I'll Dance at Your Wedding

I had an old school friend draw up the legal contract with my Aunt and he did a bang-up job. We tried to plug up every loophole either of us could conceive of and solidified our core minimum demands in return for my sacrifice.

• * 100% control of Piper Pickles. Ownership deed, lock, stock and every single pickle barrel! The promise of perpetual preferential shipping rates (via my darling bride's family) at a guaranteed minimum of 33% discount over established base industry rates, contracted for a duration of at least five years, with an automatic renewal unless malfeasance could be proven by a third-party arbitrator, who could assign civil penalties if our contract was unilaterally canceled or altered.

• * The promise of non-interference with our labor-management relations. (We already had a local labor union that we were comfortable working with and I wanted the bride's family thugs kept far away). This agreement also had binding significant civil financial penalties if the arbitrator found any misbehavior or interference here either.

•* The Non-Refundable transfer, sale and 100% control of the F&G chain from my older sister's folio for the total sum of one ($1) dollar. My sister had never once set foot into the place — you couldn't score any cocaine there apparently and the dance music was too boring to disco to! Again, now it was allmine– family hands off!

• * A carved in stone heavy duty Prenuptial Agreement with no expiration date that heavily penalized either offending marital partner in the event of proven adultery or upon the conviction of a felony crime. A 'No-Fault' Divorce could be granted after five years if no children had resulted from the union, or after ten years if there were children. Alimony would be granted for a maximum of five years and Child Support maintenance offered until their eighteenth birthday(s).

• * Last, my 'understanding' with Aunt Millicent that this was my last andfinalduty for Queen and Country ... and my family. Hereafter, I would be free to work and pursue my own flavor of happiness without needing to get permission every time I needed to take a piss. My loving family could all go fuck themselves — I wanted my walking papers.

Oh, there was howling, screaming, wailing and much gnashing of teeth, but I got my conditions. Every single one of them!

In the end, the release for a 'no-fault' divorce after five years was almost a deal-buster. The bastards wanted to hold me firm to the date of the eighteenth birthday of our youngest child. Non-negotiable!

No and hell no! Even to save my beloved plant, this was a much longer term of captivity than I had hoped or planned for, and this was a deal-breaker for me! My Aunt played hardball and put it up for immediate cash sale. My workers rallied to our defense and called for an immediate strike and they all walked out on my behalf! No buyer wants to take over a place certain to have lingering labor problems and they stayed away in droves. My Aunt and my new in-laws blinked and surrendered first.

I won't discuss the wedding, except that I upheld my end and showed up for it. Disturbingly sober, I presented myself willingly for the slaughter so that nearly a thousand employees would still have a paycheck next Friday. Still, I wished it didn't have to be me...

I can't say that married life agreed with me, but it didn't take long for us both to establish our respective boundaries and learn to give each other a really wide berth. We never shared a bedroom except during our honeymoon, but somehow we completed our filial duty and quickly produced a pair of heirs, a daughter and then a son. Odd that ... we'd only shared a bed on two occasions, the week of our honeymoon, resulting in Helena, who arrived a few weeks premature (another oddity), and a particularly anomalous night a few years later when we'd both had a bit too much to drink and had an accident, and spent the night together in bed.

Helena is cut from pretty much the exact same cloth as her mother and is already a snob and a clothes horse and treats everyone around her like dirt under her feet. I've tried my best, but she's her mother's girl and doesn't listen to a thing I tell her. Our daughter looks absolutelynothinglike me and if I were to place a bet, I'd wager that a DNA test would show her to be the by-product of Livonia's old boyfriend, whom she had allegedly spent her own last week of freedom constantly in bed with.

I see now in retrospect that she and her family had taken precautions to already nullify my hope of getting a fast divorce in just five years! I'd hoped to catch the two lovers in an affair sometime afterwards, but he'd made himself very scarce after the wedding. I think her family found her pretty boy a job far out of town ... and well out of the way. If my wife had other new lovers, she kept them well hidden.

Sure, I could have had a DNA test done and called in the lawyers, but the prenup was pretty firm that unless the marriage lasted for at least five years, at minimum, I wouldn't receive my complete independence and full possession the plant. Very grudgingly, I decided to save this ace in the hole for my later divorce plans.

My son Orson is very definitely mine, and he's intelligent but quiet and tends already be a bookworm and is of a very philosophical bent. "Why?" was nearly the first word out of his mouth as a tot and remains close to the tip of his tongue even today. Unlike his older sister and mother, he finds society vapid, and also unlike either of them he says please and thank you to the household staff! I try to be a good father to him and always make time in my busy schedule to spend time with both children whenever possible. Orson is really the only good thing that I'll ever fondly remember this marriage for.

Their mother is much less hands-on, and prefers to be a remote figure in their lives and she keeps herself well insulated from the inconveniences of child rearing with the aid of an army of nurses and nannies. Already there are murmurings of sending Helena off to boarding school next fall, an appalling notion that I am dead against. Snooty private schools certainly never improved anyone in my family that I can recall, and our young bitch in training already has her nose far too highly held in the air for my taste!

