Dishonor Thy Wife (16 page)

BRAD

A KIND GESTURE IS TO SUPPORT THE LOCAL CANADIAN ECONOMY—I FIND
A DRUG DEALER. Our neighbor north of us
is
the
Breaking Bad
drugstore, just ask seniors on a fixed
income. I up my usage of
Ecstasy
as a cure for cluster headaches, which
I never had until Jayden.

I stumble from the bathroom of his condominium feeling
lovey-dovey.
Ecstasy
is known as the love pill and my eyes are red like
a glassy Valentine’s card.
Ecstasy
can make you crazy.

Ecstasy may cause hallucinations but this is a first for me.

My brother is standing by the bed, smiling.

I rip out my heart and hand it to him in a champagne
glass.

The heart is pumping, the glass overflowing with blood
like a fountain.

Jayden drinks my blood and then stomps on the glass like
in a Jewish wedding. Mazel tov!
Who knows, maybe out mother was Jewish.
He
then slices his wrist with a shard of champagne glass.

“Drink,” he says. “Drink of my blood, your blood.”

I suck on his wrist, draining the life of my brother.

Okay, I am thinking about a vampire themed wedding with my
brother’s girlfriend in Vegas, but settle on Elvis, my favorite ghost.

* * *

BRAD

My twin’s credit card purchases a 3.71-carat wedding set
costing $40,000, only the best for my brother’s bride. He will never sue me
because we would both lose our medical licenses since most of our shenanigans
have been illegal. For instance, we have been using each other’s medical
licenses to practice in countries we have no license for and impersonating a
different doctor. Then there are the airline flights where we flew as each
other using passports, which do not belong to us. Just the passport fraud would
earn us about a dozen years in prison.

Bigamy, however, is not an issue. I will never go to prison in
either Canada or the U.S. for having two wives since Vanessa believes she
married Jayden, not me.

His credit card pays for the ceremony, the Canadian mailing
fee to send the wedding video to him, and ditto for our ride in a replica of
Elvis’ 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood. I stand on the back seat with Elvis shades
wiggling on my nose. We sing
Viva Las Vegas
while waving like royalty as
the car slowly drives up the Vegas Strip. Everyone on the strip is cheering at
the
Just Married
sign.

There is enough credit still left on Jayden’s card to charge
the honeymoon penthouse suite at the
Bellagio Hotel and Casino
where the
driver drops us.

Vanessa, being Canadian, is not used to such a strong sun
and her skin has blistered. Her white wedding dress has sweatbands under the
arms. “I need a drink,” she slurs from parched lips. “Come on, honey, let’s go
up to our honeymoon suite.” She has a coughing fit and dust clouds puff from
her mouth.

I stare over the top of my sunglasses and shake my hips and
legs as though a tarantula is biting my balls. Okay, so in order to play a part
I have to get into the role and become Elvis, a young handsome Elvis before he
ate his way through Graceland. “Amazing grace, oh how good the steak.”
My
Elvis wig falls crooked on my head. My glazed eyes reflect cocaine and ecstasy,
the best illegal drugs to calm a groom’s nerves, especially in an
alligators-biting-my-ass situation.

Vanessa pulls at my arm as if she is yanking my chain. “Wasn’t
our wedding romantic? Next time we go out wear the Elvis black shirt I bought
you.”  

“Quit nagging me,”
I hiss and punch her in the
stomach in a private corner of the casino. “Your voice is like boulders banging
inside my skull and knocking off pieces of my brain. And that’s about the best
compliment you’re ever going to get about your singing.”

My bride, Jayden’s bride that is, crumples to the floor.

I spin my head around the casino and no one is paying
attention to us in a sea of flushed faces with glittering eyes hoping to win
the big jackpot.
Gimme. Gimme.

Gimme peace.

“There, there now honey, see what happens when you nag Elvis?”
Good. One squeak and fart after punching her and Vanessa is quiet.

A cola cures her hiccups and I order her to, “stay put while
I gamble, hear?” 

“How come you sound like a Texan instead of Elvis?” Vanessa
is stupid cute so can be fun, but this is not one of those times. “I want to go
to our room,” she moans.

“Later we’ll check in. Just sip your drink and be a good
little girl. Stay out of Daddy’s way.” I shift my shoulder in an Elvis groove mood.

“Hit me again,” I say in my best Elvis voice and gamble with
Jayden’s credit card at the casino, the card that is not maxed out. My brother
would want to have a good time on his honeymoon and $13,000 blown at the crap
tables and playing black jack is about right for a Vegas groom.

