Drowned Hopes d-7

by Donald E. Westlake

  And even more beautiful than the church and its setting was the bride, blushing pink in her swaths of organdy white, climbing from the family station wagon with her parents and baby sister. They were the first arrivals, half an hour before the scheduled ceremony, father looking uncomfortable and thick-fingered in his awkwardly fitting dark suit and badly knotted red tie, baby sister an excited bonbon in puffy peach, mother beribboned and bowed in lavender, dabbing at her tear-filled eyes with a lavender hankie and saying, “I told you not to go all the way, you little tramp. Just get him off with your hand, for heaven’s sake! Oh, I so wanted a June wedding!”

  “Mother!” the bride replied, elaborately ill-tempered. “I’ll be showing by then.”

  “Let’s get this thing over with,” said father, and led the way heavy-footed up the path and into the church.

  Snickering cousins of the bride came next, some to be ushers and flower girls, some just to hang out, and two burly fellows in blocky wool jackets who’d volunteered to be parking lot attendants, to see to it that all of the cars of all of the guests would fit in this space at the end of Church Lane.

  Relatives of the bride continued to predominate for the first ten minutes or so; giggling awkward large-jointed people wearing their “best” clothes, saved for weddings, funerals, Easter, and appearances in court. Soon this group began to be supplemented by members of the groom’s family: skinnier, shorter, snake-hipped people with can-opener noses and no asses, dressed in Naugahyde jackets and polyester shirts and vinyl trousers and plastic shoes, as though they weren’t human beings at all but were actually a chain dental service’s waiting room. Intermixed with these, in warm-up jackets and pressed designer jeans, were the groom’s pals, acne-flaring youths full of sidelong looks and nervous laughter, knowing this was more than likely a foretaste of their own doom: “There but for the grace of the Akron Rubber Company go I.” The bride’s girlfriends arrived in a too-crowded-car cluster and hovered together like magnetized iron filings, all demonstrating the latest soap opera fashion trends and each of them a sealed bubble of self-consciousness and self-absorption. The groom, a jerky marionette in a rented tux, a wide-eyed pale-faced boy with spiky hair and protuberant ears, appeared with his grim suspicious parents and entered the church with all the false macho assurance of Jimmy Cagney on his way to the electric chair. The church door shut behind him with a hollower boom than it had given anyone else.

  As the hour of the service approached, the last few cars, each with its couple snarlingly blaming each other for causing them to be late, came tearing up Church Lane and was slotted into one of the remaining spaces by the volunteer attendants. And then it was TIME. The attendants grinned at each other, pleased with their accomplishment, and were about to turn and enter the church themselves when headlights alerted them to one last car load of wedding guests. “They are gonna be late!” one attendant told the other, and both stepped out to the road to wave frantically at the oncoming car to get a move on.

  Instead of which, at first it slowed down, as though the driver were suddenly uncertain of his welcome. “Come on, come on!” shouted an attendant, and ran forward, still waving. The car was a new Caddy—a lot better than most of the cars here—and the driver had the narrow nose and bewildered expression that suggested to the attendants (cousins of the bride) that these people represented the groom’s side.

  “Park over there!” the attendant yelled, pointing at one of the few remaining slots.

  The driver had lowered his window, the better to display his confusion. He said, “The church…?”

  “That’s right! That’s right! There’s the church right there, it’s the only thing on this road! Come on, will ya, you’re late!”

  Someone in the car said something to the driver, who nodded and said, “I guess we might as well.”

  So then at last the Caddy was driven to its slot, all four of its doors opened, and a bunch of extremely unlikely wedding guests emerged. The attendants, waiting for them, exchanged a knowing glance that silently said, Groom’s side, no question. Along with the sharp-nosed driver were a short fat round troll, a gloomy slope-shouldered guy, and a mean-looking old geezer. Shepherded by the attendants, these four made their way up the walk and into the now-full church, where the ceremony hadn’t yet begun after all, having been delayed by both a sudden loss of courage on the groom’s part (being treated now from an uncle’s flask) and a screaming cat fight between the bride and her mother.