Livonia occupies her time exclusively with social events of the Country Club and society circuits and maintains our far too large and appallingly over-decorated house as a local showplace. She entertains constantly or attends other parties several nights a week, but I don't think she has a single true friend. Her so called girlfriends all seem to my eyes to be social rivals instead. They're all 'frenemies' as the younger generation would say. I think it is a sad and pathetic existence living from one social engagement to the next and I make myself absent from her side as much as possible. On a good week, we never even catch a glimpse of each other.

My life for these ten years of marriage consisted of work, more work, and spending a few stolen minutes with my children, and plotting with the help of a more than obliging domestic staff, paths in and out of my house that did not cross my wife's. We have very separate bedrooms in opposite corners of the house and don't even take meals together usually. I used to keep a foldaway bed in the back of my office at the pickle plant but a few years ago I decided that I needed something nicer as a more permanent hiding place and quietly obtained a small flat quite near within walking distance of the plant.

No gaudy modern design features for me. Since Livonia hates anything 'old', which even includes expensive antiques (I swear that woman has absolutely no taste whatsoever), I decorated my newsanctum sanctorumin the English Edwardian and Art Deco styles, of select chosen antiques of English golden oak. Nothing modern whatsoever in this house, except for the bathroom and the kitchen! Livonia would be horrified. Hercule Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey, however, would feel right at home.

My eccentricity for all things vintage also began to include my dressing habits. It started off just as just another means to further irritate my wife. I'll wear plus-fours most days to the plant, as if I were off instead to a highland golf match. If more formal is required then nothing could top a proper Victorian Morning Suit, complete with top hat and silver tipped gentleman's cane. I've never been invited to a Royal Ascot but if I ever am some day, at least I'll be properly dressed to greet the Queen.

My young nieces and nephews all love this. They see me as an eccentric rebel against the upper-crust establishment of our family and indeed they're right. Besides, I don't have the patience or the desire to get myself inked up and covered with body piercings the way they mostly show their rebellion. I'd like to think my way is a little more subtle and perhaps a lot more effective. They also love me because I'm just about the only member of the family that actually has any real money of my own, and I'm a notorious soft touch ... to the few younger ones that are willing to work or get good grades in school.

Don't get me wrong, most of our disaffected Gen-Y generation family members share much of the same greed and sloth that their parents have, but at least a few of them are 'interesting'. A couple just have bad habits rather than bad personalities and I try to gently steer them towards a more productive path.

The pickle plant pretty much runs itself these days and turns a substantial profit for me, enough to keep Livonia in the style to which she is very much accustomed, and even a bit more besides. It is the dance school however that gives me the most pleasure these days. I had rescued this chain of schools mostly out of a sense of nostalgia for what it had been back in the heydays of the 1950's and 60's. The once nationwide chain was down to a pitiful handful of dilapidated run-down schools and gasping its last breaths on financial life support before I rescued it, but I was just in the nick of time.

With a bit of modernization, some clever advertising and a good franchise marketing plan, however, the business slowly rose again to nearly its old fame and prestige! Today, the chain has once again spread across the country and I have a waiting list of nearly fifty potential new franchise operators wishing to buy in over the next fiscal year. Oh, how the money rolls in!

My sister never saw the success that her former possession had become. She blew most of her payout from Aunt Millicent either up her nose or into her veins. About six months after the transfer she was found dead from an overdose, naked and rather soiled in a men's restroom toilet stall after an after-hours party at a sleazy unlicensed underground club. The family tried to keep the sordid details from the media but everyone worth knowing knew anyway. She wasn't the first in our family to go out that way and she wouldn't be the last. Self-destruction seems to run deep in our family veins.

I had been married for just over nine years and mentally counting down minutes to when I could file for my 'No-Fault' divorce, when I had an interesting visitor in my office, a Rube Wasserman from Wasserman Investigations, a fairly prominent private investigation firm. I'd even used him once or twice myself in the past when checking out the bona fides of several local investors who were interested at one point in buying one of my F&G franchises. He had the reputation for being a straight shooter and was as honest as you could be in that sometimes dirty profession. He went straight to the point with little preamble.

"Mr. Piper, I need to tell you now that what I am about to tell you probably violates both my own code of ethics and the legal responsibilities I have to a previous client. I'm not at all pleased about being forced into this position and having to make this moral choice, but on the other hand I also find that I cannot just pretend ignorance of certain facts. I had planned to give you this information anonymously originally, to keep both my hands and my conscience clean, but new important circumstances make it imperative that I present you immediately all of the pertinent details." Wordy and a bit formal, but sincere. That's Rube to a 'T'.

I cancelled all of my appointments for the rest of the day and made sure that my faithful secretary kept the castle drawbridge up and everyone far away from my office for the remainder of the day. Rube's information was indeed important and extremely pertinent to my interests, future health and well-being.

To condense three hours of material into a few paragraphs of lean text would seem near hopeless to accomplish in any meaningful manner, but I'll give it a stab.

