In July of the year 2746, Ted and Jeanette Jolligood decided to end their five year marriage.  The moment the decision was final, Jeanette sprang to action and began planning the greatest divorce ceremony. “After all,” she told her parents, “this is probably the only time I’ll ever get divorced in my life.”

The Jolligood’s divorce would be thrown in keeping with the laws and customs of the day which specified a couple permanently separating, “Shall commemorate the disunion with a ceremony of not less size and grandeur than the original wedding ceremony.”   In planning her ceremony, Jeanette paid special attention  to the phrase “not less than”;  she was determined that her divorce party would be something special.

Exceeding their original ceremony was a formidable challenge however, even for a party planner of Jeanette’s fabled skills.  When they had wed, Ted and Jeanette were considered the most dazzling couple of their circle, and had thrown a party scaled to match their glamour.  Seeking the most precious of locations, Ted discovered a pristine lump of volcanic rock a hundred-thirty-seven miles due southwest of Papua New Guinea.  The Isle of Enchanted Delights, as it had been recently named, throughout its history had only been glimpsed by a migrating herd of see turtles and Raoul, a fifty-three year old retired drag queen turned hotelier, who’s stop at nothing vision of opulence had earned the resort Michelin’s first ever six star rating.

When some of the couple’s friends had tried to beg off of the expedition pleading poverty, Jeanette’s crying fits made all but the strongest suppress their financial survival instincts and sign aboard.  And when crying didn’t work, recalcitrant friends were instantly promoted from mere guest to bridesmaid or groomsman.  Thus, half of Scottsdale, Arizona’s glitteratti had taken second and third jobs, refinanced their credit card debt, turned to embezzlement or, in one case, outright armed robbery to fund their trips.  To reach the Isle required a mere two-week voyage in either direction, with six flight changes  to New Guinea, a boat to a South Seas oil derrick, a short helicopter trip, another boat ride and ultimately a sea plane from which they parachuted, just outside the Isle’s three mile no fly zone perimeter, finally riding on the backs of domesticated porpoises to shore.  Rooms at Raoul’s ran $5800 a night, with a no cots ordinance strictly enforced.

       How to top that ceremony was a question stumping the divorce’s brain trust.  Ted, for his part, told Jeanette, their families and the assembled attorneys in the conference room of  Howard, Stroop and Lavosh, Jeanette’s attorneys, “Why don’t we just go back to Raoul’s? I mean, it would bring a nice symmetry to the whole thing.”

       “That” Jeanette hissed, “is the sort of comatose creativity that got us here in the first place.”  And with that, Ted was pushed aside from the planning and slipped out to the break room.
       Perhaps pushed to greater heights by Ted’s banality, Jeanette had a brainstorm so inspired it shocked even the jaded divorce planners.  After rejecting suggestions that they throw the party in the Rain Forest, rent Times Square, the Capitol Dome or in a live volcano, Jeanette said suddenly, “I know.  Why not get divorced in space?”

       The room was silent. The planners looked at one another, jutted their jaws forward and nodded, truly impressed. The lawyers huddled to sort out whether an outer space ceremony was legally valid and Jeanette’s father, after calculating that he could, in fact, afford an outer space divorce if he postponed his retirement twenty-seven more years, plotted how to hit up Ted’s parents for a contribution to the cause.

       So it was, a year later, that Ted, Jeanette, their families, friends, business associates caterers, musicians and photographers boarded a series of rockets to take them up to the US Atlantic 18 Space Platform, a mile and a half long station constructed and placed in Venutian orbit especially for the event

       Filing into the ceremony, few guests knew how close the whole affair had come to last minute derailment.  The night before, Ted and Jeanette had been forcibly reunited for the traditional Last Night party.  Following a romantic dinner with the bridesmaids and groomsmen, featuring a slide show of Ted and Jeanette’s honeymoon photos, the party settled into  the bridal suite where they paired off and cuddled up to watch a video festival of Meg Ryan films.  The groomsmen chuckled at Ted’s awkwardness as he was forced to squeeze into a miniaturize love seat with Jeanette.  Predictably, throughout the movie although their bodies were pressed together, both of the pair kept their hands fastened atop their heads.  Under a rain of catcalls (“Go ahead, grab a little while you can! You’re not going to get another chance!  One more for the road!”)  Ted fumed and Jeanette turned shades of purple to their friends’ delight.

