Shipshape Shenanigans

Rhys had the invitation in his hand. Crumpled. Creased. Folded four times and sweated on.

Iris smoothed it against her thigh for the fifth time in a block.

"Will you relax?" he said.

Iris didn't look at him. She was twenty-six, a vet tech, and she knew what a bad night looked like before it started. "I'm not the one holding a piece of paper like it's a winning lottery ticket."

"It is a winning ticket. Navy gala. Open bar. Admirals."

"How did you even get these?"

Rhys grinned. "Sold a truck to a guy in supply."

Iris stopped walking. The Avalon Base ballroom glowed ahead of them, a converted hangar strung with flags and bunting, all of it visible from the promenade. Music drifted out. So did the smell of butter and perfume.

"Rhys. Baby. Love of my life." She turned to face him. "We were not invited to this."

"We were absolutely invited to this."

"The invitation says 'plus one,' doesn't it."

"It says a lot of things." He started walking again, fast, so she'd have to follow. She did. She always did. Two years of dating the man and she'd learned that the fastest way to control a Rhys situation was to be physically present for the launch.

The side entrance had a table. At the table stood a guard in dress uniform, young, squared away, a name tape that read SOTO. Behind Soto, through the doors, the ballroom was full of white jackets and dark dresses.

"Good evening," Soto said. "Invitation, please."

Iris handed it over like a woman handing over a deed.

Soto read it. His face did nothing. That was the problem. A lesser guard would have winced early and saved everyone the trouble.

"Formal Attire Optional," Soto read aloud.

"Yep," said Rhys.

"Sir. It means formal attire is optional. As in, you may decline it. In favor of... also formal attire."

Rhys laughed. He actually laughed, warm and easy, the laugh he used on customers who were hesitating at the financing desk. "Buddy. Come on. I've been to events like this. It's a liberated thing. Navy guys blow off steam. It's fine."

"Sir, no!"

"Rhys." Iris grabbed his sleeve. "Rhys, do not."

He was already untying his tie. He folded it. He set it on Soto's table, neat as a tip. Then the jacket, over the back of a chair Soto was not offering. Then the shirt, button by button, while Iris made a sound like a kettle.

"Sir, you cannot..."

"I can, and honestly? Good for you for asking." Rhys stepped out of his trousers, kicked off his shoes, and stood at the entrance of a formal naval gala in his boxers and socks. Twenty-eight years old. Confident as a man selling a lemon with a bow on it.

Soto's voice cracked across the promenade. "SIR. YOU CAN NOT DO THAT."

A passing admiral, silver-haired, champagne in hand, paused at the doors. He looked at Rhys. He looked at Soto. Then the old man chuckled, deep and genuine, and said, "Atta boy," and walked inside.

That was the worst possible outcome. Iris knew it immediately. Rhys lit up like a sign lot.

"See? See? Liberated event. The admiral gets it."

"The admiral is humoring you," Iris hissed. "Give me the clothes. Give me the clothes right now."

"He's got the spirit, ma'am," Soto said weakly, which surprised everyone, mostly Soto, who then looked like he wanted to enlist in a different branch entirely.

"Thank you, Soto," said Rhys, and walked in.

Iris gathered the shirt, the trousers, the jacket, one shoe, the other shoe, and went after him with her face burning so hot she could feel it in her ears.

* * *

The ballroom was beautiful, which made it worse. String lights. A band. Officers in dress whites dancing with their dates. And in the middle of it, a man in boxers and black socks walking like he owned the dock.

"I'm going to kill you," Iris said, catching up. "I'm going to hide the body on the base and they'll never find you, because everyone will assume you just wandered off."

"Babe. Loosen up. When in Rome."

"This is not Rome. This is a federal installation."

Rhys scanned the room with his salesman eyes, working the crowd, and that was when he spotted them by the punch table. Julio, thirty-one, a naval lieutenant with a jaw like a filing cabinet, in charge of the whole evening's logistics and clearly radiating it. Next to him, his wife Eveline, thirty-five, retired navy turned event planner, in a green dress and an expression of a woman who had planned a perfect evening and was watching a weather report.

Julio knew Rhys. They had history. The base car show, two years back, a test drive that ended in a fountain. Julio had not forgotten. Julio's face, upon seeing Rhys, went through recognition, disbelief, and then a kind of professional despair.

"No," Julio said, loudly, walking over. "No. You are not here."

"Julio. My man." Rhys spread his arms, which did nothing to cover anything. "Great event. Love the bunting."

"You are in your underwear at a naval gala."

"Correction." Rhys held up one socked foot. "Underwear and socks."

