The Wedding Bet (14 page)

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cynthia said, pushing roasted turkey into her mouth.”

“I need that. An altar to focus on finding the man of my life,” added Olivia sipping on her hot tea.

“Well, I married myself!”

“You can’t marry yourself,” Olivia scoffed.

“It spoils the community fun. We all need to be there to share in your phony vows of forever fidelity and love,” Cynthia added.

“That’s funny coming from the first woman of our Triad who dared to test the marriage waters.”

“I think, Cynthia, you went first just to keep your leader status.”

“I would never betray Vic that way. I love him.” She brushed her blonde hair back over her left eye. You two are important but don’t get carried away. I’m no lesbian.”

“Where is that quirky narrator when we need him I said? He’d say:

Now, even though Cynthia is telling the truth, we know she knows Olivia and Megan know that Cynthia always wanted to do everything in their triad first.

Anyway. I read women don’t spend enough time alone. Some women and girls hardly know who they are before they get married.” I chewed, watching the both of them. Cynthia said, “I’m not going to be like that.”

Olivia said, “Right, Megan. So I’m going to spend as much of my time alone too; I’ll be the water and my future husband can be the oil.”

“Megan doesn’t mean that,” Cynthia said stacking her utensils on her empty plate. “She just means when you trying to make lemonade, just forget the sugar.”

I tried not to laughed, but they had finally come up with some humor. That’s all I needed to forget I was spending sumptuous amounts of money trying to avoid being married. This is why no one wants to raise girls. They’re too hard to please. If a guy didn’t want to be married, his male pals just buy him a hooker.

“I am going to be blunt,” said Cynthia. “Are you and PR Man sleeping together?”

I think my jaw, boobs and uterus all dropped when I heard the question. To think my best friend would accuse me of such a thing. “Cynthia!”

“Megan!” said Olivia.

“Cynthia!” I said again.

“Tell!” Cynthia said loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Are you crazy?” I replied. I scoffed. I started to get up and leave. Then I remembered. Cynthia sometimes said things to start drama. She bored easily. Marriage would be good for her because she’d always have someone to keep her from boring herself.

“PR Man and I are strictly business partners in this romantic adventure. We don’t meet every day and go to a seedy motel, or out of the way place to have sex.”

“I don’t need the dirty details,” said Cynthia.

All of us laughed.

“Olivia, do you believe me?” I cried.

“Every opportunity exists for something to have happened.” Cynthia sat back and crossed her arm and tossed a strawberry into her mouth and chewed.

I was on trial by the Bitch Court of Joinrite City. “I admit PR Man has some good qualities. But the man is an impossible bore. He flits here and there with one plan after another—helping me to win the wedding bet. He doesn’t even know I’m alive.”

“He’s gay.”

“I have it on the authority of someone in the office he’s not. He dated the graphic artists. The one who did the bus poster.”

“She is talented. We need to rob Limber & Love and bring her to our agency,” said Cynthia as she tossed another strawberry in her mouth.

Olivia sat there, sheepishly looking up at me. Then back to Mr. Lauser’s card. Finally, she reached down to the floor and slipped the card into her purse.

“Don’t say I never played cupid for you, babe,” I said in a macho tone.

“Cut the crap. If you are sleeping with Steve, that’s cheating. You, too will wind up getting married by the end of the year. Because you can’t let anyone go after you sleep with them, Megan.”

“I can fuck and dump a guy like the best whores in this city,” I blurted out, as Lenny came back and grabbed our exhausted lunch plates.

“Pardon my ears for listening only in French!” Lenny replied.

We all smiled. And I warned Olivia, “No speaking in foreign languages you, unless it’s Spanish.”

I waited for the other zapato to drop. No one said anything. I felt vindicated. “Tell you what. If something does develop between PR Man and me, I’ll be sure to let you two know first. We’re still the fearless Triad, Right?”

“Right,” Olivia crooned.

“Right,” Cynthia barked.

We left having not resolved the conflict. I foolishly hoped Olivia and Cynthia would see how insane this was. Suggesting I get married because aerodynamic properties forced Cynthia’s wedding bouquet into my hands. At least PR Man stood by me one hundred percent. We had more plans to keep me from walking down the wedding aisle. And I looked forward to every avoidance ploy.

* * * *

I went home back to work icing a three-tiered pink cake for a thirty-five year old lady’s first wedding. She fit the profile of a Type A personality. I reminded myself in taking on her wedding, and with every instruction to stay calm. Because Ms. Michaela Walling, Type A personality, wasn’t about to be calm at all. Things went really well. We set up for the wedding, the guests began pouring in. Then everything went berserk. The children started screaming; they were bored. The flower girls decided on an impromptu game of cards on the grass outside the church. But worst of all, the bride simply enjoyed her emotional fizzle fit.

I call these last second nerves. Brides always seem to have fizzle fits, because they generally go away, if you apply strong logical sequencing. She locked herself in the bathroom. The Best Friend Girlfriend tried to console her. I kept setting up the chairs, talking to the Reverend. I didn’t sign on for extra duties. As it was I’d be there long after the bride and groom settled into the honeymoon drive to the nearest hotel or airport.

