Текст книги "Trust No One: A Thriller"

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

W MINUS TWO

The rehearsal last night went well. You may be a sandwich short of a picnic in the upstairs department, as your grandfather was always keen to say (before it became a picnic short of a barbecue, then a picnic short of the Pope shitting in the woods—that was a red flag there), but everything went off without a hitch.

The church—boy, you’ve been there so many times this week you might need to start paying rent. Father Jacob is a priest hovering somewhere between sixty and old age, a down-to-earth guy who seems to have never laughed at anything in his life. He’s pretty okay for a priest, but you’ve never really been a priest guy. Add that to your list. You’re not a car guy, a priest guy, a jeans guy, or a religion guy. You’re a dessert guy. You’re a running-out-of-sandwiches guy. Every time you step into that church here comes Henry Cutter, the failed horror writer to darken your mood by playing the Something bad is right around the corner game, probably because right around the corner is the graveyard. Horror Hack Henry, would you like to take over?

“I do,” Eva said, and the crowd was smiling and some, like Eva’s mother, were weeping. Weddings had always made her weep.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Father Jacob said, then smiled and looked at Rick. “You may now kiss the bride.”

Rick kissed his bride and the crowd started to clap. Everything had gone off without a hitch—even Jerry had walked his daughter down the aisle perfectly, the right pacing, the right smile, the right amount of pressure on her arm as hers interlocked his. It was a long kiss between the new husband and bride, and people started to laugh, and then the happy couple turned towards the crowd and they smiled.

Soon the wedding party was moving down the aisle, people throwing confetti into the air, an usher waiting at the door, and that’s when it happened, the front doors busting open as the zombies piled in, the doors hitting the walls so hard that wood splintered everywhere. Dozens of zombies who had just clawed their way out from the graveyard behind were coming into the church.

“I do love a good wedding,” the first zombie said.

“Brains,” said the second one.

“Good point,” replied the first one. “Brains.” Then another said it too, and another, and the word was catching, because soon it was on the lips of all the dead people. The other things on their lips were the living as the zombies tore into them, and within seconds Eva and Rick were running for their lives. . . .

Thanks, Henry, that’s enough. Don’t give up your day job!

You don’t really think that’s what is waiting for everybody on Saturday, but you can’t shake the feeling something bad is going to happen because it’s been a year of bad feelings, hasn’t it? Both Sandra and Eva are being extremely encouraging, and seem to have a lot more confidence in you than you have. In the church Sandra keeps squeezing your hand and telling you everything is going to go great, and she seems so happy, which makes you happy. Being in the church with your hand in Sandra’s, and your arm around Eva, watching them smile, watching them laugh, it gives you a sense of completion. This is the way life is meant to be. Yes, things are going to change, but right now, right in this moment, your family is happy and that’s all that matters. In fact, this week’s episode of you sneaking out and getting confused is a good thing. If you think of the Big A as a pressure cooker, then letting out some steam to walk into town means it’s not going to blow anytime soon.

The rehearsal went well. More instructions. Jerry, stand here. Dad, walk there. Jerry, hold Eva like this. You will do nothing if not follow orders. As for the speech—you don’t get to give one. Of course not, because Pressure Cooker Jerry needs to be contained, and even though that makes you sad, you can understand it. It is, sadly, just the way things are now.

Oh, by the way, speaking of the way things are now, guess what happens on Monday? That’s right, alarms are being put on the windows. It’s official—soon you’re going to be a prisoner in your own home.

Good news—the alarms mean Sandra isn’t planning on putting you into a care facility right away.

Bad news—your world is getting smaller. You don’t really need the alarms now because you don’t even want to go outside. You just want to curl up on the couch and drink. You used to think the difference between being a good author and a great author was . . . ah, hell, you’ve said that already.

They pull out from the side of the road. Jerry plays with the radio until he finds a news channel. Hans makes the next left to take them towards the center of town. Jerry plays with the label on the water bottle. His legs are still jittering.

“It’s tough, you know? Thinking of myself that way,” Jerry says. “Thinking of myself as a killer. It doesn’t feel right. No matter how I try to see it, no matter what angle I come at it from, I can’t get the label to fit.”

“What happens in your books, Jerry, when people are hoping for the best?”

“They get the worst.”

“I’m sorry, buddy, but that’s what this is.”

