Pulp Storytime #140: Reds’ Wedding
“Of course, I think he's a good fit,” said Fabian Ivanov. “I always hoped you'd find a husband you couldn't kill.”
New readers may ask: Who are you people?! Or Where did this start?
Sept 1, 1935, Islamorada in the Florida Keys.
PFC Gus Perkins was really bringing down the mood at JP Diamond’s bachelor party, talking about the attack on the Bonus Army by the US government.
“Hoover sent in the army to tear gas us and bust us up…they cut some guys in the face with sabers, torched our encampments. They stabbed my boy in the leg with a bayonet when he tried to save his pet rabbit from our shack they had set ablaze…”
The Tibetan spirit of Brooklyn didn't want to hear it.
We’re here to party, not worry about something from three years ago. And where are the girls?!
The room agreed with Steel Eagle. Best man Jack Calvert said he has a surprise, if everyone would follow him down to the beach…
***
A few miles away, bride-to-be Semya Ivanova & co. are on a booze cruise. Maid of honor Zelda Saeki’s hired a Russian folk band to play on the ship while the gals drink vodka shots, smoke cigars, and eat Key Lime Pie. The 5-piece band (“Strigoi”) is a Russian klezmer outfit, and their music starts to get worse… Because the seas are getting choppy.
The boat heads in a little early, and arrives on the beach, where someone is setting up a big magic show! The parties merge as gorgeous women twirl swords and breathe fire. Thaza O’Rourke, the show-off raised by apes, flips around the high wires. Out comes the main attraction: “The Astounding Arthur.” Devi, who is paying for the whole wedding, challenges him; they wind up locked in battle of wills briefly. It’s all in good fun, until the other part of the act comes out… Arthur’s twin brother, the Amazing Anthony! Ever since JP ruined his act in Baltimore, he’s been eager for revenge. Which he just might get, with his army of deadly carnies!
Arthur and his dark carnival take on half the squad, with Anthony facing our heroes of the week: JP, Semya, Thaza, Zelda, and Professor Winston Callahan.
Anthony tries to hypnotize JP. Semya overcomes it with a sensitive premarital manipulation. Thaza, who always keeps a spear on her, is able to keep the sword spinners away… but Callahan makes the big difference. First, he gets to the stage, and creates a crude hose system. Despite his misgivings, he decides to use the water barrel as fuel instead of the gasoline! Zelda ably aims the hose, rendering the fire spitters helpless. Semya strolls like a revenant down the beach, intimidating a group of carnies back to their senses.
Callahan, dodging swords, searches his mental library. It turns out hypnotism is based on respect and hierarchy. So JP grabs Anthony… and Zelda slams him in the face with the last Key Lime Pie! The crowd cheers, and nobody has to be shot or stabbed. What a fun party!
***
The revelers return to the hotel. Semya has her first on-screen meeting with her commanding officer, Colonel Vadim Tikhonovich Dyshekov, who praises her success and gives her his grandmother’s earrings to wear.
***
It's supposed to be about a 6-hour voyage from Islamorada to Key West via ferry. However, the party wakes up the next morning (Labor Day) to find that overnight, the Coast Guard has advised everyone to stay out of the water.
Worse, the colonel and Cousin Clara are missing from breakfast. Semya knocks on her commanding officer's door, and he greets her with a pistol to the face. He’s paranoid: he doesn’t know what month it is. Last he knew he was in Science City 8! When shown the earrings, he tells her to destroy them – the earhooks are poisoned. He doesn’t recognize them as a family heirloom, and besides, giving such a thing to a top agent would be disrespectful.
Meanwhile, police are in the lobby: a redheaded woman was seen at the telephone company last night, beating people up and smashing equipment. Cousin Clara has red hair… and her knuckles are suspiciously bruised.
Florence and the band start playing in the lobby to distract the police. Semya, suspecting Clara’s dark passenger to be responsible, ties up her cousin and taunts her with food until Clara’s dark side emerges. The growling, snarling beast, HER, has no memory of such action.
I don’t kill what I can’t eat. Put me back inside, Ruskie, or you’re going on the menu.
Thaza is shocked by this display. JP, wanting to send Clara back to normal, calls the lobby and requests “My Old Kentucky Home” be played into the phone. It works.
