Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(46)

This last phrase sent a little echo of sadness through her. It took her a moment to recollect why.

She rose and followed Bunny into the aisle. It felt as if she had lead in her stomach. All the color seemed to have been washed out of the room, and she saw how bland it was—a dead place.

She and Bunny stood waiting while their father shook their uncle’s hand—or more like clung to his hand, with both of his own, as if hanging on for dear life. “Thank you anyhow, Theron,” he said in a funereal voice. “I apologize for taking up your—”

“Khello?”

Pyotr was standing in the corridor doorway, with Miss Brood smiling anxiously behind his left shoulder. He wore an outfit so shabby that he looked like a homeless person: a stained white T-shirt torn at the neck and translucent with age, very short baggy plaid shorts that Kate worried might be his underwear, and red rubber flip-flops. “You!” he said too loudly. It was Bunny he was addressing. He charged into the chapel, and Miss Brood melted away again. “Do not think for one minute that you will not be arrested,” he told Bunny.

She said, “Huh?”

He arrived directly in front of her and set his face too close to hers. “You…vegetable eater!” he told her. “You bleedy-heart!”

Bunny took a step backward and dabbed at her cheek with the heel of one hand. He must have been spitting as he talked. “What is with you?” she asked him.

“You went to lab in dead of night; I know you did. I do not know where you took mice but I know it was you who did this thing.”

“Me!” Bunny said. “You think it was me who did it! You honestly believe I would mess up my own father’s project! You’re nuts. Tell him, Kate.”

Dr. Battista managed to slip in between them at this point. He said, “Pyoder, I need to know. How bad is it?”

Pyotr turned away from Bunny to clap a hand heavily on Dr. Battista’s shoulder. “Is bad,” he told him. “This is the truth. Is bad as it can get.”

“They’re all gone? Every one?”

“Every one. Both racks empty.”

“But how—?”

Pyotr was walking him toward the front of the chapel now, his hand still resting on Dr. Battista’s shoulder. “I wake up early,” he said. “I think I will go to lab early so I am in time for wedding. I get to door; is locked the same as always. I punch combination. I go inside. I go to mouse room.”

They slowed to a stop a few feet from the altar. Uncle Theron and Kate and Bunny stayed where they were, watching. Then Pyotr turned to look back at Kate. “Where are you?” he asked her.

“Me?”

“Come on! We get married.”

“Oh, well,” Dr. Battista said, “I don’t know if that’s really…I think I’d just like to get on down to the lab now, Pyoder, even if there’s nothing to—”

But Kate said, “Wait till we say our vows, Father. You can check the lab afterward.”

“Kate Battista!” Bunny said. “You are surely not going ahead with this!”

“Well…”

“Did you hear how he just talked to me?”

“Well, he’s upset,” Kate told her.

“I am not goddamned upset!” Pyotr bellowed.

“You see what I mean,” Kate told Bunny.

“Come here now!” Pyotr shouted.

Uncle Theron said, “Goodness, he is upset,” and he chuckled, shaking his head. He walked up the aisle to the altar, where he turned and held both arms out from his sides like an annunciating angel. “Kate, dear?” he asked. “Coming?”

Bunny gave a hiss of disbelief, and Kate turned and handed her tote to her. “Okay, fine,” Bunny told her. “Be like that. The two of you deserve each other.”

But she accepted the tote, and she trailed after Kate up the aisle.

At the altar, Kate took her place next to Pyotr. “I at first did not understand it,” Pyotr was telling Dr. Battista. “Was obvious what had happened, but still I did not understand. I am just staring. Two empty racks and no cages. Painted letters on wall next to racks, painted directly on wall: ANIMALS ARE NOT LAB EQUIPMENT. This is when I think to call police.”

“The police: oh, well, what can the police do?” Dr. Battista said. “It’s too late now for all that.”

“The police take a very, very long time and when they finally come they are not intelligent. They say to me, ‘Can you describe these mice, sir?’ ‘Describe!’ I say. ‘What to describe? They are ordinary Mus musculus; enough is said.’?”

“Ah,” Dr. Battista said. “Quite right.” Then he said, “I don’t see why I had to get dressed up if you didn’t.”

“She is marrying me, not my clothes,” Pyotr said.

Uncle Theron cleared his throat. He said, “Dearly beloved…”

The two men turned to face him.

“We are gathered here in the presence…”

“There must be some way they can track them down, though,” Dr. Battista murmured to Pyotr. “Hire a rat terrier or something. Don’t they keep dogs for such purposes?”

“Dogs!” Pyotr said, turning slightly. “Dogs would eat them! You want this?”