“No.” I dropped it on the table. “I want to dance with the bride.”
Melanie met me halfway across the dance floor. She was sparkling white and beautiful in the way only brides can be. She had her wedding gown held up in both hands and I could see by the bare feet poking out from under it that she’d kicked off her shoes.
“Sure this is a good idea? I’m liable to step on your toes.”
Mel just smiled and put herself in my hands. I gave her a lively spin while flashbulbs popped, and the heady scent of summer trees and greenery filled me.
“Garv!” Otto grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the bride. “To come!”
I heard someone hitting a glass with silverware, and Angie was suddenly on my other arm.
“Nicholas wants to make a presentation,” she said, and I detected a bit of an impish twinkle to her eye.
The crowd parted as we approached a table next to the bar where Nicholas was standing. A cardboard box was at his feet, and Dottie stood next to it, fidgeting excitedly.
Nicholas raised a glass, and those assembled who weren’t holding me in place (or was I holding them up?) raised their glasses.
“To my brother, Garth, my best man today and every day, and to my growing family…”
Maybe it was the scotch he’d been drinking, but for once he looked sincere. Mel trotted up next to him, kneeling down to the box.
“…a family which is about to get just a little bigger.”
I saw Melanie take something nondescript from the box and put it in her daughter’s arms.
Dottie enveloped it, being careful not to let it go, and approached me.
I knelt down, and Dottie opened her arms.
The sight of it gave me a start—I thought it was a puppet or something, and I have mixed feelings about puppets. My reaction prompted Dottie to squeal:
“It’s a puppy!”
“Awww…” Angie sighed, beginning to emotionally liquefy at my side.
“Eetz very much lookink…Nice doggie, eh?” Otto began to sing:
“What is price this doggie from shop window? (arf! arf!)”
As I gazed down at the squirming ball of black and white fuzz in her arms, with its button eyes, pink tongue, and round belly, I was taken with the fullness of the moment, of being presented with something newly alive, innocent, and full of potential. This animal had no past, only a future.
“Such doggie it is swims with tail.”
The night was filled with warmth, with laughter. The twinkling lights seemed like stars of promise, of all the good stuff there is in life. Family, friends, love. And a drunk little Russian barking like a Pekinese.
“What is price this doggie from shop window? (arf! arf!)”
Like my father, I wanted no part in a haunted past of spirits and death—look what that did to my grandfather and uncle. And to those three idiots in the Pixie dry-cleaning van. I knew then that there was no vuka in me, that such hokum was the only thing that had ever possessed me. That and a fear of my own past.
“Tell to me shopkeeper—is dog on sale?”
I never did read that stupid document.
And the wedding was the last time I saw Gabby.
About the Author
Brian M. Wiprud is a New York City author and outdoor writer for fly-fishing magazines. He won the 2002 Lefty Award for Most Humorous Crime Novel, was a 2003 Barry Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original, had a 2004 Independent Mystery Booksellers Association bestseller and a 2005 Seattle Times bestseller. Information on his tours and appearances can be found at his website www.wiprud.com.
Also by Brian M. Wiprud
PIPSQUEAK
STUFFED
CROOKED
SLEEP WITH THE FISHES
TAILED
A Dell Book / June 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Brian M. Wiprud
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Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33695-2
v3.0
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