My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

by L. A. Banks

  "I'd be mighty pleased with your company Yummy—oh, sorry."

  "You can call me Yummy Cat. If anyone else does, I'll bust 'em."

  "Well, that's all right, then. There's just one more thing, an' it's been on my mind all evenin', but. . ."

  She didn't have to read his vibe to have seen that in his blue, blue eyes. She tossed her soda can away, grabbed the black leather lapels of his jacket, and pulled him toward her.

  Oh. My. God.

  Rick Cooper or Elvis, it didn't matter; he, they, whoever, was a world-class kisser. He knew exactly what to do and how much to do it and the breath went right out of her for a third time that night, and it felt great.

  Better than great.

  Oh yeah, baby ... he had her all shook up.

  * * *

  P. N. ELROD is best known for The Vampire Files, featuring her wise­cracking undead gunshoe, jack Fleming. She's written over twenty novels and twenty short stories in the paranormal genre, edited sev­eral collections, and branched into fantasy and mystery. You can check out all her projects at www.vampwriter.com. Yes, she really does love Elvis, huh-huh-huh!

  The Wedding of Wylda Serene

  Esther M. Friesner

  It has been said that God makes marriages, but the Devil plans weddings. I know this has been said, because I said it. I coined the aforementioned bon mot upon the occasion of my elder sister's third wedding of a career-best total of six. The nup­tial rut that dear Katherine wore into the aisle of St. George's Angli­can is one reason for my own continued bachelorhood. If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat.

  One would presume that when a woman has gone through the same ceremony so many times (not counting an ill-considered elope­ment with one of the pool boys during her fourth honeymoon on Maui), the mechanics of a wedding, if not the subsequent marriage, would go more smoothly as experience was garnered along the way.

  Ah, but when has logic ever refused to defer to human stupidity? Our dear Katherine somehow managed to turn each wedding into an even greater display of obsessive perfectionism, spectacular tantrums, and alienated bridesmaids. By the time she embarked upon Marriage VI she hadn't a female friend left with whom she was on speaking terms, let alone one who would be willing to stand up for her in a cloud of mint green tulle at the altar of St. George's.

  Thus my sister made a virtue of Necessity and struck up an in­stantaneous friendship with one Nora Scruggs. La Scruggs was a part-time employee at the florist's shop that had provided Katherine with so many wedding bouquets, boutonnieres, pew decorations, al­tar flowers, and table centerpieces that the proprietor had to be forcibly restrained from falling to his knees and covering my sister's hands with kisses every time they met.

  Miss Scruggs was an attractive, well-meaning young woman of gentle mien and biddable disposition. She seemed to have about as much self-determination as a tablespoon of tomato aspic. When, within the space of twenty minutes, my sister took their conversation from, "I'm getting married in May," to, "Your bridesmaid dress fit­ting will be this Saturday at ten A.M.. I'll pay for it, of course," the poor girl was thrilled.

  Katherine's sixth wedding proved to be an historic occasion for many reasons, not the least of which being that it was her last. Ap­parently her latest husband, Bryce Calhoun III, took exception to a torrid Internet romance that Katherine initiated in a cybercafe on St. Bart's during their first Christmas together. As they flew home to­gether in one of Bryce's smaller private planes, they had a dreadful falling-out about it. For my sister, the falling-out was quite literal, helped along by a hearty push from her exasperated spouse. By a re­markable stroke of luck, Bryce was both defended (well) and prose­cuted (weakly) by two of Katherine's former husbands, although I hope for our family's sake that there is little or no truth to the rumor that my late sister also had dated nine out of the twelve jurors.

  Katherine's hymeneal excesses aside, her final wedding was also significant in that it provided her makeshift bridesmaid, the bewitch-ingly blue-collar Miss Scruggs, with unexpected entree to the higher strata of Society. It happened at the reception, which of course took place at The Club. It was there, in an earthly paradise of scrupulously groomed lawns, tastefully decorated function rooms, and perfectly chilled champagne, that the winsome florist's assistant made the acquaintance of young Frederick Austin-Cowles. The rest was history, as written by Cinderella.

