I Do.

Greenville, South Carolina, city of cemeteries, city of tree-lined Main Street like you'd cued it out of central casting or some bad book, city of rain, city of wedding pictures right there out the window of this hotel room in what I think we have to call an atrium: friends, our hotel arrives fresh from 1986, a kind of triangle looking in on what would be a courtyard if not for the roof. We did this in the eighties, which is to say, faked the outside inside. Think of CNN Center in Atlanta, or any named center in any city of your youth. 3,000 indoor plants in concrete bunkers. Bricks shellacked until they shine. An open-air indoor restaurant, that most excellent of oxymorons. The glass elevators are their own wayback machine. The tiles in the shower are almost certainly, in all their bruise-colored glory, original. But: your local forecaster has arrived unscathed, the sheets are crisp, the floor is clean, the room is nearly quiet, the people are friendly. Are you here for the show? they ask you in the elevator. In all ways, the answer is yes, and yes: any time I'm anywhere, I'm pretty much there for the show.

Rain and rain, and more rain coming. All this rain looks to be aiming back 27401wards, too, so do buckle down back home, please. Shake the sump pump. Tighten the windows down. Roll the car windows up, put the ferns out in it, think about maybe making chili. Don't leave the house in your good shoes.

The wedding's started and finished since I sat down to explain about the weather. The bride's seven stories below me, a glass of wine in each hand. Tiny pink flower girls are going batshit over the echo out there. Salud.