Jerry nods. His friend couldn’t have summed it up any better. Still . . . “It’s not right. I know what you’re saying makes sense, that there’s a certain kind of logic to it, but it just feels too convenient that I can remember some things but not others. Why can’t I remember any of this morning?”

“The doctors say that you blocked out what happened with Sandra, that it’s too difficult for you to accept. Stands to reason you’d be doing the same thing now.”

“I’m not that guy, Hans. I’ve never been that guy. I shouldn’t have wiped down the knife. If I’d left it alone, then the real killer’s prints would have been found on it.”

“It sounds like you were trying to get away with it,” Hans says.

The words annoy him. “It’s not that. I just knew how things looked. That’s why I took the knife to the mall with me.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t going to dump it there. I just went there to get food and a SIM card. I was going to dump it later.”

“You should have called the police.”

“No,” Jerry says. “I called you because you can help. Because you’ve always been there for me. Because you’re the only person who will believe me. When I came out to meet you I realized I’d left the bag with the knife and towel behind in the bathroom.”

“Jesus, Jerry, are you kidding me? Or just yourself? You called me because you think I can help you get away with murder. Just like you did last time. Only this time I’m not helping you.”

Jerry shakes his head. “That’s not true. Somebody wants me to think I’m the Bag Man.”

“What?”

“The Bag Man. From the books.”

Hans shakes his head. “I know who the Bag Man is, Jerry, and you’re not him.”

“I didn’t say I was. I said somebody wants me to think I am.”

“Was the woman this morning killed the way the Bag Man kills?”

Jerry thinks about the woman on the lounge floor, the bruises and the blood. He thinks about her eyes open and staring at him. He tries to remember the Bag Man. He can’t remember the who or the why, but he can remember the how. The Bag Man stabbed his victims and when they were dead he tied a plastic garbage bag over their head. He was impersonalizing them. “She was stabbed in the chest. I even had a black garbage bag on me.”

“Jesus, Jerry . . .”

His heart is hammering. “But I didn’t do it. I would know if I had.”

“Because you trust yourself.”

“You have to help me.”

“Help you how, Jerry? By stealing a detective’s badge and walking around the crime scene asking questions? Chasing down leads and bending the rules? Pulling a mobile DNA testing kit out of my ass?”

“No. Well, yes. I don’t know. Not exactly. But we can figure it out.”

They drive in silence again. The lunchtime traffic is fading as people return to work. He sees a boy of two or three accidently drop his ice cream on the pavement then start crying, his mother trying fruitlessly to console him. Behind them a bus comes through early on a red light and almost hits a cyclist. Jerry keeps rewinding the clock, going further back into the morning, but continually comes to a stop the moment he came to on that woman’s couch. As far as he can tell, time before that moment didn’t exist. His heart beats harder the closer they get to the police station. When they are two blocks away he’s sweating again.

“Can we pull over?”

“We’re almost there,” Hans says.

“Please. Just for a few minutes. Please, hear me out. As my friend, listen to me.”

Hans looks over at him, then indicates and pulls in against the side of the road. “Talk,” he says. “But you’ve only got a minute.”

“I didn’t do this,” Jerry says. “My DNA is on record. If they’d found my DNA at Belinda’s house, they’d have made the connection. But none was there.”

“You’re a crime writer, Jerry. You know how to commit a crime and get away with it.”

He remembers Mayor suggesting something very similar on the ride into the police station. “That’s not what happened,” he says.

“Then you have nothing to worry about. The police will figure it out.”

“No, they won’t. It’ll be worse than that,” Jerry says, and he can connect the dots ahead of him, he just can’t connect the ones behind. He’s not the man he used to be, but he certainly hasn’t gone from crime writing to crime committing. “If I go in there and tell them about today, and we tell them about the florist, then it’s going to be like writing a blank check.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re going to take every unsolved homicide over the last few years and they’re going to pin them on me. They’ll probably go back further too. They’re going to say I got sick five years ago. Or ten. Every open homicide is going to close with my name in the whodunit box.”

Hans shakes his head. He looks lost in thought. “That’s stupid.”

“Is it? You really think so?”

“They’re not going to take . . .” Hans says, then stops talking.

“What?”

Hans doesn’t look at him. Just keeps looking ahead. A truck passes close enough to the car to make it sway on the axles.

