Insane City (18 page)

happiness, it is not possible to love. And so we seek them both.” He beamed again. Tina was nodding a

nod that said
So true, so true
. Everybody else was trying to look thoughtful, except for Sid, who

whispered loudly, “What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” said Rose.

“As we seek,” said Dazu, “as we walk on this journey of life, we ask, Why are we here? Who are

we? Who am I, and who are you? Who are the people we meet along the way?” Here he gave Tina and

Meghan a squeeze; Seth noted that the holy hands had drifted lower.

“But when we ask these questions,” Dazu continued, “we only make it more difficult to find the

answer. Because if we are always seeking, we are never finding. We must understand that it is only when

we
stop
seeking something that we can find it. But we must not
try
to stop seeking. For to
try
is to fail. It

is only when we learn
not
to try to stop seeking, to simply allow the stopping of the seeking to
be
, that we

will succeed. Then we will understand that we did not need to succeed at all, for what we are seeking has

been with us all along.”

“Is this the wedding?” said Sid.

“Be quiet,” said Rose.

“You ask me, What is the purpose of life?” Dazu said, although in fact nobody had asked him that. “I

answer you with another question: What is the purpose of having a purpose?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Seth saw someone waving at him. He looked over; it was Carl Juste, the

Haitian groundskeeper. Seth slipped away from the wedding party, getting a look from Tina. He went to

Juste and stood close, the two of them whispering.

“Did you find the sister?” said Seth.

“There is a problem,” said Juste.

“What kind of problem?”

“The sister was arrested.”

“What?”

“Yes. But I talked to the sister on the phone. She has a lawyer. She thinks maybe she can get out by

tomorrow. Then she can take Laurette and the children.”

“But I’m getting
married
tomorrow.” Seth glanced over at Tina, still in the clutches of Banzan Dazu

but looking his way. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“The sister asked me to tell you, Please, just one more day. Please.”

Seth looked over at Tina again. Now she was glaring.

“I have to go,” said Juste.

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“Please, just one more day,” said Juste. He turned and walked away before Seth could say anything.

Seth trudged back to the wedding party. Dazu was still dispensing insights.

“And so,” he was saying, “what you will find, when you finally reach your destination, is this: You

have been there the whole time.”

“Kind of like in
The Wizard of Oz
,” said Meghan. “When Dorothy discovers there’s no place like

home.”

This drew a glare from Tina, but Dazu was delighted.

“Exactly!” he said, giving Meghan’s ass a congratulatory squeeze. “Now, if I may continue, the

journey that we are on . . .”

“Oh my goodness!” interrupted Blaze Gear, staring with fake surprise at her watch. “This has been

so fascinating that I totally lost track of the time! I’m sorry, Your Holiness, but we really do need to get to

the rehearsal dinner.”

Dazu reluctantly released the sisters, and the wedding party, relieved to be done with having its

consciousness raised, started moving toward the hotel. Tina went straight to Seth, looking unhappy.

“Did you really have to do that?” she said.

“Do what?”

“Go over and talk to that janitor when Banzan was speaking.”

“He’s not a janitor. He’s a groundskeeper.”

“Whatever. Did you have to interrupt the rehearsal for that?”

“Teen, he’s the guy trying to find Laurette’s sister.”

“
Trying?
He hasn’t found her?”

“Not yet, but he says that by tomorrow—”

“Tomorrow?
Tomorrow?
Seth, you swore you wouldn’t let this screw up the wedding.”

“I know, and I won’t.”

They had stopped on the walkway to the hotel, letting the rest of the wedding party go ahead.

“Then why can’t you get rid of this Lornette?”

“Laurette.”

“
Whatever.
Why can’t the groundskeeper take her home?”

“Teen, she’s not a stray dog.”

“I
know
that. I’m just asking why the fucking groundskeeper can’t take her until he finds the sister?”

“He lives here, in hotel housing. He can’t take her. And it’s not really his responsibility.”

“Well, why the fuck is it
your
responsibility?”

Her raised voice had drawn the attention of the rest of the group up ahead. Mike turned and walked

back to Tina and Seth.

“Is there a problem, baby?” he said.

“We’re OK,” said Seth.

“I didn’t ask you,” said Mike. “I asked my daughter. She doesn’t look OK to me. What’s wrong,

baby?”

Tina sniffed and shook her head. “It’s nothing. I just want . . . It’s nothing.”

“You just want
what
?”

“I just want everything to be perfect.”

“Of course everything’s going to be perfect. What’s not perfect? What’s the problem?”

Tina and Seth exchanged a look, Seth shaking his head very slightly.

“It’s nothing,” Tina said.

Mike studied her for a few seconds. “OK, baby. Whatever it is, I’ll let it go for now. But”—he

looked pointedly at Seth, then back at Tina—“if you need anything, anything at all, you just tell me, and I

will make it right for you. OK, baby?
Anything.
”

“OK, Daddy.”

“That’s my girl.”

With a last hard look at Seth, Mike rejoined his wife, saying something quietly to her that made her

look at Seth.

