“Titi.” Darn. He was one of the owners of the new bathroom, so I couldn’t kick him out and make him use the twenty-year-old, perfectly functioning, but less attractive bathroom downstairs. Unfortunately for me, the minuscule bathroom downstairs was cluttered with mop buckets and other things that didn’t fit anywhere else; there was no way I could get into a wedding dress in it and still have that wedding dress be presentable. “But he should be out in five minutes,” Justine added anxiously, at my expression.

Bruno pounded up the stairs. “I get the bathroom next; I’ve got to take a shower!”

“But I’ve got to get ready,” I said, feeling on weak ground arguing with our host about whether or not he could use his own bathroom.

“I’ll be quick,” he said and disappeared downstairs again. I rubbed my thumb hard against the worry-stone.

At 9:05, Titi appeared, flushed from the bathroom humidity. “Oh, were you waiting for me? It’s all yours!”

“Well, no, it’s Bruno’s, apparently,” I said, but Bruno didn’t appear. I called several times from the top of the stairs, waited five minutes, and finally, at 9:10, decided to go ahead.

I was just stepping naked under the shower when I heard him knock on the bathroom door. “She went ahead and took a shower?” he exclaimed to Justine, indignant. “I said I needed to go next!”

I wavered between embarrassment at my own self-absorption and the frantic conviction that I needed to have first dibs on at least one bathroom and mirror this morning. Caught under this pressure, I took the fastest shower of my life and burst out with knotted hair and soap still streaming off one shoulder.

“Finally,” Bruno said, jumping up from the couch where he had been waiting for me. “It’s getting late, I’ve got to hurry.”

“But—” The door closed and locked behind him, leaving my toiletries and the worry-stone on the wrong side of it, on the edge of the sink.

I looked down at my towel-wrapped, streaming self and at Justine, who, having hit the shower before any of us, was calmly painting her toenails. “Don’t forget to do yours,” she said. “Mom said not to let you reach the altar without fingernail and toenail polish.”

“Umm . . . can I borrow a comb?”

I had pulled on jeans again and was wondering if I dared do my hair without a mirror when Bruno got out of the shower. At the same time, Mamie climbed up the stairs to help me. “You haven’t done your hair yet, Laura?” she said. “It’s 9:30.”

“I know,” I said, grabbing someone’s towel and scrubbing the fog off the bathroom mirror. “I’m working on it.” I toweled all the moisture I could out of my hair and was starting to put mousse in it when Claudine burst up the stairs.