AT THE WEDDING RECEPTION

“ Ah, unbelievable! Look who is seeing ( meeting) again after a lifetime!”

“ Oh, what an incredible surprise to find you here! Are you a relative of the bride or the groom?” Tommy and Julia were incredulous. They had been classmates in high school and had not seen each other in over twenty years. Now they were meeting in the park of the villa where the wedding reception of Martha G. and Gabriel B., two wealthy scions of the city’s bourgeoisie was being held. “ Yes, I’m a distant relative of Martha, a third cousin,” Julia said.

“ What a combination! I am the groom’s cousin” Tommy said “ But that’s not all, other classmates of ours have also been invited here to the reception”

“ Oh, I’m glad to see them again! Who’s there?” Julia asked.

“ There was Peter, Paul, Diana, and Rachel. Ah, Peter and Paul have come with their respective wives”

“ And didn’t Diana and Rachel bring their husbands? Don’t tell me they’re not married” Julia said.

“ Ah, they’ve married but they are both divorced”

“ Like me then! But I came with my new partner” said Julia, with a hint of coquetry. “ And you? Did you come accompanied?”

“ I came with my daughter….I’m a widower…My wife died a year ago”

“ Oh, sorry! Poor dear!” Julia was moved.

“ Come on, let’s go to find the others,” Tommy said “ Also they must be in the park….Actually, look, I’ll call Peter and say him to join us”

“ Hello Peter, come here near the fish basin ….there is a surprise for you! Bring also Diana and Rachel and Paul… it will be a surprise for them too”

 Peter, Paul, Diana, and Rachel arrived shortly afterwards, all four very elegant. Peter and Paul were in tuxedos. Diana and Rachel were in beautiful high-couture dresses.

“ Ah, what a wonderful surprise, how nice to see you, Julia!” They exclaimed. “ How is it going?”

 “ I’m delighted to be able to meet you after so long,” Julia said.

They all remembered that Julia and Rachel had been inseparable in their high school years and were amazed that they had lost sight of each other. But, Julia said, Rachel went abroad after high school, and over time they lost touch. “ Have you seen each other since we finished high school?” Julia asked. She so learned that even the four had not seen each other for many years. Now, not that the five had been close friends in their school days, but a certain friendship, a certain camaraderie there had been among them, even if there were quarrels and also rivalries to excel in the class and like when Diana and Rachel both fell in love with Paul, while he had kept both of them on the tightrope and then had hooked up with a girl of another class.

All five ex-classmates seemed to be very happy to meet again after a such long time. “ We have to celebrate !” they shouted. “This is the day of wonders! Have you seen what a grand wedding party is? Really magnificent!” said Tommy who introduced to them his daughter Pamela, a pretty fifteen-year-old girl. “ Pamela, these beautiful people were my classmates when I have your age. Oh, how much fun we had together! And we were real friends, you know. Now that we have met again, we must promise to ourselves that we will never lose sight of each other. We’ll keep seeing each other, right guys?” Said Tommy and they all agreed. Meanwhile, they had to have fun together and tell each other about their lives. So they danced wildly, drank heavily, and laughed a lot. To tell the truth, there were even moments of emotion and sadness when they talked about their lives. His wife’s death had left Tommy and his daughter in deep anguish and distress. The woman, Adele, had died after a long illness that had caused her great suffering.

The marital misadventures of Diana and Esther were listened to with sympathy. Both of them had married selfish and chauvinistic men from whom they had struggled to free themselves.

Julia too had made a bad marriage, she had suffered physical and psychological violence from her husband, but now she was serene and happy with her new partner.

Paul and Peter, on the other hand, had married women with whom they got along very well. The women, Louise and Katia, were introduced to their former classmates, as was Julia’s partner, Arthur. They all found them very nice and friendly, but they said that the five intended to spend the evening together, the five of them alone since they had so much to talk about and remember. “ Do you remember when we played that joke on the science teacher, that she started screaming and even felt silk?”  Paul asked. They all burst laughing. And how they remembered! They had put a big black spider on the teacher’s chair!

“ And that time we made the teacher’s desk disappear from the classroom? How hungry the physics teacher got! He wanted to know who was responsible for expelling him from school! But even if it had been Paul’s idea, we all had agreed “ Peter said, while they all burst laughing.

“ We were really terrible and almost unruly,” Tommy said. “ How many pranks we played on the teachers!”

“ Actually it was you boys who thought up the jokes, not we girls” Julia wanted to point out.

“ But you girls always agreed and you too had a great time,” Paul said.

“ And it was you, girls, who invented sudden illness in order not to be questioned! ( to avoid being interrogated) Did you forget? You were very funny! It was evident that the illness was invented” Peter said.

“ Paul, how did it go with the girl you dumped Rachel and me for, we were both so in love with you that we became adversaries?” Diana dared to ask, prompting ( arousing) Rachel’s clarification: “ My dear, I never considered myself your adversary.  It was Paul who had to choose! I was waiting for his decision”

“ Oh, she…with Rosie it went on for a long time. I left her when I met Louise, my wife” Paul said. And he added, with some embarrassment: “ Ah, my wife is still jealous of her! When we happen to meet her she obsessed me with her questions about Rosie, who is still a beautiful woman”

The five former classmates spent the whole evening having fun together and reminiscing about the time and the pranks they had made when they went to school.

When they parted, it was already night, they had exchanged their telephone numbers and had promised to see each other again soon.

Instead Paul, Peter, Julia, Rachel, and Diana met again only many years later, when they were now old, at Tommy’s funeral.