From Bad to Wurst Read Online Free PDF Page B

Etienne runs ahead to join the guests in the Prince Ludwig room, and Mom and I follow behind at a more leisurely pace?”
    Mom cleared her throat and snorted delicately. “Isn’t that what I just suggested?”
    â€œAre you sure this is what you want to do?” Etienne asked me, sounding perplexed.
    â€œYup. That’ll work. But before you head off, you need to refresh my memory about something. Do you remember how long the doctor said we should wait before we…you know”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“resume normal marital relations?”
    Stuck between an inhale and an exhale, Etienne broke out in a fit of wheezing that had him thumping his fist against his sternum to clear his air passages. Mom froze on the spot, speechless and red-faced, her eyes popping out of their sockets as if they’d been inflated with helium. “Alrighty then,” she tittered nervously, because if there was anything that could force Mom to run from a room, it was the thought of having to listen to another human being talk about that most forbidden of all subjects: S-E-X.
    â€œThe two of you must think I’m so selfish,” she blurted, aiming herself in the direction of the Prince Ludwig room. “Now that I think about it, Wally’s people skills really are far inferior to mine, so I’ll just scoot down there to help out. Those poor grief-stricken souls deserve a huge outpouring of sympathy and support, and no one can dole it out better than I can.”
    Abdicating any further claim on my arm, she launched herself toward the meeting room as fast as her feet would fly. Etienne hazarded a smile. “She does make a habit of fleeing when the conversation turns to seemingly indelicate subjects, doesn’t she?”
    â€œThank God. How would we ever deal with her if she wasn’t so predictable?”
    He studied my face for a long moment before trailing his finger down my cheek. “Tell me honestly, do you feel up to facing the masses or would you rather go back to the room?”
    â€œI’ll go back to the room after the meeting. We can’t abandon Wally. No matter how good he is at what he does, he might need reinforcements. My legs are still a little rubbery, but I’ll be okay if I can sit down.”
    Cupping his hand around my elbow, he guided me around the front desk and down the long corridor toward the Prince Ludwig room. “Since when has your grandmother resolved her issues with your mother by throwing you under the bus?”
    â€œYou noticed the tire marks, did you?”
    He laughed. “For an octogenarian, your grandmother seems to enjoy living quite dangerously.”
    Maybe too dangerously. She never should have sicced Mom on me; that was a no-no. So she and I were going to have words, and my nonprofessional prediction was that she wasn’t going to like them.

three
    The heartache in the Prince Ludwig room was palpable.
    Guests were clustered in small groups around the perimeter, speaking in hushed tones, tissues in hand, dabbing their eyes. Quiet weeping. Loud nose blowing. Earnest hand squeezing. I scanned the area in search of Zola, desperate to speak to her privately, but I caught sight of her red hair at the opposite end of the room, about as far away from me as she could possibly be.
    I was encouraged to see that my guys were making the rounds with Astrid’s friends, offering sympathy and remaining respectfully low-key. Even Bernice was displaying a level of decorum that was remarkable for Bernice. Not only did she seem disinclined to badger any of the bereaved guests into taking pictures of her, she was actually offering tissues to guests who needed them. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if this was a random act of kindness or an optical illusion.
    Mom was practicing her people skills by giving everyone in the room a big squishy hug. She could have limited it to band members only, but to her way of thinking, overkill