There would be a taxi awaiting them by the time they settled the bill, the concierge informed Darryl. Beside being a concierge, he was the room service waiter, top chef, and chief decorator - the last, a dubious accomplishment, Darryl thought. The concierge informed Darryl that a charge would appear on his credit card for the Honeymoon Hideaway, the name of the fine establishment in which they'd spent their first night as husband-and-wife. It was the first time Darryl heard them referred to that way. He glanced over at Iris, but there was no readable expression on her face. "We were glad to serve you," the concierge continued. "We hope your night with us was an unforgettable one."
What irony. Except for the cluster of erotic flashes he'd had earlier, Darryl still had no clue how they gotten where they'd gotten. He climbed into the taxi beside his 'wife', just a bit surprised not to find the hotel's jack of all trades behind the wheel.
"What's the name of the place?"
Iris glanced at the marriage license. "The You Can Hurry Love Chapel," she replied.
"I know that place," the taxi driver chimed in. "They send quite a bit of their new couples over to the Double H to honeymoon." The driver set the meter and pulled away from the curb. "The Hook and Hump is what most of the locals call the place you just left," he explained.
Darryl took advantage of the silence to attempt to clear his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to let details of the previous night emerge. It was a pointless effort. He could feel the answers to the question of the previous night just beyond his reach. "You guys having second thoughts about being married?" Darryl looked up to see the cabdriver watching him in the rearview mirror. The older man shrugged. "I've been doing this a long time. Couples are either all over each other or in separate corners of the cab."
Darryl looked over at Iris. Her gaze was fixed on the passing scenery. "You'd have to remember the first thoughts in order to have second ones."
"Ahhh," the driver said. "One of those. Well, try to remember anyway what it was that made you take those vows in the first place." The cabbie whipped into an available parking space, ignoring the angry blasts of car horn that saluted his maneuver. "Here you go."
Darryl and Iris climbed from the cab. She surprised him by waiting beside him as he took care of the fare. Some impulse, some sense of common bond made Darryl reach for her hand. "Don't go getting your period, white boy." Iris snatched her hand from his. Darryl clenched his teeth and followed her into the chapel.
As chapels went, this one was actually pretty nice. Darryl had seen a few in his job as location scout that were more like drive-through fast food places. But the You Can Hurry Love Chapel had a reverent feel to it despite the name, which Darryl assumed was some strange play on the old Supremes song his father never failed to sing snippets of when it came on the oldies satellite radio station he played in his car. The reverence of the chapel brought home the reality of his situation. For the first time, Darryl felt the gravity of apparently having taken vows with the stranger beside him. A glance over at Iris told Darryl she seemed to be feeling the same thing.
"Welcome, welcome! If you will just give me a few minutes, I'll be right with you." Darryl turned around. The speaker was an Ike Turner look-alike, complete with a flower patterned silk shirt, tasseled leather vest and a wig styled in the shape of the hairstyle worn by the Beatles. "I am Brother Love, the officiant here. I just completed an Anna Mae Special for the two lovebirds before you and I haven't had time to change yet." The clergyman stopped in the act of peeling off his fake mustache. "Unless, of course, you two would like the Anna Mae for your special day?"
"We ain't trying to get married," Iris corrected the officiant. "We already made that mistake. What we trying to do is undo it."
Brother Love gave them a rueful shrug. "I'm sorry. But we don't do divorces here."
"What about an annulment?" Darryl asked. "According to this we only got married yesterday." He handed the man the marriage license they'd found.
"Hmm..." He gestured for the couple to follow him into the small office in the back of the chapel. He unlocked a steel cabinet and began to run his finger down what seemed like an endless row of neatly stacked and labeled disks. "Ahh..." he said. "The Pine wedding. Here we go."
Darryl and Iris huddled in front of the computer screen. Darryl watched with equal parts fascination and fear as the unremembered wedding ceremony between he and Iris took place. As the video began, the camera panned across the officiant, who was dressed in what looked like a shiny blue sequined halter top and long bronze wig that contrasted sharply with his brown skin. "Your witness selected the Drunk in Love Special," he offered in reply to the questioning look on both their faces. "Which was very appropriate, considering that both of you had trouble standing."
"And you didn't wonder if we were capable of making such a decision?" Darryl was incredulous.
"It's not my job to question your motives." Brother Love pulled into place a pointy rubber ear on first the left, then the right ear. "Your witness reassured me that this was what you wanted." He pulled a pair of black platform boots and skinny black Lycra pants out of the closet. "Fast-forward to the signing of the license," he instructed them absently.
Darryl hit the button on the multimedia keyboard. They watched as the wedding ceremony flew by in exaggerated time. He slowed the video down just in time to see the scene the officiant had mentioned. "That sonofabitch!" Iris' outraged growl came as soon as the camera panned across their so-called witness. "Oh, I'ma fuck him up!"
"Who? You know who this is?"
Iris turned her angry gaze toward Darryl. "That's my ex-boyfriend, Craig," she said. "He's been fuckin' with me since I kicked him to the curb."
