Casa Dracula 3 - The Bride Of Casa Dracula (30 page)

Then the music started, and the groom took his place beneath the trellis. He was handsome in a black suit and snow white shirt.

Everyone waited excitedly for the bride’s procession. When Cornelia came up the aisle on her father’s arm, she looked more beautiful than I’d ever seen her, wearing a floor-length ivory sheath. A sparkling diamond tiara held an antique lace veil on her dark hair.

Her father was a distinguished-looking man with iron gray curly hair, wearing tails, with a banner across his chest and medals and ribbons. He moved to stand beside his wife, an attractive woman in an elegant robin’s-egg blue suit dress.

I wasn’t going to come, but Cornelia had called several times, insisting that I attend since I had introduced her to Joseph. I’d arrived just in time to check in at the oceanside hotel and drive here. I’d taken a seat in the back row. I hadn’t been sure about what to wear to a wedding that was supposed to be my own. So I decided to follow Mrs. Nice’s advice and choose something classic: my white plastic miniskirt and a black-and-white print blouse.

Now I looked for friends and I saw them everywhere. Edna and Thomas were at the front, as were Sam and his beautiful family. In the row behind them were Gabriel and his guy, and my heart ached as I spotted Oswald with Vidalia. I saw Pepper’s hulking frame, and off to one side was Gigi Barton with her beau, my friend Bernie. Nancy was at the back, directing things and looking fantastically efficient with a clipboard and a headset.

It wasn’t until the tall man in front of me moved that I saw Ian’s curly head and Ilena’s platinum fall of hair.

The wedding couple was so happy and in love that their mood cheered the whole party. Tomorrow there would be another ceremony, the private vampire ritual. The Council had lost too much credibility to object to Cornelia’s marriage to Joseph, since they’d been flummoxed by the very existence of werewolves. Among themselves, they dropped Joseph’s name-which happened to be Joseph Alfred Joseph-as if he were a celebrity.

The couple was pronounced husband and wife, and as they walked back down the aisle, I found myself tearing up. I told myself that it was because I was so happy for them, but my feelings were still tender, and I wished that I hadn’t promised Cornelia that I would come.

I was trying to slip away unobtrusively when a familiar voice cried, “Milagro!” and Gigi Barton descended on me, the dramatic butterfly sleeves of her fluid dress making her look like an exotic bird.

“I’m having my next wedding here if I can convince Bernie to tie the knot,” she said excitedly. Bernie was behind her, shaking his head at me, as she pulled me away. “Wasn’t it lovely? Come help me find a real drink.”

“It was lovely,” I said.

“And I thought it was going to be you.” She leaned close to my ear. “Don’t be sad, honey. Your time will come. We both need a good belt of scotch.”

She took my hand in her beringed one and tugged me toward a good-looking young waiter. And despite my efforts to get away, I was somehow lured into mingling with Cornelia’s various relatives and fast-living friends and stylists.

I saw an opening in Joseph and Cornelia’s circle and went to them. “Congratulations,” I said and kissed the gorgeous groom. I hugged Cornelia, happy for her happiness. “Cornelia, you look radiant.”

“Young Lady, you made it!” she said. “I’d like you to meet my parents.”

Before I could make an excuse, Lala and Augustin Ducharme were in front of me and Cornelia was introducing us. I didn’t know how to behave with people who had abused their own child because of an addiction. But Ian’s father said, “A pleasure! A pleasure!” and Lala embraced me and said, “You introduced my little girl to Joseph! You’re just as pretty as I thought you’d be.”

They seemed so warm and friendly. Even knowing what I did, it was difficult to dislike them. I said, “I know you must be happy today.” I glanced around, looking for someone to rescue me. Our biker buddy Pepper was just off to my left and I said, “If you’ll excuse me, I must say hello to an old friend.”

Pepper had crammed himself into a suit, and after he gave me a bear hug, the band began playing. “Come on, I can dance fancy. Did you check out the open bar? Nothing but the good stuff. Cornelia’s a class act.”

I followed Pepper’s steps, surprised that he actually did know how to waltz.

“How you doing, hon?” he asked.

“I’ve had better days.”

“You’re gonna be okay. You need something to smooth out the edges?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.”

