"I have one responsibility; the liquor license."

"When does Tom arrive in Toronto?"

"Thursday."

"And the wedding is on Saturday?"

"Yup."

"So when is the bachelor party?"

"Thursday."

"Want another beer?

"Sure."

"Does he have any friends coming?"

"Not really. It should be a pretty quiet night."

Barry arrived on Tuesday. The wedding was Saturday. The rest of the Morrison family would not be in town until Thursday. That's when the madness would start. Peter was flying in from Boston on Wednesday. Barry had managed to get Peter, Heather and I invited to The Big Wedding. It had not been easy. It was a Roman Catholic wedding and the bride's family was very religious. The wedding was at three and the reception was at six. The friends of the bride and groom were not invited until nine, for the second reception. The bride's mother had planned everything. Everything but the liquor license. That job fell to Barry because if the Morrison side of the family wanted a bar at the wedding then they would just have to plan it themselves, and Barry is a bartender, so he should know about these things and besides, Barry and his degenerate friends would probably be the only ones drinking anyway. She had a point. There were more Christians at that wedding than you could shake a stick at. It was a Filipino wedding. Nice people. The bride's mother had invited hundreds of them from places like Manila, Hong Kong, Vancouver, San Francisco and New York. The bride and groom knew only a handful of people at the wedding. Their friends would not arrive until nine when the bar opened. Most of the guests stayed well away from the bar, the bar and the people standing near it were sinful, evil people. Not to be discouraged, Barry stepped behind the bar, and true to form, was able to get most people drinking with his considerable charm and exuberance. The evening was just getting started.

* * * *

"Kenneth, take this money."

"Why?"

"Just take it."

"Why?"

"Because... it's for the bachelor party."

"How much is here."

"Enough."

"Enough for what?"

"Enough to buy our way out of trouble, of course."

Jaclyn was listening to the conversation. Barry and Kenneth argued out of habit. Barry was holding in his hand the largest wad of cash she had ever seen. Kenneth knew better than to take it. Jaclyn had been busy ignoring them bicker for the last hour, but the fat wad of cash peaked her interest. "What are you guys doing tonight for Tom's bachelor party?" She asked. The Morrison brothers ignored her. Barry forced the money into Kenneth's hand.

"OK. I want you to take this money and put it in a safe place. I want you to bring it with you when we go out tonight. Keep the money hidden at all times. Do not tell anyone you have it. No matter what happens, under no circumstances are you to give me the money until I give you the password. Are you listening?"

He was.

"The password is this: 'The entertainment is on the way'." Barry paused for dramatic effect. Kenneth stared blankly at Barry with his well rehearsed "Barry you are such an idiot" face, a facial expression which Kenneth has honed to perfection and which is reserved solely for his eldest brother.

"The en-ter-tain-ment is on the way." Barry repeated the password syllable by syllable for comedic effect, but also so that there was no confusion about the exact wording of the password. The three of them sat on the hotel beds laughing. "Barry you are a crazy bastard," was the unspoken dialogue of the comedy.

"What entertainment are you talking about Barry? Strippers? Hookers? How much money is that?" Jaclyn asked. Jaclyn was just young enough, and had known Barry for just long enough to believe just about anything.

"Ya, how much is this?" Kenneth asked, seriously, now that the joke was over. He was trying to weigh the money in the palm of his hand.

"One thousand dollars," Barry replied, matter-of-factly. "In non-sequential, unmarked twenty dollar bills, of course. I read in 'The Best Man's Handbook' that you should bring emergency money with you on the bachelor party. You never know when you are going to have to grease a few wheels."

* * * *

I was standing in the middle of the road. I was pretty drunk. Peter had taken his shirt off. The wedding had been over for about an hour and most of the guests were long gone. All the respectable guests were home in bed by now. I was standing in front of the Toronto French School. I had stolen a large neon-orange pylon from the empty parking lot. About twenty friends of the bride and groom were lying around the front steps and lawn of the school, waiting for our cabs to arrive. Peter was busy socializing. I was drinking beer and using the pylon as a blow-horn.

"Hey baldy, put your fucking shirt back on!" I yelled at Peter through the blow-horn. No response. He was talking to a bunch of young girls, mostly friends of the bride's little sister.

