The steps could barely accommodate the length of a foot, and the inability to see more than a few at a time made the phobic man wish they had braved the drunks on the staircase. He would not be rushed down into the black hole, though, mercifully, they were soon at another creaking door that put them in a backyard. Michael was relieved to return to the chill out-of-doors, but had no time to get his bearings. His ecstatic date had already maneuvered leaf-strewn patio furniture to unlatch a gate.

“Hurry!” she exclaimed.

A stretch limousine was parked at the curb—with its motor running. He was hustled into the back of it, and the driver, without prompting, peeled away. With the pandemonium behind them, the bumbling groom pulled a few grains of rice from the cuffs of his rental pants and endeavored to grasp their gravity. “I was wondering why this suit felt warm when I put it on. It probably doesn’t stay on the rack long.”

His companion was preoccupied with her itinerary and would not be drawn back into the script. Her silk-gloved knuckle rose to tap on the window. “Stop here!” she called up to the driver. “Stop here! I’m hungry!”

The limousine pulled up into the parking lot of a convenience store and the woman fell out of the car to waddle to the door; Michael followed with something like awe. Once inside, she plucked a rose from a display at the door and thumped a petal against the nose of the pimply-faced store clerk. “And are you circumcised, my pet?” she purred.

The young man turned even redder.

The bride snagged some deer jerky from the counter and dropped it into the groom’s tuxedo coat pocket. “This a little piece of Bambi’s Mother to munch on, Mr. Picasso, while you’re painting.” Two boxes of powdered donuts were grabbed off a shelf and handed him; a copy of Playboy was tossed on top with another wry remark. “I hear the articles are good.”

By the time Michael produced his wallet at the register, the high-spirited girl had seized the magazine and returned to the limo.

“That’s the most beautiful woman ever to fall in love with me,” the clerk confessed.

Michael, still in character, replied, “That’s the only woman who will ever talk to you.”

He rejoined his date in the car and found the Playboy’s centerfold spread audaciously over her lap. Encumbered with pastries, he managed to squeeze in around the edges of Miss October.

She perused the glossy nude, disinterestedly. “Do you whack-off to pictures like this?”

He was gentler. “I only connect the moles and freckles.”

The bride looked up and gasped, “This woman has no marks on her body, whatsoever! They’ve all been removed with an airbrush!”

“Do you have a pen?”

The doubter poked around in her sleek, oblong purse to produce an uncapped pen.

Michael took it and hunched over her to scratch out Eat More Deer on the centerfold’s leg in short straight lines. “You see,” he explained, “those airbrush artists don’t remove the freckles. They move them around to make subliminal messages—just to boost meat sales among testosterone-charged males.”

Rolling up the magazine, she swatted him like a pesky fly she was letting off with a warning.

The limo had resumed its way without either of them much noticing. When the vehicle turned down a rural road, the groom squinted through the tinted window at a column of smoke spiraling up over high grass. College revelers emerged along the gravel shoulders of the byway. Each greeted the headlights with rude gestures and beer cans. But all were staggering in the wrong direction.

The woman was doleful. “Oh, no! We’ve missed it!”

They were shortly to a cutaway where a slope rose at the far end. A dull halo defined its summit, although embers from a spent bonfire could not be seen from the low vantage point.

The girl was slower out of the car this time, clutching Michael with a measure of regret. “There’s no one left!”

On scaling the versant, the pair found the remains of an effigy still crackling in the dark. The impenetrable stillness of the smoldering mound sent the stargazer's eyes skyward in search of Orion’s nebula; it moved silently against the heavens in sync with its constellation.

The young woman’s eyes followed his. “They say pagans used to light bonfires during the short days of winter hoping to tempt the Sun back to the sky. They say that’s where Christmas trees came from.” The dark-haired beauty turned to limp back down the slope in her mismatched shoes.

He called after her. “I hope you’re not too disappointed?”

Without looking back, she almost sang. “Never!”

When they reached the bottom of the hill, instead of heading straight back to the car, the bride took the groom’s hand in a bashful way and pulled him off the path. Approaching taller grass, she released his fingers and removed her glasses to her purse. “I have to pee,” she declared, handing him the bag. “Will you watch out for me?”

He thought to give her privacy, but was paralyzed by her piercing blue-green eyes.

She walked backwards a few paces before reaching under her fluff of tulle to tug on a pair of champagne-colored panties. With pleated satin tucked against her tummy, she conducted her business with straightforwardness and a Cheshire cat grin; the man was transfixed in the unblinking middle of it. On finishing, she was reluctant to break her spell over him. “I have some Kleenex in my purse, love.”

Michael was still angling for a breath as he fumbled in the bag. He gave her a tissue.

After pulling her briefs back up under her garters, she walked over to take his hand with a gentle squeeze and another bewitching smile. Her lips grazed his beet-red ear. “One night I will bring you out here when there are a million stars to see.”

Michael continued to struggle with his converging but dissimilar strands of intoxication. His shadow—barely recognizable to him now—was irrevocably connected to the hem of her gleaming dress. She trembled close to the edge of something on the haunted landscape: something both melancholy and precious.

The stretch limousine was soon off again and heading back toward town. The reposed man remained quiet until he was obligated to give directions to his house.

The bride beamed. “You live near me.”

The long car pulled up to the curb and the resident got out. He glanced back over his shoulder at the unopened boxes of donuts still in the floorboard; yet the comedy of it had all drained away. She was at his heels, though more like surging up through the throbbing veins in his calves. He was rapidly approaching the part of the evening for which he had no script, and no confidence. Exposition was his strong suit—his only suit. He fiddled for the keys in his pants, warbling. “The electricity is out, I’m afraid.”

A stiff rustle pushed past his murmur through the crack in the door. The dark foyer opened up onto the living room, where pale pulsing light caught on the banister.

The television was on.

Michael turned back to find no one behind him.

The limo had already driven away.