Just then Cassandra Milton floated into the room. She was a tall, immaculately dressed woman in her fifties. “Well preserved,” Sam once called her. He was right. All I knew was that when the time came, I needed to have the name of the surgeon who preserved her.

“Ready for a few details?” Cassandra said. She said this every meeting. “A few details” almost always consisted of an hour of excruciating decisions about shrimp forks and frosting.

“Absolutely.” Sam stood and loosely clapped his hands in front of him, as if he’d just been in a huddle and someone had called Break!

I stood, too, telling myself it would all be worth it-eventually. I was just being immature about wanting to slow things down. I was a hundred percent certain I wanted to be with Sam. I’m not going to lie and say it had always been that way. When Sam and I first discussed getting married, I was struck with the enormity of the situation-no sex with anyone else ever again; having to see the same person every morning for as long as my life lasted; having to consult with someone about every major life decision from what blender to buy to what vacation to take. Being in the holy state of matrimony was nothing I’d ever romanticized. I didn’t need it as a notch on my belt. But I was wild for Sam. I adored him in a way I’d never realized was possible. Monogamy required giving a lot up, but I was going to gain a hell of a lot more. I loved Sam in such a way, that my whole body said, God, yes, each time I saw him.

And now here we were at the office of a Wedding Creator. It was all going to be okay.

I glanced at him for the hang in there look he always gave me at Cassandra’s, but he didn’t meet my gaze.

“Sure, Cassandra.” I stood and reached for Sam’s hand, but he just sat there, staring straight ahead.

“Sam?”

He looked up. “Sorry.” He stood quickly. “I forgot something. I mean, I’ve got to check on something. Can you handle this on your own?”

“You want to leave?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go with you. We can put this off.”

“We cannot put this off,” Cassandra said. “The contract with the restaurant requires we choose our appetizer selections by tomorrow.”

“Can you do it?” Sam said. “Please?” With any other groom, I would assume he was wisely trying to shirk his duties. But Sam actually enjoyed all the planning that went into our wedding.

“Of course, but seriously, are you all right?”

He put on that practiced smile again. “Sure, yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you at the dinner.” We’d talk then. I would get the whole thing out-all my doubts-and the talking would dispel my panic.

He blinked. He seemed to have forgotten about the work dinner. He looked at his watch. “Right, okay. I might be a little late, but I’ll meet you there.”

“Shall we?” Cassandra said, in the voice I knew as her impatient tone, even if it was cultured and low.

I squeezed Sam’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll see you at the club.”

Later, I realized Sam hadn’t answered me. He just watched me walk into Cassandra’s office, and when I turned back to give him a reassuring smile, he seemed to be studying me, memorizing my face.

5

I sat in the ballroom of the Union League Club, an empty chair at my side.

“Where’s Sam?” asked Faith McLaney, a woman from Carrington Associates, the wealth-management firm where Sam worked. Faith was ten years older than Sam and, in some ways, a mentor to him. Their boss, Mark Carrington, handled only a few exclusive clients, while Sam and Faith backed him up, dividing the clients between the two of them.

“I’m not sure.”

I texted him again-Where are you? Still no reply.

I watched while a line of speakers from a newly formed venture-capital firm took the dais and eternally praised themselves for raising so much funding. I tried to make small talk with the others at our table-two people from a local accounting firm and their spouses-but because of my increasingly agitated worries about Sam, they were tough to tell apart save one woman’s lazy eye and her husband’s psoriasis.

“Sam’s on his way,” I kept saying to no one in particular, starting to doubt my own words with each second. Had he gotten held up with some emergency with Forester’s work? It was strange for him not to text me and let me know what was happening.

I went to the bathroom, stood at the counter and called Sam’s cell. It went to voice mail.

Q was someone I turned to for help with everything, not just work, so I called him to see if he had any ideas.

I’d been lucky enough to find Q while he was night staff at Baltimore & Brown doing word processing for attorneys, like me, who worked too much and too late. He had simply wanted to make some money until he could figure out what he should do with his life, having realized that his acting career wasn’t exactly taking off. He was conscientious and meticulous, and as soon as he’d handled a few projects for me, I begged him to become my assistant. Yes, he’d be working for someone slightly younger, I told him, and yes, maybe “legal assistant” wasn’t the day job he’d always dreamed of, but I’d get him as much money as I could, I’d let him go on auditions anytime he wanted and we’d have a blast. I told him that I needed him. Desperately. At the time, I was twenty-six. Only a year and half out of law school, and suddenly I’d found myself handling a large chunk of the legal work for Pickett Enterprises-and I knew I was in way over my head.

Q finally caved, and now, three years later, he was, as Sam always joked, my “work husband,” a husband who could and would always make things better.

But oddly, Q’s phone didn’t ring either and went straight to voice mail.

I went back into the dining room and sat staring at my engagement ring, while the speakers droned on. I tried to figure out when it had happened-when the feeling had started that the wedding was getting away from us, didn’t seem like us anymore. I had to talk to Sam about it. So where was he?

Whenever a dinner course was cleared, my eyes darted to my lap, where my cell phone sat, and I stared at the empty display. I texted him a few more times. Again, nothing. Something was wrong.

The desserts-glazed pears that were better suited for a Gerber jar-were served, but I pushed them away.

When the dinner ended I said goodbye to Faith and the rest of the table, then I left and tramped down the stairway that was lined with an eclectic, expensive array of oil paintings. Once in the lobby of the club, I called Q again, but again it went right to voice mail. I tried Sam’s cell phone…and his office…and his apartment number. Nothing.

I jammed the phone in my purse and wondered whether to keep being worried about Sam or move to pissed-off mode. This no-show was completely unlike him. In fact, he’d never done something this inconsiderate, this out of character, so my usual repertoire of fiancé-management techniques seemed inappropriate.

I walked back to my office, through the mostly empty Loop, now lacking its daytime vitality. I found my silver Vespa parked behind the building. My mom had gotten me started on scooters when I was sixteen. We didn’t need a car in the city, and yet she constantly worried about me waiting at public bus stops and El stations. I’d used the scooter through college and bought a new one during law school. I thought that when I started practicing law I’d get rid of it. But then gas prices skyrocketed, and there was something about driving the Vespa I found not only convenient and energy saving, but cathartic. After a day spent in the stale stratosphere of the law firm, I liked the fresh air on my face, the feel of movement, of getting somewhere, sooner than later.

I got on the Vespa and pointed it in the direction of Sam’s office. There was little traffic, so I was able to floor it up LaSalle Street. The dazzling lights of office buildings and restaurants bled past me into streams of colors. The wind tore through my hair, causing strands of orange curls to flick against my eyes and cheeks. I tried not to think of Sam. Instead, I let myself think how grateful I was that Illinois had no helmet law and, as a result, I could let my ears and my head fill up with the rumble and roar of city life.