Jayden’s bride recovers and hangs by my side at the black
jack table, peering over my shoulder, playing with my hair. “Oh, Jayden,” she
coos, “you are so romantic, to actually get down on your knees and beg me to
marry you. Are you as deliriously happy as I am?”

She is drunk and glows like kryptonite. How do I know what
glowy kryptonite looks like? Because I am
Superman
and can see through
women’s clothes. “I’m happier,” I say, and my bladder about bursts from
laughter, imagining the look of horror on my brother’s face when he finds out
that this silly dumb broad is his wife
.
We have only been married a few
hours and I feel like choking the life out of her. I must not be sick to death
of Ronni
yet
, but then she does not whine at a man. Ronni never sings,
cries, or talks my block off. She stays out of my way, unlike Vanessa.

I pull my bride up by her underarms and wiggle the room key
at her.

In the honeymoon suite, we lift glasses of champagne.

“To us,” Vanessa gushes.

To my brother.
I lift the champagne glass and guzzle
the sparkling wine. I then throw the glass at the wall, kapow!

I grab another champagne glass and fill it to the top while
Vanessa breaks out in song. “Tiny bubbles...”

The champagne glass in my hand shatters, cutting my fingers.

I leap off the bed as if it is a tall building.

 “Where are you going, Jayden?”

None of your damn business!
I nearly yell at her but
instead answer through gritted teeth, “I’m going to the bathroom to bend some
steel with my bare hands.”

I huddle on the toilet while Vanessa bangs on the door.

“What are you doing in there, Jayden? Number one or number
two?”

If I break Vanessa’s legs, she might quit following me. She
did not need to walk down the aisle. We could have had a drive-thru wedding in
Vegas.

I will take a cheeseburger with fries and marry this
bride for dessert; I mean bury this bride in the desert. ‘Til death do we part,
I do.

I march out of the bathroom with Vanessa nipping at my
heels. “Oh,” she squeals, “I napped while you did your business and am now
rested to begin our honey…”

“Shush now while I call my true love. Do you know what quiet
is, sweetheart?”

“Your true love?”

Who knew that Vanessa could have such a tiny voice? I punch
in some numbers on a cell phone and place my fingers on Vanessa’s lips to
silence her.

“Uh…,” she says.

I snap my teeth and she mews.

“Hey, it’s me.” My voice always goes husky sexy when talking
to Barbie. “Are you alone, my darling?”

I wink at Vanessa and mouth the words, “Don’t cry.”

“How about a little phone sex, Barbie? Give me a minute, okay?”

I cover the speaker of the phone and whisper in Vanessa’s
ear, “Get out, and do not come back to our room until you hear from me or I’ll
blacken your eye.”

I uncover the phone. “How can I forget you, Barbie? You know
how much I love you.”

Vanessa blows her nose on her wedding veil, wiping the
mascara from her cheeks. “What happened to the man I married, the man I should
be honeymooning with, instead of you having phone sex with some other woman? If
you really cared about me, you’d get me some frickin’ sunscreen.”

I grab my brother’s bride by her hair and fling her from the
room, locking the door.

“Well, when you gonna leave Bubba, huh?” I yell into the
phone.

We begin arguing like always.

The more heated our argument, the hotter I become. I am
about to bust my Elvis pants.

Barbie is moaning and groaning on the phone. With all the
Viagra Bubba has stocked up, there is still no way that old man will ever
satisfy my woman. I might just go insane with lust for the hottie who pants on
the other end of the line, about 1800 miles away. No woman can do phone sex
like Barbie. She could make a killing as a 1-900-Icangetyouoff.

Barbie sounds like a banshee when she cums and ends
her
dirty phone session by asking, “Have you heard from Jayden lately?”

Oh, no, there I go shriveling up again.
“The battery
on my cell phone is dying,” I scream and hang up on her.

Vanessa enters the suite, waving a room key she must have
gotten from the front desk. “Ah, why did you have to break the lamp?” she
whines and then starts singing, “Your cheating heart will make you weep...”
blah, blah, blah. “Are you getting the hint, Jayden?”

With my
Superman
strength, I could break my brother’s
wife in two. The quiet, more useful bottom half would belong to me. Jayden could
have the upper half, including her tonsils and lungs.

BRAD

Married life is spectacular if you are not really a husband.
I lean back on my brother’s office chair, clink my shoes on his desk and grin
at the
I Want to Marry Elvis Wedding Chapel
eight-by-ten photo of the
happy bride Vanessa with her groom. The smiling couple stands on each side of
the Elvis Presley minister who has an arm around each. The photo brightens up
the gloomy decor of Jayden’s boring office.