       At midnight, the couple were thrown onto a four poster bed to spend their last night as husband and wife in the proximity of each other’s arms.  Glaring at each other with disgust as they were paraded forward, (Jeanette having been dressed in a tiny red nightgown, Ted in lavender silk pajamas) Jeanette tried to weasel out. “I think we get the point” she pleaded.  “We don’t really have to do all this.”
       “Oh no” the bridesmaids roared.  “You wanted a big traditional divorce, so enjoy tradition.” And with that, they locked the door of the bridal chamber, sealing Jeanette and Ted inside.

       But when the gloating friends gathered to free their captives the next morning, they made a shocking discovery:  on the bridal bed; Ted and Jeanette lying asleep naked in each other’s arms.  To the party’s horror, Ted sat up and announced. “Bad news, guys. The divorce is off.  Jeanette and I decided we’re in love.  Again.”

       The divorce party fanned out to take charge of the emergency. Rob phoned Jeanette’s parents who rushed over. Ted’s parents groaned in not unexpected amazement and hung up the phone.  Within fifteen minutes, the Bridal suite was invaded by an army of parents, wedding planners and spiritual advisors. But all the kings horses and all his attorneys could not bring the couple to their senses. They  remained planted side by side in bed, arms linked, lest an inch between them give the besiegers room to maneuver.  Even as Ted’s bowels ached and pleaded for a trip to the toilet, he clung to Jeanette.

       “Honey,” pleaded Mrs. Tipple, Jeanette’s mother, “all the guests have come so far. And your father’s spent so much on this…”

       Jeanette’s face reddened and she turned her head away.  “How can you talk to me about money?  This is my happiness at stake.  I want to stay married to Ted and I don’t care if it costs us all the money in the world.”

       Tricia (bridesmaid #7) pulled up a chair and reminded her friend of all the nasty things she’d said about Ted lately. “Remember how he drools in his sleep?  How he only showers once a week in the summer?  Remember that time he got drunk at that dinner party and started doing that imitation of his dog?”

       “Patricia, I’ll thank you not to speak that way about my husband if you ever want to step foot in our house again.”

       “But Jeanette, I’m just repeating what you told me!  And what about oral sex?  Is he going to learn how to do that right?”

       Ted’s face turned a deep raspberry as his family glared in horror  and disgust. “I’m going to try… I think I can get the hang …” he murmured.  Jeanette grinned broadly in contempt at Tricia.

       “But children,” said Father Bergen, the priest who had married them, back to perform the divorce, “we must think about the future. You’ve put so much of your heart, your souls into this divorce.  Do you think you can so lightly flaunt what so clearly seemed God’s will?”

       Ted and Jeanette mulled that one over, searching for the correct answer until finally Ted brightened and spat, “Maybe God was just testing us! He does it all the time; you’ve said it yourself, father.”  Jeanette patted Ted’s shoulder congratulating him as Father Bergen faded muttering in the background.

       After an hour’s assault, the family retreated into the sitting room.  “I wouldn’t care if they stay married the rest of their lives,” declared Mr. Tipple, collapsing into a plush velveteen arm chair.  “It’s just something tells me that if we let them walk away now, six months from now we’re going to be right back here in outer space.”  The troops murmured their agreement and slunk into  silent despair.

       But just as hope seemed lost, the door burst open and in walked the one human alive who could save the day.  Lowering her sunglasses, announcing her arrival with a snort and a sneer, Lorabel Brenstone stood in the doorway regarding the group with contempt.  “So,” she drawled, “Looks like someone needs me here after all.”

       Whatever feelings she may have aroused in the past, Lorabel was overwhelmed to find her animosity unrequited today, as the party rushed forward, proclaiming the arrival of their savior.  It had been, you see, Ted’s drunken night of passion with Lorabel a year before that was commonly credited as the beginning, or the middle, of the end for Ted and Jeanette.   As the final year drew on, artifacts of Lorabel, a scarf, smeared lipstick, a hang up on the voice mail, a matchbook from distant steakhouses, appeared around Ted, despite his protests that he never, ever saw her, Lorabel, whom had been Jeanette’s maid of honor, found herself persona non grata in the Jolligood home.

       Greeting her with cheers of welcome, the group pushed Lorabel forward, throwing open the doors to the bridal chamber.  Lorabel, her icy demeanor quietly relishing the moment, stepped into the brink and greeted her lover and former friend with a brisk, “Does this mean I don’t move in Ted?”

       The door was shut behind Lorabel and within minutes, the party delighted  to hear the suite sing with a harmony of Jeanette’s shrieks, Ted’s pleads and shattering vases.  A little more time alone was all the pair needed to get back on track.  Disillusionment was in the air again and the Goddess of Separation restored to her throne.  Sighs of relief sounded across the sitting room and as the Ted yelled, “You’ve ruined my life!  Get out, you witch!”  the party recovered from the close call and patted each other on the back in  congratulations.

