Hey! I am confused, I thought. Helene's handbag! I'd thought of it before. Of course! Women carry all sorts of things.
"Helene," I said, "do you have a squeeze bottle in your bag? Perfume or hair spray or deodorant, maybe?"
"Bill Wright, if you think for one minute that I'm going to—"
"Have you?" I cut in.
She spluttered. "Perfume," she finally said grudgingly. "Though with that eau-de-whatever Gladys is wearing, I should think—"
"Oh, stop it! Now will you please get the perfume out!"
She did; then she went wandering off to aphelion in her orbit and momentarily out of my line of sight. When she came back toward perihelion with the chandelier, I said, "Now, look, wriggle around a little axially if you can—"
That did it. Helene exploded into a verbal nova. "You lecherous beast!" she cried. "It isn't enough for you to dally with this shameless blonde hussy on our wedding night. Not enough for you to float along looking like a blissful ogling ogre, making mental mockery of your wedding vows. No, you—you BEM!—you have to ask your meek and retiring, your quiet and unassuming, your defenseless and self-effacing wife to act like a bumping and grinding burlesque queen!"
And my meek, retiring, quiet, unassuming, etc., wife went on etcetera-ing ad practically infinitum.
When swiftly trajecting Helene's tirade paused for lack of words and/or breath, I said meekly above the gently orbiting blonde's chuckles, "But I was only trying to get us out of this mess. I wanted you to perform a slight axial rotation so that you could aim your—er—posterior at the cellar door when you next reach aphelion near it. Do you understand?"