I LOVE weddings, so I do. It’s the one time of year I look and feel truly gorgeous.
All my celebrity friends were there, so of course I spent all week getting ready in my room: daubing layers of white lead and rouge onto my cheeks, and fingerfuls of coal tar into my eyebrows, to get that youthful vitality everyone loves me for.
But what I really love is bringing everyone joy through music and laughter. When I saw George and Amal taking a wedding day stroll on the Grand Canal, I couldn’t resist. I scuttled ahead of them, concealing my face under my favourite red hooded cape. I waited round a corner for them, and giggled so much I gave myself the hiccups. But they didn’t chase me! I realised the only way they were going to play was if I ran at them and forced them into an abandoned palazzo. After I had them cornered, I reared up on my wooden heels, tore off my hood and sang “It’s me, Bono! Fa La La!” But something had gone wrong. Shrill screaming was coming out of George’s mouth and Amal wasn’t doing anything because she’d lost consciousness. I tried to sing louder but it was no use.
After that, I was confused and sad. I walked unhappily along the narrow Venetian streets, which all had names, and this made me angry. So to cheer myself up, I bought a pizza and took it to the beach.
I settled into a deck chair as the sun was going down. Far off at the shore, I spotted George laughing and splashing in the waves. He was so fresh and perfect. And my pizza was so cold and flaccid. Two oily kalamata olives stared cruelly at me from the top of it, like George’s black, unblinking eyes. My bottom lip started to go.
As the crescendo from With or Without You rose with horrible, horrible inevitability, I slumped in the deck chair; the pizza fell from my limp hand and plopped into the sand. Streaks of murky coal tar melted and ran down the cracks in my powder blush, like dribbles of burped up black sambuca down an old drunk’s nut sack. With my last breath, I feebly cried out “Well tonight thank God it’s them, instead of ”