“What?” Jerry repeats.

“Nothing.”

“There’s something. Tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” Hans says.

“Tell me.”

Hans breathes out heavily. He sounds like a man who’s cutting wires and hoping a bomb isn’t about to explode. “Let me think for a few seconds,” he says.

“Tell me!”

“Goddamn it, Jerry, I said let me think.”

He thinks. And Jerry lets him think. And they stay parked on the side of the road two blocks from the police station, and Jerry stares out the window while his palms sweat and while Hans thinks some more. Hans tilts his head back and covers his face with his hands. He keeps them there, so the words are muffled when he talks. “There was another killing last week,” he says, then drags his fingers down to his chin, stretching out the skin on his face and tugging down the bottom of his eyes. “It’s still unsolved. A woman by the name of Laura Hunt.”

“I think I’ve seen it in the papers.”

“You can remember that but not this morning? I see what you mean about it all seeming convenient.”

“It’s the exact opposite.”

“Laura Hunt was twenty-five. She has the same sort of description as Belinda Murray. Eva told me that you wandered last week. It was the same day Laura Hunt was killed.”

Jerry doesn’t know what to say, not at first, but then reverts to what he knows is the absolute truth. “I didn’t kill her,” he says.

“Jerry—”

“They found me in the library in town,” he says. “If there had been blood on me, I’d have been arrested, but instead the police called Eva and told her to take me back to the nursing home. I didn’t hurt anybody, I promise you. If you take me to the police, I’ll become the ultimate scapegoat.”

“Can you even hear what you’re saying?”

“You’re supposed to be my friend. You’re supposed to believe me.”

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Hans asks.

“What?”

“You keep scratching it.”

Jerry looks down to see his fingers digging into the side of his arm. If he can scratch an itch on his arm without knowing it, what else is he capable of doing? “Nothing’s wrong with it.”

“The cops are going to look at the knife and think somebody was planning on hurting somebody at the mall then changed their mind,” Hans says. “They’ll find blood on it.”

“I washed it pretty good.”

“They can always find blood on those things,” Hans says. “It has a way of getting into nooks and crannies you don’t even know are there. What about the bag, Jerry? Are your prints on the bag?”

“What bag?”

“The plastic bag you put the knife and towel in.”

Jerry’s hands start shaking and he looks out the side window. “They’ll be on it.”

“It’s only a matter of time before they come for you anyway,” Hans says. “The longer you try and avoid them, the harder it’s going to go when they find you.”

“Then help me. Don’t let them pin every unsolved homicide over the last twenty years on me.”

“I’m sorry, Jerry. We have to go to the police.”

“You think I’m guilty.”

Hans doesn’t answer for a few seconds, then he looks down at his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“If you think I’m guilty, then you owe me, because you killed Sandra.”

Hans says nothing. He gives Jerry a cold, hard stare.

“You killed Sandra,” Jerry repeats. “If I’m guilty, then you’re guilty too.”

“Don’t go there, Jerry.”

“The night the florist died, if I killed her, then you should have gone to the police. But you didn’t. And because you didn’t, I was able to kill Sandra. If you’d taken me to the police then Sandra would still be alive. But you didn’t. And she’s dead. And that makes you an accomplice.”

“Jerry—”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Jerry says. “I don’t think I did any of it, but if I did, then Sandra’s blood is on your hands for not doing the right thing. You have to live with that. The only way to clear your conscience is to help me prove I’m innocent of everything.”

“You don’t think that every single day I’m aware how my decision to help out my best friend led to her dying? Huh?” He punches the steering wheel. “You stupid moron.”

Without any warning Jerry twists towards Hans and swings with his left arm. He punches his friend as hard as he can in the mouth, but the angles and the geometry of the enclosed car don’t give him as much leverage as he would like, making the punch less effective than he’d hoped. Hans’s head snaps to the side. Before he can get a second shot in, Hans gets his arm inside of Jerry’s and hits him in the throat, not hard, but hard enough to struggle for his next breath and to start coughing.

“What the hell, Jerry?” he asks.

“It’s,” he says, gasping for breath, “your fault. It’s. Your. Fault.”

“Shut up,” Hans says.

“If you—”

This time Hans reaches across and punches him in the arm. “I said shut up. I wish to God I had turned you in that night.”

