Insane City

by Dave Barry

  17

  The wedding rehearsal was held on the putting-green-perfect lawn behind the Ritz, overlooking the ocean; this was where the ceremony would take place the next day, in the Wedding Gazebo, currently being decorated for the occasion by workers.

  In charge of the rehearsal was the wedding planner, Blaze Gear, a tall, thin woman with short-cropped black hair who, when she woke up in the morning, inserted her Bluetooth earpiece even before she went to the bathroom. She was dressed completely in black, as were her two assistants, Traci and Tracee.

  Blaze, clipboard in hand, was explaining the wedding procession.

  “All of you will be starting out from inside the hotel, except our officiant,” she said. “Where is our officiant, Mr. . . .” She looked at her clipboard. “Mr. Dazu?”

  A short, balding man with an unkempt gray beard stepped forward. He was wearing sandals and a white robe with a suit jacket over it. “I am Banzan Dazu,” he said. He had been born Norman Cochran, in Avalon, New Jersey, and had worked as a record promoter in Philadelphia in the seventies before he discovered how much easier it was to get laid if you were a holy man.

  “And how shall I address you?” Blaze Gear asked Dazu.

  “You may call me Your Holiness,” said Dazu. He smiled at Blaze with an expression reflecting wisdom and deep inner tranquility. He practiced in the mirror.

  Tina’s parents had not been happy about having Dazu do the ceremony. They wanted an Episcopalian priest, because they belonged to an Episcopal church, which they attended faithfully every other Christmas. But in this matter, as in virtually every matter involving the wedding, Tina got what she wanted, and she wanted Banzan Dazu, whom she regarded as her spiritual mentor.

  She had met Dazu at a lecture by the Dalai Lama, whom Tina regarded as the wisest person alive. After she and Seth got serious, she’d taken him to a Dalai Lama lecture in Switzerland. Seth had not been impressed. As far as he could tell, the Dalai Lama message boiled down to: Be nice. This didn’t strike Seth as particularly profound. It was pretty much the same lesson he’d been taught by his preschool teacher, Mrs. Wheatley, the difference being that people didn’t fly around the world and pay big bucks to hear Mrs. Wheatley say it.

  Of course Seth didn’t express this view to Tina. Nor did he object when Tina declared that she wanted their wedding ceremony to be performed by Banzan Dazu, although Seth thought he was kind of creepy, always looking up Tina’s skirt during their premarital counseling sessions.

  “All right, Your Holiness,” said Blaze Gear. “At the start of the ceremony, you’ll be positioned on the Wedding Gazebo, facing the procession. Now I need my groom and his parents.”

  Seth shepherded Rose and Sid forward.

  “There you are!” said Blaze. She extended her hand to Rose. “You must be Seth’s mother. I’m Blaze Gear.”

  “Blaze what?”

  “Gear.”

  “That’s your name?” said Rose.

  “That’s my legal name, yes. I originally—”

  “Who’s she?” said Sid.

  “She says her name is Blaze Gear,” said Rose.

  “That’s her name?”

  “I just want you to know,” said Blaze, soldiering on, “that my job is to make this wonderful occasion as enjoyable for you as possible, so if there’s anything you need, anything at all, just let me know, OK?”

  “I could use a glass of water,” said Sid.

  “Certainly,” said Blaze, signaling. “Tracee, would you—”

  “He doesn’t need it,” said Rose.

  “OK!” said Blaze, waving Tracee off and turning away to avoid any further interaction with Rose and Sid. “Now, where’s my maid of honor?”

  She got them lined up in processional order. Behind Seth and his parents were the groomsmen—Kevin, Big Steve and Tina’s brother, Eric. They were paired up with Tina’s bridesmaids, all old friends of Tina’s, all bombshells. Behind them were Meghan, the maid of honor; and Marty, the best man.

  Kevin was paired with Tina’s Harvard roommate, a blonde named Kirsten. In heels, she was a good three inches taller than Kevin, a fact that did not deter him in the least.

  “It looks as though we’ll be spending some time together,” he said. “My name’s Kevin. And you are . . .”

