Page 2 of A Dead End Wedding

Anastasia pushed her sleekly muscled body closer to give me more access for ear scratching. “Aren’t you a sweetie?”

The bus driver blinked, a dark flush rising on his cheeks. “Ah … you’re a sweetie, too, but aren’t you getting married?”

I realized he thought I’d been talking to him and bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Oh, no. I mean, thank you, but I was talking to Anastasia, although you’re quite handsome, too.”

Eleanor grinned and rolled her eyes. “Standing right here, if we’re all giving out compliments. What brings you in, Sergei?”

“Well! That I should bring you this horrible …” he said, then muttered something in Russian that, by the look on his face, I was perfectly happy not to be able to translate. He pulled something out of his shorts pocket and smacked it down on the flat rubber mat I kept on the glass counter for just such occasions.

We’d had to fix or replace one too many cracked counters before I finally had the rubber mat epiphany.

“This! I want you to buy this from me!”

Eleanor and I looked down to see what looked exactly like a dog collar.

“It’s a dog collar!” he shouted.

“Okay,” I said cautiously. “Please don’t shout, Mr. Volkov. I see it’s a dog collar. We don’t normally take?—”

“It’s anenchanteddog collar.”

Oh, no.

I took a step back. My recent encounters with a magic disco ball and a magic mirror had left me feeling wary.

“What does it do?” Eleanor asked, taking a step back herself.

“It’s supposed to make the dog quit barking,” Mr. Volkov huffed. “Anastasia barks at everything. Other dogs, cats, squirrels. The delivery drivers. The wind! Imaginary noises! It’s too much. My brain hurts. A man at our last dog show sold me this collar and said it would make a dog stop barking. He showed how it worked on his dog, who also was barking, barking, barking. Put the collar on and BOOM!”

Eleanor and I jumped.

“Boom?” I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

“Boom! No more barking.” He scowled at the collar. “But I try it on Anastasia, and it does not work. I think, ‘Tess might buy it,’ since you buy magical objects. I paid too much to throw it in the garbage.”

I sighed. “I’m kind of at my fill with magical objects, Mr. Volkov. I’ve had some problems with them recently, and with the wedding?—”

“It doesn’t make the dogs stop barking,” he interrupted me, leaning forward. “It makes them talk.”

2

Tess

Wednesday: Wedding minus 10 days

Eleanor and I looked at the dog collar, then at Mr. Volkov, then at Anastasia, and then back at the dog collar.

“It makes them talk? The dogs? It makes the dogs talk?”

“Well,” he said, pulling at his beard. “So far, it only works on Anastasia. It makeshertalk. I don’t know from other dogs.”

I shouldn’t ask, I shouldn’t ask, I shouldn’t ask.

I had to ask.

“What did she say?”

He rolled his eyes. “Not much! A philosopher, this dog is not. She says to me, ‘Where is the bacon, Sergei?’ and ‘rub my belly, Sergei,’ and ‘it’s nap time, Sergei,’ and ‘you can do better, Sergei.’”

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