       The last minute scare derailed, the ceremony went off without a hitch.  The guests were seated by the mournful groomsmen, who gave those requesting the wife’s side the traditional mock-inadvertent kick in the shins.  Across the aisle, the two sides regarded each other with a blend of contempt and satisfaction in their mutual prescience, that the union had been doomed from the start. 

       Indeed, all declared in hushed confidences, this was perhaps the most splendid and fitting divorce they had attended in years.  “Everything about it is  just so, so right!”  gushed Alice Snardley, a school friend of Jeanette’s who had not seen her since the wedding itself.  “Even when they were dating, I said  ‘those two are going to break up someday and break up big. Mark my words.’”

       Despite having often taken credit for introducing Ted and Jeanette, Alice could hardly be blamed for claiming prophetic powers. After all the fuss, the ceremony overflowed with such grandiloquent splendor that it vested the entire divorce with an air of cosmic inevitability.  Despite the fact that this same group five years before had proclaimed Ted and Jeanette the most perfect couple alive, seeing them take the stage to divorce, Ted somber in his cobalt business suit, Jeanette, soiled and embittered in her fur hooded little black dress, there was not one present whom didn’t claim they knew they were doomed from the start.  It was that kind of ceremony.

       Ted and Jeanette glared at each other from opposing wings, while Father Bergen took his place between them.  In his musty world-weary baritone aged perfectly to herald romantic defeat, Father Bergen  intoned,  “Dearly beloved.  The way of God is cast by a mighty and capricious sword.  In his season, he gives us love and in his season he takes his gift away.  But ours is not to mourn when two young hearts, once so joyfully bound as Ted and Jeanette’s are rent asunder, but to mark love’s conclusion with tender sympathy so that the heart may, in it’s season, thaw, heal its wounds and perhaps someday love again.

       “For Ted and Jeanette entered this chamber tonight mortal foes, driven to rank hatred by their days together.  But before this eve draws to a close, they will put aside their hatred and return to Earth as strangers, perhaps a little weaker for the experience, less trusting, less giving of themselves, yea, but knowing the damage could have been much much worse and now at least, they are honoring the Lord’s will.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, as if you’ll turn your prayer books to page 143, please rise and join us in Hymn #35, ‘My Sweet Love, Nevermore Darken My Door With Ye Fetid Stench.’”

       It would have taken a hardened heart indeed not to gush with the poignancy of the moment; through the giant windows Venus floating below on her lonely path while in the foreground, the two lovers sang together one last time, hearts filled with hate, soon to be free of each other forever more. 

       As the hymn concluded, Father Bergen intoned, “The law requires that we not just honor the institution of divorce today, but also reflect on this particular divorce and why it is special to us all. For the couple who do now come together to part, the law of God and man require that they provide to all those who gave so much of themselves to support this union a full and complete explanation of what exactly went wrong. Theodore will begin.”  By tradition  the husband spoke first, allowing his wife the final word, and despite apprehensions that Jeanette’s speech would demand a rebuttal, Ted agreed to stand by tradition and led off.      
       “Well,” he began, “For a year or so, I really thought things were going well, but then we, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem quite right somehow. We just stopped, um, connecting?  Like when I’d come home and I used to be really psyched to see her, instead I’d just circle around the block a few times, you know?”  A man in the front row sneezed and Ted sensed he was losing his audience. He glanced down at his notecards but was unable to decipher his scrawled handwriting.  Only one word stood out in all caps:  TOWEL. He broke into a sweat.  “Towel?  Towel?”  he thought. “What the hell was – Oh, of course!” His face lit up.

“And then,” he said, “there was the towel.”  Jeanette groaned and threw up her hands. The bridesmaids sighed and the groomsmen guffawed.  Encouraged, Ted continued.  “She started just getting after me for everything I did. Constantly; all the time.  And then one night, I came home, I got out of the shower and was tired, so I just accidentally dropped a towel on the bedroom floor.  Okay, so I should’ve hung it up. But what’s the big deal really?

       “So the next day, I’m at work, in a meeting and Jeanette walks in, unannounced, she storms into the conference room where I’m sitting with my boss, pulls out from a bag the smelly, wet towel, drops it on the middle of the table and walks out without saying a word.  Left it just sitting there and my bosses thinking my wife had flipped her lid.”  Although most of the crowd had heard this story several times before, it still held up.  Ted paused to soak up the room’s outrage before finishing.

