The “I Do” Joker: Or Why You Should Never Marry a Washing Machine
Part 10: The Night of Uncomfortable Truths
After Grandma Hildegard had driven off in her Mercedes (and presumably with a mental list of potential charges), the warehouse sank into an eerie twilight. Lukas had retreated with the eBay extras to the “preparation lounge” (the back area with the less mouldy tyres) to teach them the art of synchronised nodding during emotional speeches.
Mia and I were left alone in the main nave of the hall, beneath the huge hole in the roof through which the first stars were now visible. “We can’t go home,” Mia said, staring at her phone. “My mum and my grandma are sitting in the flat kitchen drinking advocaat. If we turn up now and don’t immediately tear each other’s clothes off, Grandma will realise we’d actually rather throw the coffee machine at each other.”
“So we’re sleeping here?” I asked, looking at the ‘marital bed’ Lukas had cobbled together from six Euro pallets and a thin cold-foam mattress. It looked like a monument to back pain. “We don’t have a choice,” Mia sighed. “Authenticity, Finn. That was Lukas’s magic word.”
We lay down fully clothed on the mattress. It was freezing. Somewhere in the shadows, Karl-Friedrich rustled around an empty bottle of cheap sparkling wine. Above us, the swan Lohmeyer loomed on his pedestal, watching us with his rigid glass eyes.
“Finn?” Mia whispered after a long silence. “Yes?” “Do you think we’re bad people? I mean, we’re scamming our entire families out of money just because we were too stupid to turn the heating down in winter.” I stared at the ceiling. “We’re not bad people. We’re… financially challenged creative entrepreneurs. Besides, your mum gets a starring role for a swan, and your grandma gets to interrogate someone. Basically, we’re giving them exactly what they want.”
Mia let out a short laugh, dry and humourless. “You really have an excuse for everything, don’t you? That’s probably why I’d never marry you in real life. You’re so… chaotic.” “And you’re so… obsessed with paragraphs,” I shot back. “You’ve probably already drafted the divorce papers in your head before Basti even gets to say ‘narrative’ tomorrow.”
“Maybe,” she said quietly, shifting a little closer as the wind whistled through the hole in the roof. “But do you know what’s strange? In the last three days, we’ve spent more time together than in the two years we were flatmates before. I didn’t even know you were afraid of stuffed birds.” “And I didn’t know you could lie so well when it comes to Maultaschen,” I replied.
It was a strange moment. The hostility that usually surrounded us like a protective wall had cracked in the cold of the warehouse. For a second, it didn’t feel like a scam, but like the two of us against the rest of the world.
“Finn?” she asked again. “Hmm?” “If we get exposed tomorrow… promise you’ll blame Lukas?” “Of course. I’ll say he hypnotised us.”
We eventually fell asleep, back to back on the hard pallets. I dreamed of washing machines wearing penguin costumes, and of Grandma Hildegard chasing me with a pack of Maultaschen.
When I woke the next morning to the light pouring through the hole in the roof, Mia was already awake. She was sitting bolt upright on the pallets, staring towards the hall door. “What’s wrong?” I asked groggily. “We have visitors,” she said flatly. “And this time, it’s not an extra.”
Outside the gate stood a delivery van. On the side, in large letters, it read: Portable Toilets & Event Services. And next to it stood Lukas, desperately trying to stop the driver from lining the ‘wedding suite’ with a full battery of chemical toilets. The chaos of the big day had officially begun.