  “. . . well aware of your reputation,” said Kirsten.

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” said Kevin, raising his hands. “What’ve you heard about me?”

  “That you’re married, for one,” said Kirsten. “Also that you’ll try to stick your dick into pretty much any warm orifice.”

  “Not true!” objected Marty, listening from behind them. “It doesn’t have to be warm.”

  “Anyway,” said Kirsten, shaking Kevin’s hand formally, “I’m Kirsten. And please don’t take this the wrong way, but the total amount of time we’ll be spending together is however long it takes to get up and down the aisle, OK?”

  “We’ll start there,” said Kevin, holding on to her hand, “and see what develops. By the way, you have fantastic skin.”

  “Wow,” said Kirsten, pulling her hand away.

  Behind Marty and Meghan were Tina and her parents, dressed elegantly for dinner. Mike and Marcia did not look pleased about the attire of the groom and his groomsmen, but they didn’t say anything.

  Behind the Clarks, standing a few yards apart from the group and looking bored yet observant, were Mike’s two massive bodyguards, Ron Brewer and Paul Castronovo, wearing khaki slacks, polo shirts and navy blue sport jackets. Brewer and Castronovo were former New York City Police detectives, veteran partners who had left the force under the cloud of an Internal Affairs investigation arising from the unusual number of cases wherein suspects whom they were about to apprehend elected instead—according to Brewer and Castronovo’s official reports—to leap voluntarily to their deaths from the roofs of tall buildings. This had happened often enough that the other detectives had—not without a certain amount of respect—nicknamed Brewer and Castronovo the Tinker Bells, in recognition of the magical power they had to enable people to fly, at least for brief periods.

  The Tinker Bells liked working for Mike Clark. He paid a lot better than the NYPD and he wasn’t picky about how they handled problems as long as it stayed out of the news. In fact, Brewer and Castronovo got the impression that Mike had hired them specifically because of their reputation. He seemed to enjoy it when they got physical with people who dared to approach him in public or simply happened to be in his way.

  With the wedding party lined up in processional order, Blaze Gear led everyone across the lawn to the Wedding Gazebo, which overlooked the section of beach where Seth had pulled Laurette and her children out of the waves. The beach was dotted with groups of sunbathers, kids shouting, random music coming from various devices. Motorboats cruised past offshore; closer to the beach, two young men on Jet Skis chased each other in ever-tightening circles, jumping each other’s wakes.

  Blaze gathered the wedding party around her and began going over the timetable for the ceremony. The Jet Skis got closer, engines snarling.

  “I can’t hear a thing,” Rose announced.

  “What?” said Sid.

  “I SAID I CAN’T HEAR A THING!”

  “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” said Sid.

  The truth was, at that point, nobody could hear much over the din of the Jet Skis.

  “Maybe we should do this inside,” said Seth.

  “What if they’re here tomorrow?” said Tina. “They’ll ruin the wedding.”

  “No they won’t,” said Mike. He walked over and said something to Brewer and Castronovo, nodding toward the Jet Skiers. Immediately the two big men started lumbering toward the wooden walkway to the beach.

  “What’re they gonna do?” said Kevin. “Swim out there and punch them?”

  As the wedding party watched from the gazebo, the Tinker Bells crossed the beach, stopping at the water’s edge. Brewer waved an arm over his head, getting the attention of the Jet Skiers, who were n
ow about twenty yards offshore. Brewer made a shooing gesture: Get out of here. The Jet Skiers thought that was pretty funny. One of them gave Brewer the finger. The other revved his engine and moved closer, laughing, beckoning mockingly at Brewer: Come and get me.

  What happened next happened quickly and went unnoticed by almost everyone outside of the wedding party. Brewer said something to Castronovo, who stepped a little to the right, shielding Brewer. Brewer unbuttoned his jacket and shifted his position slightly. Then there was a faint popping sound, barely detectable over the roar of the engines and the other beach noises.

  “What the hell?” said Kevin.

