Manufactured Goods

On Christmas Eve, Rob and Isaac were married in an evening ceremony in Rob’s lifelong trustfund friend’s glass-walled condo on an upper floor in a high-rise in Williamsburgh just south of the Greenpoint Piers.

Looking out at the East River and lower Manhattan skyline, their hostess said, “It’s a shame it’s not summertime. We could’ve used the roof terrace.”

She was dressed in white mink-collared and cuffed red velvet like Rosemary Clooney in WHITE CHRISTMAS, and some of the guests were similarly camped up in seasonal costumes, as gifts or sugar plums/candycanes or elves.

“You couldn’t have hired two Rockettes and four Wooden Soldiers in June,” Rob thanked, hugging her. “Here is the perfect space and time.” 

Although wintry months lay ahead, the wedding ceremony was an expression of the hopeful solstice as in the northern hemisphere its holidays are. The couple’s vows, an amalgam of tradition and novelty, were applauded heartily by everyone there and by an avuncular one wherever.

 

 

L. Shapley Bassen

A native New Yorker now in Rhode Island, L. Shapley Bassen was the First Place winner in the 2015 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest for "Portrait of a Giant Squid." She is s a poetry and fiction reviewer for The Rumpus, etc., as well as the Fiction Editor at https://www.craftliterary.com/. She is a prizewinning, produced, published playwright, and a has published four novel/story collections, the latest being What Suits a Nudist (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, 2019). Her poetry and collected works are at https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/l-shapley-bassen/. L. Shapley recommends the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Sunday, August 22, 2021 - 22:20