“They hate me,” said Seth.

“No they don’t,” said Tina.

“They don’t look at me like I’m their future son-in-law. They look at me like I’m a giant tapeworm.”

“That’s ridiculous. They love you.”

“Then why are they looking at me that way?”

“Because they think you’re making me unhappy.”

“Am I making you unhappy?”

“Right now, yes.”

Suddenly her perfect blue eyes overflowed, tear tracks cascading down her perfect pink cheeks. She

was not normally a crier, and rarely looked so vulnerable. To Seth, she had never looked more beautiful.

He reached out and pulled her to him, felt her sobbing into his shoulder.

“Teen,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re just trying to be a good guy,” she said, her voice wavering. “I know that. You’re a

nice guy, and you want to be nice to everybody, and you’re being nice to the Haitians and I understand

that.” She pulled back so she could look at him. “But this is my wedding. This is
our
wedding. Why can’t

we have our wedding be just for
us
?” She went back to his shoulder and resumed sobbing.

Seth held her for a while, feeling awful, every sob a punch to his heart.

Finally he said, “OK.”

Tina looked up at him. “OK what?”

“OK, you’re right. This is insane. I can’t be the only person in Miami who can help these people.

There has to be someplace else they can go. I’ll just tell them I’m sorry but I’m getting married and they

have to leave.”

“You will? Really?”

“Really.”

“When?”

“Tonight. After the rehearsal dinner.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’ll just tell them they have to go. It’ll be OK. They’ll just . . .” He trailed off because he

had no end to that sentence.

Tina smiled hugely, hugged him hard. “Thanks, baby.” She took his arm, and they resumed walking

toward the hotel, a handsome, happy couple once again. Seth glanced over at Tina; she was smiling at her

parents. Her cheeks were dry; her tears were gone.

18

In the end, Trevor solved the problem of how to open the suitcase by simply ripping it apart. He

dumped the contents onto the dirty cement floor of his cage and began going through them. Most of them

were clothes, and they smelled like a man. This displeased Trevor, so he urinated on them.

With that taken care of, he found Seth’s toiletries kit, which he also ripped open. Out spilled a

variety of interesting things, including a tube of Crest toothpaste, which Trevor tore open and ate.
Not

bad.
He then picked up a Right Guard deodorant stick and managed to get the cap off. He sniffed the gel,

took a bite, then spat it out.
Bad.

Something caught Trevor’s eye on the floor: a small red-velvet-covered box that had been tucked in

among the clothes. He picked it up and sniffed it. It had a little bit of man scent on it, but much more of a

woman scent. Trevor inhaled deeply. He liked it. This was something he would treasure.

19

The rehearsal dinner was held in a private banquet room in the hotel’s upscale Italian

restaurant. On hand, besides the wedding party, were several of Tina’s relatives, as well as Wendell and

Greta Corliss, who were included as part of Mike Clark’s full-court press on Wendell. The diners sat at

one long table, with the Clarks and Corlisses at the end farthest from Seth’s parents.

The dinner, which was paid for by the Clarks, was first class. The wine was both expensive and

plentiful; as it flowed, the lingering tension of the rehearsal receded from the room. Seth and Tina sat at

the center of the table, the two of them feeling closer than they had since they’d arrived in Miami.

The food came in courses, each more delicious than the last. Finally, when everyone was stuffed, it

was time for the serving of the Groom’s Cake.

The Groom’s Cake is allegedly an old Southern wedding tradition that nobody ever heard of until

about five years ago when the wedding industry, always on the lookout for ways to make weddings more

expensive, started hyping it. The idea is to have a special cake just for the groom, reflecting some special

thing about him. Tina had commissioned a high-end New York cake designer to produce a cake shaped

like a football, sporting the logo of the New York Giants and an amazingly lifelike portrait, in frosting, of

Eli Manning. This cake was to be a surprise, presented to Seth by Tina at the end of the dinner. For now,

it was hidden under a silver dome on a cart near the end of the table.

Also at that end of the table were Rose and Sid. They had been fairly well behaved for most of the

meal, but now Sid, declaring that his back was bothering him, had started pestering Rose for his

medication, by which he meant one of the brownies that Rose’s sister Sarah sent them from California.

Rose was inclined to let Sid have one; she was thinking she wouldn’t mind having a brownie herself.

Rose and Sid had both become quite fond of these brownies. Sarah baked them herself using high-

grade medical marijuana, which she added in far larger quantities than the standard recipe called for on

the theory that if some medicine is good for you, then more medicine must be better for you. These were

potent brownies. Both Sid and Rose had found that no matter what was ailing them, they felt a lot better

after eating one. Sometimes they completely forgot what had been ailing them in the first place. Once

Rose had gone to the kitchen to get Sid a glass of water and had become fascinated by the water running

out of the kitchen faucet. She wound up staring at the glittering cascade for more than an hour, barely

moving. Sid, sitting in the living room, had not minded; he was engrossed in listening to the subtle and

fascinating interplay of droning sounds made by the vacuum cleaner, which Rose had left running.