"Put your shirt back on you bald pedophile. You fucking Orca-necro-feltcher." It was one-thirty AM, Sunday morning, and I was standing in the middle of the road at the corner of Lawrence and Bayview. Every few minutes a car would drive by, slow down to stare at me, and then drive by shaking their white faces in disappointment.  Where did we go wrong? What is wrong with the youth today? This used to be such a nice neighborhood. It was only a matter of time before someone called the police. The Toronto French School is the most expensive private school in Toronto. What the hell were twenty or thirty drunken adolescents of various ages doing at the Toronto French School at one-thirty in the morning with hundreds of dollars worth of alcohol? We had an impressive inventory of booze stacked at the front entrance of the school. Apparently Catholic Filipinos are not big drinkers. There was a considerable amount of alcohol left over from the wedding.

* * * *

Barry was visibly drunk and slurring his words, but still functional and authoritative. The catering people did not deal with the alcohol. It was up to us to get all the left over booze from the bar, through the school, and into the trunk and back seat of Barry's rented Pontiac Sunfire. There was a dude from the Toronto French School that was overseeing the event. He helped us carry the booze. He seemed to want to witness the evil liquid leaving the school with his own eyes. He kept asking Barry if he was driving home tonight and then not believing Barry's answers.

"So you boys are leaving all this booze in the car over-night, is that right?"

"Not exactly," Barry said. I grabbed a soccer ball out of Barry's car and began kicking it straight up in the air. My behavior up until that point had been quite normal. The French school dude stared at me like I had suddenly gone crazy. A couple of young Filipinos were driving their souped up Honda Civics around the parking lot. There were girls overflowing out of both cars. The girls were hanging out the windows, waving open bottles of wine and screaming vulgarities. The French school dude looked concerned.

"It is my job to make sure that everything runs smoothly tonight." He was trying to appeal to Barry's sense of duty. "You understand I can't allow any open liquor in the parking lot." He was staring at the girls in the cars as they drove by. They were drinking and driving in circles. He was clearly shocked by the stark contrast in behavior. Only minutes ago these people had seemed completely normal. He decided he better chaperone for a while.

"You have nothing to worry about," Barry assured him. "I have this situation totally under control." Barry turned around to address the crowd. "After-Party at my hotel," he said. "I have more booze than we could possibly drink."

That was true. We had multiple boxes with twelve bottles of Merlot in each one. We had about twenty six-packs of Steam Whistle Pilsner. We had coke and juice and other mixers. We had multiple bottles of Canadian Club Whisky, Vodka, Rum, and Gin, some opened, and some unopened.

The band was packing equipment into their van on the other side of the parking lot. The band consisted of young French jazz musicians with long hair and afros. "Bon Soir!" Barry yelled. He approached the band across the parking lot, "Est-ce-que vous avez du pot?" The French musicians looked confused. "Marijuana, do you guys have any marijuana I could buy?" They looked at each other and laughed. They seemed relaxed and friendly. They were aware that this was possibly the most indiscrete drug deal in history. The Toronto French School dude and the rest of us stood watching. The band did not have any pot for Barry. Next he tried the kids in the cars.

"Hey, you guys want to come to the after party back at my hotel?"

They did.

"Awesome, we're staying at the Westin Prince at York Mills and Don Mills, room 904. Do you guys have any pot?" The Honda Civics did not have any pot either. We were shit out of luck.

"Max! Call a cab!" Barry yelled over. That was Heather's queue.

"How many do we need, Barry?" She asked. Heather was acting as my proxy because I was busy talking to our chaperone. I was drinking out of an open bottle of Merlot.

"I don't know, lets say two, these other people are driving." Heather called the cabs on her cell phone. Kenneth, Jaclyn, Heather, and I began carrying all the booze we would need for the after party up the hill from the back parking lot to the front of the school where we would wait for the taxis. Barry and Peter were busy talking to the girls. My box of wine was ripped at the bottom making it almost impossible to carry.

"Peter! You useless bastard," I yelled down the hill, "Come help me carry this wine." No response. The four of us got to the front of the school and we each cracked a beer.

* * * *

Heather, Peter and I were the only ones drinking at the bar. There was no bartender. The bar had been designated self-service to save money. We were drinking double and triple Canadian Clubs and Coke. We hadn't eaten much for supper. All the regular guests were in the dinning room eating. All the friends of the bride and groom who had not been invited until nine were shy and hanging back from the bar because none of them knew us and I was standing behind the bar screaming things like "Party Time, Bitches!" and "Holy Fuck! Is it just me, or is it time to get druunnk?" Invariably, Heather and Peter would answer enthusiastically, "Hell yes!" Everyone else seemed unsure. Heather was drinking red wine. Peter and I had each had about four or five double and triple CC & C's by the time the first reception ended and hundreds of guests started filing out of the reception hall and into the lobby where the bar was. We talked to the Morrison family and their friends. The Morrison parents seemed happy to see us. Tom did not have time to talk. He was busy trying to drag his virgin bride out of the school. He was ready to start his honeymoon. The bride had to say good-bye to one hundred relatives before they could leave. Peter and I were talking to friends of the grooms parents. They told us they had taken a train from California to Toronto just to be at this wedding.

