Page 35 of Bless This Hot Mess

Ronald, always ready to veer into the absurd with a foot firmly on the gas, added with a vocal flourish,

“Siegfried and Roy play with their tigers all day.”

Japheth shrugged theatrically,

“Again, they’re not in the Bible,

and I think they’re…”

“Hey! You!! Ya gotta have friends,” Rebekkah, Japheth, and Ronald, as if well-rehearsed (which they were not), came together in chorus, their voices bouncing off the brick of adjacent buildings.

“God got lonely, so He made a Holy Ghost!

Hey! You!! Ya gotta have friends.

Throwing a party? Jesus is a bitchin’ host.

Hey! You!! Ya gotta have friends.

Three’s a magic number. It’s the most!”

The parking lot’s shadows deepened, but their voices carried on, as if the lack of an audience didn’t matter. This was their moment, completely untethered from reality but moored fast to each other.

Rebekkah, now fully immersed in her role as lead singer (at least on this new number), continued with fervour,

“Jesus had his disciples when they sat down to feed.”

Japheth, chest puffed out like a proud biblical scholar (or maybe just proud of his vocal range), followed,

“Noah had three sons: Ham and Shem and me!”

Ronald, twirled a non-existent baton (or cane, it’s hard to determine which he was imagining), before delivering his line,

“Joseph was the Liberace of his day!

They both had coloured coats, but Liberace was…”

Trinity burst into the final refrain, their voices soaring over the sound of distant traffic and the hum of fluorescent lights,

“Hey! You!! Ya gotta have friends.

God got lonely, so He made a Holy Ghost.

Hey! You!! Ya gotta have friends.

Throwing a party? Jesus is a bitchin’ host.

Hey! You!! Ya gotta have friends.

Three’s a magic number. It’s the most!”

As the final note hung in the air, then slipped away into the night, there was a moment of silence. The kind of silence where the weight of everything unsaid lingered and all were hesitant to break the spell as unaddressed worries swirled around them like trash reluctant to stay in the bin. The absurdity of their situation, the spontaneity of their decision, their potential delusion, and the fact that they had just publicly declared their throuple status in a bus station parking lot ballooned into a pregnant pause between them–until finally, Rebecca broke the silence.

“Well, that was something,” Rebekkah finally said, shaking her head in disbelief, though her smile betrayed her. “I feel like we had a really great flow together.”

Japheth glanced at Ronald, who had jumped onto a bench seat and clapped his hands against his jaw. “I don’t know how we allknewthe lyrics at thesametime, to something we’ve never sung before. We got Holy Ghosted!”

The three of them stood there for a beat and felt their skin prickle with the possibility.