Introductions

Joey meets a nice boy at a wedding. NOW WITH MORE DIALOUGE THAN A KEVIN SMITH MOVIE!

 

Part II: Introductions

 

            Weddings, she'd always hated weddings. She hated them ever sense she was eleven and wanted to wear her sheik hounds tooth jacket and skirt to her cousin's wedding and was forbidden. It wasn't apparently dressy enough for the event as according to her mother (Everything she owned wasn't dressy enough according to her mother. In her experience, it was just easier to get dressed with out her mother seeing her and then show up when Mother was busy.) Instead she worse some hideous velvet thing that apparently looked good on her at the time. It had been that or some hideous Kathy Lee amalgamation that looked like a maternity dress. Despite the promises she made to herself about wearing the pantsuit that she liked.  Right now it was almost impossible to fit into said suit. She'd bought the suit some time back and had it not been for the extra weight of a small infant she could have easily fit into it. However, she did have the extra weight of a small infant. She sighed opting for the last dress she owned that would fit (not another velvet nightmare. She promised herself that would never happen again). She could have easily joined her mother and her cousins in the front row with the family of the groom but decided against it. She figured that she would have to deal with them soon enough and the dishonor about being pregnant out of wed lock during the service was enough to make even the Virgin Mary scream. Instead she opted for the back pew, the one nearest the door.

 

            That way she could make a quick escape.

 

            The service was nice as weddings go. Music was partly annoying but then again it was James the Doctor and his lovely Margaret who had no taste in music to speak of, what did she expect. Then again she wanted good music she would have gone to the club instead of the wedding. Her presence at the rehearsal wasn't necessary to keep the wedding running smoothly. She didn't really do anything important apart from keep her mother wrangled during the rehearsal (“If you're there,” Said James on the phone. “You can keep her from getting excited. That's bad for her heart.” “But James.” She replied, “She'll just get be picky with me.” “Yea, and?”). No one needed to wrangle Mrs. Angela Crowne today. Today, Mother was in her element.   Though not directly the center of attention, something reserved for Margaret the blushing bride, mother enjoyed the small amount of power she was allowed for being the mother of the groom. She got to be escorted in by one of James's Doctor friends. She was given a pretty flower to pin to her sad strange Jackie O rejected skirt suit. She got to sit up front and even light the candle in memory of her dear departed husband. Mother enjoyed it all in a dignified manner reserved for the Virgin and perhaps the Queen of England. She got to play the strong marytr of a woman who was losing her only son. Joey watched quietly. She didn't say anything at the sickeningly sweet wedding vows (“Oh James, you are my shining stars and my silverly moon.” My pink hearts and purple horseshoes, she added quietly to herself. “You are everything I could want.” Part of my balanced breakfast. “And I thank Jesus everyday that we are together.” Oh hey now lets not bring him into it.) She didn't even mind the weird readings from the Bible and the Spanish poem. However she did softly gag at the prayer for children. No one ever really wants or plans for children, she thought to herself. It just well happens.

 

            The wedding then melted into a reception at the conference center on the outside of town. People still were in their finest outfits from the wedding. She could smell the sweet rush of all sorts of styles and sizes of the endless rainbow of alcohol. There was a time that she would have jumped rabidly at that chance. She'd found that drinking or altering one's state of mind was the most efficient way of dealing with a parent or relative. She of course would be sticking with the Virgin Screwdrivers. She asked for them almost ironically at the bar. The bartender didn't seem to mind or was to apathetic to notice. It was more likely that her simple joke was just lost on him. Nothing personal really. The toasts were made by the idiot maid of honor (“I hope that you all have a wave of babies.”) and the best man (“I knew that when James said he found himself a pretty thing that this was it.”) Again she only softly gagged. There was brief conversations with her mother's siblings and her cousins that she kept to the minimum. She thought maybe it was just better. She didn't have to deal with the patronizing tone of their questions and they could gossip more quietly about the black sheep with out her. The food was nice; James had at least good taste in food. They had served a nice seasoned duck dish and for those who were vegetarians, or just felt it was wrong to eat duck, was delicate mushroom ravioli.  

 

            And then came the dancing of the drunken idiots. 

 

            Long before she was even pregnant or just bitter with the world, she never cared for dancing. She suspected this was from an early obsession with ballet that led to lessons in the public humiliation of her at the very early age of 8 in which she lost her balance on stage and fell and she wept and wept and wept. Her mother could not understand why after her leg heeled that her child no longer wanted to be a dancer. ("We paid for all those lessons." She scolded her one-day after physical therapy. "And now they're going to waste!") It was probably this reason that she stayed firmly planted in a chair in the darkest corner of the room watching the dancing. The one thing she hated more than dancing was drunken dancing. She discovered back in college that when the drunk dance they dance not only off the beat of the music but not necessarily to the style of a the dance that accompanies the music being played. The pinnacle of this is that by the time the dancing starts, people are too drunk to care about what isn't in front of them. However this did have some clear advantages. The people that she wanted the least to do with her distracted and dulled by the alcohol they'd imbibed in their system. James was to busy with his bride who was hanging on him like some kind of white overcoat. And by this point, Mother was unable to carry on a conversation. She'd been drinking since at least noon and spent her time crying. Good. 

