Sinners Circle (10 page)

Carl’s
friend Michael is getting married.
Written vows, caged doves,
real rings and everything.

Alison, she’s hiking up the
halter top of her dress, spitting in my ear, “Were we not supposed to wear
white?”

Carl’s friend Michael is getting
married to a woman he met online via a website for Ukrainian mail order brides.

Alison hisses in my ear so
sharply I can
feel
the spit flying
into my external auditory canal, beads of her saliva collecting on the bottoms
of my hoop earrings. Her words, they are literally dripping onto my bare
shoulder. “It’s not like
she’s
pure
anyway. I’m not going to dress in slut colors just because
she
is parading around in faux virgin fabric. Look at her... she’s
probably been around the block a
hundred
times.”
It’s kind of alarming how Alison crosses and uncrosses her legs when she says
virgin
.

Carl’s friend Michael, this chump
hasn’t even met his blushing bride. This wedding, the one I’m sitting at right
now, hung over and dizzy, yeah this will be Michael and what’s-her-face’s first
time seeing each other, flesh wise. Alison points at the wrong woman. I wipe
the beads of spit gathering on my earrings. “That isn’t
Sveta
.”

Alison looks over at some fat
woman laced tight into an off-white bridesmaid dress and spooning borscht into
the wide hole of her face.
“Her?”

I
shake my head.
“Nope.
That’s just some bitch.”

She
keeps pulling up her halter top. “How do you know?”

“Because
Mike won’t see her until she walks down the aisle.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,
really.
Some people really
are
that lame.”

Alison
rolls her eyes, “
Traditional
.”

I
shrug.
“Lame.”

She rolls her eyes again, quits
pulling at her halter and crosses her arms and legs. “Well
I
don’t think I’m wrong for wearing white if that pig over there
gets to.”

The borscht pig, the one in the
white dress, she pops some
pirogi
in her mouth and
smiles at some old man walking by. He doesn’t smile back.

I poke Alison in the ribs, “Hey
is my eyeliner smudged?”

She looks at me without smiling
and shakes her head, “No sweetie, you look beautiful.”

Carl sits down holding a napkin
of Brie and Havarti squares.
“Hey ladies.”

Alison smiles, “Don’t we look
great? We got our hair and nails done this afternoon.” She shakes her hands
loosely in front of her so Carl can see her manicured talons.

He pops a block of Havarti in his
mouth. “Lovely!” He looks at my hair. “Wow! Amanda, I’ve never seen you with
your hair up.” He pops another piece of cheese in his mouth. “Beautiful.”

I scratch my legs with my Mary
Janes
. These tights I’m wearing are itchy as hell, but I
have to have them on or else everyone will ask me how I got that scar on the
back of my leg. I got it from the chick I killed, the one who popped me in the
back of the knee with a pair of scissors. Yeah, I don’t need to draw any more
attention to these things. I was a little worried about going strapless because
of the five claw marks on my right shoulder, but when the woman at the dress store
saw them she asked if they were like that Khmer tattoo of Angelina Jolie’s.

She said, “You know, the ‘Know
Your Rights’ one.” I was going to say
no, Angelina’s tattoo is on the other shoulder. I was going to say, no, these
scars are from a woman trying to save her own life. I was so tempted to say,
I’m a murderer and it turns me on to rape, kill, and eat women. But instead I lied, “Yeah, ‘
Know
Your Rights.’ I’m a big fan of Jolie.” I even nodded, grinned, and acted fun and
everything. Though I got the feeling,
even when I acted just right and didn’t speak out of turn and bought all the
shit she told me to, I got the feeling that bitch at the dress store knew I was
rotten. When we waved goodbye from the car, I was so tempted to give her the
finger and kill Alison and I both by driving through the wall of the bridal
shop.

“Totally beautiful.”
Carl’s cheeks are packed with so
much Brie he’s drooling wide strands of milky looking spit all over the front
of his tuxedo.

Eventually the groom’s side is stocked
full, so Michael asks half of everyone to sit on the bride’s side. Carl, me,
and Alison, we don’t move a muscle. We’re sitting in the back row in white
picnic chairs. The only three people this far back on the groom’s side.
Everyone else on Michael’s side is up front. But it’s OK because we look cool.
We look like the bad kids.

Some old Ukrainian woman sings a
song, completely flat and
acapella
. She’s wailing
away underneath a wreath of artificial flowers where the priest is waiting for
the old pronouncing man and wife shtick, the worthless pay check and the free
bar. This old woman, the one singing in
Ukrainian, she goes on and on for a good eight minutes in this terrible
language I would never want to understand
or
appreciate. I keep rolling down my
evening gloves to check my watch.

Alison pokes my arm, “I thought
no one here came from her country.”

I can see the cheese being
reduced to mush in Carl’s mouth as he speaks, “Yeah, why are they all sitting
on the groom’s side?”

Alison rolls her eyes, “People
will do the weirdest things to fit in.”

Carl’s mushy cheese
breath
blowing down my neck, “I don’t understand
why
they had an
outdoor
wedding and we’re sitting here under the goddamn
tents
. Why not just rent a hall or
something? It’d be cheaper.” He pops another block in his mouth, a drop of
white spit plopping into his sleeve.
“
And
easier to clean up.”

The old man, the one who walked
by the borscht bitch, the piggy one in the cheap dress whose now sitting on the
groom’s side, stuffing her face with Torte, yeah that old guy who didn’t smile
at her, well, he turns around now, frowns at us and puts a finger to his lips.

The priest says something to
Michael, he stands up, digs in his suit pocket for a second then nods to the
priest. A fat bitch with a huge purple birth mark on her face springs off her
chair, launching towards a tiny portable CD player hooked up to two huge wooden
speakers that look so old and crumbly they could be reduced to dust from the
slightest breeze. She presses play then
retracts like a jack in the box back into her front row seat on the bride’s
side.

