Instant silence followed as they beheld Tom Himself nodding his face toward the obscure-and-terrible as against the famed-and-fabulous.

"Let's have a tasting," someone said. "Compare old Sour Ditch to Kingsblood Royal."

Tom could not prevent as several dozen hands emptied the tooth-destroyer to make way for Mumm's mouthwash.

All was almost in readiness. Along with the killing wine and its cure, to one side were a few caviar sticks and cheese biscuits that Tom had laid on, while farther on, an ice floe frozen forever, the bridal cake waited for eternity.

Since it had already stalled eight days, its mesa and sides stalwart in the hours and quarter month just pa.s.sed, the cake had an air of Miss Havisham about it, which, spied, was declared sotto voce innumerable times in earshot of the butlers and maids, who adjusted their ties and ap.r.o.ns and searched the ceiling for deliverance.

There was a sneeze.

Lisa appeared at the top of the stairs, only to sneeze again, spin about, and run back up. There was a sound of nose-blowing: the faintest whiff of hunting horn. Lisa returned, steadied herself, and sneezed on the way down.

"I wonder if this is a Freudian cold," she said beneath the Kleenex over her nose.

"What in h.e.l.l do you mean by that!" Tom scowled. "Maybe my nose doesn't want to get married." Lisa followed this with a quick laugh.

"Very funny. Very, very funny. Well, if your nose wants to call off the wedding, let it speak." Tom showed his teeth, nibbling the air much like the courtyard horses, to prove his humor.

Lisa half turned to flee, but another sneeze froze her in place. Any further retreat ceased when several crutches punched down the stairs, swinging between them in his pink coat the director as clown, the happy huntsman as lunatic gymnast. Taking the steps two at a time and swinging his long booted legs as if to project himself over our heads, John descended, talking over his shoulder and not minding where he fiddled his supports.

"It took an hour for the d.a.m.ned ambulance to get there; meanwhile, I twitched and snaked around and screamed so loud that windows slammed a hundred yards off. Six shots didn't stop my yells. At the hospital, the Doc took one look, turned me over, and-crack! like a kick in the spine-the pain stopped, as did my screams. Then, by G.o.d, I began to laugh."

Turning from John, I plowed through the champagne mob. "Get me one of those," called John. "Make it two. h.e.l.lo, Lisa, don't you look fine, just fine!" Lisa sneezed.

"My G.o.d, look at your nose, Lisa," John commiserated. "So d.a.m.n red it looks as if you'd been up five nights boozing!"

Lisa held to her stomach with one hand, her nose with the other, and ran upstairs.

"Thanks a lot," said Ricki, halfway down.

"What'd I do?" John protested. "Where's she going?"

"To powder her nose, dimwit."

"Where's Mr. Hicks?" said John, escaping swiftly in leapfrog vaults.

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo!" He stopped in midhop to wave at all the windows along the back of the dining room, where two dozen or so local noses imprinted the panes.

The villagers, mad, angry, or irritated housewives, hesitated, not knowing how to swallow John's happy salute.

A few waved back. The rest pulled off, not taken in by his apish Protestant amiability.

"Welcome, welcome!" John called, knowing they could not hear. "It's the Hollywood sinner here, born in sin, living in sin, and soon to die, writhing, in sin. h.e.l.lo!"

Some must have read his lips, for no fewer than a half dozen indignant villagers leaped back as if he had leavened the air with brimstone.

"Drink this against the day." I arrived with the champagne.

"But will it cure at noon?" John drank.

"One hour at a time," I said. "Where's the reverend? Oh, there he is. Reverend!"

The reverend came from the hall, smelling of hounds and horses. "I have been out commiserating with them for partaking in this wicked enterprise," he said, and added quickly, "Oh, not the wedding, for sure. But the hunt. Everyone seems happy. But no one has invited the fox."

"We asked, but he pleaded business." John smiled. "Are we ready?"

The Reverend Mr. Hicks grabbed a champagne from a tray as it pa.s.sed, gulped it, and said, "As we'll ever be."

The lords and ladies and liquor merchants gathered, simmering with the good drinks, hiccuping with the bad-a medley of pink coats, celebrating joy; and black, promising unfaithful husbands and mournful wives.

The Reverend Mr. Hicks positioned himself in front of the glare of Tom and the dabbed-at and snuffling nose of Lisa, who peered around as if blind.

"Shouldn't there be a Bible?" she wondered.

A Bible, the reverend almost cried out, as he searched his empty hands.

