Chapter Nine:

"Oh no," Chelsea said in a loud whisper, drawing everyone's attention away from the indignant Maura, who was still holding a photograph of her beloved tortoise in one hand and a small orange bottle of white pills in the other. "It's Theresa..."

Moving as one, the group turned to look. Another young woman was swiftly approaching the cluster of uninvited guests surrounding her mother. She was slightly thinner than Chelsea, had chosen a different dress, and wore her hair in a severe style reminiscent of Alex's in the courtroom, but otherwise, the two twins were almost identical.

Caught between horror and relief, Maria Statler Petrovsky took her daughter's arm as soon as she was within reach, clutching tight. "Theresa, your Aunt has brought several uninvited guests to the rehearsal dinner!" she moaned, stating the obvious.

Theresa frowned – first at the strangers, then at Lena and Chelsea. "Where is the catering staff? Perhaps you can convince them to show these... people... out?"

"They're caterers, not bodyguards," Alex drawled. "They're probably in the kitchen doing their jobs."

"Oh, I don't know," Maura added, "I've paid someone to escort a trespasser off of my property before."

"That was Korsak, you paid him in French pastries, and the person he happened to be escorting was your stupid ex-fiancé. I would have kicked his sorry ass out the door myself, but you insisted that I stay with you and try to have a good time..." Jane's face darkened at the memory, but Maura seemed unperturbed.

"Same thing."

"You were engaged?" Serena asked, looking at Maura with fresh curiosity.

"Unfortunately," Maura sighed. "He – Garrett Fairfield, I mean – was only interested in my money and my last name. I didn't want to be trapped in a marriage like that."

To Jane's surprise, Alex squeezed Maura's shoulder reassuringly. The ME usually disliked physical contact, but she seemed to accept it from Alex without complaint. "I know how you feel. I was engaged, too, and for the same reasons."

"Ugh." Abbie wrinkled her nose. "The Toad. Don't remind me."

"Didn't you tell Robert some lie about having sex with Alex at Coney Island?" Serena asked, squinting her eyes a little and tapping her chin as she tried to revisit the memory. "I think it involved a Ferris wheel and one of Nathan's infamous corn-dogs..." Petrovsky let out an undignified snort. Encouraged by Serena's attitude, Chelsea grinned as well.

Maria let out a startled gasp and clutched her hand to her chest, while Theresa's eyes nearly popped out of her head.

Abbie shrugged and gave her girlfriend a sheepish grin. "Well, uh... I really wanted them to break up. I figured pretty boy would dump her and she could find someone better."

"Thanks, Abs," Olivia said. "For once, your perverted stories and your habitual lying did me a huge favor!"

Jane, who was looking at the buffet table with glazed eyes, only heard the first part of the conversation. "Mmm, Nathan's corn-dogs," she said, sounding like she was in a trance. "I'm hungry. Mind if we go eat something, Your Honor?"

"Not at all, and please call me Lena, Jane," said Petrovsky, waving a dismissive hand at the buffet table. "Any friend of Alex Cabot's is a friend of mine. Besides, you're all my guests, and my niece's as well, if I'm not mistaken."

"They are certainly not!" Theresa opened her mouth to protest, the glare on her face making it plain that she wanted to give the group and her Aunt a piece of her mind, but Chelsea interrupted her.

"Listen, Theresa, these are Aunt Lena's friends, and I want them to stay."

"Stay? At my wedding rehearsal dinner?" Theresa was appalled. Maria seemed equally horrified by the idea.

"At our wedding rehearsal dinner. You're the one that wanted to have this huge, monstrous wedding in the first place. I wanted to elope to the tropics with Mom and Dad and Aunt Lena, and just have a small party for the rest of the family when we got back, but nooo... you had to invite over two hundred people! I don't even know most of them. And there's well over fifty here tonight – almost all of them are your friends or mother's friends. I didn't even get to pick most of my own bridal party. Well, you know what? I want these people to stay, and unless you want me to make a scene and ruin the rehearsal dinner even more, you'll shut up and go away. Got it?"

There was a long, tension-filled pause.

I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie Wo-o-orld

Life in Plastic, it's fantastic!

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhe-e-ere

Imagination, life is your creati –

Olivia hurried to find her cell phone before Barbie could go party with Ken. "Oh my God," she muttered, desperately pushing buttons to try and stop the song. "Benson. Who is it? This better be good, because I'm on my vaca- Oh, hi, Elliot... uh, yeah... did Fin forget to tell you that Munch changed all my contacts and ringtones? ... He got Teletubbies, so don't let him give you any shit – Hold on, I'll check and see."