"That was stupid," Peter said, "What were you guys thinking? Trains are slow and expensive. That was just a really stupid thing to do."

"OK, Peter," I said. "Let's go freshen up these drinks."

"OK," he agreed, and we turned to the bar, Peter was still shaking his head in disgust and disbelief about the train. I've got to keep this freak away from the bride's family, I thought to myself. These Jesus freaks are not going to appreciate the subtleties of Peter's charm.

"Have you seen these girls?" He asked me. I had. "Holy Fuck, the one not wearing a dress is unbelievable." I agreed. "We have to make sure she gets invited to the after party." I told him that I'd leave that important task in his capable hands. He was drunk. Hilarity was sure to ensue. There were about fifteen girls in short, flirty summer dresses on the dance floor. One of them was wearing pants, but she seemed to be the wild one. I think we managed to get through the reception without embarrassing the Morrison family too much. I was babysitting Peter and Heather was babysitting me. Barry was running around talking to various important family members, wedding planners, caterers, the French School dude, the kitchen staff and others. He seemed very busy. I have no idea what he was doing or why, but he seemed happy and he was sweating and drinking and before I knew it he had successfully transferred all the alcohol and friends and girls from the reception hall out into the parking lot through sheer force of personality. The Toronto French School dude was following Barry around, but once we got all the booze and drunken Filipinos and Honda Civics and Morrison's and girlfriends to the front of the buildings he seemed satisfied and went back inside. Once we got to the front of the school Heather and I started to make out on the lawn. Kenneth and Jaclyn stared at us like we were crazy.

"Hey! Mind your business," I said. "Can't you see I'm pleasuring my special lady friend here?" We waited for what seemed like an eternity. There were still no cabs, still no Barry or Peter. They were behind the school with the girls. I grabbed a large neon-orange pylon. I walked to the middle of the road to flag a cab. The rest of the crew slowly made their way up the hill from behind the school. From the road I saw that Peter had taken his shirt off. I couldn't see who he was talking to, but I knew there must be girls around. He had an impressive physique. Finally a cab came. A few of the girls got in and the cab began to drive off, but most of us were still waiting, and if this was going to be the only cab, we were stranded. Barry saw the cab pulling away and started screaming and running across the parking lot. The cabbie stopped the car and stuck his head out the window. "What do you want?" The cabbie asked, visibly shaken by the sight of a 300 pound man running and yelling at him in the middle of the night. "We ordered three cabs about an hour ago." Barry informed him. "They will be here soon," the cabbie said and started to drive off, like all cabbies, he was naturally in a hurry.

"That's not good enough," Barry said. He was an impressive orator. He was loud and drunken and slightly belligerent. He was a formidable opponent in any challenge, intellectual or otherwise. The cabbie was still trying to drive around him. Barry saw this and moved to block his path. Barry stood in front of the cab and was screaming at the driver.

"I am not moving until two more cabs arrive!"

"Get out of my way, they will be here soon, get out of my way. Move, move, I need to get out. You are in the way. Move! Move... you are crazy, you are crazy, you crazy man," said the cabbie. The cabbie was starting to get upset.

"I will move when the other cabs get here, so you better call them. You better call them because I am not moving. We have been waiting for two full hours and you people still have not sent our cabs." Barry held his ground. I was still standing in the middle of the street with my pylon.

"You tell 'em, Barry," I screeched through my pylon. "Don't let these bastards push you around. Don't you dare move until we get some more cabs! Violence is the only way to make these swine listen to reason!" The rest of the party was standing up now and staring in disbelief. Luckily the Toronto French School dude and the parents and the other guests were long gone. Barry had stopped talking and was stubbornly standing in front of the cab with his arms folded across his large body. He was still wearing his tuxedo. I was still using the pylon.