“Yeah, well, I took something myself and the edges are kinda melting.” As I was laughing, he whirled me back against someone.

And I found myself looking up into Oswald’s face, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

“Hello, Milagro. You look like you’re having fun.”

“Oswald.” My throat tightened just gazing into his gray eyes. He looked even paler than usual, and gaunt. His cheekbones stood out sharply, and his charcoal gray suit hung loosely from his shoulders. But he was still fabulous. “How are you?”

“Busy. We’re opening another clinic for outpatient derma clients. Vidalia’s throwing herself into her pro bono work.” Vidalia was working off her misdeeds to me by spending every weekend providing medical services for the needy.

“That’s great.”

“How about you? My grandmother says your loft makes her eyes hurt.”

“She’s convinced that I’m keeping the pink furniture as a personal affront to her.” I tried to smile, but there seemed to be a disconnect between my brain and my body. “I’m still writing and doing the gardening thing.”

“Well,” he said, glancing across the way to see Vidalia watching us. “I brought her because Joseph and Cornelia invited her. We’re not dating or anything.”

“You’re a free man, Oz.”

“My work takes up all my time. So, are you here by yourself?”

“Yes…I’m not…” I struggled to find words. “It’s so good to see all our friends.”

He nodded and then let out a heavy breath and said, “I better keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t go off the rails.”

“Good to see you, Oswald K. Grant.”

He nodded and touched my hair. I leaned toward him instinctively, as I had from the moment I first met him, and I smelled his herb-scented sunblock. He smiled sadly and said, “I remember the day you bought that skirt.” I nodded, waiting for him to say more. But then he turned and walked away.

He had been my world: the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes. I dropped my head to hide my face, my tears, my sorrow, and rushed away.

To get to the parking lot, I had to pass right by Ian and Ilena. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing Ian’s way. His eyes caught mine and I saw something there-was it regret, pity? I didn’t wait to find out. I got in my truck and drove straight back to the hotel.

I threw my things in my green zebra case and dragged it to the lobby. “I’d like to check out of my room,” I told the clerk and slid my key across to him.

“So soon?” he said.

“Yes.”

He looked at his computer screen and said, “Yes, Ms. Ducharme’s taken care of everything again. Have a pleasant evening and come back soon.”

I was about to thank him when I realized what he’d said. “What did you mean, ‘Ms. Ducharme’s taken care of everything again’?”

He looked puzzled, but said, “I was referring to your last stay with us. It was put on Cornelia Ducharme’s account.”

“Of course. She’s so generous. Thank you.” Cornelia had set me up for failure by hoping that I would discover either her brother or Bar None. If Cornelia had made reservations here without my knowing it, she could easily have canceled Oswald’s reservations as well, which would have explained the hotel problem on my trip east.

I went back to the City and continued trying to mend myself.

The Council, so willing to punish enemies without proof, was much more lenient with their own. Nixon “resigned” his position on the Rules Committee and gave me a settlement that was sufficient for me to pay Oswald for the loft. He refused to take the money so I just deposited it in one of his accounts.

As some genius philosopher once said, breaking up is hard to do. I’d heard there was a mathematical relationship between the length of time you were together and the time required for recovery, but I’d forgotten if the ratio was one month needed for every year together, or one month for every six months together.

I asked Nancy and she said, “Oh, I’m so over Todd already and I was with him since frosh year.” She’d separated from her husband and was living in her apartment, trying to start a business as an event planner.

I’d given her the composition book filled with her style edicts, and after one of her sorority sisters had included part of it in a fashion column, Nancy was in demand as a style pundit, spouting insightful truisms such as “Leopard print is a timeless classic.”

Don Pedro’s fauxoir was rushed into publication, typos, grammatical errors, and all. I spotted it in a bookstore window downtown. The cover was a cheesy drawing of a man morphing into animals, including the inscrutable platypus. I bought a copy and pasted my name over Don Pedro’s on the cover. I propped the book atop my desk, beside a bulletin board with clippings of the fauxoir’s rave reviews.

Mercedes asked about the display and I told her how I’d been scammed by Don Pedro. When the book reached the best-seller lists, I bought a bottle of champagne and invited her over.

