2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (17 page)

Catherine hadn’t planned on a road trip to cap off the
day of hoofing it around NYC, and her body hadn’t been properly prepared for
it. In fact her ass was asleep this very moment, following her around numbly.

“You said it was close, Tara. We’ve walked three
blocks.”

“That
is
close.”

Catherine started pointing. “I could have parked there,
or there, or up there, or…” She watched a person pull out of a spot just feet
from where she stood. “… right the fuck here,” she growled.

“You need the exercise, don’t you?” Tara jabbed,
pulling her along. “Walk off that burger—”

“It was
half
a burger.”

“And fries.”

“A few,” she said through gritted teeth.
What’s
another murder on the streets of Philly?
Catherine thought, her hands
curling into weapons built to throttle.

She was notably weak-willed on the road. Everyone knew
that. Tara certainly knew that, but she insisted on stopping for “eats” anyway.
It was entrapment pure and simple. You don’t lead a starving, dieting woman up
to a fast food counter. You just don’t do it. Not if she is your friend…. And
then to eat a triple-decker burger, tub of fries, and a gallon of soda in front
of her? Of course she was going to crack. It wasn’t fair! Tara’s food choices never
migrated to her hips like Catherine could feel her own doing right at this very
moment—
that’s probably why my ass is numb; it’s getting a nice fat injection
.

She took in the view, trying to take her mind off her
ass. Not much had changed here since the days her parents used to pack them all
in the car and head the short jaunt from Chesterton to tour the historic sites
of Philadelphia—Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Betsy Ross house, the
Benjamin Franklin Underground Museum. Then they would head over to the zoo. Nowadays
people talked about taking staycations, but her parents had invented the
concept, and they were most certainly called
vacations
. Trips to Hershey
Park and Dorney Park and Philly, plus day trips through Jersey to the shore. Like
clockwork every summer. Until Josey died. After that it was like it was
impossible to find the time anymore, just like it was impossible to have
parties or events or
fun
. Eventually they started to heal, but things remained
different after Josephine. Some memories were better left as just that, so they
didn’t trod on certain hallowed ground, like taking family trips with one less
member.  

The two cities in her life were so completely
different, and being in both in the same day brought those differences into
harsh relief. It was so much smaller and more cramped and less worldly here than
in New York. But that made it personal. It wasn’t just a catch-all for everyone
far and wide who aspired to be part of it, but rather it was an intensely
meaningful place to those who grew up within its reach. Anyone could own a
piece of New York for the right gumption and price, but you had to
earn
your place in Philly. This wasn’t Wall Street and Broadway and the five boroughs.
It wasn’t a place that was so big for its own britches that it had
two
sports teams for every
one
that other cities had. It wasn’t a city of
divisions and rivalries—Yankees, New York vs. Mets, New York; Jets vs. Giants.
No, here you were all Phillies. You were all Eagles. It was bad attitudes and
cheesesteaks and pizza that blew New York and Chicago off the map… and soft
pretzels in brown paper bags like the ones waiting up ahead at the next corner.
Please tell me we reach Tara’s cousin before we reach those.

Yet for all she loved about Philly, the first city in
her life, she’d never dreamed of living here. Weird considering she’d had her
first real taste of independence within its bounds (rather fitting). She used
to come as a teenager with her friends on the weekends and on summer days to
shop and hang out. South Street still held a special place in her heart, as did
the concert venues—Tower Theater, The Spectrum (gone now), and The Mann. She’d
released a lot of her teenage angst into this place, but when she left her teen
years behind and moved into adulthood, her heart had been set on NYC, thinking
for some reason that it held the answer to all of life’s biggest questions.
People wrote books about it. They made movies about it. It had to be the most
exciting place to be. Perhaps naïve, but it had helped her carve out her own
identity away from her family and the people who knew her as awkward young
Catherine Marie Hemmings. She was still awkward in New York, but no one there knew
just how long she’d been afflicted—

“Stop, Cat,” Tara commanded.

“What? Where?” Catherine asked, looking down dumbly
for a cat, like she was about to step on one.
Probably a black one crossing
my path and signifying the end for me.

“We’re here,” she said, pointing triumphantly toward a
glass door wedged between a pizza place and a cigar store.

“Are you sure?” Catherine asked, blinking in the
waning light, trying to focus on what she was seeing. You can’t always choose
your neighbors… but this? Not exactly prime real estate for a wedding planner,
seeing as how they were smack-dab in the middle of a city block that was smack-dab
in the middle of boring, droning, everyday life, with all the dry cleaners and
Laundromats and markets; as opposed to being above all that, in the echelon of
fairytale life that exuded from the pores of the brick that built the high-end
brownstones that housed the wedding planning establishments of New York—or at
least the part that Georgia had led them to.

