The Lock Keeper's Bride

The road stopped being a road about two miles back. Ice the whole way. My rental crawled along the towpath verge and died thirty feet from the lock keeper's house, which sat there looking like something off a Christmas card, if Christmas cards came with dead furnaces.

I'm Cherise Royce, thirty-two, wedding planner. Ten years of other people's perfect days. This one was supposed to be easy. Rustic canal-boat wedding, June, bride's idea. My job was to walk the property in the dead of winter, take measurements, decide if forty guests would fit on that dock without anybody drowning.

So much for that.

I let myself in with the key the couple gave me. Dark inside. Cold like a walk-in freezer. And then I heard it. Music. Low, thumping, coming from the parlor. A bass line, actually played, not streamed. On an acoustic bass, which is a ridiculous instrument to be hauling around a frozen canal.

"Hello?" I said.

The playing stopped. A guy appeared in the doorway holding the thing like a shield. Late twenties, beanie, flannel, the general shape of a man who sleeps in a van on purpose.

"Please tell me you're not the bride," he said.

"I'm the wedding planner."

"Oh thank god!" He lowered the bass. "Chas Newsome. I'm Arnie's cousin. He said I could crash here while the band's off between dates. Did he not mention that?"

"He did not."

"Well. Great. Welcome to the icebox."

I checked the thermostat first, because I am a professional. Dead. I checked the furnace second. Also dead. I checked my phone for signal and got one bar of pure nothing.

"That's the situation," Chas said, watching me. "I've been burning wood in the parlor stove. It's the only room that holds any heat. I figured I'd freeze with dignity and nobody would know."

"Well, now somebody knows."

"Somebody with a car that doesn't start, if I heard that right."

"It's not dead. It's resting."

He laughed at that. Fair. It deserved a laugh.

***

So here's how two adults end up sharing a couch by a wood stove in the Midlands in January. There's a towpath to the next village, four miles, and my heels were not made for it, and his boots were, but he pointed out that walking four miles to a pub that might be closed, then walking four miles back, was a plan with a bad ending. I called the couple from the one bar of signal I could catch by standing in the garden like a heron and left a message. Then we made the pragmatic call. Stove. Couch. Morning.

He fed the stove like he'd been doing it for days, which he had. I sat on the sagging couch with a blanket he offered, and he took the step stool by the wall like it was his assigned seat. We split a bag of crisps he had in his kit. Dinner of champions.

"So you do this for a living," he said. "Weddings."

"Ten years. This would be number sixty-something."

"And you like it?"

I thought about it, which surprised me. Usually the answer is automatic. Of course, love it, best job.

"I like doing it well," I said. "That's not the same thing."

"How's it different?"

"You ever finish a show and feel like you were the equipment? Like the amps got more applause than you?"

He looked at me. "I'm a bassist. The amps always get more applause than me."

"Right, but you chose that. I mean, presumably."

"Ouch. Fair, though." He poked the stove. "I like it. The touring. It's loud and it's stupid and every night somebody screams my name even though they're screaming the wrong name half the time. And then it ends and I'm in a van and nobody knows I exist, and I have to figure out if I'm anything without the stage. Working on it."

"That's either very honest or very rehearsed."

"Both. Tour teaches you the speech. Honesty comes free."

The fire cracked. I pulled the blanket up. And then, because cold and dark makes people confess things, I heard myself say the true thing.

"I planned a wedding today. Well, started to. Inspected the venue, which is this place, which is a disaster, by the way, she's going to love it." I stopped. "The bride. She's twenty-nine and she found this man who looks at her like she hung the moon, and she doesn't plan anything, she just gets to be the girl in the story. And I stood on that dock doing math about guest seating and I wanted to scream. Because nobody has ever looked at me like that. I had two years with a man who checked his phone at dinner. I was efficient. I was a good calendar entry. I turned thirty and he picked the startup and I packed my stuff and that was the romance chapter of my life. One chapter. Short book."

The fire popped. Chas didn't say anything right away, which I appreciated. Most men fill silence like it's their job.

"You're cold," he said finally.

"I'm furious. The cold is a side issue."

"No, I mean, come here, the stove's better from this side." He shifted over on the couch and patted the cushion next to him. Not grabbing. Just an offer. I moved over. Sensible. Thermal reasons.

"Better?"

"Marginally."

"Give it ten minutes." He nodded at the step stool. "That's my other trick, by the way. That stool."

"The stool."

"There's a shelf up there." He pointed at the top of the parlor wall, where a plank ran above the window. "Old lock keeper's logbooks. Forty years of them. Water levels, ice, who came through. Some guy wrote down the weather every day for four decades and nobody will ever read it. I've been reading them. It's the best thing I've found on tour in years, and I found it on a step stool in an unheated house."

"You climb a step stool to read dead men's weather reports."

"Somebody should. He took it seriously. Nobody else did. I get that."

Huh. I looked at him differently after that.

More fire. More blanket. My feet were finally not blocks of ice. And the thing about sitting next to a stranger in the dark is you either talk about the weather or you talk about the real thing.

"Can I say the other true thing?" I said.

"You've been on a roll."

"I wish somebody would take me seriously as a woman. Not as a planner. Not as the organized one. Not as the person who makes everyone else's day perfect. Just. As a woman. That somebody would want. I've never felt that. Properly. Wanted for me, not for my usefulness."

Chas set his tin mug of tea down on the floor. Took a breath.

"Okay," he said. "I'm going to offer you something, and you can say no and we play cards and it never comes up again. Deal?"

"That sounds ominous."

"It's not, I promise. Here it is." He turned to face me. "When I'm on tour and I'm alone in a hotel room, which is most nights, I take care of myself. Obviously. Everybody does. And I'm good at it. I've had a lot of practice making it last, making it slow, making it good, because otherwise what's the point. And you just told me nobody's ever made you feel wanted. So. My offer is this. You watch. I'll show you how a man who