  A tuxedoed usher approached the latecomers, while the attendants went off to the seats saved for them by other cousins. Leaning toward the new arrivals, the usher murmured, “Bride or groom?”

  They stared at him. The sharp-nosed one said, “Huh?”

  The usher was used by now to the wedding guests being under-rehearsed. Patiently, gesturing to the pews on both sides of the central aisle, he said, “Are you with the bride’s party or the groom’s?”

  “Oh,” said the sharp-nosed one.

  “Bride,” said the mean-looking old man, but at the same instant, “Groom,” said the pessimistic-looking guy.

  This under-rehearsed was ridiculous. “Surely,” the usher began, “you know whi—”

  “We’re with the groom,” the pessimist explained. “They’re with the bride.”

  “Oh,” the usher said, and looked around for empty seats on both sides of the aisle. “Here’s two for the bridal party,” he said, “and two over—”

  He broke off, astonished, because the group seemed to be arguing fiercely and almost silently among themselves as to which of them was to be with which. Noticing him noticing them, they cut that business short and sorted themselves out with no further trouble, except for sharp looks back and forth. The usher seated the pessimist and the little round man among the bride’s family and friends, then placed the mean-looking old man and the sharp-nosed fellow in among the partisans of the groom.

  As he did so, the uncle with the flask (tucked away out of sight) emerged from a side door down by the altar and made his somewhat unsteady way (he’d been medicating himself as well, since the cap was off anyway) to his seat on the aisle down near the front on the groom’s side. He was still settling himself and grinning his report on the groom’s condition to his neighbors when the mother of the bride, rather red of face and grim of expression, but with shoulders triumphantly squared, came from the rear of the church, escorted by an usher, and marched down the center aisle to sit in the front row.

  A moment of extremely suspenseful silence ensued, during which the minister’s wife, out of sight in the vestry, placed the needle on the turning record, and a scratchy but full-throated version of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” poured forth from the speakers mounted high in the four corners of the nave.

  As the music swelled and the minister came out of the vestry to stand by the chancel rail, the mean-looking old guy with the bridal party gave a disgusted look across the aisle at the pessimist among the groom’s people. The pessimist gave him the disgusted look right back, then shook his head and sat back to watch the wedding.

  The music stopped. The speakers in the corners of the nave said, “Tick… tick… ti—” And stopped.

  The minister stepped forward, crossing the front of the church behind the chancel rail, smiling bland encouragement at the parents and immediate family in the front row. He was a round-faced round-shouldered slender amiable man with a round sparsely haired head and round highly reflecting spectacles, and he wore thick-soled black shoes like a cop and a long-sleeved black dress with a white dickey at the neck. The black dress showed off his round potbelly as he crossed to the pulpit and climbed the circular staircase.

  On the bride’s side of the aisle, the mean-looking old guy leaned forward and looked significantly across the aisle at the pessimist, who didn’t seem to want to have his eye caught. But the old guy kept nodding, and widening his eyes, and waving his eyebrows, until finally everybody else in the immediate area was in on it, so then at last the pessimist turned and nod
ded—“I know, I know”—which didn’t keep the old guy from pointing very significantly with his eyebrows and ears and elbows and nose and temples toward the general area of the pulpit and the climbing minister. The pessimist sighed and folded his arms and faced determinedly forward. The little dumpling beside him kept looking back and forth between the pessimist and the old guy, open-mouthed and eager. Next to the old guy, the sharp-nosed fellow ignored the whole thing, concentrating instead on the cleavage in the dress of the friend of the bride on his other side.

  Meantime, the minister had attained the pulpit, from where he beamed out amiably upon his congregation. After pausing to adjust the microphone on its gooseneck stalk in front of him, at last he said, “Well, we all want to thank Felix Mendelssohn for sharing that wonderful music with us. And now, if you’ll all rise.”

