Someone Else's Shotgun

“A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.”—Larry David

            Minutes before walking down the aisle, Nicki felt she had to feed the baby. Ryan abandoned the front pew to assume his role as burper, then set the buggy just so, for volunteers in the narthex to jig as needed.

            The church was torrid, just outside of Busch Gardens, Tampa (Ryan’s choice to make the day less ‘boring’ for the guests), even though the sun was down by now. She was keen on getting married, not so much on being a bride. Ryan was the opposite, planning everything in hopes their sometimes shaky partnership would benefit from a memorable ceremony.

            He wrote their vows, for instance, in reflection of their first date—a hack download of Lion King II. Reading them out publically made him sweat a private doubt. Nicki didn’t make her own, but nodded her head to agree:

In darkness we became best friends;

in light of that, our love has grown

to handle ups and downs and bends,

to cuddle more or leave alone.

Along the way we dreamed a pride,

like lions stretching from the lair;

then heaven sent a little guide—

Kiara—answering our prayer.

As blessed, we take a vow for three:

in sickness, health or any state

that may ring chords of harmony;

these rings today will seal that fate.

            The pastor was impatient, omitting things like “if anyone knows any reason these two should not…” or “you may now kiss…,” which they did without direction. Nicki had to whisper, though—“Ry, what’s this bulge on your side?”

            They traipsed to the narthex where Kiara was crying, and Ryan instinctively took over from his over-bouncy aunt. He cooed the baby asleep and watched Nicki, who was all hugs and happiness to the guests, seeming to linger on Steve, whom they argued about inviting. “None of my exes are coming, for fuck’s sake.”

            “Now, don’t be jealous. Steve would never be as good a dad as you.”

            “How do I even know he isn’t Kaybe’s father?”

            “I know. That’s enough!”

            The reception hall was nearby and almost as hot—its bit of aircon added to the stink. Kiara thankfully kept sleeping, checked on by a lot of proxy moms; other kids were everywhere, products of Ryan’s dozen cousins and Nicki’s many friends from high school. Some adults were single, like Steve. A fair amount of divorcees. But dances, drunker on, tended to blur those differences.

            Ryan was congratulated plentifully but never dragged to the parquet, as opposed to Nicki, who was glad to doff her veil and sleeves and train and ivories to get out there and dance. She did grab her hubby for a slow one, Elvis crooning: wise.. men.. say.. ‘only fools.. rush.. in…’ Ryan held her close around the waist, trying to hide his bulge, and kissed her with the final falling in love.. with.. you. He headed to the punchbowl at the transition: You ain’ nothing but a hound dog! In no time, Steve had cut in.

            Well, there was Sherilyn getting punch, ladling a top-off for herself and a double on the rocks for Ryan. She wasn’t one of his exes—he really didn’t have any—but, for sake of argument, they’d flirted once or twice over the years. She bat her long lashes and seemed to purr, I love the Lion King, you know. Ryan spilled a little in the act of asking, the original? or sequel? She blotched the fresh pink spot on his shirt with her fingertips, but pulled away at the sense of a strap underneath: what’s that? He looked down and blushed, oh, that’s nothing…

            Ryan finished his punch alone. From across the noisy room, he heard Kiara’s cry—his pride of recognition put a penguin’s skip into his step. He was forced to shake some hands from this drunk cousin and that old friend of Nicki, so by the time he got to the perambulator, Kiara was gone.

            Colors of the place and moment blurred like a cyclorama of tie-dyed bedsheets. Ryan’s eyes darted while the rest of his body froze. He thought he heard a snide hey Simba! from some Scar across the room—or maybe it was Kovu. From a circle of her bridesmaids, Nicki pointed at him and laughed. She wasn’t drunk—hadn’t taken more than a symbolic sip of champagne for thirteen months, through pregnancy and breastfeeding. Her mirth was more a can you feel the love tonight? She twirled her finger for Ryan to turn around. Behind him in the darkest corner of the hall was Steve, cradling Kiara with a rockabye sway.

            Ryan ripped off his tuxedo and pulled his punch-stained shirt from the tuck of his pants. “Kidnapper!” he screamed, and drew out a handgun.

            Quick as a cat, Nicki dashed to attack his unsteady arm. “What the hell are you doing?! Where’d this come from?” 

            “This shotgun’s wedding,” Ryan blubbered, “is cuz o’ him—”

            “No! Not a bit! Steve’s just—”

            Steve, for his part, didn’t have an idea what to do. He looked down at the baby and dimwittedly decided to hold her forward, under her armpits. If it looked to some like a Rafiki blessing, it also smacked of a King Solomon quandary: you aim for me, you risk hitting her.

            Ryan had all but dropped the gun. “Maybe I jus’ do my own self in,” he mumbled. “Stan’ my ground against myself.”

            The band had stopped; the drummer unholstered his own open-carry and, hiding behind his kit, trained it on Ryan. Syllables of cousins and other guests swirled with labored breathing: don’.. man.. do.. why.. this..

            “Ungrip it,” Nicki stroked his arm, “please.” Kiara began again to bleat. “Then you can go get her.”

            “Kidnap her, you mean, from Steve?”

