Chapter 27

Bachelor party,’ kiss the bride,’ and Maui.

There were only four days until our wedding date when Liz left for her bachelorette party at some strip club in Greenville. I wasn’t worried about Liz getting into trouble; after all, she went with my mother, sisters, Aunt Jolene, Olivia, my friend Jan and her mother, Lucille, the beautician.

For my bachelor party that same night, I chose to sit around a fire on the beach near Chase’s beach house with my seven high school friends. Chase is now going to medical school and is engaged; Greg is married with a baby son and works at his father’s bakery, and Vince is a bodybuilder who works at a gym and was married to his weight bench; and these three still live in Greenville. Toby is a dancer who came out of the closet two years earlier and lives in Las Vegas, and Dennis enlisted in the Marines after high school graduation and was stationed at Norfolk. Carol and Ellie were no longer skinny little girls, Carol was hot, HOT as the sun hot, and was a local cable news reporter on channel 83, and Ellie was married to a man ten years older than her who owned five car dealerships in the region, and they had three kids. If I were single, I’d chase after either girl.

We reminisced about the goofy things we did in high school together. At one point, Greg asked, “Do you remember that Wednesday in June when we were sixteen?”

Ellie responded quickly, “You mean the day Marty brought that woman in the tiny black bikini to this beach?”

Vince interrupted, “Man, whenever I have a weight I’m not sure I can lift, I bring up a mental picture of her and, WHAM, no problem lifting that weight. She was hot. Marty, I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you have any pictures of her I could have?”

Toby responded, “Gross, Vince, not cool at all; however, if you give me yours without your shirt on, I’ll give you a special picture of me.”

I laughed so hard that I fell off my log seat.

And as we retold the beach story around the fire, a new tradition among close friends was begun; whenever he got together as a group, we would tell the story again, with some modifications. I made it home about twelve-thirty before remembering Liz and I wouldn’t be sleeping together until after the wedding.

I slept pretty well and thought about driving to Mom’s house and eating breakfast with Liz, but I stopped at the diner in the strip mall where Lucille’s beauty shop was. I wolfed down a big breakfast and started to drive away, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me. I walked over and entered Lucille’s shop, and there was only one customer so far, so I said hello to Millie, another friend from high school, and walked back to Lucille’s office.

“Well, fancy meetin’ yawl here, Mahty. Ah, can’t possibly imagine why you would come to visit little old me on this pahticular mornin’? Could it be yore here tuh find out ifn your bride behaved herself lahk ah lady?”

“Um, yes, em, ah am.” She had me speaking with a drawl like hers.

“Well, ifn yawl answer mah question ahl tell you. All righty?”

“Okay.”

No drawl this time, “Just curious, why did you cosign my loan?”

Telling a lie or making up a story isn’t getting me out of this. But, I’ve heard that the truth will set you free, so here it comes.

“You deserved a chance to live your dream, and all I had to do was put up some cash collateral. So I sold an invention and used some of the money so you could get your shop. As long as you don’t default on your loan, and I know you won’t, I won’t lose my money.”

She got up from behind her desk and kissed me tenderly on my cheek. “Thank you for being honest, Marty; I’m grateful because you gave me the chance to succeed.”

“Anyway, your bride-to-be Liz was a perfect lady last night. I was quite surprised after my last encounter with her. She was delightful, and if you have an image of how you’d expected the women in your family to behave last night, Liz was right in the middle between a perfect southern lady and a cougar prowling for dinner.”

Her drawl came back, very thick. “Mahself, on the other hand, bein’ ah divorced woman, had quite ah naht. However, Ah do not believe thus is sumpn Ah shouldn’t discuss with a man who is not mah hawhsbend.”

She smiled and said, “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

Off to work, I went to do the first of five demos for Cray Inc. Waiting for me were three Cray employees and six gentlemen who appeared to be between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-five. I was only introduced to Jack, who appeared to be their leader, by first name only.

I had a conversation with my salesman an hour before, asking him what facts I needed to know about the Cray unit, and he shut me up and asked, “With the terminal in the computer room connected to your IBM mainframe, can you run a generic calculation and then run the same job on the Cray terminal?”

“You know I can.”

“That’s all you have to do, and then the demo is over.”

“Sweet.”

So everyone followed me around the computer room to the IBM terminal, and I showed them an old formula for obsolete solid rocket fuel, keyed the command into the console, and it took eight minutes to run. Then we walked back to the other side of the room, and I duplicated my keystrokes, showed them what was on the screen, and hit enter. The same answer popped up in twelve seconds. While the Cray reps swooped in to get the sale, I patted myself on my back.

Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. Marty has left the building.

I returned to my office to go through whatever mail Amara let me have, and as I sat down, my cell phone rang. It was Gail, my realtor.

“Marty, I have three new offers; the lowest is 3.2 million, and the highest is 3.5 million. Can I beef up my sales commission with a bidding war, or do you want me to take the highest offer?”

“Gail, Gail, baby. You’re the realtor; what do I know about selling a house on the planet earth? Now, if it was on the moon, no problem. Have fun, and don’t get caught between two bidders. Call me with the final price. Bubye.”

The rest of the week went by quickly, with only some wedding junk that had to be done. I had to try on my tuxedo, which fit perfectly, and I had to pretend I cared when Mom took me to the flower shop to show me the flowers she ordered for the wedding. While following her up and down a mile of aisles containing every plant God placed on the earth, I kept repeating, “Oh, Momma, they’re nice, very, very nice.”