  Shckr—shckr—shckroop.

  “Very good, very good.” The minister’s face and smile were at the pulpit, but his voice came from the four upper corners of the nave. “And now,” he said, “we will all turn to our neighbor, and we will greet our neighbor with a handshake and a hug.”

  Embarrassed laughter and throat-clearing filled the church, but everyone (except the mean-looking old guy) obeyed. The sharp-nosed fellow very enthusiastically embraced the friend of the bride next to him, while the pessimist and the dumpling hugged each other in a much more gingerly fashion.

  “Very good, very good,” the minister’s voice boomed down at them from the four corners of the nave. “Resume your seats, resume your seats.”

  Schlff—schlff—fflrp.

  “Very good.” The minister’s eyeglasses reflected the interior of the church, creating gothic wonders where none in fact existed. Beaming around at the congregation, giving them back this much more interesting reflection of themselves, he said, “We have come here this evening, in the sight of God and man, mindful of the laws of God and the laws of the State of New York, to join in holy wedlock Tiffany and Bob.”

  He paused. He beamed his sweet smile into the farthest corner of his domain. He said, “You know, the blessed state of matrimony…….”

  His voice went on, for some extended time, but the words did not enter one brain in that church. A great glazed comatosity o’ercame the congregation, a state of slow enchantment like that in the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like the residents of Brigadoon, the people in the church drifted in a long and dreamless sleep, freed of struggle and expectation.

  “……. with Bob. Bob?”

  A slow sigh escaped the slumbering assembly, a faint and lingering breath. Shoulders moved, hands twitched in laps, bottoms shifted on the wooden pews. Eyes began to focus, and there was Bob, as if by magic, a bowed beanpole inaptly in a black tux at the head of the central aisle, standing with his look-alike best man—slightly heavier, grinning in nervous relief, left hand clutching jacket pocket (no doubt to feel the ring still safe within)—the two of them in profile to the crowd, Bob blinking like the terrorists’ kidnap victim he was, the beaming minister descending the pulpit and striding toward the lectern set up just within the chancel rail. The speakers in the corners, said, “Tick… tick… tick…” and a slow, heavy-beated, orchestral version of “Here Comes the Bride” battered the people below.

  Now it all began to move. Tiffany, on her father’s arm, and her attendants made their uncertain way down the aisle, trying but failing to keep pace with the music, stumbling and tripping prettily along, concentrating so totally on their feet that they forgot to be self-conscious. Bob watched them as though they were an approaching truck.

  Bride and groom met in front of the lectern and turned to face the minister, who beamed over their heads at the people and announced, “Bob and Tiffany have written their own wedding service,” and everybody went back to sleep.

  When they awoke, the deed was done. “You may kiss the bride,” the minister said, and some smart-aleck pal of the groom said, “That’s about the only thing he hasn’t done to her,” perhaps a little more loudly than he’d intended.

  Bride and groom made their hasty grinning way up the aisle as the congregation stood and stretched and talked and cheered them on, and from the speakers high above came the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The mean-looking old guy turned to the sharp-nosed fellow and said, “If I had a gun, I’d shoot somebody.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” the sharp-nosed fellow answered in agreement.

  “How about with these two?” the mean-looking old guy said as the happy couple hurried past.

  Across the aisle, the round troll dabbed his moist eyes and said, “Gee, that was nice. Better even than Princess Labia’s wedding.” The pessimist sighed.