“Of course I’m sure,” Tara said smartly. “Come on, you
big baby—big
snobby
baby at that.” She pulled her by the arm right up to
the door, where Catherine noticed that “SG Weddings” was laser-inscribed on the
glass along with little bells and doves resting on some kind of mod looking
sticks or twigs. Tara had embellished a door-front into a storefront, but the
name was permanent, not pieced out in duct tape or scrawled in crayon, so there
was that much.

Catherine heaved a deep sigh and reached for the
handle, settling her friend with a look communicating her intent to maim her if
this turned out to be a wild-goose chase that ended in a very tacky wedding—pornographic
ice sculptures and theme weddings and gimmicks came to mind. This
was
the guy made “famous” by the tailgate wedding—Eagles v. Cowboys. Tara had
expounded on the event during their ride here; it seems the “aisle” was lined
with Cowboys tackling dummies that the groom laid out one-by-one before the
bridal march. And there was a hotdog tower—gen-u-ine dogs from the stadium.
Plus the Eagle himself made an appearance in the pictures. And it wasn’t even a
cheap wedding!

“Give him a chance. Seriously. He’s really good at
this. He did all five of my uncle’s weddings and they were timeless.”

“Well, obviously not
timeless
considering four
marriages are over.”

“They
were
timeless. And all five marriages are
over,” Tara pointed out plainly. “My second Aunt Irene dumped him again.”

She started to ask what exactly that meant—multiple Irene’s,
multiple marriages to the same Irene? —but decided it was irrelevant. “So long
as the weddings were perfect,” she said facetiously.

“That’s the only job of a wedding planner—get them
hitched without a hitch. He can’t make them stay hitched, now can he?”

The girl had a point. Plus Catherine
was
desperate—that
went a long way toward battling her misgivings.

As they climbed the stairs on the other side of the
door, the smell of pizza greeted, followed, and then completely enveloped them,
making Catherine’s mouth water—and she’d thought the pretzel guy at the next
corner would be dangerous.

The stairs were sturdy but cramped; the lighting
sparse and low wattage. She feared it wasn’t so much for ambiance as it was
probably to hide some level of ick factor from the casual eye—
blood residue
from a murder?
Come to think of it, the space provided a perfect setting for
a horror flick. Neither thought calmed her nerves, and if not for Tara she
would most certainly have stopped right there, turned around, and run screaming
out of the building and down the street.

At the top, the first door on the left had a plaque
with “SG Weddings” lettered on it in the same style as on the door below.
Catherine took a deep breath and closed her eyes, preparing herself for a truly
terrible surprise. But Tara wasn’t into waiting or preparing; she burst right through
the door and stumbled inside with gusto.

Catherine’s startled eyes opened onto an apartment
that was tasteful and elegant, with a living room that was perfectly appointed
for living or waiting. At the far end there was even a desk with an
honest-to-goodness receptionist at its helm. It actually looked a lot like
several of the other planners’ offices they had been in throughout the day. She
veiled her pleasant surprise as much as possible and refused to look at Tara,
who she knew was staring back at her—gloating.

“Can I help you’s?” the receptionist asked, popping
her gum. An unfortunate accent, and the gum was a bit over the top, but she
looked the part in her “wedding coordinator” ivory blouse.

“We’re here to see Vinnie Delrio,” Tara said
authoritatively, walking around and touching everything like a three-year-old
was wont to do.

“Oh, Vinnie, yeah… he’s in with someone. Should be
done in a sec.” She smacked her gum messily as she stood up to reveal an
extremely tight skirt, garish as humanly possible—Fran Drescher as
The Nanny
came to mind. The red and purple was broken up by an occasional leopard print,
and it was all crowned off with a wide patent leather belt, complete with a
bejeweled rhinestone buckle. The ensemble clashed with itself, let alone the entire
room, which was done in steely pale blue, and whites and creams, with a touch
of silver here or there in perfect measure. Catherine thought maybe it would
serve Vinnie better if Miss Receptionist didn’t speak at all and remained
seated
always
.

But instead she teetered her way over to an antique
dresser against the wall, walking on glossy red pumps a mile high. “You’s need
anything? Coffee? Wooder?” the woman asked, as she sifted through one of the
drawers full of hanging files.

Catherine rolled her eyes. She hadn’t heard that in a
long time. For some reason people here could not hear the difference between
what they said and
water
. “Nothing, thank you,” she blurted quickly,
before Tara ordered a drink
and
a meal. She wanted to be able to get out
of here quickly and easily if need be.

Suddenly a young and elegantly dressed woman came out
of the far reaches of the apartment, softly weeping, with a man more
mob
than
fab
comforting her, his arm wrapped around her stooped shoulders. “Don’t
worry about a thing,” he assured her, his voice thick Philly-Italian-brand
mafioso. “Better to find out now than later. I’ll handle everything.”

“What’s he going to do? Whack her groom-to-be?”
Catherine whispered to Tara, giggling nervously because it didn’t seem so
farfetched. 

Tara pinched her; her mouth a thin line of respect for
the moment that was happening outside of them.

“Like you weren’t thinking it,” Catherine spat,
rubbing the reddening spot on her arm.