Tom scowled but said: "Yes. While Unitarian, we are Protestants. A Bible!"

The reverend looked around for someone to fill his hands with such a useful tool, which Ricki did in great haste, wondering if it was proper.

Off balance in two ways, the weight of the thing being one, Unitarian practice another, the reverend clenched the book but did not open it, fearing that some lost chapter or verse might leap to disquiet his mind and capsize the ceremony. Placing the Bible like a brick on the lectern, an ignored cornerstone to his peroration, he lit out: "Have you been living in sin?" he cried.

There was a still moment. I saw the muscles under Tom's pink riding coat flex and tear themselves in several directions; one to punch, one to pray.

I saw the clear crystal lid come down over one of Tom's blazing eyes, in profile, shutting out the dear minister.

Lisa's tongue wandered along her upper lip, seeking a response, and, finding none, slipped back to neutral.

"What was that again?" Tom's eyes were burning lenses. If they'd been out in the sun, the Reverend Mr. Hicks would long since have gone up in smoke.

"Sin," said the Reverend Hicks. "Have you been living in it?"

Silence.

Tom said, "As a matter of fact, we have."

Lisa jabbed his elbow and stared at the floor. There was an outbreak of m.u.f.fled coughing.

"Oh," said the Reverend Mr. Hicks. "Well, then."

What followed was not a ceremony but a sermon and not a sermon but a lecture. Sin was the subject, and the bridal couple the object. Without actual circling and sniffing their hems and cuffs, the reverend managed to make everyone in the room acutely aware of underwear and of ties that choked. He wandered off the subject and then wandered back. It was sin this and sin that, sins of the lovers and future husbands, sins of the put-upon and not always guaranteed brides. Somewhere along in the hour he mislaid the ceremony. Finding it in the corners of his eyes, and in Tom's concentrated glare, Mr. Hicks hesitated and was about to ricochet back to pure sin, if sin ever was pure, when John shortened the hour.

He let one crutch slip. It slammed the floor with a fine crack and rebounding clatter.

"Tom and Lisa, do you take each other as man and wife!" cried the Reverend Mr. Hicks.

It was over! No one heard the shots or saw wounds or blood. There was a shared gasp from three dozen throats. The reverend slapped his revised Unitarian Bible shut on mostly empty pages, and the locals from the pub and the town villagers, pressed to the windows, leaped back as if caught by lightning, to avoid the direct-current gaze of Tom, and at his elbow the downcast eyes of Lisa, still recirculating her blush. The reverend ran for the champagne. By some accident never to be explained in Ireland, some of the cheap had risen to spoil the best.

"Not that." The reverend swallowed, grimaced, and gestured his goblet. "The other, for goodness' sake!"

Only when he had rinsed his mouth and swallowed to improve the hour did color tint his cheek and spark his eyes.

"Man!" he shouted at Tom. "That was work. Refills!"

There was a show of hands waving goblets.

"Gentlemen, ladies!" John reminded them of their manners. "Cake to go with the champagne!"

"John!" Ricki jerked her head. 'No!'"

But it was too late. All turned to focus their l.u.s.t on a bridal confection which had waited, gathering dust, for eight days.

Smiling like an executioner, John brandished the knife. Lisa took it as if she had just pulled it from her breast and desired to shove it back in. Instead she turned to bend over the lonely and waiting cake. I crowded near to watch the speckles of dust flurry up from frosting stirred by Lisa's breath.

She stabbed the cake.

Silent, the cake was obdurate.

It did not cut, it did not slice, and it gave only faint tendencies to flake or chip.

Lisa struck again and a fine powder puffed up on the air. Lisa sneezed and struck again. She managed to dent the target in four places. Then she started the a.s.sa.s.sination. With a furious red face above and the knife gripped in both hands, she wrought havoc. More powder, more flakes.

"'Is the d.a.m.n cake fresh?"' someone said.

"Who said that?" said Tom.

"Not me," said several people.

"Give me that!" Tom seized the knife from Lisa's hands. "There!''

This time, shrapnel. The cake cracked under his blows and had to be shoveled onto the plates with a dreadful clatter.

As the plates were handed round, the men in their pink coats and the women in their smart black stared at the broken teeth strewn there, the smile of a once great beauty laid to ruin by time.

Some sniffed, but no aroma or scent arose from the powdered frost and the slain brandy cake beneath. Its life had long since fled.

