Chapter 31: The Comet Again

On Sunday the ninth of May the next year, I woke at seven in the apartment over the shed.

The swamp cooler was rattling.

Leni was asleep across the foot of my bed in her bridesmaid's slip, snoring.

I lay there and watched the clock on the crate.

At eight o'clock exactly, a year ago, they'd have been putting the mask over my face.

I watched the minute hand go past eight.

Then ten after.

Then half past.

I was getting married at sundown.

Leni woke up at nine and hit me with a pillow because I'd let her sleep.

Bunny had closed the yard for a week.

She'd hung a sign on the gate that said CLOSED FOR A WEDDING, GO AWAY.

It was neon, because I'd bent it for her as a joke and she'd plugged it in.

I'd spent the winter rewiring her dead signs, one a weekend.

The martini glass lit up green now, with a pink olive that blinked.

The rows of giant letters glowed white.

The forty-foot cowboy still lay on his back in the dirt, because Bunny said he'd earned his rest.

But his lasso burned gold over the whole yard.

Over the rooftops downtown, the Golden Comet lit itself at dusk, every night, all six rings.

You could see it from the yard if you stood by the fence.

That's where Bunny put the arch.

The guests came in from Providence on two flights.

The capos sat in a row on folding chairs in the dirt in their good suits, sweating, with their wives fanning them with programs.

The older one sat in the front row with his hat on his knee.

The linen driver brought his mother.

She was in her seventies now, in a blue dress.

She and Bunny cried on each other by the trailer for ten minutes before anybody could pull them apart.

The old man from the pawnshop came too.

He'd flown for the first time in his life with the guitar case on his lap the whole way.

He wouldn't let them put it in the overhead bin.

He sat in the back row with it across his knees.

The girl from the bus was there, in a yellow dress.

She'd been in the yard nine months.

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