As the wedding was more and better than a wedding, so the reception was more and better than an ordinary party. But we can call it a reception, Jemma had asked, in a meeting.
“Yes,” said Dr. Snood. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“If the wedding is not a wedding, then doesn’t it follow that the reception is not a reception?”
“But it is. It’s still a party following a big event. It’s the event that is different, not the party, or the idea of the party. But the idea of the event is quite different.”
“So it’s just a party,” Jemma said.
“Oh, it’s more than just a party.”
“But it’s still a reception? And we will all call it a reception and be satisfied with that?”
“Correct.” All this was clarified in subsection sixteen of section four of paragraph twelve of a document called On the New Ceremony. It was a thick piece of work, detailing the number of hors d’oeuvre that could be on any given serving plate, the gallons of champagne that would spew per hour from the mouths of the dolphins, the depth of the mousse trough, and the temperatures of the various roasts. It told how many and what sort of fireworks would be let off, and contained twenty pages of seating charts alone. It did not specify levels of required or permitted drunkenness for the guests and celebrants, but Jemma imagined that it did, as she walked about on the roof nodding at people and shaking their hands and engaging in brief drunken conversation with them. She and her brother had tried to come up with a better system of classification, one, two, and three sheets to the wind not being sufficiently subtle to describe the states and degrees of intoxication that their parents regularly achieved. They settled on a blotto scale, one through ten, though Calvin had a change of heart, insisting that there must exist gradations far beyond what they could measure, and he called to expand the scale from pico-blotto at the small end to mega-blotto on the big. They postulated the existence of a mean, a person, they called him Cousin Otto, who was kept in a vault in Stockholm in a carefully controlled steady state of drunkenness, exactly five point zero zero zero zero blotto, against whose perfect drunk all the drunkenness in the world was measured. Every morning a team of scientists would test his coordination and speech and ability to maintain an erection and calibrate him with nips of booze as pure as science could produce.
There were mostly fives and ones about that night. Jemma made her rounds, at first arm in arm with Rob, and then by herself after he got swept away to dance or do flips, and did her time carrying a tray of bacon-wrapped asparagus and serving drinks at the bar, and noticed that most people approximated Cousin Otto, very friendly and somewhat stumbly, slurring only when excitement drove them to speak too fast. Most of the children managed a one without drinking anything at all. The twelve-and-unders were all flushed and sweaty and had their weak little inhibitions undone by the festive atmosphere. Among the older kids there were a few zeroes, some fives, and a number of sevens. Cindy Flemm, an eight, leaned heavily on her Wayne, looking like a five a.m. prom queen, insulting people, apologizing immediately, and inaugurating new friendships with them. Rob was a three or a four; Vivian was a six. There were only two tens, Drs. Sundae and Snood, and only one who fell off the scale. That was Ishmael, who for the last half of the party sat at a table and ranted at anyone who would come within ten feet of him.
“We can dig down deep,” he was saying as Jemma sat down at his table with a virgin Rob ’n’ Jemma in one hand and a plate of miniature quiches — no two were alike — in the other. “Deep under the drowned earth, or deep into Hell, or we could climb up above the clouds, or inside a mountain, or even just sit down underneath all the water in a sea of kelp, or you could hide in the trunk of a Volkswagen in the middle of a thick jungle of kelp. He would still send His snake to bite you on the ass.”
“What is he talking about?” Jemma whispered to Jordan Sasscock.
“I have no idea,” he whispered back. “A little while ago he was talking about a movie he was going to have made, and then he started to get mad about something.”
“Ah,” he said, squinting at her. “It’s the Bird! Bird of Frankenstein! Bird of Moron! Tell, me, little bridle, do you think you are safe here?”
“Well…” Jemma said.
“Shush! Did you think I actually wanted to hear you talking? No, I was just being polite. But enough of that. There’s no time left for that. You are not safe. I am not safe. Nobody is safe from destruction. And sudden, for that matter. And unexpected. Sudden, unexpected destruction. It could happen like that.” He tried to snap his fingers but his fingers were greasy from the buttery quiches, and the fingers only slid off one another without making any noise. He tried it again, flailing his arm and knocking over his drink. “As easy as that, anyway,” he said, looking around the table. There was an abandoned drink at the seat to his left, which he raked toward himself. “It’s easy for Him to do it, to yank the carpet or draw back the plank. It’s not just that He can do it, but that He can do it so easily.”
“Ishmael,” Jemma asked. “What are you talking about?”
“If you don’t know,” he said. “Then it’s too late to ask. I’m tired of you, anyway. Aren’t you tired of her?” He looked around at the other people at the table, Dr. Tiller and Dr. Sasscock and Dr. Sundae and Frank and Connie, and asked it again. “Aren’t you all tired of her? Bridey this and bridey that and let’s make a wedding dress and oh are you going to enter the contest to design a pillow for their mint?”
“Do you want to take a nap?” Jemma asked him. The music paused, and the first of the fireworks went off. Ishmael cringed away from them, but everyone else at the table turned to the sky to see the bursting fire flowers, not just peonies but roses and lilies and tulips and orchids on long curving stems. A rocket trailed bright green fire that hung for a whole minute in the sky, arcing up and then starting down, finally bursting into white flares that seemed to fold themselves out, revealing insides that were pink and orange and red.
“It’s what everyone is doing, isn’t it? Napping, sleeping, dreaming, dancing, feasting, drinking. Of all these drinking is the best. It says yes to the truth, and lets you understand how angry He is. I think He is angrier with the people out on that dance floor than He is with the bones under the water. You are all still boundlessly, furiously corrupt.”