Free Otherwise Engaged by Suzanne Finnamore

Kmart.”
    They have a Kmart in the East Village now. It’s doing blockbusters. Finally, people who live in New York City can get big jugs of Wisk.
    “You can buy anything in Kmart,” I say.
    “What does Michael say?” he asks. Hoping for the stray electoral vote. He needs California and Michigan.
    “I’m with the penny candy,” Michael says.
    “You guys are just perfect for each other,” Dusty says, disgusted.
    “Promise me you won’t buy the truck,” I say.
    “All right,” he says. “I love you. You’re always so right.”
    “Bullshit,” I say. “I’m watching you.”
    Received a memo today.
    “… I want to ensure that we are casting
visible
Jamaicans and/or African-Americans in our advertising. My sense is that we don’t cast obviously diverse talent in adequate numbers.”
    No more invisible people. Right.
    The mistake is to read the memos, of course. It’s just a way that crazy people can touch you. You really have to be like Ram Dass, who keeps a picture of Jesse Helms right next to his maharaja on his puja table, and says, “It’s all perfect.”
    Meanwhile I shored up my courage and cracked the January issue. I am seriously behind on my
Modern Bride
checklist. I have practically nothing checked off.
    I can feel failure gathering in a fat cloud around my head. I know I could apply myself and do well, but I don’t see how it’s going to prepare me for real life.
    We were on the couch and Michael was stroking my face and he said, “There have been two women in my life with beautiful eyebrows. One was the Wicked Queen in
Snow White
. The other is you.”
    He went on to say that if the Wicked Queen were around today, the whole story might have been different, because she would have looked in her Magic Mirror and said, “If I got a little laser work around the jaw and eyelids, I might still be considered the Fairest in the Land.”
    Michael and I attended his boss’s wedding last night. Seven hundred people, Grace Cathedral. It made the society page.
    She wore Vera Wang, with the most wonderful satiny train and sculpted bow in back. It would have been better not to have seen this dress. This dress will do its best to ruin any dress I happen to end up with.
    She glided down the aisle, which had long white tapered candles on the ends of all the pews. An angelic choir was singing into the high-ceilinged cathedral, which was draped with huge bouquets of French white tulips. We should definitely elope, I mused. Get the fuck out of Dodge.
    The reception was at the Olympic Club. We waded through the sea of flat-faced white women with tiny noses and caved-in necks, holding aloft long flutes of Veuve Clicquot. In a side parlor, men smoked cigars with thesatisfied expressions of sharks. Doorbell-like buttons lined the wall, to summon the expressionless Hispanic men who bore trays of fine brandy.
    Willie Brown was there at the buffet, thronged by the flat-faced women. As I watched them fawn over him, I dipped a jumbo shrimp into blood-red sauce. I picked a pantied lamb chop off the buffet. There were whole roast beefs and turkeys, caviar, dim sum, two sushi bars, smoked salmon, dozens of pâtés. Pasta prepared as you waited, with a variety of sauces in silver boats.
    “What’s going to happen to all of this later?” I asked Michael as he surveyed the cheese assortment. In its leering abundance it looked not so much like food but nuclear waste. I wanted to make sure it would be properly disposed of.
    Caterers, Michael explained, always give away food to the homeless shelters. He was eating a plate of thinly sliced Norwegian lox as he said this, with mini-bagels.
    It was hard to imagine that the beluga would make its way to the Mission, to the man on the street with skin the color of yams. Hard to imagine how exactly the yam man would benefit from the raw-oyster bar.
    We left early. An Ethiopian valet brought my car around, I gave him five dollars. What I should have done was given him my car, and