Children of the Dust - 7. The Wedding

“Stop fidgeting, Drew. I can’t finish your bowtie if you keep jerking around like you are.”

“Fuck you, Vince. I’m nervous, okay? How can you be so calm?”

“Mate, it’s only a wedding, not a coronation. All you have to do is walk down the aisle, and look pretty.”

“Fuck you, Vince. I’m not the actor slash fashion model here. You’re the one accustomed to parading in front of people. I’m usually the one behind the camera, remember?”

“It’s all your fault anyway. If you hadn’t sent that letter and those baseball cards back then, we’d never have ended in this position.”

“Fuck you, Vince. You liked that letter and those cards well enough. You carried them out of Vietnam, kept them with you during your years in Australia, and brought them with you to the United States when you came to meet your father.”

“True, but it was you, after we met, who insisted I move to Los Angeles. It was you who gave me a place to live, and introduced me around until I landed my first role in a movie. And it’s been you, through all these years, who’s kept me going with your steadfast support.”

“Yeah well, you were a mess; somebody had to keep an eye on you. You had your Australian parents, you’d just found your American father and his wife, and he had enough information about your birth mother, you knew you could track her down if you wanted to. Bringing you home with me to LA was the least I could do. You took the little push I gave you into the movies and ran with it. The rest’s all been your doing.”

“But you did all that based on nothing, mate. You had no idea who I was at the time. Yet you propped me up when I was close to being lost. And there are four sets of proud parents out there, looking forward to today’s ceremony, and the official joining of our families. Have I told you lately that I love you?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t go getting all mushy with me; you know I hate that shit. Anyway, go find your son, I’ll go get my daughter and let’s get this done. The sooner the two of them are married, the sooner you and I can get drunk.”