I was going to get married in a few days.
But first, I went on a sort of camping/cabin trip with a bunch of people. I'm not sure who they were, actually, because it wasn't any of my normal social groups. Just a bunch of people and we were going up into the mountains for a weekend away. We were bunking two to a cabin, and my roommate was a college-age girl I didn't know. I guess everyone expected that this was me getting my last-minute bachelor jollies in with this semi-anonymous girl or something, but there wasn't anything like that going on at all. In fact, I wasn't interested in the girl or the people or the camping or any of it:
I had an ulterior motive for the trip, and that was to buy guns.
There was a specific gun store I knew of near the camp site, a guy who sold untraceable stuff, and I went there by myself at one point to buy a couple of pistols. One was a very small .25, four round capacity, little enough to slip invisibly into a pants pocket. The other was a .55-caliber Webley revolver. (Real Webleys are actually .455 caliber, of course.) It was huge and elegant at the same time, an ornate silver and ivory dragoon pistol with a five-shot cylinder. It was insanely heavy, but it could shoot through a brick wall if needed.
I bought the guns because, apparently, I though somebody might try to attack the wedding, to assassinate me. Mafia or something. I wasn't so sure of it that I warned anyone else; it was more like, I'm keeping a couple of guns handy just in case someone comes for me. I slipped the .25 into the folded handkerchief in my tux jacket. The Webley was going to be hidden under a fake wedding present box.
But first, I came home from the camping trip. My father was there; he, too, had been out camping-- hunting, in fact-- and had returned at the same time. He was bringing in his guns-- armfuls of sleek, deadly-looking assault weapons-- and returning them to their hiding places inside the walls of each room in the house. I was eager to show him the Webley, but for some reason I didn't say anything about the concealed .25. Maybe I thought he'd realize I was expecting some sort of trouble, if I was buying two guns at once.
He flipped the cylinder open, blew a puff of air down the barrel. A cloud of dust emerged, filled the room. He looked skeptical: "How's the recoil when you fire it?" I admitted that I hadn't fired it yet. "You bought a gun without firing it first?" He clearly disapproved. "What's the combat purpose of this gun? What do you expect to go up against?" I didn't want to mention the potential attack on the wedding, so I just shrugged and said I just wanted it for the elegance of its design. He spun the cylinder shut. "Once we clean it up, I know a guy who will probably pay you twice whatever you paid for it. You don't need a gun you don't plan to use."
I wasn't sure whether I wanted to have to use this gun at the wedding or not.