“I mystery shop sex toy stores!” Marie declares. “I’m a professional!”
“So not the same thing, Mom,” Amy says with a sigh. “We’ve been trying to explain this to her,” she says to the room in a resigned voice. “She doesn’t get it. She’s been telling everyone around town, at church, at the library, you name it, that she works in the sex industry.”
“Now everyone in town thinks my wife is a hooker!” Jason declares, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen him. Even angrier than the time he confronted me after I dumped Shannon. While I like Jason and we bond over good beer in his little shack in the backyard, he’s a beta. The kind of guy, like Greg, who lets women drag them around by the nose.
Shannon will never do that to me. There are other body parts I’ll let her drag me around by, but—
“Only when we role play, Jason,” Marie says with a sigh.
“How did the ring get in there?” Dr. Porter asks the question with a suggestive tone that I don’t like.
Marie, Jason, Amy, Andrew and Amanda all turn to me with looks of expectation on their face. “Good question,” Andrew says slowly. “You haven’t told us that part yet.”
Shannon starts to make gagging noises and points to her throat.
Marie’s eyes fly wide open. “Oh. Oh, honey,” she says, patting Shannon’s hand. “You know they make special sex toys just for that. You don’t have to put that kind of ring around a man and then put your mouth, you know...”
The meaning of her words hits me like a two-by-four. Both doctors are looking at us like this is a plausible explanation for how Shannon came to have the ring stuck in her throat. From the look on Shannon’s face, she’s as horrified as I am.
For a completely different reason.
“Let me set the record straight!” I say with an angry hiss. “We did not put my mother’s engagement ring over my...” I gesture toward my groin, “and then have her...” I gesture toward Shannon’s mouth.
Andrew turns beet red. “Hold on! That’s Mom’s ring?”
Shit. Caught.
“It’s okay, Declan,” Marie says softly. “People experiment.”
“The ring would never fit,” I snap.
Dr. Porter cocks a skeptical eyebrow. Dr. Derjian, good man that he is, stays silent and his face is as neutral as a football ref’s. “Flaccid, yes,” Dr. Porter explains. “The ring could slide down and—”
“You would need a bracelet,” I explain, standing as tall as possible, “not a piddly little engagement ring.”
Marie looks at Shannon. “You lucky girl.”
“You lucky bastard,” Jason mutters.
“Who said you could have Mom’s ring?” Andrew bellows.
“Anyhow, that’s not how Shannon ate the ring,” I continue, completely ignoring him. “She took a bite of tiramisu and swallowed it.”
“Who puts a three carat diamond ring in tiramisu?” Andrew asks.
“Yeah?” Marie demands. “Why ruin good tiramisu like that?”
I really don’t get the female obsession with this dessert.
Marie’s face pauses as she starts to speak again. She shakes her head slightly, as if in shock. “Three carats? Three carats?”
I just smile.
“Lucky bastard,” Jason says again.
Dr. Derjian and Dr. Porter have these long devices that look like tweezers on steroids. I can see Shannon’s heart throbbing in terror against her ribcage. The room starts to spin, and I can inhale as much air as I need. She can’t.
Marie sidles her way over to Shannon and takes her hand. “He proposed?”
Shannon shakes her head.
Marie’s eyes flash like Godzilla laser eyes on me. “You made her eat a three carat engagement ring and never even bothered to ask her to marry you? Is that some ethnic ritual from your people?”
My people?
“My people are Scottish, Marie. My people don’t eat engagement rings. It’s a complicated story.”
“It better be a complicated story if it involves having a rock like that caught in her throat!”
Everyone looks at me. They all seem to be waiting for an explanation.
Time to give them one.
“I’ll say this once: I hired Greg to pretend to beg Shannon to do a mystery shop at Le Portmanteau.”
Shannon’s eyes turn Godzilla-like, too.
“I arranged with the staff to have my mom’s engagement ring put in a glass of Champagne.”
Dr. Porter and Dr. Derjian share raised eyebrows. “Classic,” he says to her.
Marie starts to say something and I hold up a finger. “The staff screwed up and put the ring in the tiramisu instead of the Champagne.”
“Who ruins tiramisu like that?” Dr. Porter muses.
All the women in the room nod.
“Shannon took a bite and here we are.”
No one says a word. Everyone just blinks.
“That’s it?” Marie finally pipes up, indignant. “Oh, please.” She pulls back from Shannon, leans her forward a bit, and hauls off and whacks her so hard it sounds like a loud clap.
“NO!” the doctors shout in unison.
A weird gagging noise comes out of Shannon, then a great big whoop of breath.
“MOM!”
“MARIE!”
“HOLY SHIT!”
“I swallowed it,” Shannon says in a tinny voice. A round of coughing makes her bark like a seal, then sigh.
Andrew and Amanda come running back in.
“I can breathe,” Shannon explains. “But I feel like there’s a basketball caught in my chest.”