Poca liked the mailroom. The air of possibility about it. He liked the physicality of his evening ritual. His walk through the courtyard. The feel of envelopes in his hand after a day of clicks and pixels in the living room he’d made an office. He scraped his hand inside his mailbox as twilight sifted through the open blinds, but all he felt was the cold metal emptiness. And a flyer. 

“Spam – 25% Less.”

Poca held it up and pictured an invitation. This was a habit from childhood, when he’d picture his name on the bright, festive rectangles that his classmates handed out. “You,” the paper would say, “are invited.” It would be sturdy, each corner sharp as an arrow. The invite shot from a bow, precise and final, leading him to where he was meant to be.

A young woman glided through the doorway, swinging the nimble pendulum of her body between two crutches. She wore the large hoops seen dangling from the ears of women with lots of friends and opinions and memories of music festivals. They danced, these hoops of gold, as she swung her body. Poca glanced her way as if checking the clock, then glanced again as if doubting the hour. Her attention was impenetrable.

“So many invites,” he said as she locked her mailbox.

He flung the flyer in the bin. Except he missed. The Spam surfed a wave of air and landed at her boot. She was a monument of disinterest. Maybe she had headphones in. Maybe she assumed he was on the phone.

***

The varied and fantastic colors of nightfall glittered through the window. Poca was going out. He lit his Candle of Purpose, whispered “Please,” and Ubered to a bar where he sat swiping through women. Right. Right. Mostly right. One woman had the phrase “no fuglies” in her bio. He tapped Safari to look it up. His recent searches were group chat and is everyone in a group chat.

He eyed the bartender. “Ever watch Better Call Saul?”

“No.”

He told her he’d just finished the final season.

She stared down at her phone.

He wanted to tell her that when it ended, he sank into the futon with a heartsickness both painful and euphoric. A kind of reeling obsession. He wanted to be in a room full of people weeping and hugging each other because something like this had existed in the world. He hadn’t loved the show at first. It felt as though he’d been broken up with just as he was falling in love. He loved Kim Wexler. Kim Wexler’s love for Jimmy. He ached for such continuity. He ached to be good enough for someone in a final, invincible way. To not be interchangeable or algorithmic.

“Good show,” he said.

From the edge of the bar, he looked out at the diamond-stud stars, the fingernail moon. It would happen for him. You had to keep your head up. Smile. Emanate positive energy.

“Amazing show,” he said.

Riding home, he watched the Ferris wheel. He’d never been. He was saving it for milestones. His first ride would be the proposal. The second on their wedding day. The third when his wife was pregnant. A long, wild time would pass before the fourth ride, when they were empty nesters. The fifth would be one of them holding the other’s ashes, silent with tears. Five rides on the High Roller, marking out a life. He watched the passenger capsules rise, and above them, geese piercing puffs of cloud. Five geese like an arrowhead.

***

In the mailroom, Poca pulled out the junk and reached in again. He’d ordered an authentic arrowhead of the Aztec empire. His fingers skated the metal surface, searching for the package, but they found something else. A thick, square, cream-colored envelope. He tore it open.

“You are warmly invited to the wedding uniting Grace Sophia…”

A ticklish sensation gripped his throat.

“…and Fergus Carl… fourteenth of September…”

The room spun the way it did when he drank, except it was pleasant. He slapped the mailroom door, grinned at the spinning stairwell, and whooped at his doorknob as he turned it. The apartment seemed warm, like someone’s home.

“A wedding!” he told the refrigerator. “God bless you, Grace and Fergus.”

He studied the envelope addressed to a Miss Kimberly Gomez.

“And bless you, Miss Kimberly, whoever you are, dear Kimmy Gomez—Kim!”

He set the invite on the table, propped it up so he could see it, the sweet square of cream, and watched Bachelor in Paradise. As if prompted by a cosmic choreography, his phone buzzed. A girl he’d been texting said yes.

Yes, she said, she would let him buy her dinner.

“Boom!” he cried to his candle.

He danced through the living room, the little kitchen. “Karma, baby. Good things to those who wait!”

***

He sat with two menus, two glasses of house red, and a view of the entrance. He admired the wooden chairs and how the light sparkled in the clusters of glass. In his head, he rehearsed a toast. To meeting new people. To making the most. To taking a chance and putting ourselves out there. To these decades after childhood. Decades that felt like a long summer break that would end any day now. He’d be back with his friends and they’d report their adventures.          

The waiter poured more water. “Expecting someone?”

“Yeah,” Poca said. His face spread irresistibly into a smile.

The waiter winked and the gold of his wedding ring glinted. He’d made it, Poca thought, to the other side.

Kana, a power plant brand ambassador, would ask about his job.

“I’m an integrations consultant,” he would say. “I integrate disparate systems. I make payroll talk to time tracking.”

