Destination, Wedding!

by Xavier Mayne

  Donnelly managed a weak grin. “Well, that’s Ethan. The impossible doesn’t usually stand a chance against him.” He wished that bit of good news actually made him feel better.

  “I know it kind of sucks that he won’t be making the trip with you, but at least he’ll be there. You don’t have to worry about postponing your wedding.”

  Donnelly looked out the window at the city blurring past. “I know I should be happy, but the last twenty-four hours have kind of left me with whiplash. I’ve been looking forward to this day for weeks. It’s been the light at the end of the twisty tunnel this wedding has become, and all I wanted was to be on board with Ethan, sipping champagne as the Statue of Liberty wished us bon voyage.” He put his head in his hands. “Sorry I’m such a sap. An emotionally exhausted sap.”

  Sandler put his arm around him. “You have nothing to apologize for. You’ve been through a lot, and most people would have been reduced to curling up into a fetal position and moaning by this point. But you’re almost there. All we need to do is get you on that ship, and then it’s smooth sailing until you are reunited with Ethan. The hard part is over.”

  Donnelly lifted his head and fixed Sandler with a skeptical gaze. “You haven’t known me long enough to know this, but the hard part is never over, especially when it comes to Ethan and me ever finding our way down the aisle.” He managed a weak smile. “But thanks for the pep talk. I appreciate it.”

  “That’s the spirit. Now, just sit tight and we’ll get you on that boat.”

  As they snaked through traffic near the cruise terminal, Sandler’s phone rang. He pulled it from its clip on the strap of his messenger bag. “Sir?” he said without preamble. He listened, nodding slightly, as if being given a long and somewhat complex set of instructions. Finally, after several minutes of this, he said simply, “I understand.” He lowered the phone and clipped it back onto the strap.

  “That sounded official,” Donnelly said.

  Sandler chuckled and rolled his eyes. “You’re never going to believe this.”

  “Try me. And please, make it improbable. That’s the only kind of thing that happens to me or anyone around me anymore.”

  “That was my employer. They’ve been tracking my movements, and he wanted to let me know that they’re very impressed with how I’ve managed to get to New York when most of the transport options are completely seized up. I decided not to mention that it was all in the service of getting you to your wedding.”

  “Probably a prudent omission. So it was just a congratulatory call?”

  “Not exactly. He—”

  “Cruise terminal,” Yevgeny announced suddenly as the car lurched to a stop. He sprang out of the seat with startling speed for a man his size and pulled open the back door for the men to step out of the car. Then he was suddenly by their side, holding out their duffel bags to them.

  “Thank you, sir,” Sandler said.

  Yevgeny nodded. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No.” Sandler drew himself up to full height. “The Crown thanks you for your service.”

  Yevgeny nodded with great ceremony and had already begun to walk around the car to the driver’s side when Sandler called out to him.

  “And, Yevgeny?”

  He stopped and snapped to attention. “Yes?”

  “Give Alexei my best. I’d love to see that great apartment you two were working on so hard last time we had dinner.”

  A smile—something Donnelly had not been able to imagine even being compatible with Yevgeny’s face—opened, sparkling white. “Call when you come back in town. Stay with us couple of days.”

  “Finally get a guest bed set up?” Sandler asked teasingly.

  “No, still just one. But is big enough,” Yevgeny said with a wink. He got into the Mercedes and drove away.

  “See? Nice guy.” Sandler said to the stunned Donnelly. “Come on, we’d better get moving.”

  Donnelly shook his head to clear it of visions of what might happen in Yevgeny’s big bed and followed. “You were about to tell me what your employer said on the phone,” he said as he caught up with Sandler.

  “Right. Well, it looks like there’s a cruise in my future as well.”

  Donnelly shook his head, certain he had heard incorrectly. “What?”

  “He’s arranging for me to cross to England. Otherwise the pouch would have to wait for a week or more while the ash cloud clears.”

  “He can just do that?” Donnelly asked, amazed at the strings that kept getting pulled for Sandler. “How?”