"Hey Barry, tell that bastard that if he doesn't send any more cabs up here that we are going to smash his headlights... and steal his hub-caps... that will get his attention!" Kenneth and Jaclyn were yelling at Barry to move. He was ignoring them and staring at the cabbie. The cabbie looked scared. He seemed moderately worried by this point. Presently I noticed three cabs driving east on Lawrence toward the school, since I was standing on the road I was the only one who could see them.

"Do something violent Barry," I yelled. "Or else these rat-bastards will never send us any more cabs." Barry just stood there shaking his head in a menacing way at the cabbie, who was by this time on his radio, desperately calling three more cabs for probably the fourth or firth time since Barry cornered him. The three cabs pulled into the school driveway and into the parking lot and everyone piled in and the crisis was averted. We loaded all the alcohol into the cabs. I had been unable to talk Barry into doing anything illegal. Apparently we would not need that emergency money after all. I had been convinced I would see the police driving east down Lawrence toward the school at any moment, and I had been prepared to inform the crowd with my blow horn that "The Entertainment was On the Way."

* * * *

Back at the hotel Barry ordered room service. He was on the phone for about an hour. He was having a savage argument with the hotel Night Manager about the lack of chicken on the late night menu.

"Barry you gregarious bastard," I yelled at him from the mini-bar. "How many people did you invite back to the hotel?" The room was starting to fill up with people. Barry, Kenneth and Jaclyn were sharing the room. The Morrison parents were asleep next door. The younger sister of the bride came in on crutches, she only had one leg. I welcomed her to the party and cracked a beer and gave it to her. She brought the entourage of girls with her. She seemed to be the leader. They were the girls from the dance floor. The After Party had now officially started. I looked around the room. Sure enough, The Wild One from the dance floor was with them. She looked good. I gave Peter the international male facial expression for "Booyaa." Unfortunately, Peter did not look good. Hours of drinking were starting to catch up with him. He was in no condition to talk to anyone. I tried to cheer him up.

"Peter you atavistic freak, ever since you took your shirt off I can't stop thinking about you," I yelled across the party, "your hairy chest is irresistible." The crowd seemed amused. "What would you do if I asked you to 'Let Your Man Out'?" This raised quite a debate. The crowd had mixed emotions. Some were for it, most were against. Peter was too drunk to respond. Barry was still on the phone.

"That is simply unacceptable!" He screamed into the telephone. It was three AM, Sunday morning. "Do you know what my family is paying for these rooms? Do you? Sir? Do you? This is unacceptable. I want to order room service, and I want to order chicken! There is no chicken on your late night menu. I have a person here who can only eat chicken!" Everyone was listening to Barry now. We all looked around the room at each other to find out who it was. Everyone shook their head in silence to say it wasn't them. I looked at Peter thinking that he was a fairly picky eater, but he wasn't paying attention. He was talking to the girl from the dance floor. She was from Russia, but she had not come with love. She had not seemed too impressed with me and Peter when we answered the door to the hotel room and I had asked them if they were "the entertainment for the evening." Maybe that was an inappropriate thing to say to a woman with only one leg. When Peter and I team up we're bound to offend someone, but the sister was unfazed. She was animated and jovial and I liked her right away.

"Let me talk to your manager." Barry was still on the phone. "YOUR Manager, right now, or I'm coming down there. Listen, you do not want me to leave this hotel room... OK, I understand, OK, I understand... OK, now I want YOU to understand something; if you do not offer me a chicken option on this menu I am going to leave this hotel room. Do you understand? Do you understand the implications of what I am telling you right now? What is your name? Bill? Bill is your name? OK Bill, how much do you weigh? Do you want to know how much I weigh, Bill? Do you? Do I sound like a reasonable person to you Bill? I do? I should hope so! Your manager... put your god-damn manager on the phone or god-help me. I don't give a shit, Bill, wake the bastard up then. Listen... I don't WANT you to wake him up, but you and I both know that it is well within YOUR power to cook me something with chicken in it."

* * * *

Peter passed out on the bed with the jovial Filipino sister. Heather and Jaclyn were talking to the Russian. A seriously drunk Filipino girl in the shortest dress I have ever seen kept falling down and laughing for no reason. Kenneth and I grabbed a few beers and headed out to the patio. We were on the ninth floor. We had a phenomenal view. To the north we could see the lights from the condos at Bayview and Sheppard. To the south we could see the downtown lights and the CN Tower above everything else. It was a quiet and serine night in uptown Toronto. Our balcony was only about two feet deep, a kind of half-balcony. Our view was of the street below, a small park on the other side and the Tim Horton's parking lot beyond the park. Back in the room we could see Barry arguing on the phone. The Honda Civic kids were making out with their girlfriends. Kenneth and I were alone on the balcony. We drank three or four beers each.