  Frederick came from an American lineage so old, rich, and re­spectable that defending its age, wealth, and honor was his parents' sole preoccupation. The burden of nigh four hundred years of an­cestral obligation had made them into blue-blooded martinets of the first order, intent on raising their only child to be nothing more than top-grade mulch for the family tree. The lad spent the first twenty-five years of his life firmly compressed beneath their totali­tarian thumbs. Each aspect of his existence—eating, sleeping, clothing, schooling, playing, and more—was regimented with a strictness to make the ancient Spartans look like fifth-string yoga instructors.

  No one but a confirmed masochist or a member of Yale's Skull and Bones club would doubt for an instant how deeply Frederick abhorred his micromanaged childhood and the parents who had en­gineered it. At the age of five he resolved to find some way to put their patrician noses well and truly out of joint the moment that he came into full possession of the trust fund his grandfather had left him. Wisely averse to any act that would mortify his parents but harm himself in the process, Frederick could not take any of the more conventional paths to rebellion, such as substance abuse, sexual excess, decorating his skin with blobs of ink and globs of metal, or mail-ordering a ready-made polyester men's suit from Montgomery Ward. He was at what passed for his wit's end when he met Miss Scruggs and the angels sang.

  They sang something by Patsy Cline, to be sure, something so down-home, simple, honest, and salt-of-the-earth as could not fail to send Frederick's parents into fits. Oh, how that thought left him gloating! Moreover, Miss Scruggs herself was so sweet, meek, and pleasing to the eye that it would be no great hardship for him to em­ploy her as his bedmate as well as his implement of vengeance. He put the astonished girl through a whirlwind courtship, a hasty wedding flight to Las Vegas, and got her in the family way before my sis­ter Katherine and Bryce came back from their honeymoon.

  Alas for Frederick, he did not live to relish the fruits of his filial re­taliation. He left his pregnant bride in their Central Park West pied-a-terre and was driving hell-for-finest-New-Zealand-lambskin-leather to Connecticut, to drop the proverbial bombshell on his parents, when his Mercedes lost an argument with a lawn furniture delivery truck somewhere east of Greenwich. Hilliard and Margot Austin-Cowles learned that they were childless, in-laws, and incipient grandparents at almost the same time that poor Nora found out she was a widow.

  Of course The Club was soon buzzing with the details of what followed, to no one's surprise. The Club is a veritable beehive for ru­mor. My sister's last wedding, Frederick's ill-motivated pursuit of the unsuspecting Miss Scruggs, the new widow's genuine agony at the loss of her beloved young husband, all these juicy morsels of gos­sip quickly shriveled to mere dessicated jerky-bits of tittle-tattle on that crisp October evening when Preston Bedford came rushing into the bar and breathlessly announced:

  "They've taken her in!"

  And so they had, they being Frederick's parents and she being their pregnant daughter-in-law. This news was startling enough to anyone who knew the Austin-Cowleses' stringent outlook as to who was and was not socially acceptable. (They regarded the Pilgrim Fa­thers as pushy immigrants, the Johnny-Alden-come-lately embodi­ment of all that was dragging America down into the populist mire.) But this was as nothing when compared to what followed, namely, the intense, immediate, and profound change we all observed in Margot and Hilliard the moment that little Wylda Serene was born.

  She was a lovely child, for someone who had begun her existence as a means of petty payback. Her mother's reliable bread-an
d-butter comeliness had given a much-needed anchor to Wylda's father's frailer caviar-and-cabernet attractions. Her infant prettiness was but a faint harbinger of the glorious beauty she grew to be. Fiery red-gold hair, luminous skin, and eyes the color of newly unfurled leaves adorned a lithe and vibrant body of unquestionable appeal. She car­ried herself with the poise and elegance of a young gazelle, and her curves put the corniche at Monte Carlo to shame.

  Her besotted grandparents gave her everything. Unlike their be­havior toward their late son, every benefit they conferred upon his posthumous child was innocent of any agenda save her happiness. When she became an articulate being, she had but to voice a wish, however fanciful, and all the social and financial clout of the Austin-Cowles family would be brought into play for the sole purpose of fulfilling that desire.

