“Hey! I may be loaded, but I can still understand sarcasm. I’m not kidding. Take me to this fucking ceremony by the sea so I can tell Chris… just, lots of things. I’ll think of them.”
“Oh God. Here we go.” James veers the car to the right, cutting off a van, and we soar off the highway. A quick search on my phone pulls up the location where the ceremony is taking place. I roll down the window and sense that we’re in beach territory now. The air smells different, the greenery is different. Everything is different, and everything hurts.
I am not exactly slurring, but I’m close. “Take a right here. And then go straight to the end of the road. The piece-of-crap mansion is going to be there.”
“I wish no one had told you the location or date. Or anything about this.”
“Yeah? Well, me, too, but they’re all big blabbermouths.”
We drive past an SUV that is parked at the start of the pebbled road that leads to the large and elegant yellow home. The scene of the crime, as far as I’m concerned. It’s quiet here today, with only a few cars pulled up out front. James pulls over halfway to the house but keeps the car running. I’m sure he’s hoping that my impending diatribe will be short. “I really don’t think you should go in. This is close enough,” he says.
“I’m not going to vandalize the place. Jeez.” Although the idea of egging it is not a bad one. If I had eggs. I stare at the house. Fine, I admit, it’s beautiful. So to compensate I holler, “Look at that stupid wraparound porch with a view of the ocean. And the stupid floral garlands hanging there. Honestly! The place is wretched!” I check my watch. Thirty minutes until the wedding. “I bet everyone is gonna stand outside there.” I point to a grassy area that overlooks the water. “Chris must hate all this clichéd crap. Absolutely loathe it! There will probably be some schmaltzy harp music, and poetry readings, and a grand ol’ speech from her father about eternal love and taking care of his daughter. I will never have harps and poetry and fathers. I will never have eternal love because it’s all bullshit. I don’t get to have that.”
“You shouldn’t be here. Seeing this,” James says. “Don’t do this to yourself.” He squints. “What’s up with this place, though? You said the wedding was supposed to be small, but how come there are no other cars in the lot?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. What’s important is that I’m gonna move on to rum now,” I announce as I mix up rum and fruit punch in a thermos. “How disgusting does that sound, huh? Rum. I hate rum. Nobody should like rum. The only time rum should be consumed is at a tropical resort. And then you have to have those asshole little umbrellas and mini plastic swords that hold fucking fruit chunks. Wait. Do we have any swords?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I’d be surprised if we did.”
“I swear to God that we have swords.” I open the car door. “James, we do! I bought some at the supermarket because I thought it’d be funny to make drinks together and sit outside at the house. I mean, we’re going to have a lot of work to do there, right? So we’ll need beverages. And swords can double as appetizer holder-y things because food always tastes better on a stick.” Holding my thermos, I stumble to the back of the SUV and lift open the hatch. “Seriously. Swords for all!” I start rooting through bags. I know that I packed a bunch of grocery stuff in a blue duffel. My search yields the bag, and I begin to root through it wildly.
James stops the ignition, comes out of the car, and starts repacking everything that I’ve removed.
“AHA! I HAVE LOCATED THE SWORDS!” I scream triumphantly. I hold up the ziplock bag of multicolored drink accessories.
James laughs. “Feel better?”
“I feel zillions better. Now I can drink some rum. And prepare my disruptive speech. Should I start with how the bride is boring and useless, or how I thinkhe’san idiot and a pussy?”
“Wow. Both, you know, really good options. Let’s think for a minute.”
As I am in the process of struggling to open the bag, which in my opinion, is intricately sealed in a mind-boggling way, I hear loud whooping and cheering from behind me. I turn around and watch as a small group of people runs in our direction at top speed.
“James?”
“Yeah?” He is standing with his hands on his hips, looking at what I’m looking at.
“Am I a little drunk, or are there some people running?”
“You are definitely a little drunk. And there are people running. Or maybe skipping?”
I lift up my sunglasses. “Fancy runners. Maybe I should wear a tuxedo when I go running. Then maybe I’ll run fast like they do.”
“Yes, probably.” He sighs. “Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t that… Sabin?”
“Oh. No, that person is running too fast to be Sabin. Sabin’s belly is too big.”
But as they get closer, I see that, in fact, Sabin is leading Eric, Zach, Chris, and Estelle in a high-speed race. Even in her long, fitted purple dress and heels, Estelle keeps up with them. “Thank God!” she is hollering over and over.
I lean against the open trunk and drop some swords into my thermos while I watch dumbfounded as they run past us. I am clearly hammered out of my mind.
I look at James. “What the fuck is happening?”
He shakes his head.
I hear a “Holy shit!” and a moment later Sabin is standing in front of me. He is sweating in his suit, even with his tie off and draped around his neck and the top buttons of his shirt undone. There is more hollering, and then Estelle, Zach, Eric, and finally Chris are lined up behind the car. I blink a few times.
I lean in and whisper in James’s ear. “I think you need to take me to the emergency room because I am hallucinating.”
