“You should listen to Nora, Kid—you can trust her,” Molly said. “But your aunts wouldn’t understand a beard if they grew one. You can count on your mom and Elliot to be there for you, Adam—you can trust me, too,” the trail groomer told me. I did. I actually began to relax a little.

Only the occasional fool, not watching his or her feet, was falling into the flower beds and thrashing around in the flowers. Henrik, already disabled, had his eyes on the girl jocks when he tripped on his lacrosse stick and flailed away in the blue hydrangea bushes. “Blame that one on the décolletage of the bridesmaids’ dresses,” was all the night groomer said. I saw she had her eyes on Nora and Em, who were still seeking to influence the zither man in an apparently musical direction. Em was dancing for the zither-meister while Nora appeared to be singing to him. For his part, the edelweiss man would strum a few strings—perhaps to demonstrate that he knew the tune of the song Nora was singing to him. “It looks like Nora and the screamer want something they can dance to,” Molly was saying. “Those two came dressed to do some dancing.”

More of the wedding guests had found seats for themselves at the tables. I could plainly see what Nora and Em were wearing. Short skirts, the pleated kind—skirts that flared when you spun around, skirts that showed a lot of your legs and your panties. Both Nora and Em were wearing slinky blouses. There wasn’t much support in the bras they were wearing. “I think that’s as close as you can get to the no-bra look and still have a bra on,” the trail groomer told me in her matter-of-fact fashion. Molly’s nonjudgmental tone contrasted sharply with the way my aunts spoke of women who flopped around without bras or aspired to the no-bra look. “What kind of music does Nora like to dance to?” the night groomer asked me.

“Nora has never danced with me,” I quickly said. “I think she likes Elvis, but Nora says Elvis should have been a woman.”

The snowcat operator nodded. “There’s something about Elvis—his gender is all over the place,” was the way Molly put it. “Elvis or no Elvis, Kid—when the dancing starts, you find me. I’ll dance with you.”

“I’ve never danced with anyone except my mother—I’m not much of a dancer,” I told the trail groomer.

“It’ll be easy, Kid—I lead, you follow,” Molly said.

“Okay,” I told her.

“I guess we should look for our seats—I don’t know if there’s somewhere we’re supposed to be sitting,” the night groomer said.