Henry pushed off from the table and wandered out of the room. When he came back, he was carrying a brightly wrapped box about the size of a mediocre dictionary. He tossed it on the table in front of Shawn.

“That’s really special, but didn’t you get anything for Gus?” Shawn said.

“It’s not for you,” Henry said. “I’m in charge of Bud’s gag gift. I need you to deliver it to his bachelor party tonight.”

Gus and Shawn stared at him, not understanding.

“That’s the emergency?” Shawn said finally.

“Maybe ‘emergency’ was a little strong,” Henry said. “But it’s important to me that Bud get this tonight.”

“Just not important enough that you would bother going to his bachelor party.”

“I have my reasons,” Henry said.

“Like what?” Shawn said.

“When a man is preparing to declare lifelong fidelity to one woman, it seems morally wrong to celebrate that by spitting in the face of those vows,” Henry said.

“First of all, vows don’t have faces,” Shawn said. “You’re thinking of cows, which do have faces, but you really don’t want to spit in them, because they can spit back.”

“Those were llamas,” Gus said, remembering that one long afternoon when their elementary class field trip had taken them to a farm. “And the teacher warned you about five hundred times not to taunt them.”

“Second,” Shawn said, “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from a man who organized a bachelor party in Vegas for Earl Mountlock that was so insane the wedding had to be postponed for a week because the judge refused to let the groom out on bail.”

“That was before I started listening to Dr. Laura,” Henry said. “She has a lot of wisdom on the subject. Are you going to do this or not?”