by Heather Gean
“Well, it only has two hours so it had better hurry up.” My self-pity warranted sympathetic, quiet laughter from Van.
“I’ll let you get back to work. I have to get this sculpture to the city before I return the delivery truck I fixed this morning. I just called you to brighten my day. Talk to you later, Sunshine?” I smiled at his subtle joke and bid him farewell.
Upon hanging up with him Wes popped his head into my cubicle. He tossed an envelope onto my desk. “This was in my box, but it has your name on it. Charlie really needs new glasses.” He disappeared quickly, obviously on his way out to lunch before anyone could wrangle him into doing something. I picked up the envelope and glanced at the sender: Tennessee Department of Marriage Licensing. I rolled my eyes before ripping it open. I figured it was yet another confirmation that they had received and were processing my appeal. I hoped it was a court date to officially sever my ties to Ashley. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Miss Lorraine B. Clarke:
The appeal you filed against your license to wed Ashley C. Schroeder has been reviewed. The court requires a three-month period of couples’ counseling provided by the Department of Marriage Licensing before any further evaluation of your case is made. Bi-monthly sessions are the minimum requirement with a maximum of bi-weekly sessions at the counselor’s discretion. If at any time you decide to revoke your appeal the sessions will cease. Details of your first session are enclosed. Please feel free to call your local department with any questions or concerns you may have. The success of your relationship is of the utmost importance to us.
Sincerely,
William Sanders
Secretary of Marital Affairs
Even with the shock paralyzing my entire body, my hand automatically flipped to the next page. As I skimmed the page my eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. The government was requiring me to attend counseling sessions in New York City with Ashley Schroeder twice a month for the months of July, August, and September or until I decided I didn’t want out after all. The appeals process was impossible for this very reason. I could see how an appeal would suddenly lose importance when overall sanity was on the line. If you weren’t going to file for a new one who really gave a shit if the match was on your record forever? Well, for the sake of my dad’s career, I cared. It ate me up inside as I scanned over my death sentence again.
I wasted valuable time on the phone with the local Department of Marriage Licensing. When I was finally connected to the department head, she informed me that I could not get out of the counseling sessions if I planned for my appeal to be processed any further. “I’m not exactly calling about that,” I said. “I was wondering if I could get the sessions moved closer to here. The letter I got said that they would all be in New York and--”
“If your sessions have been scheduled in New York then that’s where you will be expected to attend them,” she interrupted.
“I don’t have the time or money for that. I have a job!”
“Government issued statements can be sent to your place of employment to explain your absences and prevent your termination. You can file a claim with the Department if you wish to be reimbursed for your travel expenses. If you wish to petition for a change of location you can file an appeal with the Relationship Rehabilitation office.”
“What if it doesn’t go through in time? I’m supposed to be in New York for my first session in two weeks!”
“Your failure to appear will automatically void your appeal.” I took a moment to slam the phone against my desk and let out a low growl. I put the phone back to my ear.
“This is bullshit.”
“Any complaints need to be filed with the Program Satisfaction office.”
“Oh my god!” I yelled. I slammed the phone down on the receiver. My forehead instantly fell against my desk with a painful thud. I began to mumble a long string of curse words under my breath.
It was then, in the middle of the breakdown of my life, that the theme of the next exhibit struck me. I picked up my pen and began to scribble barely legible information onto the forms in front of me. I checked the clock; I still had time before my meeting to get this done. My hand began to cramp as it raced across the page. I had just finished the last of it in time to rush across the museum to the board room. Everyone was waiting on me when I arrived.
“What’s the theme for the new exhibit, Miss Clarke?” Catherine asked with a smirk. She seemed to be taking pleasure in the hurried ponytail my hair had been thrown into as well as in my shaken demeanor. Her arms were crossed smugly over her chest, and she eyed a friend of hers across the long table as if to say ‘I told you so.’
“Marriage,” I said. I scanned the expressions that trickled down the table. The ones that mattered looked intrigued. Catherine, of course, looked annoyed. Within moments, members of the group began to voice their approval and press me to elaborate on the idea. And thus was born order from chaos.
~*~
Liz met me late night at a tacky little restaurant that served an assortment of cuisines ranging from crab legs to Chinese food to hamburgers. Once I had gotten the ball rolling on our new exhibit idea I had spent the rest of the evening going over the finer points of it. By the time I stopped long enough to realize that I was starving, it was nearly ten o’clock and everyone besides the security guard had gone home. It was nights like those, with my work-flattened hair and work-wrinkled clothes, that required large amounts of greasy lo-mien and a plate of onion rings. We settled into a table by the front windows, which were coated with condensation so that we couldn’t see outside.
As I dug into my onion rings, I pulled the letter I had received from the DML out of my purse and passed it across the table to Liz. “What’s this?” she asked. I said nothing, just nonchalantly dipped an onion ring in duck sauce before popping it into my mouth. I gave her a few minutes to soak everything in. It didn’t take long for her reaction. “Oh shit.”
