Jake paid for the snacks and they got back in the truck. Terry Gross was interviewing Ray Davies for the hundredth anniversary of “Waterloo Sunset” or something. Re: the death of chivalry in financial matters, Leslie was ambivalent. In the twilight of the days with her last ex, he’d been unemployed, so she had uncomplainingly paid for most of their living expenses. When he’d had money, from freelance work or a birthday check, he’d done his best to pick up the slack. If you added it up, she’d spent way more than he had over the course of the relationship, but it wasn’t a major point of contention. When she thought seriously about it, she realized she wouldn’t have been happy with someone who thought it was his “duty” to pay for her, but more because it was a proxy for other chauvinist qualities than because she actually cared about the money. She really didn’t care, or at least was so invested in the idea that she didn’t that she was willing to spend more than she should on a doomed live-in relationship. And she wasn’t resentful about it now? You know, that’s a great question, Terry.

They arrived at the address an hour before the wedding was supposed to start. It was not, as Leslie had imagined, a steaming pool in the middle of the woods, but rather looked to be a saloon-and-hotel kind of deal off the very dead Main Street of a one-street town. Jake parked his truck between two mud-caked Outbacks and clipped a bow tie onto Alamo’s collar before letting him out to pee against a tire.

“Where’s the hot spring?” Leslie said.

“It’s one of those pool ones. They pipe it in,” Jake said. “Don’t worry, it’ll probably still smell like sulfur.”

The wedding guests lingering in front of the main building displayed a wide sartorial range. There were two men in full tuxes, though their top hats indicated some degree of irony, and a couple of women, who looked to be their dates, in evening gowns. But they were chatting with a group that looked practically indigent, with worn-out pants and tattered shirts and mangy dogs roaming at their feet. The median look was something like Leslie and Jake’s—clean, decent clothes, with a vaguely Western flavor. Black jeans and fancy belt buckles, pearl snap buttons, boots. The men were bearded, the women wild-haired. It was, Leslie thought, an unusually attractive group.

Jake approached a very tall man with a thick beard and long, dirty-blond hair pulled into a bun. He was dressed in blue denim from head to toe. Jake gave him a tight one-armed hug.

“Leslie, this is Marlon,” he said. “He makes very cool music. And cocktails and sculptures, and probably some other stuff, too.”

“Hey,” Marlon said. “I guess I’m a real Renaissance fair. Are you, like, Jake’s girlfriend?”