Here, Have a Husband

by Heather Gean

  It was a strange concept to process, but I didn’t have long. By the time we reached the crowd a few random electric guitar chords sounded off. Scattered cheers floated up into the air in unison with cigarette smoke.

  Remington Wilder and his band, including his equally talented guitar-playing counterpart and brother, Sebastian, a drummer who went by the name of Hash, and a bassist named Eric who was rumored to have had a degree in Biochemical Engineering, took the stage and made their introduction. From then on every cheer, chord, and rhythm could only be summed up into one word: sublime. It was anything but your average screamo show.

  I felt unprepared for the concert experience that followed. The first few songs I heard in a daze as I watched Remington Wilder’s fingers effortlessly produce guitar riffs that sounded more incredible in person than they did coming through the surround sound stereo speakers in my apartment. It wasn’t until a howling girl pushed her way in between me and Van and linked her arms around our shoulders that I was officially thrown into things. Punk rock etiquette, anything goes, but that didn’t stop me from involuntarily cutting my eyes over at her. It was only seconds before Van introduced me to the brunette as Piper McMahon, who radiated spunk and spontaneity from every facet.

  “It’s great to meet ya,” she said over the last few chords of a song. Earnest hazel eyes peeked out from under her chunky bangs. Her accent was thickly Irish, and her tone warmed my veins like a few draughts of Guinness. “So you’re the mail-order-bride of Ashley Schroeder?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well isn’t that just grand?” Her deep dimples shone through her obvious disapproval of the new marriage system. “I swear I don’t know what this country’s coming to.” Cheers nearly drown out the last of her statement, and she took that opportunity to change pace entirely.

  “So what are you doing out with this lad? Do you not know he’ll get you in a bloody lot of trouble?” Piper asked with a grin. She then turned to Van. “Does Ash know you kidnapped his lover yet?” Van smiled a little, but even her talkative nature couldn’t separate him from his habit of brevity.

  “He does not.” This didn’t seem to phase him, but it had been gnawing at my conscience since we’d left.

  Piper tsk-tsked him. “I’m telling you, Rainy, bloody lot of trouble. But aren’t the Damned just incredible?” Her arms were still firmly around our shoulders. Somehow it felt like we’d become fast friends. She wouldn’t allow awkwardness. “What is it that you do?” she asked me loudly over the opening chords of another song.

  “I’m an exhibit coordinator at an art museum in Memphis.” Her eyes lit up.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said, then waved her hand as if to erase that statement. “I’m a critic for Revolutionary!” I recognized Revoluntionary as a fairly reputable magazine containing everything from info to reviews on bands, shows, literature, indie films, and photography and art exhibits. Piper was such an excellent connection for me that the utter devastation of knowing I’d missed James Wellington’s first visit to my exhibit was downscaled to a minor discrepancy. The two of us shared an excited laugh.

  “If you ever get down to Memphis I’d love to show you around!” Saying anything more than that was too self-indulgent, but thankfully Piper took the bait.

  “Right, we’ll be in touch.” For the first time since she’d appeared her arm wasn’t resting over my shoulders. She pulled a pen from her back pocket and, as I offered it, scrawled my number on her arm right between a colorful tattoo of a robin and a set of stars. She wasted no time making liberal use of my forearm. “That’s my cell. No use in calling the office. They just get things bullocksed up.” When my arm was returned to me, Piper stayed around long enough to make final observation. “I can’t believe you aren’t inked. You look nearly naked between the two of us.” She motioned to Van. “Anyway! I’ll leave you two. I have to find Casper. Lad ran right off with my drink.”

  “Drinking on the job?” Van asked in playful disapproval. Piper brushed him off with a wave of her hand.

  “Cheers!” By the time she left us I felt like the night couldn’t get better. After seeing Dante and the Damned live and for free than to see them and meeting a critic interested in my exhibit, I couldn’t expect more.

  After the crowd suckered music out of the band for a half hour after their original two-hour set had ended, things began to wind down. The crowd thinned tremendously, allowing the chill in the air to finally creep up around me. A crew was already working to get things packed up.