Jerry wishes the same thing. Sandra, Hans, Eva—they were meant to protect him. They were his guardians, and now people are dead because of him.

If it’s true.

Which it can’t be.

“Help me,” Jerry says. “I would never hurt anybody.”

“You have to realize it’s not your fault,” Hans says. “None of it is. It’s this damn disease. You’re not the same guy any of us used to know. You’re a good guy, you’re not a killer. You’re not the Bag Man or even the bad man you think you are. I get you’re scared, I get you don’t want to go to the police. I understand what you’re saying, about the blank check, but—”

The cell phone Jerry took from the dead woman starts to ring. He gets it out of his pocket and stares at it.

“Who is it?” Hans asks.

“I don’t know. You’re the only one who has the number,” Jerry says.

“Where did you get the phone?” Hans says.

“From the dead woman. But the SIM card is new, I got that from the mall. Should I answer it?”

“Give it to me.”

Jerry hands him the phone. Hans answers the call and says hello then just listens. Jerry can hear talking on the other end but not enough to understand what is being said. After fifteen seconds Hans hangs up without saying anything. He hands the phone back.

“Who was it?” Jerry asks.

“Guy’s name doesn’t matter, buddy. Probably wasn’t his real name. Said he worked at lost and found at the mall. Said he found a package that he was pretty sure belonged to you.”

“Then why didn’t he call the police?”

“That was the police, you idiot,” Hans says, then takes a deep breath. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But it wasn’t lost and found, it was the police trying to get you to go back.”

“But how? How did they get my number?”

“I don’t know. Wait . . . wait . . . you said you went into the bathroom to put the SIM card in, right?”

“Right.”

“Because you just bought a new one,” Hans says.

“Right.”

“SIM cards come with the phone numbers written on the sides of the packet. Where’s the packet, Jerry? Do you have it or did you leave it there?”

Jerry pats down his pockets and then searches the supermarket bag. “I must have left it in the bathroom.”

“Then that’s it. They’re already tightening the noose, Jerry. But there’s another option,” Hans says. “An option I can give you because you’re my friend.”

“What option?”

“Take out the SIM card and switch off the phone.”

Jerry does as he’s told. Then he wipes the phone down with his shirt and tosses it out the window.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“Well it’s done. Now what?” Jerry asks.

“Now they’re going to run the surveillance footage of the mall looking for the guy who carried a package into the bathroom and left it there. Then they’re going to follow you out and watch you climb into my car. Thankfully it’s a mall, not a bank—the footage of you climbing into the car is going to look like the kind of footage you see of Bigfoot. The prints will give them your name, only they’re not going to know where you are, but when they figure it out they’ll send an Armed Offenders Unit after us.”

“All that for a knife that got left behind?”

“No, Jerry,” he says, and he turns up the volume on the radio. “All this because the woman you don’t think you killed has just been found.”

WMD

That list of yours, the I can’t believe it list, well, here’s something juicy to add. You ruined the wedding, J-Man. Of course you did—you were always going to, weren’t you? It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the wedding ruined for no other reason than because everybody, including yourself, believed you were going to ruin it. Really, what you should be doing is making an I can believe it list, and put this one on the top.

It is still the day of the WMD. The Wedding of Mass Destruction. The day your family went from a mixture of pitying you / being slightly put out by you / being somewhat amused by you, to straight out hating you. Hate is a strong word, but not strong enough. Thank God Sandra doesn’t know about the gun, otherwise right now you’d be bleeding from a dozen holes. At the moment you are hibernating in your office too scared to face her, and you’ve watched the footage from today over and over just like hundreds of other people have because Rick’s best man, let’s call him Prick, has posted it online. All the bloggers who hated you in the past now love you because you’ve given them one more reason to hate you. The video was posted online less than an hour ago and has already had over a thousand hits. The wedding itself went okay, but that’s because all the Stand here, Don’t stand here, Walk like this practicing got you through it. It was at the reception where things went downhill—and downhill is really understating it, partner. It’s a tough decision to put this into the journal for you, because in the future whatever little bit of your brain that hasn’t turned to soup is better off not knowing what happened. That’s what Alzheimer’s is, really—it’s a defense mechanism—it stops you from knowing how bad things are getting / have gotten. And for you, Jerry, things just got a whole lot worse.