Which left the good souls with a confectioner's corpse in one hand and a bad vintage in the other, until someone rediscovered the rare vintages stashed against the wall and the stampede for the saviors' refreshment began. What had been a moment of stat-ues-in-panic wondering how to be rid of two handfuls of failed appet.i.te became a wonder of imbibation and loosened tongues. All babbled, churning around and about every few minutes for a refulfillment of Mumm's while Tom, suffering the rejection of a lost salesman, slugged back brandies to relight the fury in his eyes.

John stomped through the crowd, not hearing but laughing at jokes.

"Pour some on my crutches," he cried, "so I can move!"

Someone did.

It would have been pitiful had it not been ludicrous to see the gentry wandering with platefuls of hard rock-shrapnel cake, picking at it with forks, saying how delicious and demanding more.

On the third go-round the crowd turned brave, abandoned the vitrified cake, and filled their empty gla.s.ses with Scotch. Whereupon there was a general exodus toward the yard, with people feverishly seeking places to hide the last of the concrete cake fragments.

The hounds in the yard leaped, barking, and horses reared, and the Reverend Mr. Hicks hurried out ahead with what looked to be a double double in his fist, garrulous and cheerful, waving to what he thought were village Catholics near the hounds and Protestants by the horses. The villagers, stunned, waved back, in pretense of a religion they despaired of to the point of contempt.

"Did he . . . ," said Tom, behind me.

"Did he what!" Lisa sneezed.

"Did Mr. Hicks . . . did you hear him say, 'I p.r.o.nounce you man and wife'?"

"I think so."

"What do you mean? Did he or didn't he?"

"Something like."

"Something like?' cried Tom. "Reverend . . . ? Toward the end of the ceremony ..."

"Sorry about the living-in-sin bit," said the reverend.

"Reverend Hicks, did you or did you not say 'I now p.r.o.nounce you man and wife'?"

"Ah, yes." The reverend wrinkled his brow and took another snort. "Easily fixed. I now p.r.o.nounce you man and wife. Go thou and sin some more."

"And sin no more!" corrected Tom.

"Ah, yes," said the Reverend Mr. Hicks, and wove himself into the crowd.

"I rather like that." Lisa sneezed happily. "Go thou and sin some more. I hope you'll be back early. I sent someone to dope the fox in hopes of an early night. Are you really going to climb on that silly horse with all those drinks?"

"I have only had six," said Tom.

"s.h.i.t," said Lisa. "I guessed it at eight. Can you really mount that d.a.m.n horse drunk?"

"I'm in fighting trim. And I've never heard you swear. Why today?"

"The Reverend Hicks, in his sermon, said it was the end of the world. Can I help you up on the funny-looking steed?"

"No, my dear," Tom said and laughed, because people were listening.

With great dignity he strode to his horse and propelled himself into the saddle. Through gritted teeth he said, "The stirrup cup!"

"Oh, yeah." Lisa turned to find Ricki with the silver wine-filled goblet.

"Attention!" Ricki called. "The bride will now give the stirrup cup to the groom." Lisa wafted the cup up so swiftly the wine spilled on Tom's breeches. He stared down, his face by degrees suffusing to a scarlet not unlike his jacket's, grabbed the cup and slugged it back. The guests applauded and leaped unsteadily into their saddles. John threw his crutches at me and manhandled his horse, which flinched.

"John, you're not going on the hunt!" cried Ricki. "d.a.m.n right. When I get up, kid, hand me the crutches!" "What good are crutches up there?" I said. "It's for when I fall off, kid." And John laughed a great guffaw as the horse reared, terrified of clowns. "John, for G.o.d's sake!" said Ricki.

John lurched again. The thing that saved him from his death ride was a muscle spasm that shot him in the back. He fell and writhed. We all gathered to watch. Seeing our faces, John lectured: "This is how I was in Paris. Pretty bad, eh? Pretty bad?" "Huntsman!" shouted Tom. The huntsman blew his horn. Far off on a hill I thought I saw the fox, tired but waiting. "Goodbye, my dear," said Tom. Lisa sneezed and waved her wet hankie. The horses charged off with the hounds, buying. "Kid," said John, on the ground, "call two doctors. One for Lisa's throat, one for my backside. And get us up to bed." "Oh, no you don't!" said Ricki. "Not the same bed, of course." John smiled. The Reverend Mr. Hicks watched the horses and hounds diminish in the distance, then spoke to Lisa.

"Your husband asked a question. What . . . ?" "Are we married? Did you legally marry us?" The reverend searched his coat to turn some papers end over end. "No." He handed the papers to Lisa. "Not until you've both signed these."