  Van and I continued to stand in the emptying field. I hugged myself and watched as the magic disappeared, piece by piece. It was always such a strange feeling to witness the aftermath. The loud drinkers were now the drunks being dragged to their vehicles; the amps and speakers that had throbbed for the past few hours were now mute and being loaded into the back of a van; beer bottles and other various leftovers littered the field.

  “Where’s Penelope?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since we’d arrived, not that that had been a huge misfortune.

  Van scanned the stage area then nodded his head in her direction. The answer to that question was only a glance over my shoulder away. Penelope stood at the edge of the stage with only a half a foot between her and Sebastian Wilder. I returned my stare to Van, who seemed totally cool with this. Over the course of the evening I had come to the conclusion that Van and Penelope weren’t a couple. Still, I couldn’t see many good reasons that he’d be carting around Ashley’s sister. It gave me hope, though, that if Ashley trusted Van with his little sister then he wouldn’t mind that I’d tagged along to the show.

  The open, button-down shirt Van wore billowed in the cool breeze that swept past us. I tightened my arms around myself as chills ran down them. “Are you cold?” he asked. “I should’ve told you to bring a sweatshirt or something.” Before I could officially answer or protest, Van was sliding off the long-sleeved shirt and holding it out to me.

  “No, really.” I felt guilty about taking his shirt even if it was good manners for a guy to sacrifice warmth for a girl. Van half-sighed and shook his head at me.

  “Don’t be difficult.” He smiled as he brought his shirt around behind me and tugged it over my shoulders, pausing long enough to beckon my arms into the sleeves. The faded fabric was warm against my skin as if it had just come out of a dryer.

  “Ah, just leaving it with don’t be difficult, not, you’re being difficult just like Ashley?” I teased.

  “Actually, Ashley doesn’t like to be difficult. He likes for things to go according to plan.” Van was still standing closer than arms’ length to me. He flipped the collar back down on one side where it was stubbornly straightened upward. The edges of his warm hands tickled lightly over my neck before moving back to tug at his gray t-shirt. “Better?”

  I nodded at him. “Thanks.” My voice sounded muffled to me through the fragments of my eardrums that remained after the show.

  I glanced back over at Penelope, who was now romantically in the arms of Sebastian. I didn’t look long. “Would Ashley be okay with your letting her make out with some random guy in a band?”

  Van glanced at the coupling pair. “He wouldn’t, but he likes to follow the rules. Her parents told her she couldn’t date Bastian anymore so--”

  “She’s dating Sebastian Wilder?”

  “Why else do you think they’d agreed to play a show for free in the middle of nowhere? I mean, most of these events are personal favors called in by one person or another.”

  “Wow…” The entire night was difficult to digest. It was a few huge doses of awesome that I’d swallowed whole and was then wondering how I’d managed it. Penelope wasn’t dating Van; she was dating the legendary guitarist of Dante and the Damned. And Van just so happened to be friends with Piper, who just so happened to work for a magazine that would give my exhibit insane amounts of publicity. It hadn’t turned out how I’d thought it would when I’d been sitting alone in the backyard of the Schroeder mansion d
rinking beer and cursing everything. It did, however, give me hope that this mess I was in would work itself out, one way or another.

  Chapter 6

  For years throughout high school and perhaps now and then in college, my friends and I had secretly strived for the perfection of the people in magazines: a little more make-up, a little more time in the gym, a few highlights here, a bazillion hair products there, an hour too long getting ready before going out. It wasn’t until I was sitting in a stylist’s chair with a crew of people buzzing around me that I realized how ridiculous our goal had been. If every girl in America had a professional hair and make-up crew then achieving flawlessness on a daily basis would take no more effort than rolling out of bed in the morning, or in my case being dragged out of bed.

