Finger Lickin' Dead (23 page)

Evelyn made a face. “Aren’t you getting kind of wound up about this wedding business? Anyone would think that
you
were the one getting hitched.”

“God forbid!” said Flo. “It’s bad enough dealing with someone else’s nonsense. I’m just trying to get this wedding set up so that these people are happy and we all end up looking good, that’s all.”

Morty said, “It should be a slam dunk, Flo. You’ve got the best help in town. We’ll rock the reception with our tunes, the flowers will beautify the room, and you’ve got the best barbeque in Memphis for the guests to enjoy for the reception.”

Big Ben bellowed, “And the reception is at Graceland in the car museum. So you got all Elvis’s toys in the room for decoration. Man, those guests are going to be in hog heaven.”

Flo waved her hand impatiently. “I know all that, y’all. But I’m still trying to make sure that everything goes
perfectly
. Even if you have the absolute
best
people, in the absolute
best
venue, things can still go wrong unless you organize so everybody knows what everybody else is doing.”

Evelyn said, “Honey, it’s self-evident. Peggy Sue, Jeanne, and I are helping with the flowers. Ben and Oliver and Lulu are doing food. Sara’s going to hold things down at Aunt Pat’s while we’re at Graceland. Buddy, Morty, and Big Ben are in charge of the music. Cherry is the general dogsbody. Easy-peasy.”

Cherry said, “General
dogsbody
? Can’t I be something else?”

“You’ll be indispensible when Flo needs an extra set of hands,” said Lulu soothingly.

“I was thinking,” said Morty in a mulling-over voice, “that I would get a small token of appreciation for the bride and her mother. For giving us the gig, you know. Do you know the kinds of thing they like, Flo?”

Flo was used to trains of thought that got derailed by this group. “I don’t know them very well personally, but I know that the stores the bride is registered with are listed on her website. And Cynthia—the bride’s mother? She’s even got a link on the bride’s site—you know, for the guests who want to give her a hostess gift and things like that.”

There was a heavy silence. “You mean to tell me,” said Big Ben in his loud voice, “that this young lady is
telling
people what she wants them to give her? And her mother is, too?”

Flo explained patiently, “She’s not
making
people give her certain things, Big Ben. Just making it easier for people who want to give her something in her china pattern. She also mentions that she accepts cash or checks if someone doesn’t want to mess with the registry sites.”

More stunned silence.

“Now you all know that times have changed! Y’all should be well aware of all that,” said Flo, putting her hands on her hips.

Peggy Sue said, “I knew times had changed, but I didn’t think
people
had. Does the bride carry around a credit card machine in case a guest wants to whip out their card?”

Flo sighed. “No, there’s nothing crazy like that going on.”

Lulu said, “I wonder if the groom has a website and what
he’s
asking for?”

Cherry covered her ears with manicured hands. “La, la, la! It’s too much! It’s boggling my mind!”

“The groom has a very nice, very discreet little website,” said Flo. “He’s looking for donations for the honeymoon and the rehearsal dinner.”

There was a collective groan from the group.

Flo said, “But never mind all that, y’all! If you
want
to make a little gift, I’m sure they’d be happy with any little thank-you . . . like a tin of nuts or a fruit basket, or something like that.” But she sounded less than sure.

“Anyway,” Flo continued brightly, “I’m going to send everybody a joint e-mail about times to arrive at the wedding and the schedule for setting equipment up and all of that.” She sent around a piece of paper to get everyone’s e-mail address. “Because things
do
go wrong
all
the time. Some of it we can help, and then I’ll feel better about the stuff we
can’t
help—like the way my photographer is sick.”

Evelyn said, “Holden isn’t feeling well?”

“No. Well, I guess he’s
feeling
well, but he’s not sounding well. His voice is like . . . gone. Just a weird squeak is all. He warbled out something about having laryngitis when I called this morning to check in with him.”

Lulu frowned. “That doesn’t really matter, does it? Does he really need his voice?”

“But if you think about it, the photographer
does
need to talk. He needs to call out for everybody to watch the cake get cut or tell the mom’s side of the family that they’re going to be the focus for the next picture. You know. The photographer is kind of a director.” Flo looked seriously peeved.

