by J M Donellan
“I have a…weak bladder…the…bathroom,” he mumbles, his head turning this way and that as if to gather support. But he slumps back into his seat, defeated. Evelyn’s eyes return to amber alert.
“The groom will now say his vows.” Even as the words tumble out of his mouth, Thomas regrets them.
“You bloody fool! Skip to the next bit!” Evelyn barks.
“Y-yes, yes, certainly! The bride will now say her vows, which she has composed herself for this special occasion.”
In fact, Rosaline had scribbled her first set of wedding vows at the age of twelve, with a marker on the back of a pamphlet for Hair ’n’ There Hairdressing. Since then, she has worked on them like a sculptor on a treasured stone, refining them, editing them, perfecting them, and practising them aloud. She beams as the well-rehearsed words spill out of her mouth.
“I, Rosaline Grace, take you, my darling Elijah Vincetti, to be my husband, my loving partner, and my lifelong companion. I pledge that my love will be as steadfast as mountains yet swift as the swallows in spring, as strong as tidal waves yet as soft as raindrops, as endless as the vast blue sky and as constant as my beating heart. I will stay by your side, your hand in mine, through good times and bad, through ups and downs, fair weather or foul. Nothing shall tear us apart…not…not even lady friends, or California.”
At this the assembly raises its collective eyebrow. Freya nearly chokes on her second glass of champagne.
“I pledge to you that together we will build a life that is based on foundations of purest love—you my prince, and I your princess. I swear that I will always be true, faithful, and honest, and never go to the grocery store in my nicotine-stained wedding dress.”
Freya can see that Rosaline is trembling, her eyes are wet with tears, not quite hidden behind her veil.
Evelyn leans towards Rosaline’s ear, places her hand on her shoulder and whispers, “Dear, let’s skip the poppycock and get to the meat and bones of it, shall we?”
“No!” yells Rosaline, slapping Evelyn away. The crowd gasps as if it is a live TV studio audience. “Don’t tell me what to do! This is my moment!”
Evelyn’s eyes flicker with rage but she nods curtly.
“Elijah, my love, for months I have dreamed of you as you have dreamed of me. I have waited, prayed, and hoped for this moment. I’ve forgiven you for what came before…the lies, the cheating and…well, the accident, of course…”
At this, Harland grabs her wrist and yanks her behind one of the decorative potted trees, causing the crowd to gasp again.
“The hell with this,” moans an impertinent voice somewhere to Freya’s left. The speaker, his plump cheeks cherry-red with indignation, pulls his wife to her feet. “Come on, Dianne. This is beyond a joke.” He moves towards the aisle, but his passage is blocked by a gorilla-sized guard who shakes his shiny, buzz-cut head and simply points back to the couple’s vacated seats. The man nods sheepishly and he and his wife sit back down.
Harland and Rosaline return to their positions, too, each holding a ring box.
“Get on with it!” barks Harland at the celebrant, who is already in the process of planning how he will retell today’s events to his therapist.
“Is…is there a ring for the bride?”
As if there isn’t, thinks Freya.
Harland passes the ring to Rosaline.
“Do you, Rosaline Grace, take Elijah Vincetti to be your wedded husband, to love him, comfort him, honour, and keep him as long as you both shall live?”
She nods repeatedly, “I do…I do!” and slips on the ring.
“And do you, Elijah Vin—”
“Of course he does, you insipid dolt!” Harland rebukes him.
Rosaline slips the ring on Elijah’s inert finger.
“You may now kiss the bride,” announces Thomas, counting down the moments until his getaway.
Rosaline removes her veil, leans down towards Elijah and raises his chin with her fingers. Their lips converge.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Elijah and Rosaline Vincetti!” announces Thomas, his impending exit closer to his heart than the Vincettis’ union.
The applause begins as a patter of two uncertain hands, stops, starts again and then spreads like a pandemic until the entire crowd is clapping, cheering, whistling.