            Nicki looked over to the drummer’s shift. “Ry, baby, you just gotta trust me…”

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2020)

Benign or Begone

            It’s likely I was part of the problem, coming over from the video arcade where kids there thought I was pretty nice not to kick them out if they snuck in a hip flask. Or else, half my age, they’d say stuff like, “Holly, you’re hot.” I don’t really mind being eyeballed, but the after hours stalking made me dread the place. I make about the same money at the bingo parlor, other side of town, selling grids and daubers and drinks. Sure, some geezers still flirt, but they don’t pester me. Besides, the vast majority are ladies with names like Madge and Bertha and Deseret, and they rule the roost.

            That is, they did before some of those high school dropouts found the action here more satisfying than the arcade. There, they lost pocketfuls of quarters from God knows where they got ’em; here, they stand to win that money back—gambling laws in this state don’t reach into bingo parlors. Granted, some have an age policy, but the one I work at doesn’t yet. Yet.

            “Hey Holly,” a punk named Justin called out the second he came through the door, “twelve rows and a whiskey sour.” His tagalong followed with a virginal, “uh, the same.”

            I waited until they worked up the guts to look me in the eye. “Twenty-four bucks, boys. Two sours without the whiskey would bring that to twenty-eight.”

            Justin uncrumpled three Hamiltons. “Keep the change, Hols.”

           

            Not many regulars marked more than four grids at a time—especially during the ‘lickity split’ rounds where the caller moved on to a new number every eight seconds. Typically, it was around twenty seconds, but then you had the ‘sleepers’ problem where folks would snooze through their win and claim it later, noticing their numbers on the bigboard. Teens came in with lightning eyes and swagger: they’d see the ping pong fall before being called out, even though they had more grids to scan for the previous number.

            They also bought the grids that were hard to sell—those with O-66, the ‘devil’s number’. Flunking math didn’t mean they’d throw away a 1.3% advantage, and God didn’t seem to punish the choice.

            But Ol’ Elroy did. He’d play with as much gumption as anyone, rum & coke by the quart and devil-be-damned on O-66. His near-sightedness prevented an early read of the ball, but he had a wicked memory for what had been pulled and the odds of what remained. No one could call ‘bingo’ before the caller vocalized the full number, of course, and the juveniles were warned, berated and penalized for doing so. Ol’ Elroy would be on that cusp, too, but his friends (including the caller) rather appreciated him standing up to the upstarts.

            Then Madge approached me the other day with a bunch of daubers at her bosom. “Here,” she says, “sell these to those kids when they come in. Earn yourself a dollar each.”

            “What’s the catch?”

            Madge leaned in. “They’re dead from use. I just lipsticked the ends to make ’em seem viable for a couple daubs.”

            “That’ll take them outta, what, one round?”

            “Not if you keep sellin’ exactly these.”

            So I did that for an evening, the cat-and-mouse paying off. Justin just grinned through it—his winnings from the past week would pay for a hundred new daubers from Costco, and the next evening he gave me one with a bracelet of smarties around it. We couldn’t prohibit people buying their daubers from elsewhere, but there was a bribery clause I could have activated. Truth told, I wasn’t taking sides anyway: the parlor could use a little drama.

           

            Duly supplied this afternoon. Justin and his gang were coming earlier now, as games were easier for them to win against the assisted-living crowd, who’d never stay past 6pm. That gave the kids more cash and time to “get wasted—c’mon, Holly, it’s on us.”

            “What is?”

            They’d laugh and say lewd things, and I’d point to the ‘swear jar’ I made just for such occasions, and they’d throw in a dollar or two each. They’d size up their own effect and brag, like chicken-shit roosters. Justin, even though he rarely cussed, threw in an amateur calling card with his number and profession: ‘fixer.’

            I assume Ol’ Elroy never got such a card, but he was insistent today that these kids had something to do with rigging the system—even pointed at me as their ‘emaybeler’—the quart of rum & coke slurring his speech. He was flustered especially after the caller mistakenly said “B-19” and Deseret voiced up, “you mean ‘I’, doncha?”

            “Sorry ’bout that, folks,” the caller cleared his throat, “the number is actually B-9.”

            “Bingo,” announced a teenager who had seen it clearly before the gaffe.

            “No!” Elroy fumed, “I had I-19 for a bingo first!”

            “But there aint any I-19,” the winner reminded.

            “You pipsqueak! Get outta my sight—” Elmer was red as his dauber, which he flung at the kid.

            Justin picked it up and urbanely walked it over. “You dropped this, sir,” he said.

            Madge put her big body in between them, mostly to settle Elroy down. He’d have none of that, though, swinging haymakers until he collapsed, clutching his chest.

            “You killed him!” somebody screamed, and all the teens but Justin fled. To his credit, though: he kept his cool and rolled Ol’ Elroy to his back and began to administer CPR. He moved the heels of his hands with athletic elegance, then opened Elroy’s mouth to blow in, back off, pump some more and blow some more. The old man’s breathing returned just about the time real paramedics burst in.

            “Thanks, man, we got it from here.”

            Nobody else said anything to Justin, if the looks were a measure of relief and ‘begone, like the rest of ya jackals’.

            I told him, “mouth-to-mouth aint so recommended nowadays.”

            He smiled, “was only thinkin’ of you, Hols,” and vanished.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2020)