Tomasz had written the best man's toast for Junko and Dashiell on his phone, in the notes app. It was in that same notes app, ninety seconds before he stood up, that the phone chose to die.
托马什在手机的记事本里，为纯子和达希尔写好了伴郎致辞。就在他起身前九十秒，还是在那个记事本里，手机偏偏没电关机了。
He had a backup plan of sorts: the week before, he had given an almost identical toast at another wedding, for his cousin Lucienne and her new wife, Ines. He assumed, wrongly, that the general shape of a wedding toast would carry him through, regardless of which couple he was technically toasting.
他倒也有个算不上备用的备用方案：一周前，他在另一场婚礼上做过一篇几乎一模一样的致辞，新人是他的表妹露西安娜和她的新婚妻子伊内斯。他以为，婚礼致辞大致的样子总能带他蒙混过关，不管他此刻究竟是在为哪一对新人祝福。他想错了。
It did not go well.
结果并不顺利。
"Dashiell and I met," he began, with the easy confidence of a man who did not yet know what was coming. "We were assigned the same dorm room, and within a week he had already rearranged all my furniture."
“我和达希尔是这样认识的，”他开口了，带着一副对接下来的事浑然不觉的轻松自信。“我们被分到了同一间宿舍，不到一周，他就把我所有的家具都重新摆了一遍。”
This was true of Lucienne, not Dashiell. Junko, glancing at her new husband, mouthed the words dorm room with visible confusion, since the two men had in fact met at work.
这说的是露西安娜，不是达希尔。纯子看了看她的新婚丈夫，满脸困惑地用口型念出“宿舍”两个字，因为这两个男人其实是在工作中认识的。
Had Tomasz noticed the confusion on Junko's face at that exact moment, he might have course-corrected. Instead, buoyed by nervous momentum, he continued straight into an anecdote about a canoe trip that had, in fact, happened to Ines, not to anyone currently standing at this particular altar.
要是托马什当时留意到纯子脸上的困惑，也许就能及时改口。可他被紧张的惯性推着往前走，径直讲起了一次独木舟之旅——那件事确实发生过，但发生在伊内斯身上，而不是此刻站在这座礼台前的任何一个人身上。
By the third misplaced story, the guests had stopped looking confused and started looking delighted, sensing, correctly, that they were watching a man improvise his way through a toast built for an entirely different wedding. Dashiell, to his enormous credit, began laughing before Tomasz had even finished the sentence.
讲到第三个张冠李戴的故事时，宾客们已经不再面露困惑，转而满脸欣喜，他们隐约觉得，自己正在看一个人即兴发挥，硬着头皮念一篇为另一场婚礼准备的致辞，而且这个感觉没错。达希尔很有风度，托马什的话还没说完，他就先笑了起来。
"I think," Dashiell said, standing up mid-toast, which is not something the wedding program had accounted for, "that you're describing my cousin's wedding from last weekend."
“我想，”达希尔说着站了起来，打断了致辞，这可是婚礼流程表上没安排的事，“你说的是我表哥上周末的婚礼。”
"I am," Tomasz admitted. "My phone died. I panicked. I only had the one toast in my memory, and apparently it wasn't this one."
“是的，”托马什承认道，“我的手机没电了。我慌了。我脑子里只记得那一篇致辞，看来它不是这一篇。”
What followed was, by every account given afterward, the best part of the reception. Rather than sit down in defeat, Tomasz asked the room a simple question. Did anyone actually want to hear the real story of how Dashiell and Junko met, told correctly, by a man now speaking entirely without notes?
事后所有人都说，接下来是整场婚宴上最精彩的部分。托马什没有认输坐下，而是向全场问了一个简单的问题：有没有人真想听听达希尔和纯子是怎么认识的，由一个这回完全不看稿子的人，如实讲出来？
They did. Freed from the pressure of a memorized script, Tomasz told it better than he ever could have written it, mixing up not a single detail this time. He described a coffee spill, a shared umbrella, and two years of increasingly transparent excuses to see each other again.
大家都想听。摆脱了背熟的讲稿的压力，托马什讲得比他写出来的任何版本都好，这一次，一个细节也没有说错。他讲到一杯洒了的咖啡，一把共用的雨伞，还有整整两年里越来越不加掩饰的、为了再见面而找的借口。
Junko was laughing too hard by the end to make a proper toast of her own in return. Dashiell simply raised his glass toward his oldest friend, loud enough for the whole room to hear. He would take an honest, badly improvised disaster, he said, over a polished speech any day of the week.
讲到最后，纯子笑得太厉害，没法再回敬一篇像样的致辞。达希尔只是朝着他最老的朋友举起酒杯，声音大得让全场都听得见。他说，比起一篇字句光滑的演讲，他随时都更愿意要一场诚实的、即兴搞砸的灾难。
Somewhere in the back, Lucienne leaned toward Ines and whispered that she was fairly certain their own wedding toast had just been recycled, slightly improved, for a total stranger's dorm-room story.
在后排的某个角落，露西安娜凑到伊内斯耳边小声说，她几乎可以肯定，她们自己的婚礼致辞刚刚被回收利用了一回，还稍微改进了一点，用来讲一个陌生人的宿舍故事。