The celebrant leads Rosaline to a white marble table to sign the marriage certificate. Harland and Evelyn drill their eyes into her as she scratches the pen across the paper. As soon as she places the pen down, Harland snatches the certificate, rolls it up, passes it to one of the security guards and points back towards the house. The guard nods and walks away, clutching the sheet to his chest.
As Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” floats over the crowd, Rosaline wheels Elijah along the aisle. The guests rise, a significant contingent of them anxious to get to the bar. Jack nods at Freya and she grabs Callum’s free hand and leads him quickly towards the house.
“That was one of the most tasteful travesties I’ve seen in years. Right up there with the birth of the royal baby,” he says, downing the last of his champagne and throwing the glass across the lawn.
“We have to be quick. Jack said he’s going to keep an eye on Lord and Lady Vincetti while we distract the guard, get inside the Danger Room, figure out what the fuck is in there and hopefully find some more evidence then make like a tree before absconding. Hopefully, Lord and Lady Vincetti will be distracted by the festivities and we’ll be able to make a clean…um…Hello, there.”
A gigantic guard who appears to be missing a neck blocks the door with his 150 kilos of steroid-infused muscle mass. “Good evening, ma’am, sir,” he says from behind his aviator sunglasses. “Access to the house is unavailable for the time being. The party is outside.”
“But we aren’t guests. I live here. Callum’s with me.”
“No exceptions, ma’am.”
“But I—”
“No. Exceptions.”
“For fuck’s sake! What are they paying you? Twenty bucks an hour? Here’s…here’s three hundred-forty-five dollars,” Callum says, holding the bills up to the guard’s emotionless face. “Go buy yourself a nice protein shake or something.”
The guard shakes his head.
“Please step away from the entrance or I will be forced to use force.”
“‘Forced to use force?’ Sheesh. There’s no point talking to this guy,” Freya mutters as she inserts a syringe into his neck, causing the giant to plummet to the ground like she’d cut his beanstalk.
“What the hell did you inject him with?”
“Quazepam.”
“What’s that?“
“A high-potency sedative. Same stuff the Vincettis have been injecting Elijah with.”
They step inside the house, which is eerily quiet compared to the chaos outside. Freya looks back to see Jack is not far behind them. “Callum, shhh. I’ll explain later, but don’t mention the sedative to Jack, okay? Hey, handsome,” she says as Jack catches up to them. “Did you manage to get Harland’s keycard?”
“Yes. Got it when he left it in his jacket in the kitchen. Strange time for that guard back there to take a nap.”
“You know what these steroid junkies are like, always messing with their system. Screws up their circadian rhythm,” Freya replies.
“Right, I guess it’s probably easier if I pretend I believe that,” says Jack. “We’d better be quick if we want to get in there.” He nods towards the Danger Room.
“Is this place going to be booby-trapped or anything? Or filled with mutant crocodiles or cyborg ninjas or stuff like that?” asks Callum as they approach the door.
“Only one way to find out,” says Freya. “Jack, will you do the honours?”
He nods and scans the keycard, then presses his eye up near the retinal scanner.
SCAN COMPLETE
>
ACCESS GRANTED: ELIJAH VINCETTI
“Elijah?” whispers Callum.
Freya shakes her head and whispers back, “Don’t get me started. One enigmagnetic crisis at a time, okay?”
Jack swings the door open. “This time I am going to find the goddamn light switch. Freya, will you keep watch?”
“No way, I seem to recall that ended in disaster last time. I’m coming in.”
“Callum, how ’bout you?”
“Screw that. Safety in numbers. I’m coming in, too.”
The three look at each other, then at the darkness awaiting them. “Fine,” says Jack. “We’ll all go in together.” They step inside and Jack pulls the door closed behind them.
“The light switch?” says Jack.
Callum pops up the light on his phone, and the others do the same. Three weak circles of light flicker around the walls.
