    “Janine,” he sighed, “if you’re trying to make me feel better about your being another man’s wife, you’re doing a good job.”
    At which her eyes teared up, causing him to apologize as she wept gently onto his shoulder, convincing onlookers that what they were witnessing went well beyond touching. It was damned inspirational. Even the Silver Fox himself got misty-eyed.
    These sudden tears on the dance floor had not taken Miles by surprise. The week leading up to the wedding had been full of them, resulting in a series of hellish negotiations, several of which Miles had undertaken from his hospital bed. First, Janine had wanted him to give her away, a notion so bizarre that Miles had a laughing fit before he realized she was serious. She had immediately flushed red with anger and hurt. “I just thought it’d be nice if the whole thing was amicable,” she snapped. “What’s so wrong with that?”
    Amicable. He’d repeated the word, recalling his high school Latin. Amicus , meaning “friend,” the second noun they’d declined (the first was agricola , “farmer,” which Miles had found odd, as if it were being suggested that in the normal course of events you’d have more use for the word “farmer” than for “friend”).
    “How about if I just turn up and smile a lot?” he suggested. “Wouldn’t that be amicable enough?”
    His ex-wife’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll just give my own damn self away.” Which struck Miles as a pretty accurate representation of what had transpired anyway.
    If Janine had given in easily on the matter of his participation, it was because, Miles was to learn later, she had a bigger, more important battle to wage, and she needed his help if she was to have any hope of winning it, for her daughter had no more desire to play a dramatic role in her mother’s wedding than Miles did. But here Janine was determined. “I swear to God, Miles, you better talk her into being my bridesmaid. I know you can, so I’m telling you right now that you’d better get busy.”
    Miles tried to reason with her. “You can’t force her into doing something she doesn’t want to do, Janine.”
    To which she replied, “I’m not forcing her, Miles. In fact, I gave her a choice. She can either do it or she can wish