The Happiest Day of Your Life (published in the Iowa Review) by Katherine Damm is a masterclass in tempo, rhythm, and the all-encompassing clock/time so critically important to writers, especially those who write short stories.

The story takes place over the course of a wedding reception, with the remaining moments of the story—shall we say the denouement? —taking place the morning after in the couple’s bedroom. Not that couple. The couple in question, already married, are Wyatt and Nina. They’re attending a wedding reception of one of Nina’s ex-boyfriends, Greg, who married Lillian. The complimentary cocktail specials are named after the couple, so the attendees bump around while sipping and getting sloshed on Gregs and Lillians.

This all takes place at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. “It’s snowing outside” and there are several characters who come and go. Brief, though memorable interactions, such as John, the cardiologist/philanthropist, who leaves the conversation with Wyatt to look for ghosts (yes, he is a cardiologist who claims to see and believe in ghosts, or maybe he just wants out of the conversation). Or, another one of Nina’s ex-boyfriends, Austin, who Wyatt bumps into while in the bathroom where he “drank water by the palmful.” Austin is the ex-boyfriend who helped Nina feel “feminine.” A remark Wyatt wished he could “unhear.”

The story is narrated through Wyatt’s POV, and it’s a convincing one: a man surrounded by his wife’s ex-partners gets tanked, fantasizes about one part of a woman’s unshaven leg, recalls past girlfriends, dances exuberantly, and has at least a half a dozen interactions, all of which feel significant in their own way. But take John and Austin, for instance (spoiler alert): they don’t make their way back into the narrative, and one wonders, especially with conversations about ghosts, like Chekhov’s gun, might we be waiting for some instance where they appear? Absolutely not. This is a wedding reception which introduces and entertains its own sense of blissful logic, tempo, and pacing. The propulsive pace of the narrative mimics the manic aspects of being at a reception where half of what you might say or do will not be remembered, and if you do remember what you say or do, there’s a better than fifty percent chance you might regret at least some of what you said or did.

The pacing along with the number of characters and interactions teeters on too much—as it should—but then we get this beautiful scene just past midway through the story. Wyatt is drunkenly dancing with everyone, and after one of the songs, he’s escorted calmly to the bar by the groom’s brother. The groom’s brother gives him a drink, and Wyatt responds with: “I love fizzy water.” After that, Wyatt sneaks away, and we get this wonderful—and much needed—moment of calm:

“It was snowing outside, and night. The street was a glassy obsidian, lit white and red as cars passed casting wet, beige piles aside. [Wyatt] rolled his forehead from side to side on the cool pane. The script on the awning across the street read The Grand Ballroom. “If you’re there, then where am I,” he wondered, then remembered that he was at the Drake Hotel, looking over Walton Street at the Knickerbocker.”

After the descriptions above, Wyatt ruminates on family, his parents, the holidays (how many more will they have together?), and then he shares a moment, a brief wave and a smile, with a stranger. It’s so serene that you almost forget where we are, what’s happening, and how long we’ve stepped away from the party. But then “Unchained Melody” starts, “the long diphthong of an “O” buttressed by arpeggiated chords” and Wyatt is suddenly searching for Nina so they might share a dance together. He stumbles around looking for her. He doesn’t find her, not at first, so he orders more to drink. Eventually, he finds her with mascara-stained cheeks. But she’s not crying because of Wyatt.

Wedding receptions are a fascinating blend of people, sometimes family, sometimes strangers, brought together by the couple of the day. The interactions of the people are propelled then by this somewhat loose or strong connection, exacerbated by emotion, exhaustion, and possibly alcohol. The constellation of people around which Wyatt orients himself is wide ranging, but mentally and emotionally he gravitates toward Nina’s ex-boyfriends, specifically the groom, Greg. These thoughts are mostly explored through Wyatt’s interiority, which, in his drunken state, has him wondering about things with regard to Greg and Nina. Wyatt eventually shares with others various bits of information he’d learned in the past, from Nina, some of it still secret. The secret he shares (I won’t tell you what and with whom—you’ll have to read to find out) helps move the story toward its conclusion. Remember the mascara-stained cheeks.

I remember once asking my own spouse why she enjoyed weddings so much, and she said, “I don’t like weddings. I like dances.” And that seemed apt to me. She went on to explain that she didn’t like weddings because we’d been married long enough to know that shit just gets more and more difficult, so the wedding oftentimes—sometimes, but not always, I suppose—being one of the happiest memories, if not moments, for the couple. So much of their emotional energy is consumed by the planning. Then, once it’s over, there’s only one inevitable direction for the pendulum to swing.

Coincidentally, the last three books I’ve read are, in this order, All Fours by Miranda July, Liars by Sarah Manguso, and This American Ex-Wife by Lyz Lenz. The former two are labeled and sold as fiction, while the latter is a mixture of memoir and reporting, mostly about marriage, patriarchy, and most of what we’ve come to know and understand about the confines and downfalls of heteronormative institutions, specifically marriage: that it’s an arrangement, socially and structurally, for men to succeed outside the home while women struggle. In other words, the institution is a far better deal for the guy. Liars is a one-sided view of a dissolving marriage. The protagonist’s husband is a caricature, so thoroughly unlikable as to become laughable, unbelievable. Still, it’s a taut, stark account, very well written, and compulsively readable, even if wholly unenjoyable. And All Fours among others things is a reexamining of how we do marriage and what a modern marriage for multiple evolved and consenting people might look like, especially for people with ravenous sexual creativity and appetites.

While Damm’s story might not mix entirely with the three books mentioned, it does touch on important questions that most married people pause on now and again: what the fuck am I doing in this marriage? Who am I as an individual? Who is this person I married? Are our lives better because we’re together?

I, for one, don’t believe in the one—I guess I don’t know or hangout with anyone who actually believes in such harmful fairytales—but there is this sense by the end of the story of the constant mental negotiations, or questions, we go through while married: is my partner happy with me? Am I happy with my partner? Could I have been happier with someone else? What would my life be like had I married that other person? Would my life be better? While not explicitly stated, these questions lurk somewhere in the subtext of Damm’s story. Or maybe I’m wrong about that, and maybe these questions are unique to my own reading of the story.

In any case, the story takes place at the Drake. A fancy spot. It’s loud, hectic, drunk. People are dancing, talking, milling about. Ordering drinks. In other words, it’s a wedding reception. If you haven’t been to one lately, and you enjoy the manic pace of a night out, or if you simply love a damn good short story, read Damm’s story. It’s a well-crafted story with a sense of gravitas so complete, that despite knowing what’s happening to the characters—getting more and more besotted—Damm’s able to ground us readers with expertly crafted pacing/tempo, pitch-perfect dialogue, exquisite details, and a level of relational tension that compels us readers to say I do want to keep reading.

Katherine Damm was raised in Philadelphia and now lives in New York. She received her MFA from the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine, and her short stories have appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, and Crazyhorse. She is working on a novel.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. More info: keithlesmeister.com