Arliss stares and blinks.
“Oh, and we’ll need you to perform the dog wedding,” I say.
His face grows stonier.
“I know,” Delia says. “Your life is very hard.”
“Tight shot on the dogs,” I say.
Arliss fiddles with the camera. “Not my first rodeo, sweet pea. Rolling in…five…four…three…two…one.”
I grip Buford behind his front legs and make him gesture (I hope PETA never sees this). I speak in a deep, comically broad Southern accent. “Why, I say, aren’t you the most lovely creature? My name is Colonel Buford T. Rutherford B. Hayes. What’s yours?”
Delia holds Tater by his front legs and makes him cover his mouth with a paw coyly. She giggles and speaks in a high-pitched, equally horrific Sookie–from–True Blood Southern accent. “Why, sir! How you do flatter! My name is…” Delia looks to be racking her brain. “What name did we decide on for her?” she whispers in her normal voice.
Delia can never keep our character names straight in skits. “Magnolia P. Sugarbottom,” I mutter back, trying not to move my lips, like a ventriloquist.
“Magnolia P. Sugarbottom,” Delia says, returning to Sookie voice.
I put the container of chicken livers on the floor and use Buford’s paw to slide it over to Tater. “Ms. Sugarbottom, I own the largest chain of chicken liver restaurants in the world, and I offer you some of my finest chicken livers in exchange for your paw in holy matrimony.”
Tater whines and licks at the container. “Colonel, I would be honored to be Mrs. Magnolia P. Rutherford B. Hayes. Do you promise that you can handle me at my worst, so that you deserve me at my best, which is also quite, quite bad?”
“Ms. Sugarbottom, I promise.”
“So you know, Colonel, I’m super hard to deal with almost always. I’m really a giant pain in the rear.”
“I will love and cherish you anyway and apply a healing salve to my buttocks.”
“Then I shall wed you this very moment, Colonel, before you can change your mind.”
I make Buford wave to the camera. “Wonderful! Simply wonderful! Oh, Professor? Professor Von Heineken?”
One guess how Arliss picked the name Professor Von Heineken. He put exactly as much work and thought into it as he puts into every aspect of the show.
Arliss pulls his goggles down over his eyes and ambles onto the set, looking exactly as happy as you’d expect a grown man forced to perform a dog marriage on public access television would look. He’ll cut in some wedding music that Jesmyn recorded for us.
Arliss clears his throat. He’s supposed to do a German accent, but he always forgets. (We get letters; he doesn’t care.) “Okay, uh, do you, Buford, take…”
“Magnolia,” Delia says. Arliss is even worse at remembering character names than Delia is.
“Yep. Her. To be your lawfully wedded wife, so help you God?”
“For as long as you both shall live,” Delia says.
“For as long as you both shall live, so help you God?”
“Professor! You gotta get the words right or it’s not legally binding,” I say.
“Oh no,” Arliss says. “Anyway, I now pronounce you…dog and dog wife, I guess. You may sniff the bride’s butt or really whatever you’re into. Just go nuts. Who cares?”
Delia and I clap and push Buford and Tater at each other. They whimper and turn their heads. We let them go. Tater runs off set. Buford sort of melts to the floor like a scoop of ice cream licked off the cone onto hot asphalt. Arliss slinks back to the camera. We clap until we see Arliss signal that he’s not focused on just the dogs anymore.
I make a great show of wiping my eyes and sigh. “I always cry at weddings, Delilah.”
“Me too, Rayne. I love happy endings. But, viewers at home, to see if our friends—the children who play with dead things—have a happy ending, stay tuned!”
“And cut!” Arliss walks from behind the camera, grabs the container of chicken livers, opens it, pops two in his mouth, drops a couple on the ground for Buford, who looks the most excited he’s looked all day, and takes a couple to Tater, who eats them out of his hand.
“I’ve never attended a dog wedding before,” Lawson says to me as I come off set, leading Tater by the collar.
“And?”
“It was very romantic. I always hoped Tater would find the right someone.”
This guy is a massive goofball, but a good sport. “You ready for your big dance scene?” I ask.
“I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Dude, none of us do.”
“Come on. You’re amazing.” He nods at Delia, who’s handing a CD to a decidedly glum Arliss. “Y’all are both great. But you especially.”
I start to respond, but Arliss cuts me off. “Dance party. Let’s go.”
I wave for the twins and Lawson to come. The twins whoop and pull their skeleton masks into position and run on set, shoving our chairs and end table aside to make room. They jump in place, slapping the sides of their heads, psyching themselves up.
Lawson does a couple of quick stretches followed by a few high kicks. Nothing else about him is that impressive, but he moves well—quick and strong. “That’s good,” I say. “Incorporate some of the karate moves.”
Delia and I take our positions; the twins and Lawson are just off set, out of the shot.
Arliss goes over to the light switch and cues up the music on the laptop and speakers we’ve set up. “This music is royalty free, right?”
“Yep,” I say. “And you better believe it sounds like it.”
Delia and I stand there for a moment to give Arliss a space to fade us in.
“Wow, Delilah, this movie sure is a spooky romp!” I say with exaggerated cheer.
“Yes, it is, Rayne. I think—”
Arliss begins flicking the lights on and off. Delia and I look around wildly. Arliss will insert a spooky cackle sound effect.
“Delilah?” I say, voice quavering theatrically.
“Rayne?”
“I think we’re about to take a trip…to the bone zone!” We say the last part in unison. We pull our capes around ourselves and retreat off separate sides of the set. Arliss begins flickering the lights to simulate dance floor lights and starts the music. Imagine the most low-rent, dollar-store dance music you can. Nope, worse. It’s filled with weird air-horn sounds and sped-up chipmunk voices and this flatulent bass that sounds like stomping your bare foot in a bucket of dead fish. Given the choice, I would prefer to listen to the screaming of the damned.