Eveline put a hand over her mouth. It might have been horror. It might have been the beginning of a laugh. With her it was hard to say; she'd seen everything the service could throw at a party, and she'd once dated a man who tried a stunt at a change-of-command ceremony, so her floor for shock was high.

Julio looked at Iris with genuine sympathy. "Ma'am. I'm so sorry. Is there anything we can do?"

"He's not with me," said Iris. "I've never met him. I'm here alone."

"Iris. Rude."

"Julio," Rhys said, stepping closer, dropping his voice like they were old war buddies. "Come on. Between us. You're telling me this shindig isn't a little bit optional? A man can't express himself?"

"You were told, on the invitation, in writing, formal attire. Optional means you could skip the tie." Julio's eye went down and came back up. "You did not skip the tie. You skipped everything above the tie and kept the tie."

Rhys looked at the tie, which was still on Soto's table.

"Fine," Rhys said. "You know what? You want to see commitment? You want to see a man who doesn't do things halfway?"

And Iris realized, with about a second and a half to act, exactly what he meant, and lunged.

She was too slow. Rhys stepped back, hooked his thumbs in his waistband, and dropped his boxers to the floor, and stood in the middle of a naval gala wearing two socks and a smile, and Julio made a noise like a boat whistle, and half the room turned.

Iris moved on pure instinct. She grabbed for the boxers on the floor, or maybe for Rhys himself, some combination, some tackle, some containment plan, and her elbow caught the champagne tower.

The tower was six feet of stacked coupe glasses. It was gorgeous. It was, Eveline would say later, the one thing that had gone right all evening, right up until that second.

Iris hit it elbow first. The whole structure went with a sound like a chandelier falling in slow motion, glass after glass after glass, two hundred dollars of champagne becoming foam across the polished floor in a spreading tide.

Eveline, moving to help, or to strangle someone, or both, put her heel into the foam.

Her feet went out from under her like a cartoon. She hit the floor with her whole elegant green-dressed self, skidded four feet, and came to rest against a ceremonial cannon that had been rolled out for the evening's pageantry, its barrel freshly painted and gleaming.

The band stopped. The room went quiet. A hundred officers stared.

Rhys stood there, nude, one sock slipping down.

"Anybody got a towel?" he said.

"No," said everyone, more or less at once.

Iris looked around at the room. A hundred navy officers. Her boyfriend, naked. A dead champagne tower. Foam everywhere. And she was still holding his tie like it was evidence.

Well. She was twenty-six, she had put up with this man for two years, and she was not going to be the only one standing in shame.

"Fine," she said. "FINE."

She reached back, unzipped her dress, and stepped out of it. Screaming the whole time, which made it worse, or better, depending on who you asked. "You happy? Is this what you wanted? Solidarity, Rhys! I'm a team player! LOOK AT ME BEING A TEAM PLAYER!"

Then she stood there in heels and underwear, arms crossed, and Rhys's face went through stages. First pure delight. Then confusion.

"Wait," he said. "Babe. You're stripping. You never strip."

"You think?"

"I mean, usually I have to ask twice."

"Do NOT make this into a compliment right now."

Eveline, still on the floor by the cannon, looked up at the two of them and said, quietly, to nobody, "The best gala I have ever planned."

Then everything happened fast. Rhys, trying to back away from Iris and her raised finger, stepped on the firing lanyard. The long rope of the ceremonial cannon, laid out on the floor for show, snagged his heel. He windmilled. Iris grabbed him. The lanyard yanked.

BOOM.

The cannon fired a blank charge somebody in logistics had loaded for the evening's salute, and hadn't mentioned to anyone. The whole hangar rang like a bell. Forty people dove under tables. The admiral stood up from behind a potted palm and looked at the cannon, then at Rhys, and slowly, deliberately, clapped.

"Salute," the admiral announced. "The gentleman saluted us. Atta boy."

The room decided, as rooms do, to be entertained. People got up off the floor. Somebody started the band again. A lieutenant commander picked the barrel of glasses off the floor and started stacking them back into a pyramid, worse than before.

Julio was not entertained. Julio came storming over with a folded napkin, which he handed to Rhys with the flat face of a man surrendering on his dignity. "Cover yourself. You two. Corner. Now. I am going to write a report that is going to have appendices."

They got shoved into a corner behind the refreshment table. A navy corner. There was a flag in it.

"I hate you," Iris told Rhys, in more or less a whisper, since Julio was ten feet away writing on a clipboard.

"I know."

"You ruined the one nice night I asked you for. One night. I did your cousin's wedding. I sat through your fantasy football draft. I asked for ONE gala."