  Most weddings take place in daylight, but there’d been a certain urgency in the planning of this one, and all the potential daytime slots here at Elizabeth Grace Dudson Memorial Reformed Congregational Unitarian Church of Putkin Township had already been taken. The mother of the bride had been determined that her daughter would have a church wedding, and women who successfully name their infant daughters Tiffany do tend to get their own way, so an evening wedding it was. Exterior lights had been turned on at the end of the ceremony, so that when the wedding party emerged, laughing and shouting and throwing superfluous rice (it was unnecessary to wish fecundity upon Tiffany and Bob), the scene looked more like a movie than real life. Many of the revelers, becoming aware of this, started to perform wedding guests rather than be wedding guests, which merely increased the general air of unreality.

  Inside, the church was nearly empty. The minister chatted up front with a small group of ladies, a few other relatives and friends drifted slowly doorward, and the four latecomers sat stolid in their pews, as though waiting for the second show. A departing aunt said to them, “Aren’t you coming to the party?”

  “Sure,” said the pessimist.

  She continued on. “Come along, now,” said another exiting in-law.

  “Be there in a minute,” the sharp-nosed fellow assured her.

  “It’s over, you know,” kidded a grandmother with a grandmotherly twinkle.

  Twinkling right back, the butterball said, “We’re looking at the pretty windows.”

  The minister, passing with the last of the ladies, smiled upon the quartet and said, “We’ll be closing up now.”

  The mean-looking old guy nodded. “We wanna pray a little more,” he said.

  The minister seemed taken aback at that idea, but rallied. “We must all pray,” he agreed, “for long life and joy for Tiffany and Bob.”

  “You bet,” said the mean-looking old guy.

  The pessimist slowly turned his head—his neck made faint cracking sounds—to watch the minister and the final few of his flock amble on to the door and out. “Jeez,” he said. Which was a prayer.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Jeez,” said Dortmunder.

  Across the aisle, Kelp said, “Okay, Tom? Okay? Can we get it now?”

  Sullen, Tom said, “It wasn’t my idea to come to a wedding.”

  “It was your idea,” Kelp reminded him, “to stash your stash in a church.”

  “Where’s a better place?” Tom wanted to know.

  Dortmunder rose, all of his joints creaking and cracking and aching. “Are you two,” he wanted to know, “just gonna sit there and converse?”

  So everybody else stood up at last, their knees and hips and elbows making sounds like gunshots, and Tom said, “Won’t take but two minutes now that the goddamn crowd is gone.”

  He stepped out to the aisle, turned toward the front of the church, and a voice back at the door said, “Gentlemen, I really must ask you to leave now. Silent prayer in one’s home or automobile is just as efficacious—”

  It was the minister again, coming down the aisle at them. Tom gave him a disgusted look and said, “Enough is enough. Hold that turkey.”

  “Right,” said Kelp.

  As Tom walked down the aisle and Wally gaped at everything in fascinated interest—the true
spectator—Dortmunder and Kelp approached the minister, who became too belatedly alarmed, backing away, his voice rising toward treble as he said, “What are—? You can’t— This is a place of worship!”

  “Sssshhh,” Kelp advised, soothingly, putting his hand on the minister’s arm. When the minister tried to pull away, Kelp’s hand tightened its grip, and Dortmunder took hold of the sky pilot’s other arm, saying, “Take it easy, pal.”

  “Little man,” Kelp said, “you’ve had a busy day. Just gentle down, now.”

  The minister stared through his round spectacles at the front of his church, saying, “What’s that man doing?”

  “Won’t take a minute,” Dortmunder explained.

  Up front, Tom had approached the pulpit, which was an octagonal wooden basket or crow’s nest built on several sturdy legs. The underpart of the pulpit was faced by latticed panels inset between the legs, the whole thing stained and polished to the shade generally known as “a burnished hue.” Tom bent to stick his fingers through the diamond-shaped holes in the latticework panel around on the side, half hidden by the circular stairs. He poked and tugged on this, but the last time that panel had been moved was thirty-one years earlier, and Tom had been the one to move it. In the interim, heat and cold and moisture and dryness and time itself had done their work, and the panel was now well and truly stuck. Tom yanked and pushed and prodded, and nothing at all happened.