by Gina LaManna
“Oh, excuse me,” I said as I stood up, casting him an innocent look through my lashes. “Sorry if I… bumped you.”
Anthony cleared his throat. He looked over my head. Maybe the family with the two babies up there wasn’t so perfect. It was sure taking them a heck of a long time to get off this plane.
I was getting antsy: we had places to be, criminals to catch, and a bridesmaid to rescue. Although, I really wasn’t complaining too hard. What was the difference if Joey and Vivian were allowed to have an extra five minutes of fun, as long as I got my five minutes of fun as well?
I was jerked from my daydream by Anthony’s hand snaking around my waist. He’d dropped the luggage to his side with his un-free arm, which conveniently blocked any visible action from the passengers behind him in line. Aha, privacy.
With his hand situated at the dangerous place between my navel and my lady bits, the small fire crackling away inside my belly burst into an inferno.
He pulled me close, my ass rubbing against him and he leaned forward, whispering in my ear. “Is this a game to you?”
His hot breath seemed to blow away all my thoughts so that no words could come out.
“What’s wrong with a little fun every now and then?” I whispered back.
He nipped my ear, his teeth teasing the sensitive cartilage, his tongue soft and warm. “Don’t sign up for anything you can’t handle, Doll.”
Ms. Blackberry turned around just then as if she were going to ask about the weather. Upon seeing our intimate conversation, she turned forward once more, but the moment was over.
Anthony slipped his hand away with a light snap of the back of my pants and heaved the luggage to his shoulder once more.
Thankfully we started moving again. A necessary development, at least if I wanted to prevent myself from bursting into flames faster than a phoenix.
We had one last stop in our exit strategy thanks to Ms. Blackberry struggling to roll her fat suitcase between the aisles. As she got stuck for the third time, I was once again pressed backwards into Anthony, this time as I’d been turned sideways in the aisle. My nose banged into his collar bone and my knees crumbled a bit as I leaned into him.
He righted me with his spare hand and helped me forward. But as I gained my footing, Ms. Blackberry yanked her bag and toppled into me, creating a domino effect, which stopped with Anthony’s solid mass.
“Ow…” I grumbled, turning to Anthony as the lady got herself sorted out and on her feet. “Your gun got me right in the ass.”
“Doll. They don’t allow guns on planes.”
I wasn’t looking at Anthony as he spoke, but my shoulders stiffened and I was sure he could sense my blushing cheeks.
The Blackberry woman fanned herself as she hurried down the aisle, now carrying the bag sideways in one hand. “Oh, lordy.”
I rolled my eyes, though nobody could see it.
Of course they didn’t allow guns on planes.
** **
“Everyone’s flight was okay?” I asked, as the five of us regrouped. Before anyone could nod, I clapped my hands. “Excellent. Anthony, where to?”
“We have a car.”
Our troupe awkwardly walk-jogged through the airport to the arrivals sign, where a short, burly man with a sleeve of tattoos handed Anthony a ring of keys to a shiny black Escalade. They exchange a few short sentences to each other in an Italian dialect I really didn’t understand, and then we piled into the car.
“Which casino are we going to first?” Alfonso piped up for the first time since the flight.
“You’re too young for casinos,” I said. “Plus, you step even one toe in a place like that, you’re in trouble. Meg’s a cop, remember? She’ll arrest you.”
Meg nodded. “Or I’ll shoot you. I haven’t shot anybody for a while, and that trigger finger gets itchy sometimes. You know how it is.”
Meg kicked the back of Anthony’s seat as if hoping he’d cement her statement with his own agreement.
Instead he gritted his teeth. “We still don’t know where they’re going. They’re driving somewhere, away from the Strip. The only good thing about that is we can skirt the traffic. If they headed to the Bellagio, we would’ve been sitting in that mess for over an hour.”
“Where could they be going?” I mused aloud.
“Yeah, it’s kind of like one of those jokes, you know?” Meg guffawed. “A priest, a bride, an ex-groom and a kidnapped maid of honor walk into a bar…”
“They’re going to a wedding chapel.” I turned to Anthony. “The Love Shack.”
