urvive.

Roasted yellow pepper soup was followed by a salad of spinach and
scallops, salmon with a thyme sauce, and risotto with wild mushrooms.
Wine servers patrolled vigilantly. Joe had a conversation about
education with a teacher Kate had met on a vacation in Tibet. There
were sentimental toasts, and then the band began to play. He remembered
that he could dance, and he took a turn around the floor with the
mother of the bride. Sally and he moved easily together out of old
habit.

Time went backwards and then into slow motion as the band worked
through hits of the 60's and 70's. Joe danced with anyone available,
and when no one was available he danced alone. Occasionally, he went
outside on a long porch to cool off in a fine drizzle that was drifting
in from the harbor.

A group gathered around the wedding cake on a table at the far end of
the room. Sally and Ingrid stood together looking mellow and nostalgic.
Gunnar and Bonnie were talking with friends. Max was taking pictures.
It was time to go, Joe realized. He had told Kate earlier that he would
fade away at the appropriate time. He walked through the bar and said
to the woman who had served him the Scotch, "Your little girl only gets
married once." He went out the door and down the steps.

"Are you from around here? Seattle?"

Joe turned and looked back up at the bartender who had followed him
onto the porch. "Hawaii."

"Uh--what do you do?" She was urgent. He remembered that she had been
watching him dance.

"I'm a poet," he said. The words fell through the air like a sentence.

"Oh, a good one, I'm sure."

"There are only a couple of us," Joe said, drunkenly. "I've got to go
now." A musician on break, watching from a corner of the porch, drew on
his cigarette. The glow lit his face, a witness, someone Joe would
never know. "I've got to go," Joe said. He turned and walked into the
dark and the rain, leaving the younger generation and most of his life
behind.

13

Joe was thirsty the next day, fuzzy, but not totaled. Dancing had
worked off a lot of the booze. He caught the Clipper back to Seattle
and sat silently for three hours while images and conversations flowed
through his mind. The wedding had been a great success--well organized,
yes--but mostly because Kate and Jackson were a good match and because
they and their friends all had the same attitude: let's have a good
time; let's do it right. It was a relief after the weddings he'd b