The paper is full and cottony, halfway between papyrus and a quilt, she thinks. Thick and nice as shit.”Īlice picks Eloise’s invitation up off her desk.
In the cubicle next to her, the phone rings. “Okay.” Alice drums her fingers across her desk. She skims down the table’s columns: foil, no foil card-stock type multiple colors. Still, though: slicing your finger open on your sister’s wedding invitation can’t be a good sign.
Getting caught in a traffic jam, winning the lottery, dying in a plane crash: it’s all just the slapdash workings of chance. She never reads her horoscope, and she thinks Fate is just the name narcissists give to Coincidence. Returning to her couch, she sat down and stared at the mess of paper in front of her. A few moments later, once the cut had got her satisfyingly angry, she shoved her finger into her mouth and sucked on it, cringing at the metallic taste: her blood, she thought, the stuff that filled her body, was nothing but a fistful of pennies. “Shit,” she’d said, and stared at the dot of blood on her finger as she waited for the sting to register. Then, when she was good and drunk, she leaned forward and ripped open the invitation, giving herself a nasty paper cut in the process. Really, she just stared at the crushing amounts her creditors were demanding. She opened a bottle of white wine and dealt with the bills first-or perhaps dealt is too strong, too ambitious a word. When she got home last evening, she’d had grand plans of going for a run in Laurel Canyon-plans that were effectively squashed when she checked her mail and found, among the catalogs and bills, an invitation to her half sister Eloise’s wedding. “Yeah, and you said you were busy, just like I’m saying I’m busy now. “You’re the one who was begging to talk last night.”
“I’ve just-I’m at work, okay? I’ve got shit to do.” “I’m going as fast as I can.” She squints at the screen. “I’ve only got about five minutes,” he says. Buried below a hundred pictures of dainty thank-you cards and save-the-dates, she finds what she’s looking for: a pink-and-white pricing table for wedding invitations. “Hold on.” Alice scrolls down the website for a stationery company called Bella Lettera that she heard a coworker gushing about yesterday. Her phone buzzes against her desk, and she picks it up before it has a chance to ring twice. Christ, Alice thinks, staring at the envelope, these invitations must have cost a fucking fortune.
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