About six months ago, Rube had been hired by my wife to thoroughly investigate me in the hopes of finding incontrovertible evidence to show that I had violated one of the two morals clauses in our prenup agreement. To prove that I was either having an affair or that sufficient evidence could be found that could get me convicted of a felony crime ... and soon! Rube performed his usual exhaustive investigation and reported that couldn't find the slightest evidence of either. I was 'cleaner than a hounds tooth and as squeaky clean as the wind driven snow', he reported.

To say this displeased my wife would be an understatement. Apparently, Rube had not been the first investigator over the years to strike out. She was apparently now desperate to find something — anything — to use to take me to the financial cleaners before my ten-year deadline arrived ... even to the extent now of conspiring to manufacture and plant evidence to frame me. Yes, they were that desperate!

Rube, who as I said was a moral man and honest operator, declined to have any role in this and dismissed himself from any further contact with her ... but not before starting an investigation of his own upon her. Livonia had now contacted a new agency of less than sterling reputation and made several large payments to them for the alleged manufacture and planting of evidence upon me. Their plans were well-advanced and the trap was expected to be sprung soon!

The trap was actually two-fold. Since I had never engaged in any extra-marital relationships, an association of this sort would have to be created. At some advantageous time in the very near future, I would be drugged and taken to a well-lit hotel room suitable for candid photography and placed into the talented embraces of a well-paid prostitute. In addition, compromising paperwork suggesting illegal payments to my plant's labor union to prevent a work stoppage would be secreted in my office and a slush fund of 'hot money' traceable allegedly to organized crime would be placed in my office safe. Other evidence suggesting money laundering and illegal payoffs to crime figures and notorious politicians would complete my frame-up as a criminal low life and well in violation of my prenup, just before some anonymous calls and tips were placed to police and federal law enforcement officials.

With even half of this material, I had no doubt that she could and would totally take me to the cleaners in any divorce settlement. The tide had turned a bit and currently her family needed the preferential terms of the inter-family business arrangement more than mine did! Still, if they 'won' I'd lose the pickle plant at the very minimum.

Rube did have at least once piece of good news. Livonia was now having an affair of her own. They had been extremely discrete so far, enough so that Rube as of now did not have anything particularly useful that would be suitable for presentation in court. Still, he had expectations. Both of the lover's cell phones had been cloned and he was already monitoring their every move. When they were ready to strike, he would be also.

I offered Rube a considerable amount of payment for his time and effort of my behalf so far, but he accepted only a $1 token retainer.

"The bitch called me a Jewish ethnic slur when she fired me." He said simply. "My niece has worked in your plant for eight years now and says you know the name of every single worker and treat them right ... and they all know what you did to save their jobs! Unlike most of the members of your family, you're a good man Mr. Piper, and it just wouldn't be right to let them get away with this shit." We shook hands and agreed to remain in contact daily.

With the help of my secretary and a few other very trusted employees that had been with me right from the very start, we conducted a series of late night exhaustive searches to examine all of our records going back over a decade to remove any possible evidence that had been already planted. It was all easily found, but we kept looking some more anyway just to be safe. No money had been planted into my safe yet and with Rube's more than able assistance we installed a set of hidden security cameras that covered the entrance to my office and everything inside it, including clear views of my personal file cabinets and my safe. Rube's team also installed hidden cameras covering my private little apartment, just in case our opponents decided to get clever and plant evidence, or a naked woman, there as well.

There wasn't much left to do now but wait ... and we didn't have to sit on our hands worrying too much longer.

The day of my niece Veronica's wedding was the day selected by my wife to spring her first set of traps on me. Her lover, one of my slightly older cousins that I had a particular dislike for, could barely contain his smirking when we greeted him at the church on that chilly and rainy April afternoon. The plan had originally been for an outdoor garden wedding at The Gardens but due to the constant drizzle, most of the festivities were now being moved indoors to the large church hall.

By means of a brief explanation, The Gardens were a preferred local site for most of the better outdoor held functions in our city. They were famous botanically and deservedly so. The grounds were situated exactly between two different churches, or rather a church and a synagogue that shared a 40 acre suburban lot. A masterpiece of interfaith cooperation, the two groups combined to purchase the rather large parcel of land in-between them and all around them and then created a clever plan to jointly develop and use the property. The front area between them becoming became a shared parking lot and the sides and the extensive back lots becoming were transformed into a large children's play area, picnic grounds, gazebos and a superb nationally famous botanical garden with large fish ponds and numerous mazes of shrubbery.

Dressed up in my full Edwardian style morning suit, I was naturally mistaken for either a misplaced undertaker or the event florist by Veronica's wedding planner. To make the frazzled woman happy I agreed to help move all of the floral arrangements inside from the tents outdoors to the church. I didn't mind. It kept me busy and away from the rest of my family. Our family neverevernotices a servant, so this made me effectively invisible.

Just as well. While relocating one particular display of flowers to the care of the bride's mother, I learned far more about the blushing bride's sexual habits than I would have preferred to know about. Particularly, she was uncertain as to whether she should discontinue seeing most of her other boyfriends after the wedding and just stick with a few favorites. She especially was looking forward to her honeymoon which would feature one of her especially well endowed lovers in the hotel room right across the hall from the newlyweds, so that she could have 'suitable entertainment'when her new husband was otherwise indisposed.