Page 123 of A Dead End Wedding

He grinned. "If you say so, but are you sure that's the way the Founding Fathers would have wanted it?"

I hate my life.

Twenty minutes later, having written Max's directions and promised Jim I'd never, ever tell anybody that he'd helped me, I was on my way to my stupid cloak-and-dagger meeting at the MOSH. I'd decided the whole thing was an enormous waste of my time, but I was goingbecause it was a way to hide out for a couple of hours and – hopefully – regain a little of my equilibrium, before I had to face my employees and tell them their boss was an idiot without hope of redemption.

Maybe I needed a couple ofdays.

The drive to the museum gave me some time to calm down and try for some optimism. Maybe I was an idiot, but I was an idiot driving a great car (even though it wasn't mine) on a beautiful day (hot enough to melt pavement) to meet a guy who wouldn't give me his name (about an invoice that probably didn't matter a bit).

My "glass half-full" needed work.

As I drove over the bridge, then around to the road appropriately named Museum Circle, I tried to enjoy the sunshine and remember all the reasons I'd been so ready to leave Ohio.

What I wanted to do was stuff my face with donuts and spend the rest of the day in bed watching my DVD ofPride and Prejudice. Colin Firth never would have married Elizabeth's secretary. I slammed the steering wheel to the left, after I nearly drove right by the entrance.

I parked and got out, wondering if I could figure out how to put the top down for the drive back. I needed to call Jake, anyway, about Gina, and also find out when I would get my car back.

"He's probably already heard about the fiasco today. Something else for him to laugh at me about," I mumbled to myself, walking toward the giant building where, according to several giant banners, the Dinosaurs were here.

Maybe I'd get lucky and one would eat me.

I paid my admission fee and took the building map to figure out where the planet show would be held, wondering again why I was doing this. The guy'd sounded like a psycho. Threadingmy way past a hundred kids wearing purple Dolphin Day Camp shirts, I made it to the staircase and headed for the second floor. Gaping at the enormous robotic dinosaurs, I almost didn't see the planetarium entrance at first.

By the time I figured it out, a couple of teenagers dressed in MOSH shirts were getting ready to close the doors. I squeezed in behind a family of six, and tried to remember what my caller had said.. I was pretty sure it was "Mars show, back row, left side, red hat."

I looked to my left, but the lights were going down fast, and I saw only the dim outline of a man wearing a hat. I couldn't tell what color the hat was. I sat down, anyway. He said nothing, so I waited for a minute, not really wanting to humiliate myself again by asking some poor tourist about being my clandestine contact.

Two or three minutes into the show, I'd learned that Mars is red because it's rusty. The soil contains iron oxide; the planet was once wet, and now it has had no rain in millions of years. A rusty planet – who knew? Speaking of rust, the planetarium stank of rust or mildew or something nasty and metallic. Maybe they were piping in a rust smell to complement the Mars show, but that was going a little overboard, if you asked me. Not to mention my horrible certainty that somebody had stashed a smelly diaper under one of the adjacent seats.

Rust and diaper smell was enough to make me want to get the heck out of there. Rust and diaper smell on an empty stomach was making me feel like I was going to start dry heaving any second.

I still hadn't heard a peep out of the guy next to me, but I was almost positive his hat was red. He was leaning all the way back in his seat and looked like he was asleep, but I'd had enough of Mars and its aromas.

Leaning toward him, I tried to quietly get his attention. "Psst!"

The smell worsened near his seat, and the acrid stink burned my eyes. Maybe he'd passed out after being asphyxiated by the fumes and would need a good lawyer. "Psst!"

Nothing. He didn't even move.

I tried again, louder. "Psst!"

Nothing.

"Oh, for Pete's sake. Hey, dude. I'm December Vaughn, and I can't take the stench. Are you the guy from Orange Grove Productions?"

He didn't move, which was kind of rude. I mean, the least he could have done was say no if I had the wrong guy.

I hate rude people. That's my only defense for what I did next.

I leaned clear over across the two seats between us and poked him in the arm. Hard. That's when three things happened all at once: He fell forward and smashed his face into the seat in front of him, the lights came up, and I started screaming.

Because the back of his shirt was soaked with blood. His head had tilted sideways, so I had a front-row view of the four-inch gash in his neck.

Then everybody else started screaming, and there was running and yelling and somebody's baby starting crying.

I sat there, unmoving, staring at the bloody man in the red hat until somebody grabbed my arm. "Did you check his pulse?" somebody asked. I pointed to the open wound that ringed the part of his throat where his pulse should have been —wouldhave been— but I still couldn't talk. Only after they dragged me out of my seat did I realize I was shaking and tears were pouring down my face.

It was my first dead body. I couldn't stop staring at him, even as I walked away. At the body. Atit. He didn't look like anything but what he was – dead. Not like anything I'd ever seen anywhere before. Not in movies. Not on TV.

---