A cool, bright morning in late August. I’m channeling Mrs. Onassis in oversized tortoise shades and a vintage mini-shift, sailing the 9 am ferry to Saltspring Island. I’ve got company: my dear friend K.T. in an acid-wash denim romper, her indie-rocker boyfriend who owns, like, two alternating t-shirts, and the Ageing Director in his standby summer dress jacket. In fact, the boat teems with faces from our crowd. We’re all en route to the wedding of a most fiery, least domesticated pal. Bronco is an actor who once confided he could never marry, because his real love – the stage – is a wickedly jealous mistress. In under five hours, he is scheduled to wed Chiara, an Italian-born choreographer whom none of us have met.
Perched on the ship’s top deck, salt-wind riffling our hair and flirting with the hems of our clothes, we wonder at the right words to ink on the card.
“Well you can’t use ‘joy’ or ‘forever,’” quips the Ageing Director. Somebody’s feeling cynical about his impending divorce. Maybe it’s the setting, the boat and the open ocean, but I feel a gradual lightness beginning somewhere in the centre of my chest.
“Write this,” I say to K.T., recalling the words of a prophet, “love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea.”
Call it white magic, or good witchcraft. Just for today, call it a willingness to suspend my disbelief.
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