  It was close to eight, and for at least an hour I’d been poked and prodded at, or more accurately brushed and dabbed at. Apparently, I had unmanageable hair. My curls had been slathered in tons of serums and tugged in every imaginable way; my scalp not only ached but tingled just behind my ears. My tiny nose stud was not agreeing with the cover-up make-up artist; she griped about the difficulty in making my nose appear symmetrical because of it. Not to mention the fact that I had brown eyes instead of blue was throwing off the wardrobe team since they’d been misinformed. I felt more than a little self-conscious by the time they’d made all of their assessments. The only redeeming factor was that the coffee at the magazine headquarters was far better than that Monica forced upon everyone at the Schroeder house. However, when the layers of people standing between me and the mirror were finally peeled away, I was astonished at to see that I actually looked like a cover girl.

  Wardrobe was a similar transformation. I’d given Monica notes on my personal style, most of which seemed to have been ignored. I flipped through each item of clothing hanging on my designated rack, full of reds, blues, and whites, and found myself disappointed. I wasn’t a polo shirt and golf shorts kind of girl, and I definitely wasn’t going to tie the sleeves of a sweater around my shoulders. When I asked the head of wardrobe if there were any other options, he gave me a disapproving glare and hurried away. It was only moments before he returned with Kat in tow. Kat, whom I remembered from the impromptu meeting on the terrace the day before, immediately sized me up. With her sharp eyes, she looked me over and then silently examined the clothes picked out for me. It was one of the most uncomfortable silences I had ever experienced. Finally, with a thin-lipped expression, she returned her stare to me. It took great composure not to squirm.

  “This girl’s never played golf a day in her life. Get her a few sundresses with heels. Make sure they’re classy with a bit of an edge. Call studio seven and get the runner to bring over some of that new, counter-culture casual look that they swear is coming back in style. I don’t know why I’m doing your job.” On that note she stalked away, probably to go smoke another cigarette to put extra gravel in her voice. The head of wardrobe scowled at me before dressing me appropriately and handing me over to the least forgiving member of the whole crew: the cameraman.

  Turn. Tilt. Smile. Put your hand there. Act like you love him.

  Act like I love him? I barely knew him, but there I stood beside him smiling and posing with a huge engagement ring on my finger. Ashley sent it over with someone from his side of the make-over headquarters, and she passed it off to me as if she was giving me a nickle I’d dropped. No down on one knee, no dreamy setting or romantic spiel, just an expensive, meaningless piece of metal and stone to weigh down my left hand.

  After hours of fake smiles, aching cheeks, and sore feet, the photographer, dressed all in black like a mime, finally stopped clicking and gave a glance at his watch. “Break for lunch? Reconvene in an hour to do outdoors?” His suggestions were taken by everyone as instructions, and the room began to murmur and shuffle about. I sighed as my posture drooped. Ashley put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Lunch is on me.” He winked before striding away, glancing back only once as if to say ‘keep up.’

  As awful as the day had been, lunch sounded phenomenal. The growls of my stomach were hardly suppressed by the few cups of coffee I’d substituted for breakfast. If I hadn’t been so damned tired I wouldn’t have missed breakfast or required so much coffee, but that was the price I’d paid for accompanying Van on his late-night excursion.

  Ashley led us just outside the studio where things were warm and sunny. A huge weight lifted off of my chest and left itself at the studio door. Only a few steps into our two-block walk to get some food from a Thai restaurant Ashley was in the process of speaking volumes about, a voice from the studio door called us back. Mrs. Schroeder and her twins caught up with us within seconds. Ashley greeted his mother with a mock embrace. “What are you girls doing here?”

  “Well, I could think of no better thing to do with my afternoon than spend it with my darling son and his beautiful fiancée.” I offered Mrs. Schroeder the same smile I’d given the photographer, and it was faker than the words dripping from her lipsticked mouth. “Care if we join you to lunch?”

  I wasn’t consulted before he responded, “Rainy and I were going down to the Thai restaurant two blocks over if you’re up for the walk.”

  Mrs. Schroeder let out a prolonged laugh. “You’d think a lady who plays tennis every morning would have no trouble walking two blocks.” Ashley added a laugh to the end of her statement, assuring her that he hadn’t meant she was old or out of shape. After spending all the time and money on as many facelifts as she’d probably had, I would’ve been a bit touchy about being referred to as anything above thirty as well.