  Overindulgence of the young is a perilous thing. Children spoil more readily than oysters in July. Her grandparents' inexhaustible worship might have caused little Wylda's life to go very bad very quickly if she had entertained any unsuitable desires, but she had none, none! She accepted all the gifts and benefits with which her adoring grandparents showered her, doing so with a quiet gracious-ness fit to make the Queen of England look like a mule skinner by comparison, yet not one of these was ever her idea. She requested nothing.

  Shame on that jaded soul who would leap to the cynical conclu­sion that Wylda's behavior was sly in the extreme, that she was mis­tress of the ancient art of acquisition through the Request Indirect. It was not so. She never dropped a hint, never sighed over high-ticket gewgaws, never wondered aloud how much was that doggie, dress, or Daimler in the window. She never so much as wrote a letter to Santa Claus.

  If it is truly more blessed to give than to receive, young Wylda was sanctified in spades. Her grandparents gave her worldly gifts, but she gave them something infinitely more precious: the sincere, bone-deep docility that her father had died withholding. She had not a single rebellious bone in her body, neither mutinous heart nor insub­ordinate mind.

  In this she took after her mother. The Austin-Cowles manner of living was quite literally stunning to a woman of the former Miss Scruggs's social class. In the twenty-three years between Wylda's birth and wedding, the erstwhile florist's assistant dwelled in nigh-nunlike self-effacement in the shadow of her dynamic in-laws. Apart from the occasional command appearance at family functions, one would hardly guess she was there. This suited all parties concerned admirably.

  I was in The Club bar discussing the finer points of bespoke golf balls with ten of my fellow members on that February day when Hilliard Austin-Cowles made the grand announcement. He drifted into our midst like a curl of bourbon-laced tobacco smoke, beck­oned the barman, conveyed his desires in a whisper, then sat down in the leather armchair most removed from the rest of us. Within mo­ments we knew that something was afoot, for through the bar­tender's particular sort of magic, there now appeared at our several elbows bottles of a buxom Veuve Clicquot champagne, served up in The Club's best crystal flutes.

  We maintained the silence proper to the occasion. When a gentle­man sets drink of such quality before so many, it would be uncivil to rush him into an explanation. However, etiquette did not forbid us from sampling that effervescent nectar, and so we sipped and waited, waited and sipped. We knew that Hilliard was acutely aware of our painful curiosity and that, being human, he relished our mounting discomfort even more than we savored his champagne.

  At last he spoke: "My friends, thank you for joining me in a mod­est drink. It's not every day that one's only grandchild becomes en­gaged to be married."

  A politely muted clamor of congratulation went up from all our vintage-moistened lips. Bit by bit, we teased further details out of Hilliard's rock-ribbed old Yankee reticence. The name of the prospective bridegroom—one Miles Martial—was universally unfa­miliar and, once uttered, required a fair portion of explication.

  "Do you know, it was the strangest thing," Hilliard said. "At first our Wylda was abnormally secretive when Margot and I asked her how she met the gentleman. When we pressed her—we do have the right to know everything about our grandchild's life—she became vague."

  "Good heavens!" cried Middleton. He was not quite our Oldest Member, but well enough advanced in years. "Was there something unsavory in the man's background, or was some aspect of their in­troduction . . . improper? Hilliard, I'm astonished that you'd give your blessing to any of this."

  A brief frown flittered across Hilliard's patrician features. "And I am astonished at your level of self-deception. Really, Cadby"—long acquaintance permitted him the employment of Middleton's Chris­tian name—"your attraction to my granddaughter is common knowledge, as ill considered as it's ill concealed."

  Middleton blushed and sputtered. "I resent your allegations deeply, Hilliard," he said. "Of course I'm fond of the child. I'm only concerned about her future happiness. If the circumstances sur­rounding her introduction to the man she intends to marry"—here he could not prevent his voice from breaking just a bit—"are so ir­regular that she withholds them even from you, perhaps you should stop this from going any farther. Purely for Wylda's sake, of course. She's young. With matters of the heart, the young tend to get. . . ideas, frivolous ones. In the long run, she'd benefit from the guidance of older, wiser heads."