She arrived carrying a big box and said, “I’ve got a couple of presents for you.” Inside the box was the much-vaulted Margaritanator 3000, a chrome-and-glass powerhouse of a blender. Mercedes took a sheet of folded paper out of her pocket and handed it to me. “Here’s another.”

“What is it?”

“It took considerable digging, but I found out that your pal Don Pedro isn’t from the jungle. His real name is Dave Alvarez and he’s from the San Fernando Valley. After his auto parts shop went under, he did a stint as a pet psychic, using the name Jasper Farswat, and from there he reinvented himself as a Don Pedro Nascimento. But he’s just an ordinary Mexican-American like you.”

I handed her a glass of champagne and raised my own. “To all the ordinary Mexican-Americans and their extraordinary imaginations.”

She toasted and then said, “I read the book. It was damn good, mujer, aside from the fact that it’s total B.S.”

After Mercedes left, I sat on the pink velvet sofa and opened the fauxoir. After twenty pages, I realized that when I’d been channeling Don Pedro, I’d broken away from all the writing rules I’d imposed upon myself. His voice was loopy and florid, yes, but also fluid and touching. I began working again on my story about the girl who is taken to the underworld.

I reconnected with my old friends. The vampires and their circle kept in touch with me, although they handled me carefully. I made new friends at the local Stitching & Bitching group. They taught me to knit and I made several charming sweaters for Sam’s toddler. I even invited them to my loft and fired up the Margaritanator 3000 for Rancho Sunsets.

The needlework had an unexpected but very welcome benefit: after so many hours of controlling my small motor skills, precise movement became automatic and extended to my large motor skills. I stopped having to worry about hugging someone so hard that I hurt him.

I decided to salvage the embroidered silk from my wedding tunic and make scarves. The garment was in a box on a shelf in my closet. I took down the box and when I pulled out the gown, a manila folder fell out of the box.

It was the guide to the vampire marriage ceremony. I hadn’t looked at it before, but now I sat on my bed and opened it. The first sheet was written in the strange old alphabet. The phonetic translation was written on the second page along with the directions: “The groom places the braided birch wreath atop the bride’s head.” The wedding was consummated when the bride cut the groom and tasted his blood.

I fingered my bride’s tunic, remembering how Oswald had looked in his scarlet robe. Then I turned it inside out to see how I could cut it. Parallel to my original seams were neat rows of stitches that took in over an inch on each side. Bad, bad Cornelia.

Edna and I visited whenever she was in town, but I was never able to talk about Oswald except in the most superficial ways. Once I said, “I miss the ranch the way it was…with all of us there. Those evenings we shared. They all blend together in my mind, but each was so wonderful. I was so happy.”

“I know, Young Lady.”

As the weeks went by, I found myself content to awake in the rosy light that came through the curtains of my pink loft. I looked forward to seeing my friends and I enjoyed my time alone writing, reading, or unraveling one of my knitting experiments.

Sometimes I even went out to dinner or a movie with a man, but I always went home by myself.

One night I walked to My Dive, as I did once or twice a week, enjoying the way the steam came up through the sidewalk grates. I watched a man changing the signage on a music hall and admired the gray cupola of City Hall against a dark blue sky. Mercedes had taken the lease on the little sandwich shop next door and installed Juanita’s son Freddie as cook and manager of My Dive Annex.

I waved to Freddie as I walked past the doorway, but he was busy flirting with a California girl.

Lenny, the club’s doorman, and I greeted each other with a hip bump. “Good show tonight,” he said.

“It always is.”

Mercedes was talking to the lighting guy on the balcony, so I helped the bar chick set up. As the house began filling up, I poured a cranberry and soda for myself and took a seat at a two-top.

Someone pulled the other chair out, and a man said, “May I?”

I looked up to see Ian Ducharme, but all the different things I could have said had a traffic jam in my throat. He sat, and instantly a waitress was there and he was ordering a bottle of wine.

“So here we are again, Young Lady. Should I ask how you are?”

“Please don’t. All of my friends treat me like an invalid,” I said. “But how are you and Ilena?”

Ian gave a bitter smile. “Do you expect me to be satisfied with another woman? I am still waiting for you.”

“Ian, may I ask you an odd question?”