  “So how is the photo shoot going?” she asked as we resumed our walk. “Isn’t Kat just fabulous?”

  “It’s going well. Of course, we haven’t seen any proofs yet, but I feel good about it.”

  Again, I kept my mouth shut, and managed to do so all the way to the restaurant.

  At the table I was positioned directly across from the twins. Due to their vastly different choices in clothing, it wasn’t difficult to tell them apart though their physical features were identical. Walker was the twin wearing pink, and Penelope was the twin with chipped black nail polish on the hand holding up her head while falling asleep at the table. If anyone cared to look closely enough, they would spot a hickey hidden just under the collar of Walker’s polo. Everyone in the family seemed to have secrets. I glanced over at Ashley who was intently studying his menu and wondered what sort he was keeping.

  “Lorrie,” Mrs. Schroeder began. I didn’t hear another word of what she said and was quick to interrupt her.

  “It’s Rainy.”

  “Oh, well, my apologies. Why don’t you go by Lorraine? Lorraine is a much classier name,” she said looking up from her menu.

  “Lorraine is my mom’s name. It cuts down on confusion.”

  “Yes, but for our purposes. I mean, up here in New York no one is going to confuse you with your mother.” Her high-pitched laugh dragged on and on like nails on a chalkboard.

  “I like Rainy.”

  “I like it, too,” Ashley added. My surprised gaze caught him smile supportively at me. “It suits her, I think.”

  Mrs. Schroeder titled her head slightly and narrowed her eyes. She took a sip of the water with lemon in front of her. “It was simply a suggestion.”

  Walker chimed in, “Rainy sounds cool. Like you could be in a band or something.”

  Mrs. Schroeder thinly smiled. “Well, Walker, she isn’t in a band, she’s marrying Ashley.” You’d have to have been deaf not to have heard the negative implications in the tone of her statement. Walker rolled her eyes the second Mrs. Schroeder turned her attention back to her menu. The twins may have legally been adults, but Walker acted like a fourteen-year-old.

  The conversation needed to turn away of me for a while. “How’s the khanom chin namya here?” I asked Ashley. I wasn’t a connoisseur of Thai food, but it was the first thing I saw on the menu. I probably mispronounced it, but nobody corrected m
e.

  “I’m not sure. I’d recommend the gai himaphan. What are you ladies having?”

  Mrs. Schroeder was selfishly absorbed in her menu. “If the menu was in decent English I might be able to tell you.” Walker suggested another random dish and then volunteered the same for Penelope who was dozing behind her tinted glasses.

  The waitress reappeared promptly, and Ashley relayed all of our orders to her. She smiled adoringly down at him as she wrote everything onto her notepad. “You won’t be having any of your usual this afternoon?” she asked. I should’ve guessed he was a usual from the milk and honey of her voice. If he’d been my fiancée any way other than just legally, I might’ve been suspicious of her sweetness.

  “Uhm--” Ashley stuttered. It grabbed my attention. It was the most unintentional, nervous sound that had ever slipped from Ashley’s mouth. “I’ve sworn off liquor by strict orders from my doctor. I’m kind of fond of my liver,” he joked. The waitress’s laugh was gooey like molasses as she collected the menus.

  “More sweet tea?” she asked me. I glanced down at my half-empty glass and nodded her way. “I’ll be right back with that.”

  “I find it very unusual that you drink sweetened tea during meals,” Mrs. Schroeder said. “Your teeth must be horrible.”

  “I happen to have excellent teeth. Not a single filling. The cameraman was very impressed.”

  Mrs. Schroeder hid her disapproval with another dramatic sip of her water. “Charming.” It wasn’t hard to pick up on the fact that Mrs. Schroeder found me inadequate in every way. I used that to justify my mutual dislike for her.

  “I’m jealous that I’ve never been a cover story!” Walker said. She smiled as she swirled the ice around in her Coke with her index finger. Mrs. Schroeder swatted at her wrist to discourage the bad table manners.