“Tell you what,” said Peggy Sue eagerly. “If I see some movement toward the wedding cake, I’ll holler at everybody. I’m all
about
the cake, honey.”

“I’m all about the cake if it’s
good
cake. Some of those wedding cakes look really pretty, but they taste just like cardboard,” said Lulu with a face.

“This will be
delicious
cake. That’s because Tommie said she’d make it for us when the baker backed out,” said Flo.

“They upset the baker, too?” demanded Cherry.

“These people seem to have a God-given talent for making folks upset,” said Flo with a shrug of her shoulders. “Who am I to argue with a gift?”

Flo said, between her teeth, “It’s going to be
perfect
. A
beautiful
wedding.”

“It’s hardly even enough rain to dampen your hair,” said Lulu in a soothing tone. “And the temperature will drop a little with these clouds and things will just
feel
so much better.” Which was, of course, a total lie. Rain in the Southern heat meant humidity—not cooler temperatures.

Flo appreciated the lie and smiled at Lulu. “Thanks. I’ve just got to calm down and not get all wound up about stuff I don’t have any control over.”

The bride’s mother, Cynthia, marched up to Flo. It was clear she was
not
going to try to calm down. “They’re all coming! All of them!”

Flo put a well-manicured hand to her throat. “The guests? They’re
all
coming? They
can’t
all be coming! Almost half of them didn’t even RSVP and then there were about thirty of them that said for sure that they weren’t going to be here at all.”

“Well, maybe,” said Cynthia in a sarcastic voice, “I’m just imagining things, but it sure does look like my friends and relatives out there, coming in on the shuttles.”

“But we’re not going to have enough food! Or seats at the reception! And the chapel only seats seventy-five. . . . Any more than that and it’ll be standing-room only.”

“I’m not paying you good money for
me
to worry about this,” said Cynthia with hard eyes. “You just make sure it all works out. I want this wedding
perfect.
” She stalked off.

“Okay,” said Lulu, “Calm down, Flo. We’ll make the best of this, honey. Why don’t you take care of the chapel seating, since that comes first. Ask the Graceland coordinator for folding chairs. It’ll work out—I’m sure these folks are going to see what’s happened and will let the older guests sit down. And so what if there are people standing in the back? The ceremony will only be twenty-five minutes, tops.”

“What about the food?” asked Flo nervously.

“Just leave that up to Ben and Oliver. We’ll call Derrick and have him bring some more food from the restaurant. We have this sort of thing happen all the time, Flo—in the restaurant business you never really know how many people you’ll have to feed that day. Sometimes we get swamped, too.”

For a while, “making do” went pretty well. Flo felt calmer about her last-minute emergency—until she spilled a large container of sweet tea on the front of her dress. She cursed and said, “What the heck am I going to do now? I can’t go to the ceremony like this!”

It did look like Flo had had some sort of restroom accident, thought Lulu. Cherry jumped in with a rescue line. “Come on, Flo—you can borrow my dress. We’ll trade out in the restroom and I’ll hang out in there for a while and dry yours with the hand dryer.”

Flo was beyond caring that Cherry had on a banana yellow dress with a large print of hot peppers covering it. “Bless you, Cherry! I just need something dry.” A few minutes later, Flo was back out, dashing around with her clipboard and Cherry was standing in the restroom in her slip drying Flo’s dress under the hand dryers.

Lulu called Derrick’s cell phone. “Hon? Could you run into the kitchen and see how much food we’ve got already prepared or what can be cooked up real quick?” She waited for a minute while Derrick rattled off a list of the available foods. “What? Okay, that’ll have to do. Can you bring most of that pork over and all the sides? We’ve got more guests than we bargained for. If I have to shortchange everybody on the barbeque a little, I can make up for it with more sides. Oh, and however much tea you can bring over, too.” She stopped. “You know, that’s going to be too much stuff for you to handle. Why don’t you call Peaches over to help you bring it by?”

Derrick said reluctantly, “I’m not so sure. She might be in the middle of doing something else, since it’s Saturday.” He paused. “Oh. Actually, she just walked into the restaurant, so never mind. I’ll see if she can help me out.”