The heroes soon discover that someone has sabotaged the radio in the hotel. The receptionist working that shift doesn’t remember seeing anyone do it, but thought that he saw…some kind of ghost…maybe it was just nighttime mist? He remembers feeling dizzy. When he returned inside, it was nearly dawn, and the radio was destroyed. A jailhouse interview of the Amazing Brothers explains their motives: they were hired by the Green Gang for revenge on JP, for his actions in the adventure Shanghai Bullets!
The players can't solve the mystery of the phone and radio destroyers, but they can help fix the machines. There’s something else to fix though: 300 Great War veterans are camped along the northern Keys, building the Overseas Highway as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. (The Bonus Army has been put to work.) They’re supposed to be evacuated… But the train isn’t arriving until at least four, and the winds are way too dangerous already.
The ZSS begin evacuating the man camp, building storm breaks, and reinforcing the hotel. Callahan repurposes the hotel’s sound system to create a bullhorn mobile, and Zelda uses her considerable charm (and the skills she learned as a General’s daughter) to coordinate the effort. The sky is dark, and the rain is nearly horizontal when the train arrives. Everyone, drenched and exhausted, enters the train, and it begins moving back towards the safety of Miami…when Devika hits Thaza with the whammy!
The ghostly possessor reveals herself, a spectral mist that used to be Abigail Thorndyke! (Last seen in The 500 Fingers of the Abomidable Dr P!) Formerly burnt and bedridden, she was promised a new lease on life by Captain Ivanova… but was instead transferred to Science City Eight. There, her body was destroyed but her spirit lived on, and she swore revenge!
The captain laughed.
“Pathetic. Rescued from death, you have the gift that entire civilizations have strived for. Life beyond the veil of tears. And you use it to get revenge on those who had the gall to take pity on you. JP?”
She called over her fiancé, and began making out with him as the soldiers cheered. Abigail howled with undying fury, which gave Zelda the opportunity to open a window… sucking the spectre outside into the hurricane!
The group's victory was short-lived, however, as a few miles later, the train was knocked off the track by a giant wave!
***
The night was damp and unpleasant, but the heavy train stayed on its side. The next morning, the sound of loud rotors filled the air… and guess who came to the rescue? Semya’s least favorite person, millionaire Rafe Lancaster, with his girlfriend Lillian and an experimental airplane filled with supplies!
The Communist part of the wedding party had to be restrained as Rafe explained his magnanimity. (Turns out he had been called by a certain Indian millionaire.) Callahan flew Semya and the Soviets to Key West, while Rafe transported the others.
Key West was much softer-hit than Islamorada, so the wedding could proceed as planned. There was some beach cleaning to be done, sure, but more importantly there were two surprise guests: Semya’s parents, snuck out of the Soviet Union by Devi! In rehearsed English, they explained how excited they were to meet Joe Diamond, and invite him into their family. (A big step up from the first time he entered the campaign, as a drugged zombie interrupting a nightclub show.)
The officiant was busy elsewhere, so Ernest Hemingway volunteered. Luckily, Florence’s agent Bert “the Beast” Wilde was drafted instead.
Semya was a vision in her traditional red wedding dress. Tango the parrot, dressed in a tuxedo, delivered the rings down the aisle (and, having been raised in a tavern, interrupted the “does anyone object” part with a swearword.) After dancing to the new hit song “Cheek to Cheek”, it was time for speeches, and the best one was delivered by Ernest.
It’s been said that I wrote “the first draft of anything is shit”, but here’s hoping that only applied to my own misfortune in marriage. From experience I can testify that a union between two people is rooted in trust, as that is the very foundation that remains, when the winds blow and the storms rage all else away. In the small hours, in the little times between the routine crises we lurch between, if trust remains, so too can love be found. I trust that wiser words I’ve written prove more applicable on this day:
At night, there was the feeling that we had come home,
feeling no longer alone,
waking in the night to find the other one there,
and not gone away;
all other things were unreal.
We slept when we were tired and if we woke
the other one woke too so one was not alone.
Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too
and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other,
but I can truly say we never felt that.
We could feel alone when we were together,
alone against the others.
We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.
The New Orleans-style wedding cake was filled with fortunes, which were generally benevolent except for Zelda drawing The Tower. Uh oh.
Elsewhere, spy Krystal Wolf stole Rafe’s experimental airplane and presumably flew it to Germany…
Hopefully, the Diamondova’s honeymoon would be less eventful.
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