Free A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias Page A

that he looked silly in this outfit and anxiously checked and rechecked himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his bathroom door. His once roommate and bachelor best friend Sal Mingoti, who now lived, inconveniently, with a girlfriend of Sylvie’s, had insisted that Enrique buy the looking glass at Lamstons. “The Women will need this,” he assured Enrique as they awkwardly lugged the six-foot-tall glass up the five flights, and then Sal helped him drill and attach plastic holders to support its frame. That installation was a forbidding task for the literary Enrique but laughably easy for Sal, who had pioneered a dying manufacturing neighborhood soon to be known as SoHo. Sal, a broke, struggling sculptor, had learned to be plumber, electrician, carpenter, and tile layer en route to the coveted loft prize: a certificate of occupancy, or C of O.
    Enrique had occupied the vast illegal space with Sal, or rather mostly slept for nearly a year after his breakup with Sylvie, and occasionally served as a holder of things that Sal drilled or glued or nailed. Sal had been kind about providing shelter for Enrique. He had refused all offers to help with the rent but also gently spurred Enrique to get his own place. In exchange, Enrique had inadvertently supplied Sal with a new inamorata. They were close and true friends despite the fact that Sal, unlike Bernard Weinstein, wasn’t literary and had never read Enrique’s novels. In fact, he hardly seemed to read at all, claiming to be dyslexic. Also unlike Bernard Weinstein, Sal was rooting for Enrique to succeedwith Margaret (or any woman, really) and called about an hour before the dinner to ask, “Nervous?”
    “No,” Enrique not so much lied as deluded himself. “Just, you know, I don’t like…dinner parties. I mean, what are they? You just sit and eat and talk.”
    “Oh yeah, Mr. E?” Sal said, using his affectionate name for Enrique. “You wish it was a dancing party?”
    “No!”
    “Yeah, that’d be a fucking nightmare. Dancing. It’s sex with all of the work and no fun.”
    “All the potential for ridicule and none of the fun,” Enrique amended.
    Sal laughed, with the relaxed grace of a man who knows with whom and when he will next get laid. “Don’t be nervous. She likes you, Mr. Ricky. It’s obvious. She would have torn your clothes off if that bozo Bernard wasn’t there. Women don’t stay up all night talking ’cause they want to hear what men have to say.”
    “Then why a dinner party with all these other people?”
    “Safety in numbers. She’s a little scared of you. And that’s good. That’s really good. Just what you want.”
    Enrique loved Sal. He felt at ease with him, probably because Sal, precisely because he was neither a writer nor a reader, didn’t resent Enrique’s precocity. And the fact that Enrique almost never agreed with Sal’s opinions and perceptions of the world (and thought his nonrepresentational shape-sculptures didn’t qualify as decoration, much less art) only seemed to increase his feeling of trust. He knew that if he made a fool of himself with Margaret, Sal would not truly think less of him whereas, with the Bernard Weinsteins of the world, Enrique felt he was forever on probation, one misstep away from their permanent disdain.
    Sal, the shaman of seduction, had a final word of advice. “Promise me one thing. Kiss her when you leave.”
    “What?”
    “On the lips, Mr. E.”
    “In front of everybody!” Enrique fairly squealed with incredulity and horror.
    “Yep.”
    “No!”
    “I mean, no tongue. Don’t ram it down her throat, but you know, move in, right up to her, pause for a sec, just one second, and then kiss her softly on the lips. She’ll appreciate it. Believe me. The Women want men to make the move, you know? She’s invited you to dinner with her old friends and you have to show her, you’re not just another friend.”
    Sal’s kiss order haunted Enrique. He knew he wasn’t capable of so