Bride and Doom: Excerpts

Boris the Mad Russian Florist held me close. As his massive arms enfolded me from behind, a warm whisper teased at my ear and sent goose bumps rippling down my spine.

“Gr-rip with fingers, my Kharnegie,” he breathed. “Not with palm.”

I obeyed. I’d done this before, plenty of times, but tonight was different. Tonight I was in the hands of a master.

“Perr-fect.” He tilted his head aside to get a better look at my legs, and his voice rose with authority.

“Be ready to move heeps. First heeps, and then — ”

“Enough about her hips!” Aaron Gold called out, amid hoots of male and female laughter. “For crying out loud, Nevsky, let her hit the ball already.”

With a huge and comical shrug, Boris Nevsky lifted his hands from me and stepped out of the batting cage that arched like a giant clamshell over the home plate of Seattle’s Yesler Field. Whether or not Boris had pinch hit for the Red Army as he claimed, he was almost as good a coach as he was a floral designer. And that was saying something.

I cocked the bat over my shoulder, blew a kiss to my fiancé Aaron — our engagement wasn’t public yet, but how I savored that word fiancé — and nodded to the pitcher that I was ready.

If this had been major league batting practice the pitcher would have been way back on the mound, and protected by a shield in case the ball was belted back to him at a dangerous speed. But he was in no danger. The regular season was over — the World Series opened tomorrow in Minneapolis — and this was just a major league engagement party.

Of course Gordo Gutierrez, the bridegroom and our catcher tonight, wasn’t “just” a baseball player. He was The Homer King, the man who had just smashed the all-time record for home runs in a single season with a spectacular 75. The Navigators might have drifted out of Series contention after the All Star Break back in August, but their season had ended on a higher-than-high note with Gordo’s feat.

The Navigators owners, cannily sensing yet another PR coup in Gordo’s engagement, had decided to play fairy godfather. The franchise was footing the bill for the wedding and making it an open-to-the-public extravaganza. And they were hosting tonight’s engagement party as a media event — with batting practice as one of the party games.

So tonight the pitcher’s windup looked impressive, but that was just for show. He was taking it easy on the guests, and when he released the ball it lofted toward me quite gently. Also quite deceptively — my bat fanned the air and the ball plopped into Gordo’s catcher’s mitt unscathed.

“Strike one!” he called, then said to me, “Good try, though.”

This big league baseball wedding, taking place in just over a week on this very diamond, would normally be out of my league altogether. I’m Carnegie Kincaid, owner of Made in Heaven (“Elegant Weddings with an Original Flair”), but I was on duty tonight as a temporary employee of Beau Paliére, celebrity wedding planner and my occasional rival.

Beau and I had certainly had our differences in the past. But when he suddenly needed a local assistant for this wedding, I just as suddenly needed his hefty commission to finance my own nuptials. My partner Eddie Breen had grumbled, but then he always grumbled. It was one of his job skills.

I told Eddie I’d get back to work for Made in Heaven the day after Gordo’s ceremony — after I’d made myself a nice pile of cash. My wedding plans were still vague — Aaron and I hadn’t even picked a date yet — but people would expect the owner of Made in Heaven to put on an unforgettable event. Something elegant, something grand…something extravagantly expensive.

Though nowhere near as expensive as the union of Gordo Gutierrez and a very hot, very young rock singer — so young that Beau had directed me to keep an eye on her. Baseball fans would attend the wedding because of Gordo. But some other Seattleites, who couldn’t tell a bunt from a batting helmet, would come just to see the bride. She had just released her first album, and she went by the name of Honeysuckle Hell…

“Oh!”

The second pitch sailed by, jerking me out of my reverie.

“What was wrong with that one?” demanded a heckler.

“Take your time, Stretch,” Aaron countered from the other side of the cage. “Look ’em over.”

Instead I looked around at the crowd outside the batting cage. The guests drifting back and forth between the diamond and the owners’ luxury suite tonight made quite a see-and-be-seen assortment: ballplayers, rock musicians, sportswriters, general-assignment reporters like Aaron, management types, baseball groupies, big names from the city’s football and basketball teams, and various friends and family.

At least a hundred people in all, a motley mix but an impressive one — and they were certainly trying to impress each other. But even the VIPs wanted to play fantasy baseball, it seemed. It was hard to say which was the bigger draw, the lavish buffet and bar upstairs, or the chance to come down here and bat on a big-league diamond.

I took my stance carefully, recalling Boris’s advice and determined not to embarrass myself in front of all these glamorous and important onlookers. Just as I did so a train whistle sounded from out behind center field, probably an Amtrak run coming into Union Station. As if in response to the whistle the stadium lights sprang on, outshining the October twilight above us and weirdly transforming all the colors.

Steady now, eye on the ball.

The ball floated toward me quite gently, a nice fat pitch right over the plate. Leading with my wrists, I brought the bat around with all my might — all the way around, as I spun full circle and fell flat on my butt.

(Later…)

“Hi there, Beau,” I said, as my temporary employer bore down on me like a well-tailored Parisian freight train.

“You think you are a guest?” he hissed, his handsome nostrils flaring theatrically. “You work for me!”

Some of the guests waiting to bat turned to look at us. Beau clutched my elbow almost painfully and marched me down into the home team dugout, where the long wooden players’ bench was empty.

“I tell you to watch Honeysuckle,” he said, his voice low and furious, “but instead you come down and play games!”

“Honeysuckle’s fine, dammit!” I yanked my arm away. I was tired of being man-handled tonight. “She’s up in the suite with her friends from the band. Everything’s under control.”

Famous last words.

“‘Scuse me, Mister Palliser?” Eugene, a gray-haired security guard, peered down at us from the dugout railing. “There’s a young lady in the suite making kind of a fuss. I wonder if you could come up and — That’s her, that’s the lady!”

He whipped his head around as shouts and shrieks of laughter echoed from across the diamond. Beau and I scrambled up the steps to look, just as three figures burst from the darkness of the hallway and sprinted into left field.

Cries of amusement and alarm rose from our little crowd, with Gordo hollering loudest of all as one figure took the lead. This was a young woman with short-cropped hair and an even shorter skirt puffing out beneath a strapless black bustier. The bustier was cut dangerously low, so the girl’s cleavage shone white in the stadium lights, and as she ran her thighs flashed pale above tall black boots.

“Can’t catch the wind!” she screamed.

She paused to taunt her pursuers, two young men in scruffy leather and denim. But as they closed in on her she darted away again, laughing shrilly. Then she began to whirl in circles, face raised to the sky and arms outflung in ecstatic high spirits.

The ecstasy didn’t last. All of a sudden the girl crash-landed, dropping to her knees with such a jolt that her breasts popped right out of the bustier.

“Mon dieu!” cried Beau, horrified.

It got worse. Oblivious to her wardrobe malfunction — and the rapt attention of some twenty or thirty spectators — the girl arched forward convulsively. A moment’s hideous hesitation, and then she puked up a mess of expensive hors d’oeurves onto the sacred grass of Yesler Field.

“That was no lady,” I said, wincing. “That was my bride.”