Everyone watched with bated breath as she glanced down at the screen to see what Munch had dubbed Elliot. "Apparently, you're 'Girly Man', partner. Oh well, maybe it's a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's pretty buff... No, I don't think so either." Another pause. "Uh, I'm at a wedding rehearsal, actually... it's not a good time. Yes, Alex is here. And you'll never believe the two new friends we made. One of them looks just like Abbie, but she's a cop and she isn't a pervert. It's pretty cool. Okay, I should probably go, everyone's staring at me like I'm crazy... bye."

Olivia hung up her phone, wisely choosing to put it on silent. The group continued staring. "What?" she said defensively, tucking the offending object away.

"Normally, I would scold you for answering your cell phone during a social event while you aren't on call, but that conversation was priceless, judging from your side of it." Unable to hold back any longer, Alex, Abbie, Serena, Jane, Maura, Petrovsky, and Chelsea burst into uncontrollable laughter.

It was too much for poor Maria, who allowed a mortified Theresa to shepherd her off to a quiet corner. Both of them looked worse for wear, and obviously needed the recovery time.

"Is your partner a hypermasculine person that would take offense to being labeled as a girl or a homosexual, Olivia?" Maura asked, eyes watering.

Olivia grinned. "Worse. He used to be in the Marines. He doesn't care that I'm gay, but after being called a Girly Man, I have a feeling Elliot is going to be handing Munch's ass to him..."

Maura looked momentarily confused a the colloquialism. "They're going to beat him up or get him back somehow," Jane translated. "You've heard me use that expression before, Maur."

"Sorry, I was momentarily distracted by the unusually humorous situation. By the way, I think we have emerged victorious over Lena Petrovsky's relatives."

"Yeah," Chelsea said gleefully. "Thanks! Seeing those two put in their place made my night. Maybe my wedding won't be so bad after all..."

"Glad to be of service, although I think Olivia's cellphone stole the show," said Serena. "Now that the trash has taken itself out – no offense, Your Honor, Chelsea... – who wants to hit up the buffet?"

"I'm so in!" Jane said eagerly.

...

Several minutes later, the six friends, Petrovsky, and Chelsea were clustered around the left side of the table of honor, having stolen several seats from other tables in order to make room. They were introduced to Chelsea's fiancé, Jason, a pleasant-faced young man with sandy blonde hair. Chelsea's father was curiously absent, and Lena dryly postulated that her brother had probably overheard some of the commotion and hurried off to comfort his fuming wife and daughter. "Let him," Chelsea said dismissively. "He's missing a good time!"

They were also introduced to Jason's parents, who seemed equally amused by the confrontation. They looked a lot like their son, although both had graying hair, and they shared Chelsea's attitude towards her parents. "We like Chelsea, she's been a good influence on our boy, but her mother's a nightmare," Jason's father confessed to Olivia while they both tucked in to their lobster – a Provincetown specialty.

A quarter of an hour later, a sour-faced Theresa returned with her mother and a gaggle of pompously dressed friends in tow, heading towards the unoccupied right side of the long table, plates in hand. They were whispering back and forth, but no one could hear what they were saying.

"Just ignore them," Lena said, looking rather pleased with herself for causing her sister in law and niece so much trouble.

"Hey, I'm not complainin'," Abbie said. "I may be a Southern girl, and we don't always call 'em lobsters, but I sure as hell love to eat 'em!"

"You love to eat anything," Serena added, leaning over to steal a bite from her lover's plate. Their playful banter was interrupted by a loud, high-pitched gasp of surprise and dismay. Everyone turned to look.

Theresa, who had been passing behind her sister's chair with her friends, had apparently allowed her plate to slip, spilling the contents down the back of Chelsea's dress. Everyone stared, waiting for some kind of reaction from the shivering, angry-looking bride-to-be.

The first response came from Alex. Calmly picking up her glass, she tossed the contents in Theresa's face, watching with grim satisfaction as wine trailed down her neck and chest in bright crimson lines. Her perfect hair was ruined, and so was her rehearsal dinner dress.

That did it.

Following her friend's example, Abbie grabbed a handful of greens from Olivia's plate and hurled them at Maria, who didn't seem to know how to react to anything that was going on around her. One of Theresa's friends returned fire, hitting Jane in the middle of her forehead.

"It is so on!" the detective growled, getting up out of her chair and grabbing a basket of dinner rolls to use as missiles.

Abbie looked positively gleeful. "FOOD FIGHT!" she hollered, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Olivia groaned and ducked behind the table, hoping that no one decided to actually throw the lobsters. The shells might hurt, and she had a feeling that things were going to get ugly.