"I bet you can't hit that stone on the lawn across the street," I said. Kenneth looked at me suspiciously.

"Hit it with what?"

"With this empty beer bottle."

"Are you serious?"

"Do I look serious?"

"Yes, you do," he said. There was silence. The night was warm.

"OK, why not?" he said.

"Good," I said. "Now listen, these are the rules. I pick the target and you have to hit it with an empty beer bottle. If the bottle doesn't break, you lose. Then you get to pick the target. We'll take turns. How many empties do we have?" He told me we had about five. "That will have to do for now. Naturally we'll have to keep drinking to keep the game going." We were on the ninth floor. There were about fifteen floors to the building. I looked up and then down the outside windows of the hotel. For some reason we were the only ones still awake. All the other balconies were deserted; all the other windows were dark. Taxis were parked along the street below us to our left.

"OK Max, but if the target you choose is the grass or the trees, then I shouldn't be penalized if my beer bottle doesn't break." Kenneth possessed the Morrison passion for rules and competition.

"Agreed," I said. Kenneth was a natural athlete and beat me easily. His beer bottles smashed beautifully and always hit their target more or less dead on. My bottles flew wildly to the left or right, although I did manage to hit the Tim Horton's parking lot. We couldn't see the parking lot because of the trees, but we heard it smash on something.

That little shit, I thought to myself as we walked back inside. Wait until I get my hands on some more empty beer bottles.

"What were you two doing out there?" Jaclyn asked.

"Throwing beer bottles," I answered, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"What? At who?" she seemed alarmed.

"Not at people," Kenneth assured her, "at targets like the grass or the sidewalk." He sat down beside her and put his arms around her.

"You should have seen it," he bragged, "I beat Max with my wrong hand."

"You bastard," I muttered to myself.

"Kenneth is so competitive," Jaclyn was talking to Heather and the Russian. "Kenneth is completely ambidextrous. He talks about it all the time."

"Bullshit," I said. "One hand must be dominant. I guarantee you he masturbates with one hand more than the other."

"Of course, I mostly use my left. That's my writing hand," Kenneth said.

"Here we go again," Jaclyn exclaimed. "Kenneth, can't we get through a single conversation without discussing masturbation?"

"But it was Max who brought it up," Kenneth protested.

"Hey! Don't pass your masturbation obsession off on me," I said.

"I don't even think he has time to masturbate that much because he is too busy talking about it," Jaclyn said.

"That's interesting," I said, "because I have the opposite problem."

Kenneth and I rounded up all the empty beer bottles in the room and went back outside to continue our game. Either the Taxi's below us were empty or the drivers did not consider beer bottles falling from the sky an unusual event. Not once did I notice a driver get out of his car or even poke his head out in curiosity. The Russian joined us on the balcony with a full bottle of wine. We explained the game to her. She didn't seem that interested but then out of nowhere she tossed her full bottle of Merlot over the edge. "That's the spirit," I said. Red wine and glass exploded all over the street. We had been avoiding the street for obvious reasons.

"Holy fuck!" Kenneth stared at her in shock.

"Relax," I said. "It's OK, she's from Russia." She gave me a flirty look and walked back inside without saying a word. Kenneth did not say anything but he shook his head and gave me a look that translated very clearly, "that bitch was crazy." I shrugged my shoulders and picked our next target.

* * * *

Peter was still sleeping on the bed. There was a knock on the door. Was it the police? Was it hotel security? Had we been busted for throwing multiple beer bottles off the balcony in the middle of the night? Barry answered the door. It was room service. An old man in a uniform with a huge cart of food was waiting in the hall. The really drunk Filipino girl was passed out on the floor. The old man could not get the cart into the room because she was in the way. Barry picked her up and threw her on her back on the bed with Peter and the one-legged sister. She was out cold. When she landed her short dress was up around her waist. Barry did not notice and turned to pay for the room service. The Filipino girl was not wearing any underwear. Barry was trying to pay but the old man was not paying attention. Barry got frustrated. "What is wrong with you people?" Then he turned to see what the old man was looking at. It was a vagina, a perfectly clean shaven vagina. The entire room was in shock. The Russian quickly covered the poor girl up. The Russian was quick, but not too quick, like it was a task of only moderate importance. She was clearly not as shocked by vaginas as the rest of us. Barry turned back to the old man.