  As he spoke, the closer Jet Ski began sputtering and emitting smoke. Its driver, no longer cocky, dove off and swam frantically to the other machine. He scrambled onto the back, barely making it aboard before the driver gunned the engine and took off at full speed toward the horizon. Both driver and rider looked back repeatedly and fearfully. The remaining Jet Ski bobbed in the swells. It coughed out a last plume of smoke and died.

  Brewer and Castronovo turned and walked calmly back up the beach, Brewer buttoning his jacket. A dozen or so sunbathers were looking at them; several were applauding.

  For a few seconds, the wedding party stood in stunned silence. Then Big Steve said, “Did he just shoot at them?”

  “Of course not,” said Tina.

  “Definitely,” said Meghan.

  “Wait, he shot a Jet Ski?” said Kevin. “Even in Miami, that has to be against the law.”

  “Well,” said Marty, “legally, he—”

  “Legally, he works for Mike Clark,” said Meghan. “That’s really all you need to know.”

  Seth was looking at Tina. “Seriously?” he said.

  “First,” she said, “we don’t really know what happened.”

  “I think we do. I think your father’s bodyguard just—”

  “Second,” said Tina, “nobody got hurt. And third, those idiots were disturbing the peace and operating illegally close to the beach in a designated swimming area.”

  “Illegally?” said Seth.

  “Yes,” said Tina. “Somebody could’ve gotten hurt.”

  Seth stared. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Seth, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. This is supposed to be our wedding rehearsal, so let’s just focus on that, OK? We’ve already had enough distractions.” She looked pointedly in the direction of the hotel.

  Seth hesitated, then said, “OK.”

  Blaze Gear resumed the briefing, which was pretty simple: Everybody would walk from the hotel to the platform, Banzan Dazu would perform the ceremony, everybody would walk back to the hotel. It was going to be wonderful, Blaze declared. A perfect day. She asked His Holiness Banzan Dazu if, as officiant, he would like to say a few words about the ceremony and he said he would.

  First he held his arms out and turned his face toward the sky, eyes closed, looking holy. He held that pose for quite a while, long enough to make everybody else uncomfortable. Then he opened his eyes and beamed at the group, especially at Mike and Marcia Clark, who were paying his fee plus expenses, including first-class airfare. He found Tina with his eyes, beckoned and said, “Come here, my child.”

  Tina came over and stood next to her mentor. Seth figured that, as the other half of the wedding couple, he would be beckoned next and had taken half a step forward when Dazu instead beckoned to Meghan. She came over and stood on his other side, she and her sister forming a holy-man sandwich.

  Dazu put his arms around the sisters’ waists and squeezed them in a manner that could be seen as affectionate and paternal but also could be seen as a way that an older man subtly puts his hands on two attractive young women’s asses. Holding them tight, Dazu beamed at the group again—he was a skilled beamer—and began to speak.

  “We are all seekers,” he said. “We seek love and we seek happiness. We know that love is not happiness and happiness is not love. But without love, it is not possible to be happy. And without happiness, it is not possible to love. And so we seek them both.” He beamed again. Tina was nodding a nod that said So true, so true. Everybody else was trying to look thoughtful, except for Sid, who whispered loudly, “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rose.

  “As we seek,” said Dazu, “as we walk on this journey of life, we ask, Why are we here? Who are we? Who am I, and who are you? Who are the people we meet along the way?” Here he gave Tina and Meghan a squeeze; Seth noted that the holy hands had drifted lower.

  “But when we ask these questions,” Dazu continued, “we only make it more difficult to find the answer. Because if we are always seeking, we are never finding. We must understand that it is only when we stop seeking something that we can find it. But we must not try to stop seeking. For to try is to fail. It is only when we learn not to try to stop seeking, to simply allow the stopping of the seeking to be, that we will succeed. Then we will understand that we did not need to succeed at all, for what we are seeking has been with us all along.”

  “Is this the wedding?” said Sid.

  “Be quiet,” said Rose.