But you know what? This journal is all about being honest. Best to write down all the details, and of course you can always go online and search Jerry Grey Wedding Speech if you want to see the moment it all happened, if you want to see your family watching in horror as what’s left of your dignity plummets.

Context. That’s what you need. There is some good news because the ceremony itself went off without a hitch, so let’s start there, huh? Your wife disappeared in the morning to be with Eva and the bridesmaids to go ooh and ahh as they had their hair done, to relax the nerves with a glass of champagne, to have their makeup expertly applied, and to just generally enjoy the morning. Hans came to look after you, and you sat out on the deck like always and you had a beer and since nobody else was around, he lit up a joint just like he used to. The morning was hot. It’s not even summer yet, but if today is anything to go by, then the city is going to blister and burn.

The wedding was scheduled for two o’clock. Around twelve you put on the new suit and it looked sharp, really sharp, and you can count the times in your life on one hand that you’ve worn one. You actually liked the feel of it, liked the way it made you look grown-up. All these years hanging out at home in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts always did make you feel like a kid. In a suit you looked like somebody to be taken seriously, and that’s something else you’ve always thought—nobody ever took you seriously. Why not? You were just a crime writer, and do you remember that time you were detained flying back into New Zealand because you wrote Makeup on your immigration form as your occupation? The woman at passport control didn’t find it funny and you were detained, but only for fifteen minutes during which you were given a stern telling off and a reminder that immigration was not a joke. But the fact of the matter is you are a makeup artist. Technically. Or were—because now you have a ghost makeup artist tapping those keys on your behalf.

Hans drove you to the church and you got there thirty minutes early and things were still being set up. Belinda was there with her assistant carrying flowers out of the back of the van and loading them into the church, and you chatted for a minute with her before she had to disappear to the winery half an hour away to unload some more.

Guests started to arrive. They hung out in the parking lot in the sun. It was too nice a day to spend in the cool church. Some of them smoked, some laughed, chitchat filling the air. Rick and Prick and the groomsmen showed up in a black limousine, and it was pretty obvious they’d had a few drinks to calm their nerves, then a few more just for the fun of it. Rick had the same look in his eye hundred-meter sprinters have just before the firing gun goes off. He came over and you introduced him to Hans, and Hans took his hand and applied a little too much pressure and said If you ever hurt her, if you ever cheat on her, Jerry here may not be around to protect his little girl, but I will be. You step out of line, buddy, and I will punish you, and the way he said it—well, he wasn’t bluffing and Rick knew it.

I would never hurt her, sir, Rick said.

Then we don’ t have a problem, do we?

No. There was no problem.

The problem was still to come.

More people were showing up, and Rick and his entourage went into the church and you stayed outside with Hans. There were family members you hadn’t seen in a while, mostly from Sandra’s side, her sister the gossip who has been married herself three times, a couple of cousins and an aunt and uncle you couldn’t remember from your side, a lot of Rick’s friends and family you’d never met, and a lot of Eva’s friends, some you’ve known since she was a kid. You shook a lot of hands, said How have you been a few dozen times, Nice to see you again a few dozen more, people who were strangers, people from your life you couldn’t remember, here was Jerry with his Alzheimer’s, Jerry to be pitied, Jerry who everybody was worried was going to mess up, and isn’t that just the setup to the world’s greatest punch line? Isn’t that what they wanted? People go to car races hoping to see a good crash, don’t they?

When the cars with the bridal party pulled up all murmurs coming from inside the church came to a stop. You could hear the pews groaning as everybody shifted to look back towards the door. Eva climbed out of a dark blue fifty-year-old Jaguar, and she looked so much like Sandra on your wedding day that your heart froze and for a moment you were scared, actually scared you were having what Mrs. Smith would sum up as an episode. But it wasn’t an episode—it was Eva looking stunning, looking beautiful, the smile on her face so large she looked as though she owned the world, and your heart melted. You were changing, but you had done your job. You had helped raise this amazing woman, and no matter what the future had in store, nobody could take that away from you.

You took her hand and hugged her, and told her she looked beautiful, and her smile widened and she hugged you back, and she was happy, she was filled with so much joy you actually felt like crying. You hugged Sandra and her smile was almost as big as Eva’s, and she also looked like she was going to cry, and in that moment, Jerry, you forgave her for everything. Sandra had given you the best years of your life, and she still had a future ahead of her. Her body was warm and comforting and she smelled amazing, her hair smelled great, she felt fantastic against you, and in that moment you embraced your future. You had reached the top of the grief pyramid, your name was Jerry Alzheimer, and you were going to let Sandra put you into full-time care if that was her desire.