Everyone turns around to see the
bride come stepping slowly out from behind two large cream colored drapes that
part the very moment Madonna comes to life through the CD player, “Life is a
mystery...” those two ancient speakers carrying over the sounds of that old
wailing Ukraine woman.

I
itch
the scar on the back of my knee and smile as the bride steps into the aisle
with Madonna singing, “I hear you call my name, and it feels like
home
...”

The bride, I’ve never met her. I
know her name is
Sveta
. She’s got the body of an
anorexic teenage cheerleader, only hotter. She’s got the ass of a girl coming
into puberty. I can’t see her face, but I’m immediately disinterested when I
see her hair is blonde, long and thick. I’m reminded of the waitress—what’s her
name—Kim. I remember her strapped into a chair, huffing beneath the saran wrap
wrapped around her entire head.

I can’t see
Sveta’s
face because she’s wearing that damn veil. I check my watch again, Madonna whines, “I want you to take me there!”
as
Sveta
approaches the priest. When she’s face to
veiled face with Michael, the woman with the birthmark on her face, she dashes
forward, slapping the
stop
button.

Somewhere off in the distance a
car honks twice and a dog starts barking. While Michael reads his feelings off
a flash card I can’t stop staring at the perfect bow in
Sveta’s
back, her perky tits and stick arms. Her figure is so perfect she looks like
Leta
Laroe
only covered in glowing
white silk and a head of honey blonde hair curled against her back.

Alison whispers, “There are
blondes in the Ukraine?”

I poke Carl, “Are there blondes
in the Ukraine?”

Pieces of wet cheese foaming at
the corners of his lips growing into soppy streams of creamy spit, “I guess
so.”

I lean back to Alison, “I guess
so.”

She shrugs and spits in my ear
again, “That’s
weird
.”

When the bride says, “I do,” and
Michael starts crying and everyone is blowing snot into hankies,
Sveta
lifts up her veil and they kiss. Carl leans into one
ear, “But-her-face.”

Alison leans in the other ear, “A
fantastic body and that’s all she’s got for a mug?”

I laugh just when the priest
says, “May God be with you.” And
that old asshole, walk
by guy, turns around again frowning and puts his finger against his lips. I’d
flip him the bird but
Sveta
is looking at me and I
can feel little chunks of Carl’s cheese rolling down the side of my face.

Fatty pushes play again, skipping
to the beginning of “Like a Prayer” and the whole song starts over again. Only
this time, thank God, everyone is getting up from their chairs and moving
around, walking towards the bride and groom.

It’s always a great relief when I
speak without whispering, “Alison, give me a napkin.”

She checks around her, “Don’t
got
.”

Carl is getting up, walking over
to the buffet, I follow him when a napkin is suddenly right in front of me. I
take
it,
wipe my ear which causes a bunch of makeup to
come smeared off.

“Thanks, this...” I look up to
see a girl so beautiful my heart skips a full beat and I have to close my eyes
for a second to keep myself from chocking on a lump that’s swollen my throat
completely closed.

When I open them again, the girl
is still standing there, an awkward grin on the whitest skin I’ve ever seen.
Her hair is bright red, but not the gross kind of red. She’s got eyes so
stunning, so bright green I can’t even look at them directly when she asks “Are
you OK?” Her words are like gifts from the bows of her lips, the most beautiful
silk ribbons,
the
kind you would never untie.

“Hi.” I go to shake her hand but
the napkin, with all my makeup and mashed cheese hits the tiny palm of her
perfect hand and I feel so dizzy I can’t say anything except, “Great party...”
before stumbling away and almost knocking into a group of bridesmaids posing by
the punch bowl. I sit outside, have a smoke and wait for Carl to come out of
the tent dragging Alison with him.

He’s laughing, spinning his keys
around his finger as we walk to Alison’s car. “So I see you met Mike’s sister.”

A passing breeze moves through my
body, chilling me to the center of my bones. “Who was...
”

He throws a thumb over his
shoulder back towards the tent.
“That red head.
That’s
Mike’s older sister. She asked me if you were drunk.”

I shake my head and fumble with
opening the door, my whole face feels hot,
my
chest
feels tight and heavy. “But I’m, I wasn’t,
I’m wasn’t
not...”

Carl is staring at
me,
Alison pauses at her door in the front. I can barely
look up because my chest keeps getting tighter and tighter and it’s getting
harder and harder to breathe. “I’m
not
drunk!”

He squints, his voice getting
real calm. “I know, Amanda, it’s OK.”

I light another smoke and we pull
away into traffic. Carl unwinds his window, lights a cigarette. “It’s OK,
Amanda, don’t worry about it.”

I flick the ash of my cigarette
out the window. “I got some shit to do at home, drop me
off,
I’ll call you guys later.”

Alison turns on the radio, bobs
her head to the rhythm of a song I don’t know the name of, but have heard
enough to hate. “But it’s the wedding party!”

Carl laughs, “Shut the fuck up,
since when do you give a fuck about
wedding
parties?”

She turns the radio up higher,
“Whatever, I just
do
OK?”

He shakes his head, “Yeah yeah,
whatever.”

At a traffic light I put my head
between my knees, I hear Carl call from the driver’s seat, “Amanda, you OK?
You going
to puke?”

I sit up, lean my head back and
close my eyes, “No, my chest just
is
...”

Alison says, “Panic attack. It’s
OK,
I used to get them all the time.”

I open my eyes but everything is
either too bright or too blurry so I close them again. “What the fuck is a
panic attack?”