It is a story she has told several men, crucial, she thought each time, to their learning to know her, although the time you spend learning to know your lover is also, awkwardly given the story, the time you first put your mouth on their genitals, so the story was too often misread as flirty. It was Ben who said, his legs all jumbly with hers in his saggy bed, “Well, that’s awful.” Well, it is. Well, it was. She is free of it now, is what she is hoping with a ring on her finger next to the other ring surrounded by a ring of trees. Her marriage will be a story, the wedding will, and it is, though the story is not the ceremony, which most, like the bride, dream right through, what with the breeze and the drony vicar and the smell of the upcoming delicious feast. But then it is later, darker, the sky its last gloomy blue at the top of the trees, and there’s a new story in the works with five barrels drained of Happy Couples and the music loud. The one tableful of older guests has gone home, and the bride’s college gang is crowing the song’s chorus while their thirsty husbands lean on the windows and talk about new construction mucking up traffic.

Stanford takes the curtained exit to grab more ice from out back, and a little noise startles him. It is Reynard’s tall shadow, and then his sly eyes.

“Good job out there,” Stanford says. “How many weddings have you done?”

“Nine,” Reynard lies. It is more than that.

“And you’re a, what is it? Vicar? I thought they were only in old books.”

Reynard steps closer. “We’re still around,” he says.

“You’re responsible for their happiness now, right?” Stanford says. “Is that how it works?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Reynard says, “how anything works.”

“That doesn’t sound very clergyman.”

“Indeed,” Reynard says, like a sea captain, a detective, something on TV, and blows a little smoke. There is a cigarette in his hands, and while it is not certain what will happen next, Stanford lets the feeling settle, the bag of ice over his shoulders like a fireman rescue.

“I need to take this back in,” Stanford says.

“Sure.”

“I’m at work.”