       “So anyway, that’s when I first started to really think, that maybe things weren’t going so well, and then, here we are.”         Ted stepped away from the mike to enthusiastic applause.  Father Bergen motioned for Jeanette to take her turn.
       Jeanette’s flush of anger had faded and been replaced as she approached the mike by that look of icy determination that struck fear into the hearts of friends and foes alike.  

       “I have just two things to say,” she said calmly.  “First, I plead guilty to Ted’s story about the towel. He got it right in every respect, except for one little detail.  Ted, just to refresh your memory, that wasn’t actually a towel, if you recall. It was YOUR DISGUSTING, FOUR DAY OLD SKIDMARK STAINED BAGGY WHITE UNDERWEAR THAT YOU LEFT ON THE FLOOR EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN NIGHT!”      

       Ted’s nerve now completely left him and he crumbled into a chair as the crowd let out a collective “eeeeewwwww” of shock. The groom’s blood ran cold and he broke into a cold sweat of revelation. Ted had in fact, told his revised version of the story so often that in his mind, it actually was a towel Jeanette had dropped on the table.  

       As the murmurs subsided again, Jeanette, skilled matador, stepped forward to deliver the coup de gras.

       “And I’d also like to congratulate my maid of honor, for finding her way into my bed not two days after our first fight.  Lorabel, I can only say, if putting up with his jalepeno breath and beer sweat is worth four minutes of passion a week,  I wish you all the happiness in the world.”

       All eyes in the audience turned on Lorabel whom with a shrugging nod, confirmed the truth of Jeanette’s statistics.

       With Ted sobbing in a corner and Jeanette transported in a fit of otherworldly rage, there was nothing left but for Father Bergen to make it official.  He stepped forward and asked, “Jeanette,  is it your wish to sever your vows, promising to forsake each other for so long as you both shall live?”

       “You’re damn right!”

       “And do you Theodore vow you shall never again trouble Jeanette’s sleep ‘til the end of your days.”

       “God, yes.  Please.”  From opposite ends of the stage, Ted and Jeanette looked away from each other.

       “Then by the power vested in me by the high church and the Arizona Province, I now declare you, ex-husband and ex-wife.”      

       As the organ broke into the divorce dirge the crowd rose to their feet.  Ted and Jeanette were carried down the opposite aisles on litters draped in black crepe. But from across the church, Jeanette’s scream could be heard, “And I’m keeping the cat, you motherfucker!”

       The reception, as expected, was lavish, tasteful and extravagant, shepherding the Jolligood’s union into the history books with customary pinache. 

       Rob, the best man, had fretted about his toast for weeks before but in the end he took the advice of the experts, keep the spotlight on the couple, not yourself, and you’ll do fine.  He opened with a brief, humorous anecdote: “I first suspected Ted and Jeanette’s fairy tale was ending not so happily ever after when we were out for dinner and Jeanette excused herself to go to the bathroom, saying ‘I’ll be right back’  and Ted looked from his soup and muttered ‘Why don’t you do us all a favor and drown in there?’”

       The crowd guffawed and Rob on cue turned serious. “But seriously” he said.  “I think we’ve all known for a long long time that Ted and Jeanette were a terrible couple.  So on behalf of their friends and families, I’d like to propose a toast and hope that their lives will be way, way less dramatic apart then they were together and their next marriages will bring them the joy and contentment that this one never did.”

       The crowd Awwwwwed appropriately and raised their glasses in tribute. Even Jeanette was moved by the tasteful speech.  So much so that fifteen minutes later, she and Rob slipped out of the ceremony together, stole Ted’s rocket and made a mad dash back to Earth.

       Fortunately for Ted, he didn’t notice his Best Man’s betrayal as by that time, he had passed out under the table.  Lorabel, having failed to revive him, instead went home with Jeanette’s father who had been quarrelling with his wife since the ceremony began.

       Those who stayed on enjoyed the customary food fight at 3 AM when the two sides of the room pelted each other with the remains of the buffet.

       Riding her rocket back to Earth the next morning, Alice Snardley basked in the event’s afterglow.  “Wasn’t it just perfect? Every detail!”  she gushed to her husband Ebenezer who dutifully replied “Yes, dear.”

       “Do you ever think about, not that I’m saying we would, but have you ever just pictured where we would do our divorce?”      

       Ebenezer tut tutted his wife. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, pumpkin.”

       She patted his arm, knowing he was right. She was being silly thinking of such things now.  “But still,” she sighed, “Ted’s not the only one who leaves his underwear on the floor…”  And as the rocket shot out its final burn, leaving Venus orbit, Alice and Ebenezer gazed at each other for the first time with a look of suspicion and distrust each would remember the rest of their lives.