“Mmmhmm.” I nodded as I lifted my drink to my lips. Liz’s eyes were bugged out like those of goldfish, and she was watching me, waiting for me to say something. I stared back at her.
“What are you going to do about this?” I replied with a shrug. Liz slid the letter back across the table to me. “Are you going to fight it?”
I tilted my head from side-to-side, leaving it in a strange swirl between nodding yes and shaking no. “I’m not sure I have time,” I finally said. Liz absorbed that with a nod. She went back to eating forkfuls of fried rice.
Through the static on the television in the corner came the blurry image and broken words of a game show host. As it briefly caught my attention I tried to solve the puzzle.
“It’s probably not worth it,” Liz said after a while. I was slightly confused by her statement as I drew my attention away from the snowy image on the television screen.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. It just seems that you would be wasting a lot of time and effort on an appeal that won’t go through.” She was right, of course, I could simply never marry Ashley and forget the license existed, but I had many factors that would make that route less than simple. Liz shrugged one of her shoulders with her fork already scooping up another bite from the red, square container. “After all, how bad could it be to be married to Ashley Schroeder?”
I had a hard time believing that I had just heard the words come from her mouth. I had seen her say them, and there she was, casually eating her fried rice, as if she had let no abominable utterance slip from her mouth. “You think I should marry Ashley even though I don’t want to marry him?”
Liz finally detected the absolute shock and disgust on my face and attempted to cover her ass. “Well, you know, the money and all.” I blinked in annoyance. “That’s a lot of money to turn down. Have you ever stopped to realize how lucky you are, Rainy? How almost every girl who goes and files for her match hopes for something like you got?”
“What about my dignity? I have other options that I believe would make me a lot happier than a fe
w billion dollars. I would rather be alone forever than marry that asshole.”
Liz threw her hands up as if to claim innocence. “All I’m saying is that you should consider the money. It’s like you won the lottery but you decided to burn the ticket instead of collect. It isn’t very practical.” Before I could argue, she rambled on. “I mean, you could have Van, who may be cool now but will just annoy you in ten years because he still doesn’t have a real job, or you could have Ashley, who will never be around, and all his money and have Van on the side as a guilty pleasure.” Liz motioned with her fork as she talked. “It just makes sense.”
Suddenly the low crackling of the static on the television seemed loud, as did the clacking of pots and pans from back in the kitchen. A guy was sitting a few tables away, turning the page of his newspaper, the rustling of which seemed to echo in my head. The steam rolling up from the buffet made the air in the restaurant too thick to breathe with my throat tightened from annoyance.
“I don’t need a man to provide me with financial security. That’s why I went to college. That’s why I have a job.”
Liz sighed and tilted her head at me. “You are giving up something people would kill for all on the basis that right now you have an infatuation with a grungy artist.”
“No, Liz, I’m giving up a meaningless bunch of material shit for something most people really would kill for, a chance at love.”
“Love doesn’t come FDIC, Rainy. You can’t count on love.”
“There are things more valuable than money, Liz. Like happiness and trust. I know there is a risk involved. It’s high stakes. There are always risks. It probably wouldn’t be worth it if there weren’t.” I rolled my eyes and folded shut the takeout containers my food came in. I had my purse on my shoulder within seconds. I would rather share my meal with Ringo than with the gold digger masquerading as my best friend. “I gotta get home.”
“Rainy, you’re being stupid,” she said in an attempt to reason with me.
“Well, Liz, you’re being a bitch. Thanks for putting everything in perspective. After all, what are friends for?”
The bell on the door jingled loudly as it slammed behind me on my way out. I walked across the parking lot in an angry daze. Liz wasn’t required to agree with me, but that wasn’t exactly why I was upset. Deep down inside of me it was because on some level I feared that everything she said may have been right.
~*~
Ringo tugged at his leash as I led him up the stairs to Sasha’s house. His tail was rapidly slapping my leg as he sniffed every inch of ground we treaded across. He could probably smell the cat that lurked around Sasha’s house from time to time. I could only hope he wouldn’t see it. His strength was easily a match for me, and I wasn’t in the mood to struggle with him. It had been one of those mornings.
Sasha appeared on the porch wearing an oversized t-shirt and an old pair of cutoff guy’s jeans that hit her at mid-shin. Her hair stuck out in random chunks. She looked as if she had been up all night. “You look like hell,” I said to her.
“I could say the same for you.” She rested against the rails of her porch. “You don’t have to go, you know. You could say screw the government.”
I paused to look at the ground.
“I already fed him this morning. He’s been full-speed since I woke up so he should pass out soon.” Ringo was following his nose in circles around me. I stepped over the leash to keep it from wrapping me up.
