“Pelicans!” said Ernest, then, in a hopeful, accusatory voice, “A wedding.”

“Pelicans?” said Bruno. “Surely not.” But there they were, single file and exact, military even, with the smug look of all pelicans. “Pelicans flock!”

“Well, sure,” said Ernest. “What did you think?”

“I thought they were freelancers,” said Bruno. “Pelicans!”

“They looked like brother and sister,” said Ernest, “the bride and her groom. Like salt and pepper shakers.”

“They did,” said Bruno.

The three people in the car, on the other hand, looked nothing alike, though strangers could tell they belonged together. Strangers were always trying to perform the spiritual arithmetic: the tall paunchy goateed near–senior citizen, the short hirsute broad-shouldered young man, the otherworldly child, who called now, from the back seat, in his thrillingly husky voice, his dreams filled with artificial rivers, “Schlitterbomb!”

“Bahn,” said Ernest, and Bruno said, “That’s right, darling, Schlitterbomb.”

Ernest and Bruno had not married, not legally and not, as Ernest would have liked, in a church, or in a friend’s backyard, or on a beach. Bruno did not believe in weddings, though he’d been married once, once for fifteen years, to a woman. He’d been the young husband then. Now, when Ernest brought marriage up, Bruno said, “I’m an old hippie,” which was true insofar that he, unlike Ernest, had been alive in the 1960s and had done some drugs.