Sunday Scribblings: Wedding

Bliss
Upon further review, she thought the 100 milligram Davrocet (in it’s bubble-gum-pink generic form) was overkill – considering the few mimosas she’d downed in the past 30 minutes, each shaken into a pint glass, light on the OJ.
She sat on an old oaken table in a back room off the Sacristy, enveloped in yards of satin and lace, and sipped shallow breaths like there was a need to horde the air around here. There was a comfortable numbness to her lips and gums, not quite a tingle, but…something. She’d smeared her lipstick three times, as she tested her level of inebriation (and/or in/tolerance).
He was in the rectory, smoking weed with the boys (a fan was wedged into the window, blowing OUT) between shots of Jagermeister, just a few bottles that the groomsmen had stashed in Father’s freezer. He sat in a metal folding chair in his “costume,” the knee-high socks still in the white plastic bag, the patent-leather shoes sequestered in their cardboard box.
His breaths, even with the weed and the Jag, came into his lungs deep and quick.
The moment was here, he knew.
And neither had blinked.
Amid the nail appointments, the marathon billiard games and poker sessions, the mobile calls at 3 a.m. to out-of-state confidants (whom neither knew of) that sought the whys of the impending moment.
A wedding that surged like an un-damned, unchecked river. Muddy and murky, froth with power and fear.
She was the only daughter in a family with four boys. She’d called his bluff, saying she wanted a Walt Disney-themed affair - Cinderella of course - complete with glass slippers and a carriage drawn by horse to the reception.
He would wear a soldier’s uniform in baby blue, tight white pants - he would tuck everything into his old softball compression shorts, as to avoid panty lines, bulges - and a cream silk shirt with ruffles.
Daddy was on the hook for $48,000.
Both were recent products of the state university system, juggling loans and under-achieving first jobs where advancement and placement were a thing of a generations ago. Two weeks, a paycheck. Rent, credit card bills, keep the gas on, right?
There was no loyalty. There was only alliance. Strangers who played the game.
He had stretched the thick silk black socks past his ankles, used the wooden shoehorn provided by the rental franchise to wedge his pinkish feet into their blackened depths and stood to his full - if emancipated with ramen-hotdog-and-scrambled-egg-existence life - to 6-foot, 2-inches and began to lean toward the church.
His sides ached; not this much since senior soccer season, the State Championship Season, where as forward he’s scored the goal that put this all into play as the cheerleader twirled a finger in her hair during her congratulations.
“Son,” Father said, as he grabbed the meaty underside of his left bicep as he stepped outside the rectory, in the pissed-stained alley where bums sought resurrection, “Time stretches, it catches in eddies."
The youngster, blinked, licked his lips.
“There is time,” The Padre said. “To fix this.”

Comments

quin browne said…
brought back memories of me sobbing and holding on to a door frame.



good times, even better post.
Melody said…
What an great story, it was so easy to read and left me wanting more.
Anonymous said…
This is realer than real. I’m pulling in the bad memories channel, but it’s all fixed now…
susan said…
Whoa, I wished we'd really give up the fantasy and only go down this road when we want and know what we're doing.

Solid write, Thom.

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