The Betrothal: Or How I Saved Alan Edwards from 40 Years of Hell by Richard Raley

Author:Richard Raley [Raley, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-04-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18- The Rehearsal Dinner[213]

How bad was it?

We hosed Emily off and toweled her down . . . like five times.

It was that bad.

Her clothes were completely ruined, sunglasses and earrings as well, her engagement ring would need a dip in some serious disinfectant with high honors at odorizing, and all that saved chunks of her hair from being cut away was a special zookeeper shampoo.

I’d expected anger, fury, or some such usual Emily tantrum, but instead all we got was a silent numbness from her. It almost made me feel cruel for the joy I got from the whole situation, but only almost. My nethers couldn’t help but send ‘hey remember what happened to me?’ messages and that successfully clamped pity from emerging.

For obvious puritanical reasons us males weren’t allowed in the shower stalls, instead the three of us were ordered by Sam to raid the gift shop for clothes. The zoo staff was also nice enough to have everything we picked up for her be on the house, mostly because they didn’t want the video they knew we had to appear on YaPipe.

After she was cleaned off, we donned her silent, staring-into-space form in a Hogle Zoo t-shirt, Hogle Zoo sweatpants, a Hogle Zoo baseball cap to hide her frizzed out hair, and a Hogle Zoo penguin—Alan glared at me when I suggested we buy the hippo version—car deodorant around her neck because she still stank like a pile of . . . lemon-scented hippo crap.

We packed up into the Tank, Emily in the back row by herself because even sisterly affection or Hannah’s kind personality didn’t go that far, before heading back to the mansion. We were about halfway there when we collectively realized 95% of Emily’s family would be at the mansion when we pulled up, watching as the Hogle Zoo Doll stepped out of the Tank. I remember the exact moment because Sam giggled when it happened.

It wasn’t until we actually hit the mansion’s long driveway that we realized we were going to need some kind of distraction, Emily breaking her silence with a sudden statement of, “I’m not going out there!”

“You’re going to have to eventually,” Sam pointed out the obvious.

“I bet you just love this, you horrible—”

“Hey!” Hannah yelled. “Time out. Calm down. Yelling never helps anyone.”

“I can’t go out there!” Emily said again, ignoring Sam. “Not like this . . .” She actually looked like she might cry. It was pretty pitiful. The whole situation was like feeling bad for Stalin.

We parked in a now rather full parking lot. Across the way, by the pool, there was a mass of bodies that had yet to notice us. Tad saw it too. “We need a plan,” he declared. “We need to do something. Doing is good.”

I couldn’t help myself. “We’ll do what we do every night, Tad, we’ll take over—”

“This isn’t funny, you bleep! That’s my family out there!” Emily screeched, the pretty pitifulness wearing off pretty quick.

“Listen, Em,” Hannah tried again, “We’ll

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