“Ah, here we go. Weird place for a light switch, halfway across the room,” says Callum as he flicks it on. Four halogen lights spark into life, though they start blinking, creating a disorienting strobe effect before settling and filling the room with light. The walls are a cold and sterile white. This, paired with the pale marble of the floor, gives the room an eerily institutional feel. Sound echoes easily around the open space. Piles of books are pushed flush against every available wall space, stacked between three and four feet high.
The room’s sole furnishing is an ornately carved wooden desk and chair. Freya approaches the desk, upon which is resting an old-fashioned brass bank lamp, a white feather quill resting in an inkpot and a tattered leather notebook.
Freya picks up the notebook in front of her—the leather has a thick and heady scent—and flips through its pages. She furrows her brow, confused by the melee of images, and skims through them until she reaches one that gives her pause. She begins to shake, her head filled with a tribal pounding. Callum sees her lips trembling and before he can offer to hold her, she utters one word and collapses to the floor: “Valerie.”
31
A Collection
***
Yvette feigns interest in Harry Leeson, heir to the Morotech empire, as he babbles on about his achievements. Her eyes, however, are locked on Rosaline and Elijah. Rosaline’s hand clutches Elijah’s as she chats with guests and periodically convulses with laughter and playfully slaps their shoulders.
“Harry darling,” Yvette purrs, all the while seething that Rosaline is so happy, “would you mind grabbing me another drink?”
“Of course! Champagne?”
She nods but rolls her eyes as Harry scurries off, as eager as the private-school boy she imagines he once was, running out the wrought-iron gates at the three o’clock bell.
So, this is it, Yvette thinks. This is how it ends. Not with a bang but a simper. Despite her beauty, charm, and cunning she sees she has been defeated by this little maniac. Yvette walks down to the river, away from the noise and the crowd. She senses Harry approaching and sighs but, with consummate skill, transforms her remorse into coquettish charm. “Hello there, handsome. You sure don’t like to keep a girl waiting, do you?”
“Of course not! Especially not a girl like you! Cigarette?”
“Good Lord, I thought you’d never ask!”
He hands her the pack. With her beloved gold lighter she lights her cigarette, and then his, as she stares past him at the sprawling facade of the Vincetti mansion. When Harry’s mouth begins to spew a dreary account of his latest Italian holiday, Yvette fixes her mouth in a smile and her eyes on the house.
She flicks her lighter open.
Closed.
Open.
Closed.
Open.
Closed.
Open.
***
Freya runs her fingers over Valerie’s picture. She looks so happy, frozen in a perfect two-dimensional wonderland where she is eternally young, smiling and pretty. “Why is her high school yearbook photo here? Why is any of this here?” Freya flips through the notebook; Valerie is not the only one pasted in its pages. Subsequent pages feature Valerie’s father, followed by a host of vaguely familiar faces all smiling, laughing, posing.
Most are not home photos or holiday snaps, but cut from magazines and newspapers. Together, they crowd in a jumbled collage of frozen felicity. As Freya looks closer, she notices that marked above each head is a roman numeral. Valerie, it seems, is number VII.
“Is that Sasha Fairlane?” asks Callum, pointing. Sasha is seated in a sultry pose, on a white throne, applying a stick of Crimson Infidelity to her lips. She is saturated with light and colour. XI is scrawled above her head.
Callum takes the book from her hands and flips through it. “Look at this, it’s an article on Wilson Davies, with the number IX. And this photo from Time magazine, Kyle Engels. He’s number X.”
“The toy company guy?” asks Freya.
Callum nods. “I don’t recognise these other people, but they look important. These photos are all clippings from the financial pages…they have the numbers I through V. Why is there a photo of a dead dove here?”
“Callum, Jack, look! Is that Maria?”
It’s an old photo. Faded. Crumpled. The face doesn’t yet tell the stories that Maria’s wrinkles did and this figure is slim. She looks different but the smile is unmistakable, as is the trademark twinkle in her eyes. Around her people are laughing and they are all posing under a sign, Corazón Del Sol.
