the whole exchange. Deciding something, she drops her napkin onto the table and circles over to us.
“Abek, I was wondering if you would like to dance with me? I’m not very good,” she apologizes. “But if you don’t mind a clumsy partner, we can have a go together.”
I look up at her in gratitude as she extends her hand and Abek takes it. The two of them weave onto the floor, bobbing awkwardly to the music.
Lots of other people have also partnered up, and now I’m the only one left at our table, which is littered with mismatched cups and crumpled napkins. I down the contents of my glass while watching the dance floor.
There were bottles of good wine, and now they’re empty; there were bottles of bad liquor, and now they’re almost empty, too. By now I’ve drunk enough this evening that sitting still makes me woozy, so I busy myself by gathering all the dirty dishes into a pile and carrying them into the kitchen.
Josef stands at the big white sink, arms submerged to the elbows.
“You’re not out there dancing?” I set the dishes on the counter.
He gestures to the soapy water. “We’d run out of plates.” As if to further illustrate his point, he takes a dirty one off the stack I’ve just brought in and begins to wash it.
But on the other side of the sink is a different stack, nearly as tall, of clean plates.
“Don’t you think that should be enough for now?” I ask. “Most people have already eaten. Why don’t you come back to the party, and we’ll just bring out the ones you’ve washed so far.”
He shakes his head and grabs another plate. “I’m not much of a dancer anyway.”
“Neither is Esther, but you should see her trying to teach Abek out there.”
“I might as well finish. Someone is going to have to eventually.”
It’s clear he won’t be persuaded, so I roll up my own sleeves and grab a clean towel.
“You don’t have to,” he protests as I tie a makeshift apron over my dress. “Especially not with your brother here.”
“I’m trying not to hover over him. I think I’ve already embarrassed him once tonight. Here, you wash, I’ll dry. This will be faster with two of us.”
We move through the stack swiftly, but I can tell from his occasional intakes of breath that there’s something he wants to say. The next time he pulls a dish out of the water, he doesn’t let go when I move to grab it. Suspended between our two hands, it dribbles water onto the floor.
“I never congratulated you for finding him,” he says. “Or apologized for saying you wouldn’t.”
“You were only being rational,” I say magnanimously. It’s easy to be magnanimous, of course, since my brother is right now less than fifty meters away. “Most people would have agreed I was foolish.”
His grip on the plate only tightens. “But what if you’d actually listened to me? If you’d listened to me and you hadn’t put up all those letters, or—”
“Josef, we’re at a wedding,” I sigh. “I’m in the nicest dress I’ve worn in years, and I’m wearing it to wash dishes in the kitchen. Now hurry up and let’s finish so I can take this apron off and you can tell me I look beautiful in my dress.” The words coming out of my mouth are fueled a bit by alcohol, no doubt, but not so much that I couldn’t control them if I really wanted to.
“And that, by the way, is what a person in a new dress wants to hear when she walks in a room,” I continue. “‘You look beautiful.’ Not, ‘We’re out of dishes.’”
I’ve shocked Josef into letting go of the wet plate. It reels back against the front of the dress I’ve just finished bragging about. My grip seems tight enough at first, but the plate slips through my hands—and then through Josef’s as he, too, tries to grab it as it falls—and finally it crashes onto the floor, shattering into pieces.
“Oh,” I say uselessly as the shards settle around my feet.
“I’ll get a broom,” he says.
Damnit.
We sweep up the pieces, big ones in a trash bin, smaller ones wrapped in a cloth, and the only words exchanged—Do you see that piece under the sink—are practical ones.
I’ve ruined the moment, if there ever was one. On my hands and knees, I skim the floor with a wet towel to mop up the tiniest fragments. My dress is now damp