More and more people poured into the bathroom and out of it like a regular fountain of youthful rebellion. The bride probably had never had this much attention since she gave a temper tantrum as a little two-year-old girl. Not that she remembered the temper tantrum.

The mom went in, and out. The dad went in and was shooed out. Finally, I guess they scratched the bottom of the barrel because one of the bridesmaids came and told me about the caper.

“Oh, these things always happen,” I said as I readjusted the wedding bride and groom on the cake’s top tier one more time. I needed to make sure the bride stood slightly taller than the groom. My psychological gift to the new brides, to take no prisoners and rule their marriages with an iron fist. That’s what Pippi Longstocking would do.

“From my earlier perspective, the bride’s thong probably twisted into some uncomfortable position. Given all the tulle, petticoats and lace on the bride, her conscious awareness found it difficult to break through and reveal the trouble. If she’d been wearing a simple nightgown, she’d just reach back and adjust the situation.”

“I don’t think this one will go away,” said the bridesmaid. “You know she’s a Type A personality.”

“Really. I never noticed,” I batted my eyelids. “Oh, okay. But I don’t think I’m any good at this sort of thing.”

“Come as a last resort. You know if the wedding is delayed, the next wedding can’t begin on time.”

That got me stepping a little faster. I hated the idea of rushing the clean up. I loved to savor the departing wedding moments. I would later learn that there was no wedding booked after this wedding.

Anyway, once upon a time, a wedding caterer entered the bathroom of a hysterical soon-to-be thirty-five-year-old bride. She found the bride’s mascara almost running. Her lipstick almost fading. Her white wedding dress in a bunch around her knees as she bawled her eyes out.

Over and over, the bride repeated her refrain. “I can’t do this. I don’t love him. This is a marriage of convenience. I don’t want to look foolish in my old age.”

“I agree with you,” came out of my stoic mouth. “You know, I hate marriages, but I love the taste of wedding cake.”

Everyone started laughing. “I’m serious. My friends are forcing me to search for a husband right now. You remember my bus poster ads don’t you?”

“Yes. I thought you’d make a funny wedding guest,” said Ms. Walling.

“I don’t know any jokes per se. All I know is these men, aka frogs are driving me crazy. I’ve totally given up on finding a hero. And the guy, who marries me has got to be nothing short of that. Because I’m totally independent.”

The bride stopped crying. “I feel your pain, Michaela. You don’t need this marriage. Does any woman need to be married? Come oooooon!” I dragged the word out for emphasis. “Men are the lonely ones. Women know how to lean on another woman’s shoulder and cry, and emote till the baby is born, leaves the nest, marries...you know what I mean. Men don’t have that luxury. They only have us. Only so much chest beating and yelling is acceptable in society, before they really need someone to vent to. That person will be you. You’ll be the emotional Rock of Gibraltar in the relationship. You’ll be needed in that quiet way that the solid earth is needed to stand on when nothing makes sense anymore.

He’ll turn to you. Right now your husband is quaking in his boots, thinking, if she doesn’t marry me, I’ll be a bouquet under a bolder.”

She stopped sniffling.

“You, Ms. Michaela Walling are the valley of triumph. He’ll silently hear trumpets playing when you walk into the living room with curlers in your hair and an ten extra pounds after the birth of your second child.”

She sat up straight and dropped her wedding dress to the floor.

“You’ll be the railroad to his promised land of peace and tranquility. Don’t you want that, Ms. Walling?”

She collected herself. “Yes. I do. That’s why I went into this marriage in the first place. I guess I just forgot all the reasons in the deluge of drama and duty setting everything up. Trying to meet everyone’s expectations.”

I nodded deeply. “I’m going through the same thing. We want the same thing, Michaela, happiness of our dream abode. The pitter-patter of tiny feet. The whoosh of the bed sheets going up at night, before we retire with our husband and make delicate love to one another. And you can have it Ms. Bride. It’s all waiting for you, but you must step outside of your promenade of distressing emotions and into the legend of being yet another needed housewife. That solid rock which none of society past, future present can do without.”

Everyone smiled.

The bride stood up. She regained all her self-respect. She wasn’t giving herself away from dad to her husband; she was on a mutual journey of destiny to define the race of humanity itself.

“I want to thank you, Ms. Megan. If you don’t get married before the year’s out, I’ll send a few beaus your way. If you don’t mind?”

“No. I don’t mind. I’m here for the asking, for the right man that is.”

Now, I didn’t believe a word of what I said. I hoped like a puddle of water lying low in a hole, no one even remembered my words of wisdom. Those thoughts were my tossed-out visions of what marriage meant. In reality, marriage was listening to your husband snore, washing dirty clothes and dishes everyone suddenly hated after once before smiling and admiring the cleanness and the careful arrangement of food. Marriage was looking forward to seven years of reaffirming your marriage or the dreaded seven-year itch became a seven-year panicked trip to the divorce courts.

But, I was the wedding caterer and letting a triple tier pink and blue cake go to waste would be like a Viking burning his ships.