They watched the man give the sad bride a quick bear
hug. With his massive proportions any hug would be a bear hug to the receiver.
Then he turned from the door after ushering her out and focused on the two of
them.

The receptionist piped up, “Vinnie, these two are your
next—”

“Tara!” he boomed. “Whatta-you’s doin’ in Philly?
Slummin’ with the other half-a-the family?” he chuckled, giving her a hug.

“I brought you a client.”

Vinnie looked down upon Catherine—way down. He was borderline
ginormous up close.

“Welcome to SG Weddings, where we make it happen,” he
said with a smile.

It was definitely in a whole different vein from the
“where we make your dreams come true” motto that had popped up in a variety of
formulations throughout the day. At this point, though, she was easy pickings
for the making-it-happen play.

“What kinda timeline you’s workin’ with?” Vinnie Delrio asked, after
seating himself behind a desk that made him look even bigger still, like he was
sitting in a dollhouse set.

“About two months,” Catherine said through gritted
teeth, squinching her face in preparation for the laughter or disbelief that
had followed that answer all day so far. The blowback on those words had given
her a haggard appearance that she could see reflected in the mirror behind his
desk.
I look like hell and this is only the first day.

“I see.” He looked her over and rubbed at his five
o’clock shadow that with his Italian roots was more like Fynn’s three-day
growth.

This was the first Catherine had actually thought
about Fynn all day and she felt a smile take over her face. This was their
wedding but she had been dealing with it like it was a cumbersome and
oppressive
thing
rather than remembering what it meant to them as a
unit. Common rookie mistake.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Tara piped up.

“No. We have some spectacular options for… what say the
1
^st
?”

“Really?” Catherine asked, startled to be getting this
far after her prior consultations. Honestly, she wasn’t
married
to the 4
^th
of March. Although the first was mid-week—certainly outside wedding rules, she
was sure.

“Of what?” Tara asked, eyeing her cousin warily, like
he was up to no good.

“Of April,” he said innocently.

“Vinnie,” Tara warned.

“What? It would be a beautiful wedding. High-end
everything at a fraction of the cost.”

“She wants to do it in
two
months.” 

“Well, I—” Catherine was calculating just how
important it was to her to be married before she turned thirty-five. It seemed
so superficial and ridiculous. It wasn’t like all of a sudden the calendar
would turn and her birthday would come and she would wake up to find all her
eggs dried up and her breasts dragging on the floor and arthritis in her hands
and osteoporosis making her shorter than she already was…. And yet she
wanted
to be a thirty-four-year-old bride. She just wanted it.

“It’s the April Fool’s Day thing, isn’t it?” he sighed
sadly.

“Huh?” Catherine asked, caught up in her gross
nightmare of aging.

“Nobody ever really thinks about it when they first
book it, and then it approaches and someone tells them…. I’ve had more flakes
on that date….” He shook his head in disappointment. “It’s just a day. Heck, I
was married on April Fool’s Day.”

“Aunt Sharon didn’t mind?” Tara asked.

“No, Sharon would have had a cow. I mean Trina. It was
a beautiful ceremony,” he said wistfully.

“You’ve been married how many times?” Catherine asked.

“Just three…. I love a good wedding.”

“Do you have any other dates available?” Tara dug.
“She’d really like to do this thing before March 13
^th
.”

“Superstitious?”

“Thirty-five,” Tara said bluntly.

“Oh.” He nodded in understanding. Catherine had the
feeling Vinnie had seen it all and more in his business.

“Let’s see….” He picked up a file in front of him. “How’s
March 4
^th
sound?”

“Are you serious?” Catherine asked in disbelief, like
this was kismet.

“Although if you’s are willing to go down to the wire,
I think I’ll have some wonderful options freeing up for the 11
^th
.”

“The 4
^th
,” Tara said definitively.

Catherine looked to Tara thankfully, her voice lost to
unadulterated shock and joy.

“The 4
^th
it is then. I have a wonderful
venue, plus food and music—a package deal.”

Vinnie started sifting through the paperwork and Tara excused
herself to the bathroom, leaving Catherine alone with him. Awkwardly, she tried
to fill the empty space with small-talk. “So, how long have you been here; it’s
kind of an out-of-the-way location for the wedding planner sort of thing.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a wedding broker—an
opportunity guy. I’m the last resort. I make it happen. I don’t need outer
appearances. Do good work and they will come; that’s what I like to say.”

But she was barely listening or caring. His voice was drowned
out by her stomach, which was protesting loudly over the scent of sauce and
cheese… and
crust
below. “I don’t know how you work like this,” she
grumbled.

“Like what?”

“With the smell of pizza always right there. I’d be
huge—” She stopped, wishing she could disappear in the shadow of his massive stature.
“Sorry.”

“The joint downstairs is mine. Didn’t want a long
commute between offices.”

“So pizza maker and wedding planner?”

“Yeah, well, weddings come and go, but a good pie? Now
that’s forever.”