Chapter 12
“Left. Right. Your other one. Just… drive over the curb. We’re here. Park anywhere.” Reading maps, even on my phone, was still not one of my fortes.
The parking lot I’d directed Anthony into was dirty and empty. A single car was parked in the far, dusty corner. That poor vehicle looked like it’d been driven to Mars and back, by way of a mudslide.
A short, white picket fence blocked absolutely nobody from entering the front yard of the chapel, and the white front steps had almost no paint left on them. A crooked sign hung from the front door, the letters in bold, pink, sparkly letters screaming, MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES HERE. NO APOINTMENTS NECESSARY.
I wasn’t Miss Attention-to-Detail over here, but I still felt an insane desire to go draw in the appropriate number of P’s on the entrance sign.
“How’d you know this would be the gem of a chapel that Vivian picked?” Meg asked.
I hesitated to answer, only because I was debating whether or not Meg had used the word gem sarcastically. Deciding she’d meant it earnestly, I scrunched my nose. “She told me a long time ago, back when she was supposed to be getting married to Joey. She said that she’d known her and Joey were destined to be married here the second she set eyes on it. Mostly because of the pink letters. They matched her Jeep. So then she matched her wedding invitations. Everything was pink.”
“Vivian. Always classy as shit.” Meg shook her head, a jealous twinge crossing her eyes. “I wish I had half her style.”
“Do you, though? Really?” Clay asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wouldn’t go putting Vivian on a pedestal.”
Meg opened her mouth, probably to defend Vivian, but Anthony interrupted. “Inside before they arrive. According to my guys, they’ll be here soon. I’ll move the car around back so they can’t see it from the road.”
Once I’d deduced where Vivian was headed, we’d been able to fly through the backstreets to get here. Vivian, Joey and company. were stuck in traffic, the driver most likely taking the slowest possible route in an effort to squeeze a few extra pennies out of their pockets.
If Anthony’s buddies were right, we had about eight minutes until they arrived.
We’d be waiting. A nice, little surprise greeting party. It’d really make the reception more interesting. The idea was to let them enter thinking they’d be exchanging rings, while in reality they’d be leaving clasped in a different set of rings.
In layman’s terms, handcuffs.
We entered the church, and there was a tiny old man tinkering about, watering plants. He gave us a large, cheery grin the moment we entered.
“Hi, ya’ll. Welcome to the Chapel of Love, a-k-a the Love Shack, where we wed winners! Marriages guaranteed to last the night.” He winked, sharing a joke with himself.
When nobody laughed, he cleared his throat. “Vivian, I assume?”
I flinched as he held a hand in my direction. “Nope.”
The tiny old man looked towards Meg.
“Vivian?” he squeaked hesitantly.
“Not me,” Meg said boisterously. “But I can be if you wanna convince that one to marry me.”
She winked and thumbed over her shoulder at Anthony, who was striding into the place dressed in his nicest suit and tie, looking every bit the ideal groom.
My stomach did a little flippy flop wondering if Anthony would ever be tied down. Then, I realized that I wasn’t even sure
he didn’t have a girlfriend somewhere else. Sure, he’d knocked into me with his gun on the plane, but it was possible he had a hot Brazilian singer or a lanky Scandinavian model waiting for him at some exotic location. He was a man of mystery, and his love life was shrouded by a thick veil of intrigue. Frankly, I didn’t even know what he thought of me.
I pushed the thought away, reminding myself I wasn’t yet ready for that kind of commitment. Especially not if it came with a baby anytime soon. Or two, as demonstrated by the overachiever family on the plane.
The tiny, wizard-like man heaved a sigh of relief at Anthony’s presence. “Oh, good. What a handsome groom we have here. Joey?”
“Sorry,” said Anthony. Then he approached the small man and whispered some words at a decibel below my hearing capabilities.
With a solid handshake that most likely exchanged a few bills, the small man left hurriedly through the front doors. Seconds later, the sound of a clunky exhaust pipe reached our ears and the dusty old car rattled off into the fading Vegas sunset.
