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stall door swung wide to reveal one very unkempt and unsteady Greek goddess. In wordless sympathy, I ran a paper towel under the faucet and handed it to Aaron’s long-lost date. Corinne dragged it across her mouth, her long fake fingernails a startling crimson against her pale, trembling lips. How much champagne did it take to drown the memory of Boris Nevsky? A double latte had done the trick for me, but then, I never wanted to marry the man.
“I’m going to die,” said Corinne. She looked at herself bleakly in the mirror—hairdo in ruins, satiny toga crumpled and soiled—and took a long, sobbing breath. “I want to die.”
“You’ll get over him,” I offered. “You’ll feel better, really you will.”
She glared at me. Her eyes were a weak, watery blue, almost aquamarine, and the look in them was somehow scarier than Mercedes’. “What do you know about it? How do you know how I feel?”
“Corinne, I just meant that you’ll find somebody else—”
Her eyes went wide and rolling, like a panicky horse about to bolt. “I’ll never find anyone like him. Never!”
Then she pushed past me and was gone. Aaron, I thought, Aaron, she is all yours. While I waited for the gypsy queen and the drama queen to get a good head start, I belatedly remembered Northwest Shores. I radioed Marvin, one of my security guards, and asked him to close it off. Then I left the ladies’ room and went back to my rounds, checking on each of the bars and food stations. The Halloween menu I’d designed with Joe Solveto, my favorite caterer, was definitely a hit, especially the all-chocolate dessert bar. Good thing we had generous reserves; running out of food is an event planner’s highest crime.
As I worked my way through the party, I could see that Lily was right: people were having a blast. Down in the eerie green gloom of the Underwater Dome room, the dance floor was overflowing. Ropes of thick green weed wavered like ghosts behind the curved glass walls, and sharks floated ominously over the heads of the gyrating dancers. Perfect for Halloween. I stood for a while admiring the DJ in action. Rick the Rocket was a chubby fellow whose bald pate rose from his ring of untidy blond hair like a big pink egg in a nest of straw. His costume matched his hairline: he was dressed as a tonsured medieval monk, with a rough-spun black cloak and a rope belt around his ample middle.
Rick Royko was new in town, but he was doing a first-rate job for me tonight, gauging the mood of the crowd with skill and accepting requests with a friendly smile. A music-snob DJ can really kill a party, but this guy was good. I know how to pick ’em, if I do say so myself. I watched happily as the dancers outdid themselves to Gladys Knight’s “Grapevine.” What were a few smashed glasses, after all? If we could just get to midnight without a serious mishap, I’d call the whole party a smashing success.
Before I could pat myself on the back any harder, I was accosted by a large leprechaun.
“Carnegie, you look glorious! Who are you supposed to be, exactly?”
Tommy Barry, the Sentinel’s legendary sportswriter, was sixty-five or so, and a legendary drinker of Guinness. The costume was appropriate, because when Tommy drank he got very Irish. A shamrock-bedecked hat sat askew on his bush of grizzled hair, and one of his curly-toed leprechaun slippers was missing. I had gently suggested a more reliable best man—and Elizabeth had demanded a more photogenic one—but Paul was adamant. Tommy was his mentor and his pal, so Tommy it would be.
“I’m supposed to be a witch,” I told him, “and you were supposed to be here at eight. We had to do the toasts without you. The maid of honor is working tonight, so I was depending on you. You will be on time for the wedding, won’t you, Tommy?”
“Of course, of course. Tonight I gave Zack here a ride,” he said proudly, as if this were quite a feat. In his current inebriated condition, maybe it was.
Zack Hartmann, the young Internet whiz working on the Sentinel web site, was Paul’s third groomsman. He was sometimes shy and slouching, but not tonight. Tonight Zack was the Prince of Thieves, with a quiver of arrows over his green-cloaked shoulder and a couple of martinis under his belt. Tall and rangy, with crisp fair hair and long-lashed cobalt-blue