 

            The music was sub-par. At the earliest conversations about the wedding, they'd talked about getting a live band. James had thought about a band he'd seen in a bar some weeks ago. Joey herself had seen this band. She nearly insisted on it. She knew when Jim Morrison was writing "Roadhouse Blues" that he would hope that some day some idiot high schooler and his band would do a cover to which the lead singer would yell "Show your T*****s!" and then thank his mother for complying. She knew they had to be doing weddings and bar mitzvahs on the side. She'd been stuck with the image of her mother flashing her sagging wrinkled breasts at some seventeen year old who was destine to be in a Creed cover band. Margaret thought that there was something unclassy about a rock and/or roll band but still wanted live music. Since it was difficult to rent out string quartets, she would settle on one man with a keyboard playing today's hits in Muzak form.

 

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

 

            Joey had turned her head to greet him with a snide comment. The last thing she wanted right now was a sympathy discussion from one of James's friends. And there he was. His eyes that were his most striking feature or at least the one she noticed first. He had the most especially blue eyes that she'd ever seen on a man. It was as if he was a walking photograph that some one had doctored the tint to make them look radiant blue. These eyes were perfectly blue and sat like a pair of ice burgs into the features of his softly chiseled face. Fitting she thought, since she felt as big as the Titanic. It was then that she had a startling revelation. Perhaps not all men were evil.

 

 Just most of them.

 

The band, if you could call it a band, started in on some disturbed version of Mono in Stereo by Mono. How could some one do a muzak version of a song that really had no real instruments apart from the woman singing, she asked herself. It was barely even considered music by this point. It was a song that had been beaten, anally raped and then transformed into half a song. Then it was put through a metal grinder and made into sausages fed to a dog and then was preformed.  

 

He drew his jaw line into an earth-shattering smile, a hand resting debonairly on the metal frame of the chair adjacent from her.

 

“May I?”

 

“Please.”

 

            The chords swelled into some kind of ambient setting of the song. Pity, she used to like this song, oh well not anymore. His lanky frame moved and stretched until it settled into the chair. It was different somehow. He was at ease with himself and her. It hadn't been like the countless blind dates that she'd been forced on by her mother and her so-called friends. He was calm and not in the least unsure about being around some pregnant woman at a party or a café or whatever. Maybe he just thought she was fat. She smiled quietly back.

 

“Are you a friend of the brides?" Clearly that she didn't know him as friend of James. James had been attempting to hook his little sister with some of his friends/co-workers. She knew everyone he knew. She thought they were all wankers.

 

"Um ex-boyfriend." He said with a slight smile.

 

"That's pretty ballsy for you to be here."

 

"For me or her."

 

"Well first one and then the other."

 

"Maggie and I are still pretty close friends." Joey wondered what did it say about her brothers wife was close to one of her ex-boyfriends. Maybe he was just lying. "And besides its like living on the extreme sports channel expect with out the bungee jumping."

 

"Yea usually you don't invite their exes to their wedding."

 

"I know usually they invite their current boyfriends/girlfriends to their weddings."

           

            She firmly arched an eyebrow at him. He was attempting to be charming and suave and smart. That sent a sharp nervous pain through her stomach. She could distinguish between the pang and her baby's firm kicks. This was the kind that made her feel like she was going to dry heave. It was simply because she didn't trust the charming and the handsome. Most of the time those guys were pricks.

 

"Who are you here for? Bride or Groom?"

 

"I'm the groom's sister."

 

"Is that why you’re hiding in the darkest part of the room?"

 

"I think I'm hiding because they're ashamed of me. Better to accept my position before being told."

 

"Why? Are you the one with the "I break the hubcaps" bumper sticker? Because if that is you then I'd be ashamed too."

 

"No, its a little more complicated than that."

 

"Well, then lets start with are more simpler things. Hi, my name is Five Murphy. I'm a friend of Maggie. Now, I suppose I am to ask you, suavely, your name."

 

"Joey Crowne."

 

"What the hell kind of name is Joey?"

 

"Its short for Joanna, what the hell kind of name is Five?"

 

"My mother named me that. She wasn't very creative. She wanted to name me something original and couldn't think of anything apart from Five."

 

"I don't know, if she wasn't very creative then she would have named you something like James or John."

 

"Or Joey."

 

"It's only not creative if you’re a boy."

 

"Well, what are you planning on naming your kid." He said making a motion towards her stomach. The lump of new life kicked as if on queue from Five. She settled a hand on the top where the curb almost met her breasts. She looked down.

 

"Anything but George." She looked at him again. "Why did she really invite you?"

 

"Her mom likes me and…"

 

"Maggie invited all her ex-boyfriends to her wedding to the doctor?"

 

"Yea." He sighed. "I wasn't going to come but you know, I already RSVP'd. I don't know how much of this I can take."

 

"Me neither I thought I'd stay for the cake but you know considering...."

