Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(41)
The first unit is stacked high with cardboard boxes. Sam looks inside a few: shit, it’s mostly books. He’s got no idea how to value books, so he’ll make a deal with a guy he knows, a book specialist; if there’s anything really noteworthy, Sam will get a cut. Author signatures in them are sometimes good, the guy says; on the other hand, sometimes not, if no one knows them. Dead authors are sometimes good, but not that often; they have to be famous as well as dead. Art books are usually good, depending on the condition. A lot of the time they’re rare.
The next unit has nothing in it but an old scooter, one of those lightweight Italian quasi-tricycles. Sam has no use for it, but someone will. It can be stripped for parts if nothing else. He doesn’t linger. No sense freezing his balls off: these units aren’t heated, and the temperature’s dropping.
He finds his next unit, slips the key into the lock. Third time lucky: what if it’s a treasure trove? He can still get excited over the possibility, even though he knows it’s like believing in the tooth fairy. He rolls up the door, switches the light on.
Right at the front there’s a white wedding dress with a skirt like an enormous bell and big puffed sleeves. It’s swathed in a clear plastic zip bag, as if it just came from the store. It doesn’t even look worn. There’s a pair of new-looking white satin shoes tucked into the bottom of the bag. There are white elbow-length buttoned gloves pinned to the sleeves. They look creepy: they underscore the absence of a head; though there’s a white veil, he sees now, wrapped around the shoulders of the dress like a stole, with a chaplet of white artificial flowers and seed pearls attached to it.
Who’d put their wedding dress into a storage unit? Sam wonders. That isn’t what women do. Maybe they’d stash it in a closet, or in a trunk or something, but not a storage unit. Where does Gwyneth keep her own wedding dress, come to think of it? He doesn’t know. Not that it was as elaborate as this one. They hadn’t done the whole hog, not the big church wedding: Gwyneth said those were really for the parents, and hers were dead, as were Sam’s, or so he’d told her. No sense in letting his mother yap on to Gwyneth about the amusing ups and downs and the not so amusing ins and outs of his earlier life, it only would have confused her. She would have had to choose between two realities, his reality and his mother’s, and that kind of situation was toxic to a romantic atmosphere.
So they’d just done the city hall routine, and then Sam had swept Gwyneth off to a dream honeymoon on the Cayman Islands. Into the sea, out of the sea, roll around in the sand, watch the moon. Flowers on the breakfast table. Sunset again, holding hands at the bar, filling her up with frozen daiquiris, that’s what she liked to drink. Sex in the morning, kissing his way up her like a slug on a lettuce, beginning with the toes.
Oh Sam! This is so … I never thought …
Just relax. That’s it. Put your hand here.
It wasn’t hard to take. He could afford all of that then, the beaches, the daiquiris, he was flush. The cash wave ebbs and flows, such is its nature, but he’s a believer in spending it while you have it. Was that when he’d covered Gwyneth with hundred-dollar bills – on their honeymoon? No, he pulled that one later.
He moves the wedding-dress skirt to the side. It’s stiff, it rustles, it crackles. There’s more wedding stuff in here: a little night table, and on it a huge bouquet, tied with pink satin ribbon. It’s mostly roses, but it’s dry as a bone. On the other side, in behind the white skirt, there’s the matching night table, holding a giant cake, underneath one of those domed covers they have in bakeries. It’s got white icing, pink and white roses made of sugar, and a tiny bride and groom on the top. It hasn’t been cut.
He’s getting a very odd feeling. He squeezes in past the dress. If what he’s thinking is right, there ought to be some champagne: there’s always champagne for weddings. Sure enough, here it is, three crates of it, unopened. It’s a miracle it hasn’t frozen and burst. Beside it are several boxes of champagne flutes, also unopened: glass ones, not plastic, good quality. And some boxes of white china plates, and a big box of white napkins, cloth, not paper. Someone has stored their entire wedding in here. A big-ticket wedding.
Behind the cardboard boxes there’s some luggage – brand-new luggage, a matched set, cherry red in colour.
And behind that, in the farthest, darkest corner, is the groom.
“Crap,” says Sam out loud. His breath unfurls in a white plume because of the cold; maybe it’s the cold that accounts for the lack of smell. Now that he notices, there is in fact a faint odour, a little sweet – though that could be the cake – and a little like dirty socks, with an undertone of dog food that’s been around too long.
Sam wraps his scarf across his nose. He’s feeling slightly nauseous. This is crazy. Whoever parked the groom in here must be a dangerous loony, some kind of sick fetishist. He should leave right now. He should call the cops. No, he shouldn’t. He wouldn’t want them looking into his final unit, number 56 – the one he hasn’t opened yet.
The groom’s wearing the full uniform: the black formal suit, the white shirt, the cravat, a withered carnation in the buttonhole. Is there a top hat? Not that Sam can see, but he guesses it must be somewhere – in the luggage, he bets – because whoever did this went for the complete set.
Except the bride: there isn’t any bride.