Sandra went inside to sit in the front row. There was already music playing in the church, but now it changed to a different piece that was your cue to start moving. The flower girls, who were related to Rick in some way, wandered down the aisle first, everybody in the church going They’re so cute, they’re so cute, they’re so adorable, and they were adorable, of course they were, these little kids that didn’t have Alzheimer’s. The bridesmaids went next—two of them, friends of Eva’s since primary school—and then you led Eva, people in the crowd almost breaking their necks to get a better view, Eva beaming the whole way, little nods and extra smiles for certain people in the crowd, and you did what you had been told to do, nothing more, nothing less, step after step all the way to the front, and Jerry falls over and the crowd goes wild! No, that’s not what happened, but it’s what they expected. You got Eva to the front, gave her a hug, and then shook Rick’s hand. You said It’s over to you, now, son, before glancing at Hans. Rick glanced at Hans too and you were all on the same page.

You sat next to Sandra and held her hand and the ceremony began. You watched Eva get married. There were tears and there was laughter and there were no zombies as far as the eye could see. Rice was thrown at the end and people clapped as the happy couple walked back down the aisle, arms linked, lives linked. Outside the photographer started putting the bridal party to work, Stand here, Smile, Now you, Now you and you, Now just the family. If that was it, then it would have been a perfect day. But of course Captain A had something else in mind, didn’t he? Look at this hand while he fools you with the other. That’s the magic of it all.

The wedding party disappeared to other locations for more pictures, and everybody else had two hours to kill. The crowd slowly departed, breaking up into mostly groups of two or three and getting into the cars to drive to the winery. Father Jacob stood outside shaking hands and making chitchat, and you had this weird image of him sticking business cards under all the windshield wipers, with little Ten percent off your next confession coupons attached, or Absolve two sins for the price of one.

Hans drove you to the winery, and Sandra went there with her parents. You sat at a table under a sun shade chatting with Hans as others slowly arrived, and it was like the church all over, everybody outside killing time and mingling, only the difference here was they were all holding glasses of wine or beer. You were drinking water even though Hans had smuggled in two hip flasks full of gin and tonic for you, to which you told him thanks but no thanks, then thanks and had a drink anyway. The nerves were gone because there was nothing left to do except listen to the speeches, eat dinner, and maybe hit the dance floor.

You only had the one drink, and were back to water when the speeches began, and you hated that you didn’t get to say anything, that Sandra was muzzling you for the occasion, and you thought . . . this is what you thought: Hey, that’s my daughter too, everybody else gets to say something so why not me?

Why not you?

The answer became obvious once one speech ended and you interrupted the emcee while he was introducing the next speaker, because you had something you wanted to say. Some words of wisdom.

And the crowd went wild, didn’t they?

The video online has now had 3,981 hits. It’s going viral. And there you are, walking up to the stage. Jerry Grey in his wedding suit and his funeral suit, but it’s not Jerry Grey at the wheel, it’s his magician buddy, Captain A. It’s all there for the world to see, 4,112 hits now, and the human race, well now, they sure do love a good show, don’t they? Especially when it’s at the cost of somebody else.

Let me describe it for you. Jerry Grey. At the stage and to his right the wedding table, and at the table are the wedding party, Rick and Prick and the groomsmen, Eva and her bridesmaids, glasses of wine and plates and flowers, and to Jerry’s left the band, and next to Jerry the emcee with the smile on his face, the kind of guy who was just going with the flow, the kind of guy who looked like he’d still be emceeing while the ship went down—and that is what happened, isn’t it? So that’s the scene. Jerry on stage and the room goes quiet. What’s he going to say? What’s he going to do? Well step on up, Future Jerry, and catch yourself a tale.

Hi everybody. My name is Jerry Grey, and for those of you who don’t know me, I’m the father of the bride, Jerry says, and he turns towards the wedding table and smiles at his daughter, and she’s smiling, or trying to, and off to the side people are standing near Jerry trying to figure out a way to get him to sit down. To contain him. They’re hoping for the best.