  “You ask me, What is the purpose of life?” Dazu said, although in fact nobody had asked him that. “I answer you with another question: What is the purpose of having a purpose?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Seth saw someone waving at him. He looked over; it was Carl Juste, the Haitian groundskeeper. Seth slipped away from the wedding party, getting a look from Tina. He went to Juste and stood close, the two of them whispering.

  “Did you find the sister?” said Seth.

  “There is a problem,” said Juste.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “The sister was arrested.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. But I talked to the sister on the phone. She has a lawyer. She thinks maybe she can get out by tomorrow. Then she can take Laurette and the children.”

  “But I’m getting married tomorrow.” Seth glanced over at Tina, still in the clutches of Banzan Dazu but looking his way. “This is getting ridiculous.”

  “The sister asked me to tell you, Please, just one more day. Please.”

  Seth looked over at Tina again. Now she was glaring.

  “I have to go,” said Juste.

  “But what am I supposed to do?”

  “Please, just one more day,” said Juste. He turned and walked away before Seth could say anything.

  Seth trudged back to the wedding party. Dazu was still dispensing insights.

  “And so,” he was saying, “what you will find, when you finally reach your destination, is this: You have been there the whole time.”

  “Kind of like in The Wizard of Oz,” said Meghan. “When Dorothy discovers there’s no place like home.”

  This drew a glare from Tina, but Dazu was delighted.

  “Exactly!” he said, giving Meghan’s ass a congratulatory squeeze. “Now, if I may continue, the journey that we are on . . .”

  “Oh my goodness!” interrupted Blaze Gear, staring with fake surprise at her watch. “This has been so fascinating that I totally lost track of the time! I’m sorry, Your Holiness, but we really do need to get to the rehearsal dinner.”

  Dazu reluctantly released the sisters, and the wedding party, relieved to be done with having its consciousness raised, started moving toward the hotel. Tina went straight to Seth, looking unhappy.

  “Did you really have to do that?” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Go over and talk to that janitor when Banzan was speaking.”

  “He’s not a janitor. He’s a groundskeeper.”

  “Whatever. Did you have to interrupt the rehearsal for that?”

  “Teen, he’s the guy trying to find Laurette’s sister.”

  “Trying? He hasn’t found her?”

  “Not yet, but he says that by tomorrow—”

  “Tomorrow? Tomorrow? Seth, you swore you wouldn’t let this screw up the wedding.”
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br />   “I know, and I won’t.”

  They had stopped on the walkway to the hotel, letting the rest of the wedding party go ahead.

  “Then why can’t you get rid of this Lornette?”

  “Laurette.”

  “Whatever. Why can’t the groundskeeper take her home?”

  “Teen, she’s not a stray dog.”

  “I know that. I’m just asking why the fucking groundskeeper can’t take her until he finds the sister?”

  “He lives here, in hotel housing. He can’t take her. And it’s not really his responsibility.”

  “Well, why the fuck is it your responsibility?”

  Her raised voice had drawn the attention of the rest of the group up ahead. Mike turned and walked back to Tina and Seth.

  “Is there a problem, baby?” he said.

  “We’re OK,” said Seth.

  “I didn’t ask you,” said Mike. “I asked my daughter. She doesn’t look OK to me. What’s wrong, baby?”

  Tina sniffed and shook her head. “It’s nothing. I just want . . . It’s nothing.”

  “You just want what?”

  “I just want everything to be perfect.”

  “Of course everything’s going to be perfect. What’s not perfect? What’s the problem?”

  Tina and Seth exchanged a look, Seth shaking his head very slightly.

  “It’s nothing,” Tina said.

  Mike studied her for a few seconds. “OK, baby. Whatever it is, I’ll let it go for now. But”—he looked pointedly at Seth, then back at Tina—“if you need anything, anything at all, you just tell me, and I will make it right for you. OK, baby? Anything.”

  “OK, Daddy.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  With a last hard look at Seth, Mike rejoined his wife, saying something quietly to her that made her look at Seth.

  “They hate me,” said Seth.

  “No they don’t,” said Tina.

  “They don’t look at me like I’m their future son-in-law. They look at me like I’m a giant tapeworm.”

  “That’s ridiculous. They love you.”