That Old Cape Magic

at three in the morning was watching an old movie. By this time he wasn’t living with Tommy anymore but rather in his own tiny efficiency apartment. Most nights hedidn’t even pull the bed out of the sofa. “Always? I wish you’d said something.”
    “You better hope I never see you again,” the caller continued, music and barroom laughter in the background.
    Griffin knew it had to be either Jared or Jason, but which? “Oh, I do, Jason,” he said, taking a flier.
    “It’s not Jason, it’s Jared.”
    “Yeah, but same deal.”
    The other man was quiet for a minute. “What did my sister ever do to you? Why are you treating her like this?”
    “Listen, Jared—”
    “Because you don’t fucking deserve her.”
    “I agree.”
    “Yeah, well… you just better hope I never see you again,” he repeated. Griffin’s ready concurrence had apparently thrown him off track, and he was now trying to get back on as best he could.
    “Where are you these days? Just so I know where not to go.”
    “I’m stationed in Honolulu.”
    “Okay, then. That’s easy enough.”
    “I got a leave coming up, though. How about I fly to L.A. and kick your ass?”
    “I’m going to hang up now, Jared.”
    “You’re probably thinking I don’t know where you live, but I can find out. Don’t think I can’t.”
    “I live on Bellwood Terrace. The Caprice. Apartment E-217.”
    “I have my ways.”
    “Good night, Jared.”
    He hadn’t heard from either twin since, but was happy to hear they’d agreed to a truce during the wedding.
    “I told them if they didn’t chill, they couldn’t come, and they both promised,” Joy went on. “I just hope you can tell them apart when you see them, because it pisses them both off when people getit wrong. Especially now that Jason’s out of the service and has some hair.”
    “I’ll try to remember.”
    “There’ll be lots of kids. Try not to look like you hate them.”
    Yes, by all means
, his mother chimed in, startling him.
Pretend
.
    Shut up, Mom
.
    “And you know about the ceremony, right? That there’s a minister? Nothing in your face, but God will be invoked.”
    “Which?”
    The Protestant one. The god of gated communities and domino theories. Jesus. With a
J,
like the rest of them
.
    Best to ignore her, Griffin decided. Telling her to shut up had never worked in life, either. “You don’t have to worry about me, Joy. I’ll behave.”
    “I know you will,” she said. “I just …”
    “What?”
    “Well, I guess I wish we could’ve found a way to …”
    “Keep it together one more year?”
    “But we didn’t, did we?”
    “My fault, not yours.”
    She looked off into the distance, her eyes filling, then gathered herself. “There’s one question I have to ask.”
    “Shoot.”
    She took his hand lightly. “Are you going to be able to write these checks? Tonight and tomorrow?”
    “I said I would.” Though in truth he was a little worried. He’d taken twenty-five K out of his retirement, hoping that would do the trick and trying not to panic as the guest list grew. Last week he’d taken out another ten just to be sure.
    “You also said you weren’t working.”
    What he’d actually said was that writing assignments had been few and far between since he and Tommy had been fired offthe cable picture, and of course there was his mother. After the first heart attack, he’d returned to Indiana several times, trying to make his visits coincide with her major transitions—from the hospital to a rehab facility, then back home with hospice volunteers and, finally, to the hospice wing of the hospital and full nursing care.
    In January he’d picked up a couple of film-school classes, adjunct status, so the pay was for shit, but it was something. He had a new agent, Tommy’s, but all she’d come up with was a quickie dialogue rewrite. This he’d done on his own. Since he’d moved out of Tommy’s place, they’d seen little of each other. They occasionally met for a drink, but Tommy always made some excuse to call it an early night. Griffin knew his old friend was at a loss to understand why Griffin didn’t just tuck his tail between his legs and go home and beg Joy’s forgiveness, as husbands in his circumstance invariably did, if they had any brains. “You
want
to end up alone?” he asked one night. “Is that it?” No, it wasn’t, but Griffin was hard-pressed to articulate what it was, exactly.
    “I just don’t want any embarrassment for