  “See that flag?” he said, pointing at the red flag at the stern of the massive ship that lay before them at the dock. “That’s how. This ship is flagged in Bermuda, and you know who’s the head of state of Bermuda.”

  “So this is what it’s like to have the Queen of England in your corner. Wow.”

  “Well, that and the fact that with the disruption to the entire transport network, there are a lot of vacationers who aren’t going to make this sailing. So the United Nations is working to slot in diplomats who need to get home. The standby area in the cruise terminal is going to look like the lobby of the General Assembly.”

  They reached the doors to the large terminal building and stepped into yet another chaotic scene of disruption, delay, and distemper. Sure enough, there was a cordoned-off area on one side where a large group of men and women in serious suits were standing, looking very much out of place in a room full of tourists. Everyone in the cavernous hall seemed to be standing in a line, though none of the lines appeared to be moving or even pointing toward a discernible goal.

  “Wow. In all my years traveling, I’ve never gone by cruise ship. Now I can see why.”

  Donnelly scanned the cavernous space, then found what he was looking for. “Follow me,” he said and started off for the far corner of the terminal.

  “But I should probably go check in over at the standby pen with the ambassadors and all their sour-faced hangers-on, some of whom I’ll be bunking with for the next week. They’re, like, my people.” He stuck his tongue out and gave a queasy roll of the eyes in their direction.

  “No, you’re my people now,” Donnelly said. “I have a plan. Come on.”

  Sandler seemed genuinely startled, but he fell in step behind Donnelly as they slipped gracefully through the crowd.

  “Here we are,” Donnelly announced when they’d reached the front of the room. He pointed up at the sign that indicated they were in the reception area for passengers who had reserved (and paid dearly for) the largest suites on the ship. He walked to the counter and presented his passport to the smiling clerk.

  “Good morning, Mister”—she glanced at his documents—“Donnelly.” She began typing with elegant precision and consulted her computer monitor. “And Mr. Brandt, I presume?” she inquired, casting her beaming smile at Sandler.

  “Alas, as much as I’d like to be Mr. Brandt, I am instead Mr. Birkin.”

  “My fiancé,” Donnelly explained, “was trying to get here from the West Coast and was unable to. He’s going to meet the ship in Southampton. However, Mr. Birkin also needs to get to England, on a rather important matter, and I would be delighted to have him take Mr. Brandt’s place.”

  Sandler turned a surprised face to Donnelly, who simply motioned that he should hand over his identification. He did so, and the clerk seemed astonished to find herself holding a diplomatic passport.

  “Well, this is quite irregular,” she said slowly, looking at the extravagantly stamped passport. “We don’t really have a way to—”

  “I know it’s an unusual circumstance, but if you will allow me to make a quick phone call,” Sandler said, unclipping the phone from the strap of his messenger bag. He dialed and held the phone to his ear. “Sir? Yes, I’m at the desk in the ship terminal and…. Yes, sir, of course.” He held the phone out to the clerk.

  She looked at him in alarm but reached out hesitantly for the phone. Gingerly, as if expecting it to explode, she held it to he
r ear. “This is—”

  She fell silent. That seemed to happen whenever anyone spoke to Sandler’s boss, Donnelly noticed. She started nodding, just as Sandler had earlier. After a minute or two of this, she finally found her voice. “But sir, we would need some documentation of—”

  “Excuse me, Miss Prentiss, this is a matter of some urgency.” A tall man had appeared next to her, holding several sheets of paper in front of him.

  She set the phone down on the counter as if she’d been hung up on. “Yes, sir,” Miss Prentiss said absently, clearly overwhelmed.

  “You are to keep alert for a Mr. Sandler Birkin, who will present a diplomatic passport. He is to be granted passage with the highest priority.”

  “Yes, sir. This”—she pointed vaguely at Sandler—“is he… him. Mr. Sandler Birkin, I mean.”

  “Ah!” the man cried. “Excellent work as usual, Miss Prentiss. Now please complete the check-in so that Mr. Birkin and his guest may get underway.”

