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Best Man, Wrong Paper
Dev stands up to give the best man's toast and unfolds his notes. They are the receipt for his suit. With two hundred guests watching, he has to get through the speech from memory, including the part he never trusted himself to say out loud.
Characters
- DEV - late 20s, the best man, funny under pressure and allergic to sincerity
Setting
A wedding reception in a rented hall on a Saturday evening, present day.
A wedding reception in a rented hall. String lights, a long head table, a microphone with a cord that is slightly too short.
DEV, late 20s, in a rented suit, stands with a glass in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other. He unfolds it.
DEV
Hi. Hello. For those who don't know me, I'm Dev, I'm the best man, and I have prepared some remarks.
He looks at the paper.
This is the receipt for the suit.
(to the head table)
No, it's fine. It's fine. I have a system. I wrote the speech on the back of... no. That's the deposit. Eighty dollars, refundable on return, "subject to condition." Which, given tonight, is optimistic.
Okay. From memory.
Marcus and I met when we were eleven and he pushed me into a pond. He'll say I fell. There were witnesses, they're all here, and they've all been bought.
(checking the receipt again, hopeful)
"Pants, one pair." No.
He puts the receipt in his pocket.
Here's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say Marcus is loyal. I had a bit about how he still has the same phone from six years ago and he defends it like it's a family member. I had a bit about his driving. I was gonna do the pond in more detail. There was a callback.
But the thing I actually wrote, the part at the end, the part I was gonna read off the paper because I didn't trust myself to say it out loud... I don't need the paper for that. I've been trying not to know that for about a week.
(beat)
Two years ago my dad was in the hospital, four hundred miles from here. I called Marcus at one in the morning and I didn't even ask him anything. I just said, I'm at the hospital. And he said, okay. And he drove all night in the same car I make jokes about, and he sat in a plastic chair for two days, and he never once asked me to talk.
That's the whole speech. That's the part.
He raises the glass, then remembers something.
Also, Lena. Sorry. Lena, you're wonderful and you look incredible and you're way too good for him, and I have that in writing.
(to Marcus)
On the receipt. Return by Monday.
To Marcus and Lena.
End of script