The “I Do” Joker: Or Why You Should Never Marry a Washing Machine
Part 8: Aunt Erna’s Legacy and the Army of Extras
The screech of tyres announced the end of our relative calm. A silver estate car rolled onto the warehouse yard like an armoured vehicle from a UN peacekeeping mission. “They’re here,” Mia whispered, clutching her bridal bouquet, which was basically just thistles and a few wilted flowers Lukas had “rescued” from a front garden moments earlier.
Mia’s mum, Beate, stepped out of the car – a woman radiating enough energy to power a small town. And she wasn’t alone. Sitting proudly in the passenger seat was him: Lohmeyer, the stuffed swan. He looked even more malevolent than in the photo. His glass eyes seemed to stare straight into my soul and find nothing but unpaid taxes and poor life choices.
“Mia! Finn-Alexander!” Beate shouted, rushing towards us. She spun Mia around and hugged me so tightly I briefly saw the colour of my own lungs. “This hall! So… bold! So progressive! You can practically smell the hard work of the generations before us.” “More like forklift oil,” I muttered, but Lukas immediately kicked me in the ankle.
“Beate, wonderful that you’re here already!” Lukas gushed, immediately grabbing the swan from the car. “Lohmeyer! He gives the room exactly the patriarchal weight we need for the ‘industrial vintage’ concept.”
While Beate began scanning Mia’s face for signs of pregnancy-related nausea, the hall door opened again. The eBay extras arrived. About twenty people stepped in, all looking as if they’d come straight from a casting call for a dystopian science-fiction film. As instructed by Lukas, almost all of them were dressed in black. A guy with a goatee and a beret approached me.
“I’m Malte,” he murmured. “I’m playing the ‘sad uncle from the Palatinate’ who harbours a dark secret. Is that okay for the dramaturgy?” “Uh, yes, sure,” I stammered. “As long as you don’t say anything that blows our cover.” “Understood,” Malte said, gazing wistfully into the distance. “Silence is my craft.”
Meanwhile, Basti – our fake registrar, Dr von Vogelstein – was trying to assert his authority by positioning himself behind the duct-tape altar and flipping importantly through his empty notebook. The only problem was that he still carried the distinct smell of frozen fish fingers from his days as a promotional penguin.
“Who is that young man in the turtleneck?” Beate asked suspiciously, pointing at Basti. “That’s… Dr von Vogelstein!” Mia called out hastily. “A very close friend of Finn’s. He’s a professor of… uh… applied romance at the university.” Basti nodded solemnly. “Love is a rusty nail in the tyre of eternity,” he intoned in his graveyard voice.
Beate blinked. “Oh. How… profound. Finn, you really do have interesting friends.” “You have no idea,” I said, watching Lukas try to balance Lohmeyer the swan on a Euro pallet so he wouldn’t tip forward.
Suddenly, Lukas clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone! Briefing! We’re doing a rehearsal. The extras sit on the tyre stacks. Beate, you get the seat of honour next to the swan. Finn, Mia, you stand in front of the altar. And Karl-Friedrich…” – he glanced at the rat disappearing under a pallet – “…you stay in the background, please.”
We took our positions. The hall filled with an absurd silence, broken only by the sound of water dripping from the roof. Basti cleared his throat. “We are gathered here today to witness a crime… I mean, a union!”
Beate was already sniffing into her handkerchief. The eBay extras stared blankly at the ceiling. It might have worked. And then something happened that no one had accounted for: the sound of a second car pulling into the yard. A car that sounded far more expensive than Beate’s estate.
“Oh no,” Mia whispered, going pale. “That’s my grandma’s Mercedes. And she’s two hours early.”
The “I Do” Joker was about to burst before the first free beer had even been poured.