Dreams Are Not Enough Read Free

shortcomings.
    During the long, hot drive through the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas he had been unable to entirely block the vision of his frail mother’s impending horror; yet, standing at the gaudily painted altar with Alicia at his side, seeing the tears on her luminous, flushed cheeks, his heart seemed to swell, and he accepted there had been no stepping back from the madness that had overtaken him the first time he’d seen her sipping a Coke at Ship’s Coffee Shop in Westwood.
    Love at first sight had been accompanied by the classic symptoms:
    sleeplessness, loss of appetite, inability to think of anything but Alicia, a constant semi-erection. They had made out vigorously in his 1950 De Soto coupe, but hadn’t gone all the way. Barry held Alicia in reverence, and also feared failure—his one experience with an aging pro on Main Street had been an unhappy one.
    Barry was exceptionally thin: standing at the altar in his rumpled gray suit, he gave the impression of a malnourished adolescent who had grown too quickly. As he shifted on his storklike legs, he could feel the sweat running down from his armpits despite the extra-strength Mitchum’s he had applied the previous night before setting out for his date with Alicia—it wasn’t until they were embracing that he had seriously entertained the idea of elopement. The hairs on his neck prickled with awareness that his cousins and sister were staring at them, and he had a momentary surge of regret that he’d invited them.
    Alicia brought out a hitherto dormant protectiveness in him. During the six broiling hours in his un-airconditioned car, she had worried about looking a mess at her wedding—and from the guests’ vantage point, she did. The rear of her scarlet crepe dress was puckered into ugly creases, causing its miniskirt to ride yet higher in back of her slim, shapely thighs.
    Glancing sideways at his bride, Barry found himself unable to look away. He considered Alicia gorgeous, but he wasn’t positive whether others did. From the heads swiveling in her wake he knew that most people found her riveting. True, her skirts were unfortunately short and her tops a shade tight so that the buttons pulled between her full, peach-shaped breasts, but this didn’t fully account for the zephyrs of attention that trailed her: women turned as often as men.
    Ignoring the justice of the peace, who was rumbling on about the duties of matrimony, Barry gazed at Alicia’s profile, attempting to convince himself that he wasn’t moonstruck, that she was indeed gorgeous. As usual, he was incapable of analyzing her face. Her skin assuredly was unique. Other women possessed faultless complexions, but he’d seen no other skin with this velvety incandescence. Light was not an external quality for Alicia, but appeared to emanate from within, as if an electric current flowed with the blood that now was pulsing rapidly in the subtly blue vein at her throat.
    He realized she was clutching the wilted bridal bouquet (he had just purchased it in the wedding chapel’s tiny vestibule) so tightly that the baby’s breath trembled. Edging closer, he let his arm rest in moist reassurance against hers.
    At noon, the temperature in Las Vegas was well above a hundred, and the chapel lacked air conditioning. The justice of the peace’s bulging, magenta cheeks appeared to be melting into the creases of his double chin.
    Hap, Maxim, Beth and PD were equally miserable.
    The cousins had all been born in 1938 or 1939, the socalled Golden Age of Hollywood. Hap and Maxim were sons of Desmond Cordiner, the family emperor. Long before their births Desmond had been a major wheel in the Industry, second in command to Art Garrison, founder of Magnum Pictures, and after Garrison’s death he had taken over as head of the studio. PD’s father was Frank Zaffarano, the director whose sentimental, flag-waving films had made a bundle for Magnum. Barry and Beth’s father, Tim Cordiner, never rose higher than a grip.