“You need some more family photos, brother.” Talking to pictures
of Jayden, makes me feel closer to my brother. Okay, so I am really talking to
myself because the one photo of Jayden in his office is of me assisting in the operation
of one of his patients. I took my mask off to smile at the camera and streaked
my cheek with blood. Other than my lovely photo, there are just boring medical
certificates and medical books. Jayden’s office is blah decor with nothing personal
of the man to mark his office, until now—a photo with wedding bells sketched into
the glass frame. I push a UPS tracking receipt of the wedding video that I
mailed to my brother into the frame corner.

Jayden ruins my good mood by calling and screaming like a
fishwife. “You married her! You married Vanessa, the woman you promised to
break up with!”

“But...”

“You dirty bigamist!”

“It wasn’t me who married Vanessa, Jayden. It was you.”

“Quit confusing us! I was right here in Austin. I was not
the one who dressed up as Elvis and married her, Brad!”

“Really, neither of us married her, Jayden. Elvis did. Elvis
is her husband.”

 “You can go to prison in Canada for having two wives, Brad!”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Jayden; I am not going to
jail because you are not really married to Vanessa. I did not sign the marriage
certificate so the marriage is illegal, thus, there is no marriage. Vanessa is
too dumb to realize we should have signed. The Vegas wedding is simply a joke
on her.” I sang my last sentence to the
Wedding Bell Blues
tune,
mimicking Vanessa.

“Quit laughing, jackass! How can you play such a cruel joke
on a woman?”

“Hey, the minister thought it was a funny jest. I did you a
favor, brother. Once Vanessa finds out the wedding was fake,
she
will
break up with
you
.”

“End this, Brad, and soon. You are twisted, you know that?”

“Well, thank ya. Thank ya very much,” I say in my best Elvis
impersonation.

Kazam! Jayden must have used a hammer on the
End Call
button.
He did not even give me a chance to announce that his office staff threw a
party to celebrate his wedding.

I whisper to his wedding photo, “I haven’t even opened any
of your wedding gifts, brother. I figure you want the honors. I never bought
you anything in Philly except a
Whiskey Sour
and an
AMF.
Remember
how many
AMF
s we drank and each time, toasted our biological mother. We
lifted our glasses of
AMF
and yelled out,
Adios Mother Fucker!
Well,
at least I did. You are always the good boy, even to a mother who gave us away.”

I throw back my head and chuckle. I definitely want to go
home so Jayden can fly back to Canada and open his wedding gifts.

Then my brother ruins my joyous mood again by calling back.

“And tell your Barbie doll to leave me the hell alone. She
keeps calling,” he hollers.

“Now you are the one mixed up, Jayden. Barbie is calling
my
cell phone, which you have, and believes she is talking to me.”

“Yeah, then why does she say in a breathy voice, ‘Jayden,
I’m free tonight. Let’s get together for a drink or two.’”

“And have you?”

“What?”

“Gotten together with my doll?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Brad. I’m just cooling my heels here
in Austin waiting for you to keep your promise.”

“I’ll call when there’s any news.” Boom! I hang up on him
and then urinate in a corner of Jayden’s office, the walls with the best view
of Victoria. Having marked my territory, I milk the leftover drops from
Big
Sam
and zip up my pants. My brother’s office is
mine
now.

Screw his practice, I am leaving the office early.

At a hardware store, I purchase a shovel using Jayden’s
credit card.

I drive down the express lane with my carpool buddy beside
me. The shovel is leaning against the front passenger seat wearing a black
Vancouver
Canucks
hat with a silver visor that matches its mean silver spade face.
The
Canucks
is a hockey team with a killer for a logo, an orca whale.

Jayden wants to end this farce. Well, I am sick to death of
Vanessa and seriously thinking about going home myself, just hopping on a
plane and surprising Jayden. The Canadian teenager I hired after firing Irene, Jayden’s
old-bag receptionist, is incompetent.

I have become disenchanted about living
mi vida loca
.
Really, I picked up some Spanish north of the border in Canada.

“Si,” I tell the shovel, “you and I, Señor Grave Lover, will
play a prank on Monsieur Jayden.” Okay, so I mix up my Spanish with French, but
then English is my second language since I am from Krypton.

My brother will have more than one shock waiting for him
when he returns to Canada.

I flick on my turn signal and make a right onto the long
driveway of the Jayden family farm.