The Bodyguard ("Perfection, Story #61)

PERFECTION
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard’s mother is at work in the law office. She’s going through the official documentation of her future bridesmaids. Mostly it’s photographs. The bulk of them were taken not long after the bridesmaids had been allowed to go back out onto the street without bandages. It surprises her how nicely they all smile in the pictures. She’s glad they are smiling, even though it looks as if it must have hurt. She always prefers it when people are happy.

As she examines the smiles, she’s careful to touch the photographs only along their edges. She knows better than to mar them with fingerprints. Doing so could create a problem for her with her superiors, but it is also something she would not do anyway. She’s not that sort. Courtesy, cleanliness, and a razor-keen attention to etiquette are big issues for her. Etiquette is part of why her wedding needs to be as perfect as possible, and why it’s so good the women in these pictures are smiling. Plus, this way she can estimate in advance how things will look when the bridesmaids are up in front of everyone during the ceremony. Especially how it will look for the two award-winning photographers she has hired to preserve the event for eternity.

She chose the two photographers not only because of their national awards, but also because of how nicely they looked beside each other in their advertisement. When she talked to them on the phone they also seemed very polite. Almost too polite. In fact, something in their voices made her wonder if perhaps they were not homosexuals. Then she worried about this fact more and more because she wasn’t sure if they would be allowed into her church. She’d even gone so far as to phone that giraffe in black pants who calls himself her priest and asked for his input on the matter—and had been told to go back to sleep. It was two in the morning. Couldn’t it wait? NO, she’d said, it most certainly could not! This wasn’t about fishing or farming or waiting, THIS was about a wedding. Quite obviously her perfect one needed the precision and prestige of those national awards behind it; but, just as much, it needed God’s blessing. Was it completely impossible to get the Church’s approval? It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t stand for such nonsense. And why should she? There had to be a way to allow the two vile abominators and their marvelous cameras onto sacred ground.