“You’ve got a way with words,” Meg said admirably. “I probably would’ve just punched him.”
“They let cops do that?” Alfonso asked.
“I’m not technically on the job right now,” she said, her eyes not quite meeting anybody else’s in the room. “Or for the past few years, for that matter.”
The sound of an approaching car silenced all talk.
“Off to the side,” Anthony said. “We need to let them get into the chapel first, just in case they try to run.”
“Roger that, sir,” Meg said. “Copy that shit.”
We scooted over. Meg, Clay and I on one side of the small church, Anthony and Alfonso on the other.
“Get your head down,” Meg hissed to Alfonso. “You’ve got the sun over there just hanging out on your scalp.”
Alfonso scowled, but ducked behind a huge vase of pungent roses. I was surprised to see they were real. I didn’t expect real flowers in a church as cheesy as this.
I leaned closer to sniff the pot of roses on our side. I took a deep breath and burst out in a fit of coughing.
“They’re fake, dufus,” Meg said. “It’s just perfume. It’s kind of like how I shower. I just pretend, say I did, and then spray a ton of rosebud scents on my armpits.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
“I mean, I shower sometimes,” she said. “Like once a week. Or when I eat Korean BBQ. Sometimes that’s two or three times a week.”
“That smell really lingers,” I agreed. “I always have to air my sweatshirts out after one of those meals.”
There was a moment of silence both inside and outside of the chapel.
I took the moment to survey the church: large pots of fake roses lined the aisle, and to either side were rows of mismatching white, wooden and black metal folding chairs. A small altar at the front provided the stage for the couples getting married, and a few snapshots of Jesus had been hung in dollar store frames around the walls.
“This ain’t right,” Meg said, standing up. Her knees crackled with the effort. “Romeo and Juliet deserve a proper greeting.”
She leaned forward and snapped off a dozen fake roses from the huge vase. She took a few steps forward, cradling them like a baby and parading towards the chapel doors, despite my hushed pleas and Anthony’s sharp reprimands.
“This just ain’t right,” Meg repeated, silencing Anthony with a glare. “Have some respect.”
She proceeded to give me a bouquet of kind of droopy fake flowers. Then she broke a few flowers in half with her teeth and stuffed them in each of the men’s pockets like a makeshift corsage.
Anthony’s entire face went slack. He shut his eyes as she poked a rose into his chest pocket.
“Whoopsies, sorry about that.” Meg gave him a pat on the chest. “Mighta accidentally poked a bit hard right through this flimsy suit. You’ll wanna get that stitched up.”
“Get back to your spot.” Anthony’s voice was a thin warning.
“Right-o, sir.” Meg hustled back behind Clay. Even she could sense the malice in his voice at this point.
She ducked down just in time. A car door slammed shut outside and there were a few shouts arguing about how much was a proper tip for a driver that didn’t know shit. Then, a few pairs of dusty footsteps stomped up towards the door. On the inside, we took a collective breath and pushed against each other. I was under the impression that each of us was trying to become the wall.
“Hurry up, Joey,” Vivian whined. “My dress is getting dusty.”
“I’m coming, my love.” The door creaked open and there was a sickening thunk as the first shoes appeared inside the chapel.
I winced as Vivian’s arm flew to her head, her small frame bobbing in Joey’s arms.
“Oh, sorry, dear. Did I clip your head on the doorframe?” Joey’s voice sounded thunderous in the chapel.
“CLIP MY HEAD?” Vivian’s feet popped into sight as Joey attempted to carry her through the door. “You nearly popped it right off! What are you thinking? Be more careful, idiot. Now I’m going to have a black eye for our wedding.”
“Baby, it’s just that your hair is so big, I couldn’t tell…” Joey trailed off as they stomped up the aisle, not realizing there were a bunch of people hiding behind potted plants.
Leo followed soon after. He was still in his priest attire, a cross dangling from his neck.
