Summer, 2008

I Hope My Wedding's As Good As What I Pinned on Pinterest

My staff runs the gamut. I've had calm, cool, steady—several former teachers, English and theatre arts students; one manager of a video rental store for over 20 years was a "fan favorite." Little did they know his wife had called me after his interview to beg me to hire him. "Since he retired, he's driving me crazy! Please, I'll pay you to keep him out of the house!" Remembering my mother's threats to my father ("Find a hobby or die."), I was sympathetic to her plea. He was already on the top of my pick list, so she didn't actually have to bribe me.

I also have the other end of the spectrum. Nobody is totally bonkers, but they're definitely a bubble off of plumb—which is why we all get along pretty well.

Chanda grew up coming to the store and, when she moved back to town, joined us for a paycheck. She knew that things were very casual; if you needed to trade a shift, there was always someone happy to swap or just pick up some overtime.

So I knew she had traded with Marci so she could attend a wedding the day before, and here she was on Sunday morning looking like she had a week of Mondays rolled into one night. I figured she was suffering the aftereffects of partying like she was still 21. "Good wedding?"

She gave me a weak smile. "Open bar."

"Oh, myyyyyy….." I tsk'd.

"At my funeral tomorrow, grab the flowers and throw 'em into the crowd to see who's next," she groaned. She grabbed a fistful of ibuprofen and carefully downed them.

I started to laugh. "You caught the bouquet?"

She sniffed haughtily. "I'm married. I'm not that gauche. No, the bartenders were not chintzy with the booze. I only had three during the whole reception and I was flat on my ass, even though I danced all night." She suddenly grinned.

"Good band?" I guessed.

"DJ. Excellent DJ. You know Tammy Benedict and Chris Pelsiver, right?"

"Only as customers and not that well. Chris a little bit better from Libricon."

"Right. They're both fen." (S-F fans. The plural of man is men, the plural of fan is fen. Term goes back to the 40s, I believe.) "Steampunk, filking, horror society, Chris collects golden era SF paperbacks, they both do a lot of costume events, the whole drill. Chris grew up really straight-laced, he actually was in the seminary when a friend took him to a con—then it was like, 'I'm not the only one out there!' And I think it was a crappy Creation Con, to boot."

I nodded in my patent pending wise mom-to-be way. "Finding your tribe."

"So, Tammy's family is pretty Leave-it-to-Beaver/solid citizen/suit and tie, too. You've got half of the crowd looking like they belong at a Young Republicans presser, talking stocks and bonds and au pairs, and the other half going, 'You gonna be at Worldcon? We're doing a room party.' 'Have you heard the rumor? They're doing Costume College east coast next year!' 'I'll believe it when I see it.' 'QuickieCon is next month. Grade B skiffy and horror, I'm digging out my old Vampira outfit.' 'Did you catch the Eureka season opener?' And there's a divide between them like the two colors of water at the Gulf of Alaska."

I've been to weddings and parties like that. (I've even been to funerals like that.) "Grin and bear it and exit as soon as possible."

"So for the first half hour or so, the DJ is spinning the traditional stuff—Love Me Tender, Can't Take My Eyes Off of You, so forth." She started to giggle. "They you start hearing this fast guitar beat that all of the fen in the room recognize and they all jam the floor in lines like we're doing Israeli Drill Team dances—" She was laughing and trying to contain it, so it was hard to understand her. "And Tammy and Chris knew it was coming, and they're in the front line in their Edwardian frills and sparkles and everyone is jumping around—to the TimeWarp!"

I started to laugh, too. I'm a longtime Rocky Horror Picture Show fan and I could just picture this.

"But! But the best part is, you've got her family over here and his family over three and clearly they're thinking the same thing: 'This is all his-slash-her fault!'"

Geoff squeezed past me, reaching for a box of shelf dividers. "Any hope someone got this on film?"

"Oh, hell yeah. Pro and amateur. The floor was crammed, at least twenty people had their cell phones out because they ran out of room to dance."

"Sweet."

"And what did you do this weekend?" she asked in her prissiest voice.

He narrowed his eyes and gave her a sidelong glance. "I dunno… What have you heard?"

That's mah boy.