I rolled my eyes. "That was different, Seth, they were trying to do the Princess Bride Princess Bride theme. This is-" theme. This is-"
"Okay fine. How about the Rocky Horror Rocky Horror wedding? Or the murder-mystery wedding?" wedding? Or the murder-mystery wedding?"
I laughed and b.u.mped his shoulder with mine. "You left out the dead squirrels."
He flinched. "I"m still trying to block that one out."
Fair enough.
"So you"re actually officiating a wedding at a run-down club?"
"Yes."
"How"re you being so nonchalant about this? You know it"s weird, right?"
"Nothing fazes me anymore when it comes to weddings." He started walking toward the door and I followed him. "At this point, I just hope to get out with my suit intact and no lasting injuries."
As soon as we walked into the club, Seth turned to me and asked, "Does it look like this in here all the time? Or did they decorate this way for the wedding?"
I squinted at my surroundings in the dim light. "The walls are black all the time. It goes with the goth vibe or something, but I think the dripping faux blood is new and, might I add, cla.s.sy."
He snorted. "I"m already glad I brought you with me."
"Oh holy s.h.i.t!" I yelled when I caught sight of what was being displayed in the corner.
"Eli!" Seth hissed. "We"re at a wedding. Watch your language."
My jaw dropped. "You"re kidding, right?" I raised my hand, jerked it in a circle around us, and pointed at what had grabbed my attention. "You"re going to harp on my language when there"s a brain cake?"
"What?"
"Look." I cupped his chin and moved his face in the right direction. "That, I believe, is the wedding cake, and in addition to being drizzled in red slime, it"s topped by a brain." I paused and then said it again. "A brain."
A loud noise sounded, like a motor, and then fog started rising from along the edges of the room.
"Is that...?" Seth peered toward the corner.
"A brain?" I decided it was fun to keep repeating it. "Yeah. It"s a brain. On a cake."
"No. Behind the brain." Seth stepped closer to the cake. The fog was making it hard to see. "Is that a real bird or is it...."
"Billy!" a panicked voice said from what sounded like a nearby location, but with our vision impaired it was hard to know for sure. "There"s a pigeon s.h.i.tting on the cake!"
I couldn"t help it; I cracked up. Totally and completely cracked up.
"Eli," Seth whispered. "Stop it." He coughed. "You can"t laugh." He swallowed hard, no doubt trying to stop himself from doing exactly the same thing. "It"s not professional."
"There"s-" I gasped. "-a pigeon-" I gasped again. "-s.h.i.tting on the cake." I bent over and held on to my stomach. "Hurts," I wheezed.
Seth had turned around to face the wall so I couldn"t see his face, but his shoulders were shaking, which gave me a good idea exactly what Mr. Professional was doing.
A guy-Billy, I a.s.sumed-had run over to the cake. He was waving his hands around and yelling, "Shoo, bird! Shoo!"
"Oh my G.o.d. This is the best thing I"ve ever seen."
Seth finally turned around, and, to my surprise, he looked composed. "We need to help the pigeon."
"Help the pigeon? How do you suggest we do that? Are we supposed to go s.h.i.t on the cake too?"
He flipped right back around, shook, coughed, and then turned to look at me. "I meant help with with the pigeon." the pigeon."
I opened my mouth, but he put his hand over it. "Not another word," he warned. "Ehm." He cleared his throat and tugged on his sleeves, straightening them underneath his suit. "I"ll be right-"
"Hey, why are we wearing suits when everyone else is dressed like zombies?"
Seth stopped midstep and turned his attention away from what had turned into a major panic situation in the cake zone. "We"re working."
"I know, but it"s a theme. Couldn"t we-"
"No."
"Wouldn"t it be more fun if we-"
"No."
"But-"
"No themes!"
I barked out a laugh and inadvertently spit in his face.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Very nice."
"Sorry."
He rolled his head from one side to another, took a deep breath, and then stepped toward the cake.
"Billy," he said. "Is everything okay?"
A guy wearing a shredded tuxedo and white face makeup with black around his eyes and red on his jaw and neck, turned around and yelled, "Rabbi! Oh, thank G.o.d! This is a disaster."
How Seth kept a straight face in response to that, I"ll never know. I, for one, would have asked him if he was referring to the entire wedding. Instead, I dipped my face and hoped it was too dark and too loud for them to notice I was laughing. Still.
"What happened?" Seth asked.
"A pigeon s.h.i.t on the cake!" someone said.
"A pigeon! Can you believe it?" another person I didn"t recognize shouted. "They"re, like, the c.o.c.kroaches of the aviary world. Gross!"
Right. Because the type type of bird s.h.i.t was the real issue, not the s.h.i.tty food. s.h.i.tty food. Oh Lord. I was going to sprain a rib. of bird s.h.i.t was the real issue, not the s.h.i.tty food. s.h.i.tty food. Oh Lord. I was going to sprain a rib.