He checked his phone.

“I moved here right before Covid, but they closed the office so I work from home—which I don’t love. It’s hard to meet people.”

He sipped water, checked his phone, typed On your way? and erased the message.

She would ask about his name.

“According to my grandmother, I was named for an Aztec god. But I think my mom meant to name me Paco and was just too sick or stubborn… I moved here after she died.”

He checked his phone. On your way? he typed again. This time he sent it.

She wrote back: uhhhh where..

Olive Garden lol. We said Thursday, right?

She was typing. He sipped his water. She was still typing. He sipped his water.

oh yeahhhhhh our big date at The Olive Garden!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He nodded. She was typing again.

your hilarious

Scrolling up, he saw it now. A joke. He decided to leave the wine untouched as a kind of offering. A goad for the gods of love. The waiter didn’t come back for a long time.

“Got our wires crossed,” Poca told him. “She’s at a different location.”

“Still time, brother. Go.”

“I think I will.”

Poca stood on the curb as if waiting for a car or a vision. The sky removed its veil and the stars made their entrances. Down from the clouds an idea floated. This notion, this visualized conviction. He forced a smile at the sky, stood straight, and laughed out loud. Then he rushed to his car, sped home and snatched up the cream-colored cardstock.

“Miss Kimberly Gomez,” he said.

He pictured her on a plush couch eating popcorn, watching Slumdog Millionaire. She looked at him; he looked away. How could he meet the eyes of a girl like that? Maybe if he tracked her down, if he delivered the invitation, they would talk. Maybe she’d ask him to be her plus one. Maybe she’d be joking.

The conviction came back to him. He set down the cardstock, circled “Steak,” and sealed the envelope with his spit.

“I’m going to a wedding,” he told his succulent, holding the jar up to his face.

***

“Bend over,” the tailor said. “You move here from New York?”

“Mexico,” said Poca. “I’ve been in Vegas for—”

“This reminds me of baseball. The bone white with the red. Must be a pretty high-end deal you’re gearing up for.”

Poca told him about the wedding. Some details from the website, some invented.

“Magnifique,” the old man said as he tightened the tape under Poca’s crotch. “Been to a couple hundred myself. Three of my own. Turn. Not that I took the conjugal contract lightly. Nah, just piss-poor luck. I must have a demon. Wants me to himself. Lift up. Slide left a little. Cha cha real smooth. Ha! Ha! No more wives for me.”

Poca asked if he had any tips.

“Prostitutes,” he said.

“I mean for the wedding.”

“Oh, sure. Start early. Bring a flask. Keep her in this pocket. Is this a Catholic deal? Those things drag on forever.” He measured with one hand while lifting a pack of cigarettes to his mouth and fishing one out between teeth and tongue. “You mind? They say loneliness is as deadly as smoking, so I figure, as long as I keep fending off the one…”

***

On the day of the wedding, Poca whispered to his Candle of Purpose and put the suit on, savoring the fabric like an athlete dressing for the playoffs. Flask of hard lemonade in one breast pocket, arrowhead in the other, he sat near the back. The church was full of sad cartoons with shiny golden backgrounds. When the bride appeared, a pillar of white, he stood on tiptoe. It was so beautiful the way she glided out of darkness looking straight at the groom. Locked in. Precise as a bolt of lightning. An old woman leaned over to pat his trembling hand. All through the ceremony he pictured himself with a bride gliding toward him and before he knew what was happening, people were leaving.

He left with them. He reeled to his car and followed the current to the country club, where he mingled and snatched up coconut shrimp from floating trays of gold. There was music. There were children and old people—this was humanity! This was life!

He fist-bumped cigar-smoking uncles, dropped ten-dollar bills into tip jars, and surfed a perfect buzz, neither spilling drunkenly forward nor falling back in still sobriety. At the urinal he remembered his grandparents, A Bug’s Life, a girl from kindergarten, and grinned at the wall in front of him.

He took the last chair at a table toward the front. The bread rolls, whipped butter, and fresh, tangy dressing tasted like food from another world. Beside him sat a gleaming brunette who seemed to know which glass to drink from.

“That wedding was so short!” he said.

The brunette snorted. She wore small, elegant hoops on her ears.

“Jesus,” said a guy in suspenders. “I almost committed suicide in there. Two hours? Jesus.”

The brunette scrutinized Poca over her wine glass. “How do you know Grace and Ferg?”

“My ex,” he blurted, “dated the bride.”

He’d never used that phrase before: “my ex.” It crackled in his mouth. Lit his brain like an incandescent bulb. It certified something. Maybe he had broken up with her. Maybe she wasn’t up to his standards.

“My crazy ex,” he said, attempting to look disgusted through his grin.

