The most quintessential of DC weddings. At the Hay-Adams—where else? The ceremony for my parents’ old friend Mac and his new bride—the previously accused bimbo—was in a large, stately wood-paneled room that reminded me of my father’s study on P. Cricket, Wallis, and I were running a bit late, the flurry of nerves, I think, had gotten to all of us, and by the time we’d arrived most chairs were occupied. I pushed Wallis and Cricket to sit together and squeezed down a back aisle to a pair of seats between a pleasant group of elderly out-of-towners and a power couple who used their phones to politely ignore me. I didn’t like that we were split up, but I knew once Atlas got there I’d feel less on edge at this event to which we had been all but disinvited.

The groom, tuxed, sweaty, stood before a makeshift altar draped in cascading roses, looking very much like a sixty-eight-year-old doing his best to look fifty. He ran a dinosaur of a law firm and had a reputation that had just as many black smudges as you’d expect from a formidable lawyer in this town. His daughter and I happened to play tennis together in high school, and our parents spent countless hours on the bleachers dissecting our backhands. When the bride walked down the aisle in a strapless gown I swore I’d seen at a wedding last summer, I thought of Mac’s ex-wife, and how lovely she’d always been to me. There’d been a game, long ago, when I’d double-faulted match point. I’d been furious with myself, ready to quit the sport entirely, but Louise had come to my side with kind eyes and tissues and a chocolate chip cookie about the size of my racket head. I hadn’t thought about this in a long time. At weddings, like at funerals, where there is such emphasis on tradition, where old friends gather, where families make nice, the current of my thoughts always seems to flow backward, into the past.

During the first scripture reading, Atlas dropped down in the chair beside me and apologized. “Work,” he whispered. “You look great. What did I miss?”

I beckoned him closer. “The groom is as old as my father and the bride is as young as Wallis. Neither of them wanted us here. Also, no one in attendance has made eye contact with me, except this nice couple to your left, who are from Grand Rapids, Michigan. When I introduced myself, they asked if I was named after the sour cream brand.”

“Don’t tell Cricket,” Atlas said dryly. “She’d be so sad to hear people are associating her daughter with a condiment.”

“Is sour cream a condiment?”

“I think so,” Atlas said. “Like mayonnaise.”

“Then, no, we will not tell Cricket. I love your bow tie, by the way.”