Rhys looked at her. She was standing there in heels and underwear, foam in her hair, furious, and she was, objectively, the best looking thing in the building. He knew better than to say that out loud. So he said, "I'm a moron."

"Yes."

"A complete moron."

"Yes."

"And you're the most beautiful woman at this gala."

"That's a low bar tonight, Rhys."

"Can I kiss you?"

She looked at him. Foam in his hair. Napkin around his waist. Two socks. "You're going to get us arrested."

"Probably."

"...Yeah. Kiss me before Julio comes back."

He kissed her. She kissed back angry, which was her best mode, hands flat on his chest, and then her hands were not flat, they were pulling, and his mouth went to her neck, and she made a small sound she would deny later. Somewhere in there her bra came off. Somewhere in there the napkin came off. It happened fast and furious and entirely in the corner, against the ceremonial cannon, which was cold and smooth and exactly the wrong height for everything and they didn't care.

Iris got up on the barrel on her knees, heels hanging off, gripping the muzzle for balance. Rhys stepped in behind her.

"Condom," she said over her shoulder. "Wallet. Now. Before Julio."

He fumbled one out of his sock, which was still on, and rolled it on, and she said, "You kept a condom in your sock at a navy gala," and he said, "I'm a professional," and she said, "Just fuck me before I change my mind."

He pushed into her and she gasped, and the cannon took both their weights like a champ. He fucked her hard, both hands on her hips, her heels drumming against the barrel, her voice going high and then getting stuffed into her own arm. The band was playing. Nobody was looking at the corner. Or a few people were, and raising their glasses.

"Oh my god," she said, low. "Oh my god, Rhys, right there, don't stop."

He didn't stop. She came with her forehead against the cold metal of the barrel, biting her own wrist, shaking. He followed a minute after, gripping her hips, and rested his face between her shoulder blades, both of them panting, the cannon under them faintly warm from the blank.

Which was when Julio and Eveline came around the corner.

Julio dropped his clipboard.

"SIR!" he said, which was wrong on several levels, since Rhys was a civilian and Julio outranked everyone he could see. "You are under... you are being... Iris, ma'am, put down the cannon."

Iris, still bent over it, said, "Give me a second."

"No. No seconds. This is a federal..." Julio stopped, because Eveline had started laughing. Not giggling. Laughing, doubled over, hand on her knee.

"The cannon," she wheezed. "He's... on the cannon. Julio. The ceremonial cannon."

"It is not funny."

"It is the best thing that has ever happened at one of my events. I once watched a captain fall into a cake. This is better. This is SO much better."

"Evie."

"The best gala ever," she declared, wiping her eyes. "I'm putting it in the after-action report."

"You are not."

"I absolutely am."

Rhys pulled out and dealt with the condom, tying it off, looking around for somewhere to put it, and finally pocketing it because there was nowhere. Julio stood there rubbing his forehead. Then, from across the hangar, the admiral's voice rang out.

"Best stress relief I've seen in thirty years of these things. Write it down. New tradition."

The crowd cheered. A hundred officers, cheering. Somebody toasted. The band swung into something fast, and the party, incredibly, got better, loosened up, people laughing, dancing, two ensigns attempting to reenact the champagne tower collapse.

Julio turned to Iris with a face of total defeat. "Ma'am. Would you and your... partner... like a ride home? The duty driver is going back into town anyway."

"That would be great," Iris said.

"Please use the blanket in the car."

* * *

The duty driver dropped them at Iris's apartment a little after midnight. They walked up the stairs, Rhys still wearing the blanket like a cape, holding his folded clothes.

At her door, he stopped.

"I messed up," he said. "The invitation. I skimmed it. Guy in supply, he wrote 'formal attire' and my brain just went, sure, formal for the twenty-first century, free the body, whatever. I'm sorry, Iris. I had one job. Wear pants."

Iris looked at him. Her hair was a disaster. Foam had dried in it. Her dress was over her arm and her coat was somewhere in the hangar.

"You know what the worst part is?" she said.

"That everyone saw me naked?"

"The worst part is I had fun. Once the dying was done. The cannon part. That was fun."

"Really?"

"Don't build on that. Do not take 'the cannon part was fun' and turn it into a lifestyle." She unlocked the door, then turned around, grabbed his blanket-caped shoulders, and kissed him. Soft, this time. "Next time, read the damn invitation."

"Next time there's a next time?"

She pulled him inside by the blanket. "Get in here, you idiot. Bring the socks."

The door shut. Somewhere out in the dark, a navy annex settled down for the night, and in the morning there would be a photograph of the cannon in somebody's report, and Eveline would frame it.