"Next time they should find lovebirds to s.h.i.t on the wedding cake," I whispered to Seth. "It"d be festive."
He tripped. Thankfully I was right behind him so I was able to grab his arm and keep him upright.
"Let me see," Seth said when we got to the cake.
I looked over his shoulder and evaluated the damage. Yup, sure enough, a corner of the cake had gray drizzle coated over the red drizzle.
"Looks like the bird ate some of the cake," I pointed out helpfully. "Must be a good mult.i.tasker."
"Where?" Billy, who I"d realized was the groom, asked.
"There." I indicated a section of the top tier that had a hole in it.
"s.h.i.t!" yelled Billy.
"See," I quietly said to Seth. "Saying s.h.i.t at this wedding is fine. Expected, even."
He threw his elbow back and hit my rib, but not hard enough to hurt.
"What are we going to do? If Rory sees this, she"ll freak!"
"Where is Rory?" Seth asked.
"She"s getting her hair and makeup done."
Based on the groom"s appearance, I figured the bride was being done up to look like, well, a freak. It was kind of ironic considering what he"d just said, but I didn"t point it out to him. That would have been unprofessional.
"Don"t worry," Seth soothed. "I think we can fix this."
"How?" Bill asked.
"Yeah, how?" I chimed in as I looked over his shoulder again. "It looks really bad."
He twisted his head around and glared at me.
"What? It does."
"We can cut off the portion the bird, uh, contaminated. Do you have any more icing?"
"I do!" said a woman who might have been crying. It was hard to tell because, given the setting, the black mascara running down her face could have been intentional. "I brought it with me to do touch-ups." She rushed over and shoved a bag at Seth. "I made the cake. It"s red velvet." All of a sudden she burst into tears. "A flying rat ate my cake! It"s ruined! I was up all night and it"s ruined!"
"Which is it, a rat or a c.o.c.kroach?" I asked quietly enough that only Seth could hear. Maybe.
"It"s not ruined," Seth said calmly. He patted her shoulder and she threw herself at him. There went his goal for a clean suit. Hopefully the white zombie makeup and black mascara would wash off. "It"ll be okay," he said. She wrapped her arms around his waist instead of moving away. "I"ll take care of it," he added as he tried subtly to extricate himself from her grasp.
I saw her slowly lower her arms, and I knew what was coming. I considered jumping in to help for about two seconds, but then I decided the entertainment was too much fun for me to stop her.
"I"ll fix the cake," Seth a.s.sured her. "If you just-" Her hands reached their destination and she squeezed Seth"s a.s.s. He jumped. "-give me s.p.a.ce."
Seth managed to shove the bag between them, which gave him the leverage he needed to wiggle away.
"Um, okay." He shuffled through the bag. "I think all we need is a knife and then we can take care of this." He looked at Billy. "Do you have a knife?"
No fewer than five people thrust knives at him.
"Do you have any, uh, clean clean knives?" he clarified. "Without fake blood on them." knives?" he clarified. "Without fake blood on them."
"I hope it"s fake," I muttered.
Someone handed Seth a knife. I highly doubted it was clean by any definition of the word. Didn"t matter-there was no way I was putting that cake anywhere near my mouth.
Seth leaned toward the cake and started blinking. "Can you cut the fog for just a minute? It"s a little hard to see."
"Cut the fog!" Billy yelled at Lord knows who. "We need to turn off the fog so Rabbi Cohen can cut out the s.h.i.t!"
Seth immediately jerked his gaze toward me. "Not a word," he mouthed.
I moved my hand across my lips in a zipper pantomime.
Once some of the fog cleared, Seth carefully sliced the offending piece off the cake, coated the exposed area in frosting, and then turned the whole thing around so the damaged portion was in the corner and no longer visible. "There," he said as he looked at Billy expectantly. "All better."
The groom, d.a.m.n him, frowned. "I don"t know, Rabbi. The brain doesn"t look right that way."
Uh, he did not say that. I gaped in surprise.
"Oh," Seth said. "I-"
Before he could finish what I hoped wasn"t going to be an apology, I shoved my way forward, yanked the brain off the cake, turned it around, and plopped it back on.
"There," I snapped at the groom. "How"s that?"
He jerked, seemingly taken aback by my reaction. I stepped toward him and glared.
"Good." He threw his red-tipped hands up defensively. "It looks good."
I squinted at him and then nudged my chin toward Seth.
"Thanks, Rabbi," the groom said hurriedly.
"You"re welcome," Seth replied, and then he turned to me and quietly added, "I think you just scared a zombie."
"You bet your a.s.s I did." I crossed my arms over my chest. "Being dead doesn"t give someone the right to be rude."
It took about two seconds before my words sank in, and then we both died laughing. Pun intended.