"You pervert," he said. "Take this money and get out. You're lucky I don't tell Bill about you." The old man left swearing under his breath in a foreign language. Barry was now happily eating his room service. He had ordered six ham and cheese sandwiches and six large bottles of Pepsi. Oh god, I thought, did they forget his chicken? But then he opened a container and I heard him saying "here we go, chicken pot pie. You just can't beat chicken pot pie in the middle of the night."

"Hey Kenneth, did you know that they tried to tell me I couldn't order chicken?"

* * * *

It was almost five AM by the time I got the drunken Filipino girl down to the lobby. She was heavier than she looked. She was very beautiful despite the fact that she had just spent the last half hour violently puking into the bathroom toilet. The kid with the Honda Civic and the Russian were already gone. They had carried the one-legged sister down to the lobby, dumped her on a leather bench, and disappeared. I tried to carry the drunken Filipino girl over my shoulder but she was too heavy for that. It was like carrying a dead body. The only way to carry her was in my arms. I let her lay on the floor of the elevator on the way down. When we got to the lobby I picked her up again. That was when I noticed her reflection in the elevator mirror. If I carried her this way I would expose her vagina to the entire lobby. She was heavy; I had to make a decision. Fuck it, I thought. She was the one who decided not to put on any underwear this morning. Her head swung back in my arms. She looked like she was choking on her own tongue. To anyone in the lobby it could only have looked like I was carrying a half naked corpse. This girl had clearly OD'd on something serious, most likely heroin, and I was obviously her sleazy pimp, escaping with her body out the front door of the hotel and racing off to dump her in a cold ditch somewhere. Luckily there was no one in the lobby. I could only make it as far as the leather benches before I had to put her down. That is when I noticed a one-legged woman sleeping on the floor. What a strange fucking hotel this is, I thought to myself. Where the hell is the night manager? Where is Bill? I looked up. Bill was sitting right behind the front desk reading a newspaper! He had been there the entire time. He had pretended not to notice when two savage lunatics appeared in the middle of the night, dropped an unconscious one-legged woman on the floor of the lobby of his hotel and walked out the front door. He had pretended not to notice when I walked across the hotel lobby waiving a vagina in his face. This guy was a real piece of work. He obviously did not want to have anything to do with us or this ugly scene unfolding right in front of his eyes. His plan was clearly to ignore the problem until it went away. This guy was unbelievable. Barry had been on the phone with this freak for over an hour trying to order a chicken pot pie. I sat there waiting for Bill to look up and see that I was sitting in the middle of the lobby with two half-naked Filipino women, one of them missing a leg and both of them sprawled out on the floor. I became conscious that I was probably being watched by security cameras at this very moment. Where the hell are they with that god-damn car? This was an ugly scene. And no matter who might walk by, I was obviously guilty of something. There was no talking my way out of this one. I had clearly raped these poor women. Calm down Max, I thought to myself. You've been drinking heavily for hours, you haven't slept in days. You're becoming paranoid. There is nothing unusual about this situation. Just make sure that poor girl's vagina is covered and you will be fine. I looked around for the security cameras in the lobby. I pulled her dress down as far as it would go. Don't touch her you fool! Now they have you on camera touching her in the hotel lobby. You're doomed now. Now they can prove that you're a pervert. I expected the police to walk through the front doors of the lobby at any moment and charge me with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, disturbing the peace, destruction of public property, and given the obvious nudity of these girls, they would probably add sodomy to the charges. I was doomed and I knew it. Just then the Russian walked back in the hotel and asked Bill for a wheelchair.

"Excuse me. Hey... hello, I'm talking to you. I need a wheelchair for my friend; she is disabled and very drunk."

Good, I thought, she didn't mention anything about the sodomy. I think I'm in the clear. Bill slowly put down his newspaper. He looked at the Russian and mumbled something.

"Excuse me?" she demanded, "I couldn't hear you, what did you say?"

"Fifty dollars." Bill grunted.

"What? You want fifty dollars just to use the wheelchair? Is that right?" asked the Russian. He said it was just a deposit. "Fine," she said. "Whatever." She paid for the wheelchair. She walked over to me and the girls.

"I see you've met Bill," I said. She was looking at the one I had carried.

"Is she OK?"

I looked at the girls on the floor, they seemed alright to me. They looked almost peaceful. It was cool and quiet in the hotel lobby. Soft classical music was playing in the background. It had been a long week.

"She'll be fine," I said. "Some people just don't know how to behave at a wedding."