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"So I'm sure y'all can understand why ..." Daphne forged on bravely, "... why ... I can't go through with this. I just can't!" she cried. In a lightning gesture, she slapped her engagement ring into the hand of the stunned groom. Then the bride scooped up her twenty-five-foot lace train and nodded emphatically in the direction of Althea LaCroix.
The musician brought her hands down on the organ's ivory keys with a crash. Triumphant recessional music thundered ominously throughout the church while Daphne scored a bull's-eye, dashing her red-and-white rose bouquet against her maid of honor's elaborate flame-haired coiffure.
As suddenly as King Duvallon stepped out from the line of nine groomsmen, a thought hit Corlis like a bolt of lightning.
He knew this was going to happen! That's why he wanted us to leave!
The stunned wedding guests gawked, dumbfounded, as King offered his distraught sister his arm. Within seconds they swept down the aisle and disappeared.
As for Corlis, watching this passion play from the balcony, her journalist's instinct suddenly took over. Pavlov's dog. The bell had rung.
"Follow me!" she hissed urgently to her TV crew.
She made a dash for the paneled stairwell as if she were off to cover a fire. Virgil, with his video camera thumping up and down on his shoulder, and Manny, with headphones clamped to his ears, thundered close behind. The panting trio arrived at the arched doors in time to see brother and sister sprinting across the slate paving stones that fronted Jackson Square.
"I'm still rolling!" Virgil shouted as he and Corlis raced in hot pursuit of the fleeing couple. The reporter prayed that hercameraman had caught the shot of Daphne's long train billowing behind the pair like a water-skier's wake.
"Get the hell outta here, you harpy!" King shouted at Corlis over his shoulder as he yanked open the door to the waiting limousine.
She didn't really blame him for his angry reaction, but by this time the adrenaline was pumping. And besides, she considered in some remote portion of her brain, chasing fire trucks was all in a day's work. She'd decide later whether or not she'd actually use this footage.
In the next instant King pushed the bride into the backseat, speedily stowed her long, lacy train inside as if he were gathering an unwieldy parachute, and climbed in after her, slamming the door. A second later the sleek black Cadillac sped away--destination unknown.
"Oh ... my God!" Corlis exclaimed as she and her crew headed back inside the church in time to see gaggles of dismayed wedding guests leaving their pews. "She did it!" she said in an awed tone of voice. "She blew that two-timing creep right outta the water!"
By the time Corlis had broadcast the story of the disastrous Ebert-Duvallon wedding, edited with spine-tingling speed barely in time to make the late evening news, she'd all but forgotten the strange apparition of the Victorian-era bride and groom at the church. It was nearly eleven, and feeling tired, she gathered up her things and left the newsroom.
In the hallway, Larry, the janitor, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. He was toting a poster-sized photograph. Corlis gaped at the glossy color image of herself in full makeup and turquoise linen blazer. She looked more like a brunette version of Murphy Brown than she cared to admit.
"Oh, Miz McCullough," the janitor said, shaking his head. For a brief two months, her picture had graced the lunchroom walls, along with those of the rest of the WWEZ-TV broadcast team. "I've got bad news for you, sugar. Mr. Girard done tol' me to take this down."
"Wha--?" Corlis asked, dumbfounded. The janitor was delivering this news? "How can I be fired? The story just aired ten minutes ago!"
"Mr. Girard called me on m'beeper. When I called him back, he was mad as a snake. Tol' me to go right into the lunchroom tonight and--"
"But why?" Corlis protested. "That wedding turned out to be an incredible story! The video was fabulous! I thought I wrote it well, and--"
"But, sugar," Larry interrupted patiently, "the tape editor and the director both done tol' me they tried to get you to call higher-ups tonight before you went and put that thing on TV."
"Oh, Larry, those guys are always a bunch of wusses in situations like this!"
"Yeah, but sweetheart, if you'd done called the boss, he'd have tol' you that he's Mr. Armand Ebert's second cousin on his mama's side."
"You mean Victor Girard, as in the owner of WWEZ-TV?"
"That's right."
"You're telling me, then, that the philandering groom's father--René Ebert--and my boss, Mr. Girard, are kissing cousins?" Corlis exclaimed, and then added in a small, defeated voice, "And so ... that's why we were assigned to cover this particular wedding?"
"I 'spect that's right."
"And Victor Girard, then, was the person who provided the assignment desk with all that inside information about the two 'prominent local families'?"
"I 'spect so, sugar," Larry nodded with a sad, knowing smile.
"Nobody told me that."
"In N'awlings, darlin' ... all them other white folks'd figure you already knew."