  “Actually, this is Mr. Gabriel Donnelly, and I am his guest,” Sandler said, smiling at Donnelly.

  “Very good, sir,” the man replied with an obsequious smile that quite nearly obscured an appreciative flicker of his eyelids as he appraised the two men and perhaps speculated on the nature of their relationship. “I leave you in Miss Prentiss’s capable hands, and I trust you shall have a delightful crossing.”

  The two men filled out several forms, had their pictures taken, and were issued their boarding packets in soft leather portfolios. Then Miss Prentiss personally escorted them to a lounge area that was as far removed from the hue and cry of the general boarding terminal as could be imagined. There were only a dozen or so other passengers present, not one of whom seemed to be under the age of seventy. They found a pair of chairs next to a small table in the corner of the room beside a window overlooking the pier; the ship, from this vantage, was simply a vast black wall.

  “May I offer you gentlemen a cup of tea?” asked a tuxedoed waiter bearing a gleaming silver pot.

  “That would be lovely,” Sandler said.

  “I don’t suppose you have… coffee?” Donnelly asked.

  “But of course, sir,” the waiter said. With a flickering glance across the room, he summoned two more waiters who walked briskly over, one bearing a coffeepot and the other bringing a tray laden with cups, little pitchers and bowls, and a plate of sandwiches cut into triangles with anal-retentive precision.

  There was a discreet flurry of activity, and in under a minute Donnelly was sipping a very fine cup of coffee indeed. “Ah, that’s the stuff,” he groaned as the first caffeine of the day entered his deprived system.

  Sandler lifted his steaming cup with its delicate saucer and sipped cautiously.

  “Too hot?” Donnelly asked.

  Sandler swallowed and set the cup back on its saucer with a smile. “No, it’s perfect. It’s just that the tea they make for the household staff at the palace has spoiled me. I never drank much tea before, but there’s just something about the way they do it there.” He sipped again. “I’m sorry, that sounded arrogant and awful.”

  “Not at all. I love hearing about your travels and experiences. My only brush with the glamorous elite was being thrown up on by the lieutenant governor at a wedding reception. That’s not a story I tell much, for obvious reasons. Yours are so much better.”

  Sandler smiled and looked around the room. “So, it seems as though the experience of crossing the Atlantic on a ship hasn’t changed much since the Titanic. The great unwashed masses mill about like cattle, and the smart set sip tea and talk about the Queen.”

  “So it would seem. This is the first time I’ve done this, and almost certainly the last. I have some idea how much this trip must have cost, and it’s easily more than I’ve spent on every vacation I’ve ever taken, combined.”

  “Then we must be sure to enjoy it,” Sandler said with a chuckle. He picked up one of the precious sandwiches and popped it into his mouth. “Oh, dude, you have to.” He held the plate over to Donnelly. “They killed it with the egg and cress. Just fucking crushed it.”

  Donnelly’s laughter drew more than one stern look from the other passengers. He stifled it as soon as he saw their reaction but still smiled broadly. “Let’s be sure to let the waiter know that they ‘fucking crushed it,’ okay? They probably don’t hear that very often.”

  “You kidding me? That one, over there,” Sandler said, tipping his head toward a stately woman who had to be ninety, and who regarded the room from the needly tip of her Edwardian nose. “She probably drops the f-bomb on the regular. ‘Jeeves, bring me the fucking newspaper, and a fucking crumpet while you’re at it, you old poofter!’” he said in the arch tones of congenital nobility.

  Donnelly dissolved into helpless laughter while struggling desperately to stifle any sign that he was laughing. When the waiter returned with the coffeepot, he asked if he could be of any further assistance.

  “No, I’m just fine,” Donnelly replied, lifting the freshly filled coffee cup toward the waiter in gratitude for its replenishment.

  Sandler watched him glide away. “Poor guy thought he’d have to run and fetch the defibrillator. I imagine that happens daily with this crowd.”

  “Now behave,” Donnelly scolded with good cheer. “We’ll probably be seated next to her at dinner.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t ask her to pass the fucking salt,” Sandler said solemnly, holding his fingers aloft as if swearing to try his very best.

