“This was a terrible idea,” he snicker-snorts, fizzy bubbles dribbling down his nose.

“Absolutely the worst idea. Say, have you ever tried any of the local brews?” the proprietor asks, accidentally knocking over one of the empty bottles.

“Can’t say I have,” Kassen smiles woozily.

“We should try those next.”

“Excellent!”

It had started like this:

Kassen had gone to the liquor store to find solace in a cheap bottle of something (he wasn’t picky). The proprietor of the liquor store was a proper gent, the genteel kind with a handlebar mustache and a sympathetic ear (traits that were essential in being a liquor proprietor).

When Kassen had gone to ring up his purchase, he had asked, “Why the long face my good fellow?”

Kassen, being particularly miserable and eager to share his woes, had burst out into tears.

“My fiancé left me,” he cried, “our wedding is supposed to be tomorrow! What kind of poor fool am I that I lose my husband the night before the wedding?”

“There, there,” the proprietor had said, vaguely alarmed at the rainfall (so to speak) and yet wholly sympathetic, “you’re better off without him (probably).”

“Oh, how he played me! He’s on a cruise now with the wedding planner, probably having fantastic sex, not to mention spending all the money he stole from me.”

The former fiancé had indeed stolen all the wedding gift money and was now splurging it on drink packages and thongs.

“That was really quite cruel of him,” the proprietor said, “you’ve dodged a bullet, I think. Better to find out before the wedding that he’s a piece of work, rather than after!”

“Oh, but I loved him,” Kassen sighed, then hiccuped, “and how will I face all the guests tomorrow? How does one call off a wedding the night before? We have over two hundred guests! We spent a year and a fortune planning this and now it’s all for nothing.”

The proprietor looked at the bottom shelf tequila on the counter and decided that that really wouldn’t cut it. A wound of this nature needed stronger stuff (and better tasting stuff) to cauterize it.

“Quite a miserable turn of events; but not to worry, I know just what you need!”

And so, the proprietor, being very genteel and sympathetic, had closed his shop and started popping bottle tops.

Now, nearly four hours later:

Having worked through the good whiskeys and pre-mixed drinks and halfway through the rums, they are both having, what they think, are Very Good Ideas (which could just as well be Bad Ideas, as they are too drunk to properly tell).

“So, what if – what if – you just married someone else?” the proprietor suggests, swaying and burping and not incredibly genteel anymore.

“S’good idea,” Kassen idly twirls the proprietor’s mustache, “who sshhhhhould I marry then?”

“Don’t know. There’s gotta be someone around” hic! “here.”

Kassen nods, “Yes, that would solve the…uh, the what’s the word when something goes wrong and you have to deal with it.”

“Problem.”

“Yes, that’s it! Problem.”

They nurse their drinks for a bit, lost in hazy drunken contemplation.

“I think it should be me,” the proprietor says. He sets down his drink with gumption, to echo his determination, but misses the table and the bottle ends up smashed on the floor.

“What should we you? Beeee you.”

“Your married person. The one you lost.”

“My husband!” Kassen cries, delighted, as he finally connects all the dots, “You’ll be my husband?”

“Yes, now walk me down the aisle!”

Kassen and the proprietor weave down the gin aisle, humming ‘Here Comes the Bride’ off-tune and out-of-sync, and collapse in a cuddle pile in the men’s restroom, which they mistakenly thought was the altar.

The next morning, Kassen does not marry the proprietor. Instead, he tells his two hundred assembled guests that he and his former fiancé are seeing other people, and the whole thing is off as they have found happiness elsewhere. He does this with sunglasses on and a bottle of aspirin in his pocket.

Three years later, however, he does marry the proprietor, in a quiet little ceremony in the liquor store, where they walk down the gin aisle again, but for real this time.