 

"Want to go get a drink somewhere?"

 

“But they have an open bar here…”

 

“Yes but if I have to listen to another one of those idiot bridesmaids sob at the bar on how beautiful everything is…”

 

"No you won't, I'll kick them in the teeth before you have a chance. I'm not much of a drinker right now."

 

"Well you know, I'll drink and you can watch."

 

"Deal, as long as I don't have to listen to drunken philosophy lessons."

 

"All right."

 

            Weddings, it has been long written by some of times greatest philosophers, are the premiere hook up events more so than Paris Hilton's Birthday Party or funerals. In fact 75% of unwanted pregnancy's result from people who have sex at a friend's wedding. This should not exclude unwed single mothers-to-be and men who are named after numbers. She breathed in the earth smell of being in a bar. When was the last time she'd been in a bar. It had to of been with George Russell. Of course it was, She could remember what she had. He had a Miller Light and she had a Fresca because one of them had to be sober enough to drive home or George was cheap she wasn't sure which. Of course it was on the night before he left her. He'd taken her out to the bar. She discovered, or rediscovered, that night she could not stand beer flavored kisses. It didn't suit anyone. The answer is no matter how much you enjoyed the beer that you just had and no matter how flavorful it was going down. In the regurgitations in the on the faint traces of breath it is most disgusting, only second to that of pot or cigarette breath. She followed the unobtrusive Five to the bar in question. The tinted warm colors of finished oak. She liked bars that didn't have to much crap on the walls. There was something comforting about a place with a couple of pictures. She had suspected that places with all sorts of things were trying to distract you from the slow service and the poor conditions. In short all that flare is suppose to make you happy.

 

            She came to the conclusion that she wasn't comfortable with flare.

 

            Five didn't seem to have much flare to him. If he had been a scumbag, like people could be but won't be mention, he would have mentioned how big the backseat of his Lexus was. Instead he just walked with her across the street to the bar. He even pulled out the bar stool for her. At least if he was a scumbag he was a polite one. The bartender stared at them. It wasn't the weirdest someone was dressed to come into his bar. People coming in suits and dresses were more common than you'd think. The strangest person he'd ever served in the bar was a man in a chicken suit. He didn't want that explained to him and he was more too happy to take the chicken man's money. He wasn't having a good night. He was losing money because the Sox's were whipping up on the Cubs. It should be noted that the majority of people who were served in his bar were rarely women let alone mothers-to-be.

 

"What'll you have?"

 

"Um, I'll have a seven and seven." Joey wondered if he was aware of the irony.

 

"I'll have a virgin White Russian."

 

            The bartender blinked at her for a moment before producing a glass of milk. "Here's your milk. What are you, some kind of straight edge?"

 

"I'm pregnant you dumb a*s."

 

"Really? I just thought you were fat."

 

            There was a moment before Joey launched herself forward. Five, in a move that would only say that he'd been an expert as avoiding fights between bartenders and pregnant women, grabbed the back of Joey's skirt and pulled her down. 

 

"Easy Tigress."

 

"Let me at him I just want to hurt him. Let me hurt him a little."

 

"You have a lot of pent up rage. Come with me I'll show you the way that I deal with it."

 

            Five's three favorite past times, in no real order, are as follows: collecting comic books, recreational driving and video games. Five's favorite video games range from the old sixteen bit games to the more advanced. The game they stood in front of was a small first person shooter. Five shuffled around in his pockets and produced two quarters. Joey stared at the floor for a moment and then at the game.

 

"This is what we in the biz, call Area 51. Its a first person shooter where you hunt aliens that look a lot like zombies from a George A. Romero film." He put two coins into the machine. "Just point the light gun and shoot."

 

            Joey aimed her gun quietly at the zombie-esque aliens and fired. There was a computerized scream before the alien exploded into nothing but matter and blood. Her eyes widened and started to glow with an amount of love and joy.

 

"Oh look at that." She said excitedly.

 

"Yea see, isn't this better than hurting people." Five fired off a few rounds himself. "They have this game in the arcade across this street from office. Every alien I kill here is one less I have to kill there."

 

"You have aliens where you work?"

 

"No but some times they do feel like zombies."

 

            Joey could imagine him at a game like this. Suit jacket thrown over his brief case, tie loosened like some kid who had just gotten out of school and slowly was undressing from his uniform. She could see him blasting away like now tongue out in concentration. This was his moment of freedom from a cardboard prison of florescent lights. A moment’s peace in blood splattered alien carnage.

 

            She felt like she might really start to like this guy.

 

"What do you do for a living?"

 

"Oh you know venture capitol. Oppress the weak masses for financial gain."

 

"Sounds rewarding."

 

"And you?"

 

"An over glorified secretary for the historical society. I know I should be lucky. Not everyone has gone through the stages of evolution to be designed for clerical work."

 

"Well it means you have nimble fingers."

 

"Thank you."

 

"For the ontandra or the lessons on Area 51?"

 

"For saving me from doing the Electric Slide."

Author's Note

Teh usual