  “That’s better,” Donnelly replied with a grin. He slugged back his coffee in a gulp, and then it struck him. Out of all of the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, this was the first normal thing he’d done: drinking coffee and laughing.

  “What’s wrong?” Sandler asked suddenly, setting his cup onto its saucer with a clatter and leaning toward Donnelly.

  “Nothing,” Donnelly replied, not even convincing himself. “I just… forgot. Just for a minute, I let myself forget.”

  “Forget what?” Sandler’s voice was full of concern.

  “That he’s not here. That I’m about to take this trip of a lifetime alone.”

  Sandler nodded. It was clear from his face that he knew a thing or two about going it alone. “I know it’s hard. But he pulled off a miracle getting to Madrid, and you’ll be together soon. The best thing you can do is to try and salvage what you can from this situation. You are about to embark on an amazing journey, and he would want you to enjoy it, wouldn’t he?”

  Donnelly smiled sadly for a long moment, then nodded.

  “And you aren’t alone.” Sandler said this in a low voice, and put his hand on Donnelly’s knee.

  Donnelly put his hand on Sandler’s and nodded. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near here without your help.”

  “And I wouldn’t be on my way in the lap of luxury without you, so that makes us even. Now, the least we can do is use the sacks of cash that your friend blew on this trip to some good purpose and enjoy it a little, right?”

  “You’re right, of course. I just miss Ethan so much. This will be the longest we’ll have spent apart in… well, since we first met.”

  “I can hardly wait to meet the man you love so much.”

  “That’s a very sweet thing to say. I’m sure he’ll be happy to meet the person who made it possible for me to get there at all.”

  “Good. Now, let’s snarf these sandwiches. I saw some cake being passed around over there.”

  Donnelly nodded grandly. “I say, I believe I’ll have some of the fucking cake.”

  It was Sandler’s turn to dissolve into laughter.

  Meanwhile, back at home

  “THEY SAY the air, it is full of ass?” Nestor asked, his expression puzzled. Intrigued, but puzzled.

  “Not ass, ash,” Bryce replied, stabbing at the news reports on his phone with increasing alarm. “An obstreperous volcano, of all things, is attempting to derail our dear troopers’ impending nuptials.”

  Ne
stor stared blankly, then shrugged helplessly.

  “This bitch of a mountain in Iceland,” Bryce said, turning his phone for Nestor to see, “has decided out of pure spite to blow up, and the ash in the air means we cannot fly to the wedding tomorrow.” Bryce had invited himself and Nestor to come nearly two weeks early, just to see to details. Of this particular manifestation of his dedication to service, the troopers were, as of this moment, unaware.

  Nestor again shrugged, holding his palms outstretched in a gesture of accepting what one cannot change.

  Bryce gave a mighty—yet piercing—harrumph. “This is what holds your people back,” he snapped. “A dictator starves the entire island for decades, and….” He held his hands out just as Nestor had done and gave a surrendering shrug. “The entire world gives up on both communism and the Catholic church, but”—he shrugged again—“you manage somehow to hang on to them. And now in the face of the worst thing to happen to a wedding since heterosexuality?” He shrugged a third time, arms stretched to heaven. “It’s almost as though you would prefer to yield quietly to whatever the world throws at you, like Buddhists contemplating a river, or the French army hearing gunfire.”

  “But, my love, it is a volcano. There is nothing we can do—”

  “Nestor, I will not have that flaccid attitude in this house. In this—as in all adversity—I prefer to think there is never nothing we cannot keep from not doing.”

  Nestor’s eyes crossed a bit.

  “I will not stand idly by while some ‘natural disaster,’ as the alarmists on the news are calling it, keeps me from getting to that wedding. Our dear boys need us, darling. How else are they going to get down the aisle with the pleats of their kilts perfectly pressed? I will not have them mussed as they say their vows. Even if I have to reach under there and straighten things out myself.”

  Nestor nodded gravely. “Is a skirt, with something… extra.”