“It’s a trophy collection…”
***
Harland has always loved the smell of money. From an early age he trained himself to distinguish between national currencies by their scent alone. Very handy in the dark. He particularly enjoys the scent of American greenbacks, printed on their flimsy paper, passed from the palms of lawyers to drug dealers to doctors to hot-dog vendors to waitresses to bank clerks to strippers to bus drivers. For Harland, American money retains the smell of these stories in a way Australia’s more sterile plastic currency can’t.
His mind is performing a series of complex calculations weighing up the pros and cons of alternative currencies as the home for the fortune his gormless daughter-in-law is about to bestow on him. Finland currently looks like a viable option, though he’s a little worried about the notes carrying the odour of herrings.
Numbers twist and turn and pirouette through his head as his mouth runs on autopilot with various “Mmm”s, “Yes, quite”s and “Oh, how funny”s. What eventually distracts him from his mental monetary masturbation is Rosaline. She approaches him at the head of her entourage of bridesmaids, exchanging laughs, hugs and kisses on cheeks. She is filled with the glow that various romantic poets he has never bothered to read are always blathering on about. She’s completely deranged, he doesn’t doubt that, but she looks so obscenely happy. Harland can only recall feeling so joyful once, but the origin of that moment of true happiness is currently in a vegetative state.
He looks square on at the pallid cretin he has been pretending to converse with and decides the charade is not worth the effort. “Listen, James, I’d rather lick a dog’s balls than hear the rest of your sentence, whatever it was.”
Harland waves James’ astonished face away and heads to Rosaline, who ensnares him in one of her freely given hugs. “Harland! Or should I say Dad?”
He extracts himself from her grasp, reaches into his jacket pocket for a cigar and a cutter, snips the end off and lights it. He takes the first puff and tries to avoid grimacing at the foul taste. “Rosaline? How do you do it?”
“Do what, Harland?”
“Be so goddamn happy all the time?” His voice sounds angrier than he means it to. It’s become his default setting these days.
Rosaline beams and takes him by the arm, leading him down to the banks of the river. She points to the other side where kids are playing frisbee. “See those little kids? Do they h
ave more knowledge than you, or less?”
“Less, of course.” Harland puffs at his eighty-dollar cigar and resists the urge to gag.
“Do they have more money than you, or less?”
“Less, obviously!”
“And happiness? Do you think they have more or less happiness than you?”
Harland puffs but says nothing.
“I’ve got to get back to the guests. Would you keep an eye on Elijah for me?” She leaves him at the riverbank, staring at the small children throwing a plastic disc back and forth. He feels deflated and angry.
Harland walks over to Elijah, still seated in his extravagant wheelchair, and smiles. The only source of happiness he’s ever had. He places a hand on his son’s shoulder, and wonders what Rosaline would say if she knew the truth about her new husband.
He notices a small pool of red running down his son’s shirtfront. Harland grabs desperately at Elijah in search of explanation. “Eli! Eli, what’s happened?!”
It takes him a moment to notice the guests closest to him are silent. None of them is panicking, calling ambulances or moving any part of their body except their eyes. All of them are focused not on Harland, nor Elijah, but on Harland’s head chief accountant, Ramsey. In Ramsey’s shaking hand is a freshly emptied wineglass, streaks of red creeping slowly down its edges.
“I…er…tripped and…I spilt my glass on…I can pay for the dry cleaning?”
The pathetic apology is ended by the sudden meeting of Harland’s fist with Ramsey’s chin, eliciting a fray of yelps and screams from the crowd.
Ramsey hits the ground and stares up at Harland. He raises his hands in an awkward flailing motion; not in any serious attempt at defence so much as because he believes this is the done thing in such a scenario. In the midst of the storm of pain that clouds his skull, he is for some reason keenly aware of the unusual hairiness of Harland’s knuckles as they slam repeatedly into his increasingly bloody face.
32
Grendel’s Mother