Lulu popped into the restroom to see how things were going. Cherry still stood there, holding Flo’s dress under the dryer. “It’s coming along,” she said. “But it’s slow.”

Peggy Sue and Evelyn both hurried into the room. “At least our part is all done! The flowers are all set and they look
beautiful
, y’all!” said Peggy Sue, beaming as she rummaged in her pocketbook for a lipstick.

“What are you doing about the extra tables that we need for the reception?” asked Lulu.

Evelyn waved her hand dismissively. “Well, you can’t whip up extra flowers just thirty minutes before the reception starts. We put some magnolia blossoms and greenery on the table and they looked just fine.”

Peggy Sue gave a nervous giggle. “It’s been kind of a disaster so far, hasn’t it? What kind of people don’t RSVP to a wedding and then show up? Don’t they know that’ll mess everybody up?”

“And I
expected
the batty bride, crazy mother, and silent groom to be weird, but what’s eating Oliver today?” asked Evelyn. “He’s acting really odd himself. He’s white as a sheet, keeps looking over his shoulder, and then on top of it all, his mind has clearly been somewhere else.”

“Maybe it’s the guilt eating him alive,” intoned Peggy Sue. “Maybe he’s the killer! And he’s on the lookout for his next victim. Watch out, Graceland!”

“Or maybe,” said Lulu in a dry voice, “he’s just not feeling well. God forbid that’s the case, because I can’t really afford to lose any kitchen help today. Maybe I should go out and check on him.” She had turned to go out the restroom door when the door opened abruptly in her face, making her scoot back a couple of feet.

Flo was there, hair wild like she’d been running her fingers through it. “Flowers! Flowers for the extra tables! Tablecloths! Ohmigod, tablecloths!”

Evelyn said, “Honey, it’s all been handled.”

“What? How . . .”

“It’s been handled. It looks good! Just go and worry about something else, okay? Oh . . . and do something about your hair. It looks like the Bride of Frankenstein.”

Flo pushed past Cherry to the mirror. She put down a pile of notebooks on the counter and ran her hands through her hair. “Better?” she asked Evelyn.

Evelyn just stared at her. “Better if you’re trying to look worse.”

Peggy Sue said, “For heaven’s sake, Flo! Stand still a second.” And Peggy Sue pulled a loaded cosmetic bag out of her enormous pocketbook. She took out a brush and expertly whipped Flo’s hair into a semblance of its normal self. “And you can use some color, too—you look like hell, honey.” She squinted at Flo’s dress and shook her head. “Here’s my red lipstick. . . . Try it on.”

Flo leaned into the mirror and ran the lipstick over her mouth. “Got to
go
,” she said, dashing back out the door.

“That’s my signal, too.” Lulu sighed. “I’d better go across the street and make sure that meat and those sides got here. And that Oliver isn’t off being sick somewhere, I guess. Evelyn, can you give me a hand? I’m thinking we could go ahead and fill some tea glasses while the ceremony is going on.”

“I’ll come help, too, as soon as this dress looks presentable,” said Cherry, nodding at the still sopping party dress.

Derrick and Peaches were just unloading the last of the food when Lulu walked up to them. Ben stood there with arms crossed. “These folks are going to have to wait a little while until the extra food is cooked. That’s the problem with not getting an accurate head count.”

The Graceland wedding coordinator who’d been checking in with Ben said, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it. We’ve got the bar set up over here and this crowd looks like they’ll be happy to visit and have a couple of drinks for a little while. And they’re right here in the car museum, so they can walk around and look at Elvis’s pink Cadillac or his motorcycles . . . or the pink Jeep. There’s going to be plenty for them to do.” She looked at her watch. “I’d better head over to the ceremony.” She looked across the road at Graceland and stared. “Is that a woman in a slip running across the front yard?”

Evelyn drawled, “Clarice, you should be able to recognize that red hair. It’s your very own docent, Cherry Hayes, tearing across Graceland in her petticoats.”

“But what is she . . .”

“It never pays to ask, Clarice. Better get crackin’—I think that ceremony is about to start up in the chapel.”

Evelyn, Peggy Sue, and Peaches were already busily tackling the table settings. Ben was cooking at a frantic pace. “Ben, honey, where is Oliver? He needs to be helping you out.”