  "Tchah!" Thus Hilliard dismissed Middleton's clumsily veiled agenda. "My granddaughter hasn't had a frivolous idea in her life. As it happened, they met at a dog show last May. Martial's pedigreed mastiff, Champion Caesar Alexander's Philippi of Austerlitz-Manassas, took Best in Class. Her little school chum, Solana Winthrop, intro­duced her to Martial when Wylda remarked how much she would like to have a closer look at the winning canine. From that most proper introduction, mutual affection bloomed."

  "Solana Winthrop ..." I mused aloud upon the name. "How could she have been in attendance at a dog show last May? We were told that she would be studying art history in Paris from April through December."

  "Er, yes," said Elwood Porter, who had married Solana's elder sis­ter Meredith. "It turned out that her need to study art history was a false alarm."

  "So you see, Wylda's reticence was motivated by discretion, not deception," Hilliard added. "Until Solana's family might find a tact­ful way to announce her reappearance in Society, Wylda chose to shield her friend. Once there was no further need for confidentiality, she was suitably frank with her grandmother and me. Of course we also made our own inquiries. Miles Martial's bona fides are impecca­ble. He comes from an ancient family with unimpeachable connec­tions in the worlds of finance, industry, and politics. The bulk of his fortune is derived from munitions, with prudent diversification in aviation technology, shipbuilding, and applied biochemical research."

  "In other words, he's worth a mint," Hasbrook whispered in my ear. "And likely to stay so. You don't go broke catering wars."

  "Have the happy couple set a date for the wedding?" Porter asked our host.

  "As a matter of fact, our Wylda has decided on a June wedding."

  Here Hilliard spared a moment to glare at us en masse, in case anyone would have the supremely bad taste to begin counting the months between now and June. A natural but unnecessary reaction on the part of that devoted grandparent: We had no need to resort to spiteful calculations in order to conclude that the girl was quite out of the family way. This was February. If Wylda had been in a condi­tion delicate enough to oblige either marriage or the abrupt study of art history, a June wedding would display her indiscretion for all the world to see, even if she glided down the aisle in an oversized Empire-waisted bridal gown.

  "Well, well, a June wedding!" Middleton affected a cheery air that fooled no one. "How nice to see that there are still some young people who value tradition. And where will the event take place?"

  "Why, right here, of course," said Hilliard. "At The Club."

  Elwood Porter gave a little cry of distress and dropped his cham­pagne.

  It was about a month later, as
the caterer flies, that I was approached by Porter and Middleton on a matter of some delicacy. Rather than discuss the matter over drinks at The Club, they instead invited me to join them in New Haven for a private dinner at Morey's. There they laid matters on the table.

  "You must speak with Hilliard," Middleton said. "You must make him see that what Wylda has in mind is out of the question. There must not be a wedding at The Club."

  "Who knows what will happen if there is?" Porter shuddered and darted his eyes to left and right, as though the physical embodiment of Dire Consequences somehow had managed to procure a neigh­boring table. (An impossibility, of course: Access to Morey's is re­served for carefully selected Yale men and—reluctantly I concede it—women. Dire Consequences and the Ivy League simply do not mix socially.)

  "My friends," I said, "I understand your trepidation. I, too, feel somewhat less than sanguine at the prospect of such an event taking place at The Club, and with good cause: I have been a member since well before that dreadful day when Simpson turned our world upon its head."

  "Ah yes," said Middleton, who had been a member of The Club for even longer than I. "Simpson." He pronounced the ill-starred name with the same intonation that medieval folk might have re­served for remarking, Ah yes, the Black Death.

  To understand the enormity of harm that Simpson perpetrated upon The Club, it is best if first you comprehend The Club itself and all that it entails. Set amid the greenest of PGA-worthy golf courses, it is a monument to exquisite sophistication and understated luxury. It is blessed with a dining room whose innumerable perfections of cuisine send the most fastidious gourmets into gales of frustrated tears when they find absolutely nothing about which to complain. The wine cellar and the bar are stocked and tended by men who are more like high priests in the Holy Brotherhood of Grape and Grain rather than mere names on The Club payroll.