Excerpt: Girl Crush

Girl Crush
By Deanna Roy

One: Wedded Bliss(ters)

Photographers do not get paid to baby-sit Bridezillas.

Okay, we do.

I handed the bride a tissue and tried the door again. Still locked.

“Does he do this often, your father?” I asked the girl, twenty-something and ruining her $650 make up job.

Yes, $650. The stylist had handed the bill to me, thinking I was some sort of personal assistant despite five pounds of camera and flash in my hand. I passed it on to The Father.

The Father who had now locked us in the dressing room.

“Do what?” she asked, doe-eyed, like Bambi’s girlfriend during the forest fire.

“Lock you in rooms.”

She shook her head, commencing fresh wails at a decibel sure to penetrate the bridal chamber walls. We were in a restored Victorian house specifically designed for these oft-disastrous occasions. The pressure gets to everybody, even when surrounded by doilies and chintz.

But of course, Barbie here had threatened to walk. Congenial dad became father-from-hell, insisting that if he was footing the $56,000 bill, his eldest offspring was getting herself hitched.

So she made a break for it, barreling toward the door in nothing but a bustier and crinoline.

Dad, with his contact sports background, snagged her cleanly by the waist and set her back on the chaise. “Get dressed and ready,” he said. Then walked out of the dressing room, securing the door from the outside.

Just prior to the escape attempt, I’d sent the bridesmaids out to fetch the bouquets for pre-ceremony shots. Bridezilla and I were alone.

I examined the lock. It had to be original, or at least a period reproduction. The old fashioned keyhole was the traditional shape, and eye-peerable. I stuck my face to the door.

The bride leaned over my shoulder. “Do you see him?” she asked.

The weight of her, while no more than that of an anorexic scarecrow, with boobs, of course (had The Father paid for those too? Would he ever have cause to insist on their return?) nevertheless jammed the crystal door knob into my eye.

I stifled a yelp and pulled back, pressing a hand to my face.

Bridezilla didn’t care. It wasn’t about her. “Did you see him?”

I sat back on the floor. “I might be blind.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned into the keyhole. “He’s out there. Wearing the carpet thin.”

“Well, you haven’t been the model bride.”

She turned her head slowly, each perfectly sculpted curl outlined against the whitewashed wainscoting. “Are you sure you want to talk to me that way…Zest? That’s your name, right? Zest?”

I nodded, then shrugged. People always found my name odd. “Why don’t you want to marry him? Shouldn’t you have figured this out by now?”

She leaned against the wall, smashing the coiffure that could have fed a family of four for a year in Bangladesh.

“The cake.”

“The wedding cake?”

“No, the groom’s cake!”

“Did he eat it?”

Bridezilla closed her eyes, the long fake lashes flitting against her model’s cheekbones. “No, he put the Aggies on it.”

“As in Texas A&M Aggies?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t YOU an Aggie?”

She nodded, a cascade of glitter drifting from her hair down the wall.

“Didn’t he do it for you then?”

She didn’t answer.

“Isn’t he a Longhorn? Wouldn’t that be an act of sacrifice?”

Still silence.

Good God. I settled back against a chair, legs sprawled out in front of me. A chair scraped overhead, followed by a series of thuds. We were in a basement, the only sunshine entering from small high windows above ground. A difficult lighting situation, actually, and I’d had to use my fastest lens to catch candids without flashing the images to death, ruining the previously sentimental moment when mom had hugged her daughter and slipped a strand of pearls around her neck.

Time to save the freaking day. Again.