“What’s his name?”

“Whose?”

“Your ex.”

He patted the arrowhead pocket. “You mean her name.”

“Grace never dated a girl.”

“Oh,” he said. “I meant the groom. He once had a fling with Kimberly, my ex, after I broke things off.”

“That’s my name,” the brunette said.

He realized where he’d seen her. The mailroom. The crutches and boot were gone but even as she sat there, eating, drinking, her body swayed with the same pendulum ease.

He was saved by the clinking of glasses.

“Hear, hear!” he said.

Throughout each of several speeches, he cried with laughter. He couldn’t help leaning over and whispering, “She’s legit funny,” or, “He should have a Netflix special.” That regular people could speak with such humor, with callbacks and sudden eruptions of raw emotion, made him glad to be human. He was one of them—him! With a rush of warmth, he felt that Fate had brought him here for a purpose. He looked at Kim—Kim Gomez, surely—who was also in tears. What a story they’d have. The mailroom. The misplaced invite. Every detail like a note in a symphony composed by a generous god. He could see her emerging from darkness, gliding, nearing.

“What’s your gift?” she said when the toasts ended. “I saw you lugging some behemoth.”

“Well,” he said, “if I was married, I thought—what I’d want is an old-fashioned popcorn maker. For when I watch old movies with my wife.”

“How unique,” said Kimberly. “I ordered off their registry.”

After steak and cake he stepped into the river of music. The current pulled him and he gave himself to it, whirling, plunging, bobbing in the common motion. The elderly were dancing, plucking moves out of eras past, jitterbugging with the dead, because nothing was dead now. All were alive in this river.

Who cared if the invite came by chance? The same was true for others. Everyone knew the bride or groom by accident of birth and social circle.

“Hey, Macarena!” he shouted, mimicking the motions Kim made so easily.

Everyone, he thought, had shaken off the husks of themselves and appeared luminously naked in suits and dresses. This was the real world. This was the heart of things.

“Hey, Macarena!”

Each person was a sub-system and sorrow was only the process by which all were integrated. Loneliness was a bug. A glitch with a pending fix. Joy was a permanent feature. He saw the spark of God in every face, every bathroom tile. Even in the bright red gum in the urinal—there was God.

Returning to the river, he seemed to be wading in slowly. People were parting slowly, making way for him, making way for his bride.

“Kim?”

The braids of her hair were glowing. He stood still. She kept coming toward him. He saw that she was not Kim. Kim was beside her and the bride’s voice came thundering down.

“Who are you?”

“What?” asked Poca.

“We don’t know you. What are you doing here?”

She came closer, face-to-face, so that he smelled her perfume and saw where the pale shade of her neck met the color of her makeup.

“Who are you? Come in here clowning in your suit. Who the hell are you?”

Her spit drizzled down, and a white-hot hovering light—the flash of Kimberly’s phone—beat against his eyes.

“I’m no one,” he said, backing away. “I’m sorry.”

***

He sat on a cold metal bench. The guy in suspenders stood by the curbside smoking, looking up at the glinting shards of glass that were suburban stars. Maybe Kimberly felt bad. Maybe she’d come outside.

He’d never smoked before, but something made him say, “Can I bum one of those?”

The young man turned. “Last one, brother.” He flicked his cigarette to the ground and stomped it. “Killer pinstripes. Yankees fan, yeah? If my girlfriend let me, I’d wear the most ridiculous outfits to these things.”

Poca laughed.

“Back to the merrymaking,” the man said and he wheeled around a waterless fountain.

“Wait.”

The guy stopped.

“Can I ask you something? Can I just ask what’s wrong with me? Is it my looks? My breath?”

The man put his thumbs in his suspenders and slid them up and down. His mouth opened. His cleanshaven chin jutted out.

“Too obvious that I’m desperate?” Poca said.

The man released his suspenders and they slapped against his chest. “I don’t know, bro. I don’t know you.”

“That’s the point. It’s so lonely, you know? Is it just me? Why is it so lonely?”

The man glanced at the entrance. “Look, why don’t I grab us some drinks and we can talk. Whaddaya want, beer?”

Poca rubbed his face. “Red wine,” he said.

A wave of music rushed out, then subsided as the door swung shut. He waited ten minutes. Twenty. An hour. Old people, middle-aged people, people with children trickled out to their cars as the party clamored on. They trickled in fives and twos and sevens. A world of long division, he thought, with remainders. He studied the glinting bits of starlight, inhaled the chill air. He was sober now. The sky was clear. He faced a dark network of dry ravines rising up in rocky foothills. Over the foothills, Sagittarius aimed his bow, not at the moon, but into the empty dark beyond. Turning, Poca saw the skyline. Silent. Distant. A still life of a toy city. Even the Ferris wheel was still.