“My hair is BIG?” Vivian snapped her fingers and her gum at the same time. “You wanna tell me that one more time? I’ll tell you what’s not big. Your little…”
She whipped around, opening her blood red lips to continue her insult. Unfortunately, she paused halfway through her turn as her eyes made contact with mine. “What are you doing here?”
The next moment, everything burst into chaos.
Meg let out a huge breath and a huge fart at the same time, a feat I didn’t have time to dwell on in the midst of everything else.
“Been holding that awhile,” Meg murmured as she leapt forward. Clay was right behind her. I was knocked on my ass as Alfonso rushed past me and took a flying leap at Leo. Anthony took two strides to the front and sunk Joey to his knees with a fancy maneuver that took less than two seconds.
Leo screamed while Vivian shouted a stream of expletives that combined the Italian and English language like they’d never been joined before. I sprinted to Vivian, but once I got there, stopped abruptly.
We stared at each other in a weird no-blinking-first contest. It felt as if we were trapped in a peaceful little snow globe, while the rest of the chapel had broken out in guerilla warfare.
“Hey,” I said. “I, uh, think I might need to arrest you.”
“You’re not a cop,” she said.
“Yeah, well. I have to do something.” I shrugged.
“Why? What did I do wrong?” Vivian flounced her hands on her hips.
“Uh, you kidnapped somebody.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even know about that. I was sad about Kiki not being here, remember?” She flicked her nails, surveying them as if a chip would be the most disastrous thing in the world right now. “And don’t even get started on Leo—I didn’t know a thing about that.”
I tapped my front tooth with my fingernail, a bad habit that sometimes helped me to think. Or at least, I thought it did. “Hmm.”
“Face it. The only thing I did wrong was change which guy I was getting married to. And plenty of people do that. Happens all the time, just read the magazines.”
I shrugged. “It just seems so wrong, what you did to all those people.”
“Yeah, but at least now I’ll be happy in my marriage.”
“Will you, though?” I asked. My voice took on a much higher pitch than I intended.
“Yeah. We’re destined to be together, me and Joey.”
She shot a loving look over in the direction of her big, orange bear of a fiancé. He was trying unsuccessfully to fight off Anthony, who held him down with a few f
ingers.
“Hey, let him up,” Vivian said. “We’re going to get married.”
“Nobody’s getting married,” Meg said. “We’ve sent that cute little priest home, unfortunately.”
Anthony clasped a set of cuffs on Joey, then another set on Leo, who’d stood with his mouth open. He’d tried to run at the last moment, but ran smack into Meg and bounced off, right into Anthony’s hands.
“What are we going to do with them?” I asked Anthony as we stared at the three captives. Vivian had squeezed herself into Joey’s lap.
“Listen,” Vivian said. “You really don’t have anything on any of us. So, I’ll tell you what. You let us get married here and then you can do whatever you want with us. I’m assuming Leo’s in trouble with Carlos, and maybe Joey, too. But I didn’t do nothing wrong. And we got our whole wedding party here. We’ll be real cooperative once we’re married.”
“Come on, please?” Meg begged with her hands clasped together. “This is adorable.”
“No.” Anthony shook his head.
“Oh, lay off. It will take two seconds,” Vivian said. “Have a heart.”
“You have to let them,” Meg said. “Except, wait a second. I already told you the priest went home. And I think this one’s a fake.”
Leo looked offended. “I am not a fake. I was supposed to do their original wedding before they broke up.”
“This is perfect!” Meg nodded. “Anthony, please?”
I pulled Anthony off to the side. “We’ve got a little problem. Vivian hasn’t really done anything wrong. She’s also part of the Family. Leo and Joey are idiots, but have they really broken any laws? Sure he faked his death, but probably plenty of people do that.”
I surveyed the three. “Oh, shit. Where’s Kiki?”
“You didn’t find her yet?” Joey asked, his confusion seemingly genuine.
“No, we thought you’d taken her here.”
“No, I didn’t kidnap her,” Joey said. “I have an alibi.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Yes.” He blushed a little bit.
