The nameless pianist smiled. "There's no such thing quite like a barn wedding, is there?"
I smiled back. I could think up a such-thing.
Other barn weddings are quite like a barn wedding. Wearing cowboy boots when you've never so much as tossed a lasso at a reenactment is quite like a barn wedding. Tying a duet of silk and burlap ribbons to mason jars and then trouncing down a tourist-plunged mudpath in a $1,200+ dress, forcing the awe of your parents' friends, is quite like a barn wedding.
But what did I know? I was a hormonal 13-year-old girl from Humboldt Park, and I would not meet the love of my life until unknowingly at Yesemenia Pineda's 16th birthday party, to which I arrived donning a Winehousian cat-eye and a tease that broke the seal of my virgin hair.
Thus, I was here to perform a job. Or what some people might consider a job, and anybody who wasn't a Holden-Cauldfieldian like me might consider...fun. I whipped one of my twin braids to the back of my plaid shirt--bride's idea, utterly begrudged--and kicked a denim flare away from my calves so that I could click open my violin case, which had already inspired, "Is that a fiddle or a violin?" and, "Machine gun? Pew pew!" in doldrummed multiplicity.
The repertoire, which I pulled from the zippered top of the case, and I had cruelly not practiced until, well, now:
Prelude: "Theme," Legends of the Fall. Banefully predicted.
General Procession: "Canon in D." I heard wardens repeat this song over the loudspeakers to instill feelings of insanity in prisoners.
Bridal Procession: "Maybe I'm Amazed," McCartney. I'll give her this one...
Lighting of Unity Candle: "Amazed," Lonestar. ...but how amazing is she?
Recessional: "Wedding March," Mendelssohn. Well, we end with Beelzebub's dinner music.
After a pinky-pluck tuning and skittish eye contact with the accompaniment, I raised my wooden machine gun to my shoulder and began to eke out the intro to..."Theme." Partway into the bridge, a breeze tickled the corners of the sheet music, which I had clothespinned to the stand to keep things rustic. Into the second repetition of the melody...the sheet music was gone.
It flipped and twirled far away, into a corral, presumedly into the mouth of a pony.
