INCOMING

fiction piece

He went to a wedding, he wasn’t any sort of guest of honor or anything, but he was a guest, one of the guests, so he felt that he was special in some way, so he plodded through the ceremony and made it finally to the reception, where the open bar awaited his lingering presence.

'Gimme one of those,' he told the attendant, a youngish girl with tightened hair and a prim white shirt that made her look flat but if you looked close enough you could see that if she removed it she would blossom. The girl gave him what he asked for, one of the lagers. He drank it down in seconds and asked for another, which the girl less smilingly handed over. He took the second lager and found a seat next to…uh…well…of course: a very beautiful sexy horny-looking woman. At least he thought of her as horny-looking. But beautiful and sexy she certainly was.

'Hi,' he said to the woman, who looked over at him as if a giraffe had suddenly discovered its inherent sound. 'You know the bride? I sure as hell don’t. The groom either. I’m just here ‘cause I happen to know one of their long lost friends who died in a plane crash back in ’88. I’m Peter Darwin.'

The woman remained unblinking while he spoke. 'The bride, but we aren’t on that great of terms right now. But we’ll get through it. Once they get back.'

Darwin shifted his eyes left and right. 'Get back?'

'From the honeymoon.'

'Oh right. Honeymoon. That dildo of a word.'

The woman finally blinked, hard. 'Pardon?'

'Nothing, forget it, waste of fucking time, forget it. Hey, you’re empty. Whatcha havin’?'

'I’m fine thank you.'

'Nope, no you’re not, you’re empty and being empty at a wedding recep is like having run out of gas in the Mojave Desert. Now whatcha havin’.'

The woman sighed, but without looking away. 'White Zin.'

'One white Zin comin’ over, along with another lager for yours fucking truly.' Darwin chugged down the last of the lager, set the bottle beside the woman’s empty wine glass and rose from the table and belched. 'Sorry,' he said, then walked off toward the bar for the woman’s wine and another round for himself.

'Here you are, the white Zin you ordered. We coulda waited for the waiter or waitress but hell it takes ‘em for fucking ever to get to you, you know? So I didn’t get your name.'

The woman sipped some of the wine and returned the glass to the table. 'Melody. Melody Moses.'

Darwin tilted his head. 'Hmmm, Melody Moses…Sounds like…Kinda sounds like a dancer or something. You a dancer?'

'No. And not ‘a something’ either.'

'Damn! The girl’s got some venom after all! Well ain’t that quaint!' He took a chug of the lager.

'Go away,' she said, frowning. 'Please leave me alone.'

Darwin raised his eyebrows and backed his head away. 'Why? ‘Cause you think I’m a creep? Is that it? You think I’m some fucking creep? Well, little lady, my little Melody Fucking Moses, I am a creep and happen to be fucking proud of it. I’m up to the gills in creep, so how about that? Huh? How about that?'

The woman took the wine glass and splashed the contents into Darwin’s face. His eyes began to sting but he endured and made his way, with the escort of a large man twice Darwin’s size, to his car, into which he entered and drove away, never to be seen again by anyone in the wedding party, and certainly never ever ever by the briefly celebrated Melody Fucking Moses.