“We need to have a girls’ weekend when you get back. We need to get away for a while, you know, take a little time to do the things we want to do instead of the things we have to do. You, me, and Liz could drive until we find the Warped Tour and follow it around for a few days.” She was trying to lift my spirits, but for some reason they wouldn’t budge. She sighed herself into a yawn.
“I’m still not speaking to Liz.”
“Oh… that’s right,” she remembered. “Well, just us then. Either way. Yeah?”
“If the next two days don’t kill me.”
I passed Ringo’s leash off to Sasha and lingered on her front steps for a moment. It looked like rain, and I could only hope that that would somehow indefinitely delay my plane.
It didn’t.
I arrived in New York about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, actually. I’m pretty sure that is the first time I had ever experienced that phenomena in any of my dealings with airports. I was thoroughly annoyed by the time I retrieved my luggage. The city was packed and dirty. The grime of it seemed to attach to me as I tried to get a cab. I ended up walking. I wasn’t going very far.
Ashley’s secretary looked as if I had stunned her with a single look. The second I slid my sunglasses up onto my head her face went white. I had her pinned under my stare, leaving her helplessly praying for an urgent phone call or a stack of paperwork she could use to ignore me. “Good morning,” I said with a sinister smile.
“Good morning, Miss Clarke. Mr. Schroeder isn’t expecting you for another half hour.” What she really meant was that she had planned to be conveniently on break by then. I felt sort of bad catching her in the crossfire.
“Is he busy? I’m really not in the position to wait.”
I had never seen such an organized woman look so unorganized. She frantically flipped through the pages of the appointment book. After sighing over and scanning the book for a few frenzied seconds, she picked up the phone. She murmured a few things into the receiver that I didn’t bother to listen in on, and she returned the phone to the desk. When her task had been accomplished she looked relieved.
Ashley appeared from the office door down the hall within moments. As always, he wore a perfectly pressed suit and a carefully contrived expression. His gray eyes sparkled as he smiled. “Miss Clarke,” he said. His voice carried through the room. “It is such a pleasure to finally see you.”
“The pleasure is all yours, I’m sure,” I said with an equally fake smile.
“Would you like some coffee?” He knew how difficult it was for me to turn down coffee, but in this case I didn’t think twice about it.
“No, thanks. I’m here on business, Mr. Schroeder. Surely you haven’t forgotten.”
“I believe our appointment isn’t until three thirty. You’re a little early to be here on business.”
“I want you to reimburse me for my travel expenses. That includes a hotel for tonight.”
Ashley’s eyes met mine with a flash of opposition. He quickly recovered his level, passive demeanor. “I already have arrangements made for you. You know you always have a room in my house.”
Ashley began walking back down the hallway as if I was supposed to follow him. I tagged along for the sake of argument. We passed a few men in suits carrying on a loud, heated discussion that included waving around charts and loosening ties. A few other employees seemed to disappear into cubicles when they saw Ashley, like gophers into holes at the appearance of an enemy. He cut the corner and neared a coffee pot in a large break room. The lanky fellow standing near the water cooler caught one glimpse of Ashley and escaped as quickly as he could, leaving us alone in a room of too much gray.
“In your house?”
“What sort of man would I be if I made my fiancée stay in a hotel?” He casually poured his coffee into a Styrofoam cup. His tie was so perfectly knotted that I wanted to grab it and choke him with it.
I narrowed my eyes at him. The kind of man who files an appeal against his fiancée behind her back and fails to tell her, I thought. The kind of man who lies about his feelings.
“I’m not sure I feel comfortable staying at your house with your being a backstabber and all.”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean.” Ashley picked up another cup from the stack and filled it also. He slowly searched for lids.
“Filing an appeal behind my back feels a lot like betrayal to me.”
He nodded as he seemed to suddenly recall the incident. “If I’m not mistaken you have the knives to me too.”
“
Maybe it was self-defense.”
He narrowed his eyes at me as he passed me the cup of coffee I had already refused. His voice was condescendingly smooth and low. “Or maybe you got scared and wanted out. We are surprisingly alike.” My heart caught in my throat as I furrowed my eyebrows in anger.
“If you wanted out then why were you going to all that trouble? Why fly down to Memphis and meet my family and act interested?”
“If you wanted out then why do you care?” Ashley took a sip of his coffee. “It was a momentary lapse of judgment on my part, and yours too. You’re here to get it sorted out.”
“I’m here to get out.”
The corners of Ashley’s lips curled into a grin. “If you’re only here to get out then why are you standing in my office right now? This has nothing to do with getting out. This has to do with your trying to figure me out. I didn’t file that appeal because I didn’t want to marry you, Miss Clarke. I filed that appeal because I didn’t want to get married in general. It was a rash decision. I made a mistake. By three-thirty you should be able to admit that you made a mistake, too.” He was standing there like the voice of reason, telling me as one might tell a child exactly how to feel and what to do.
Anger rose up from within me and escaped as a defiant chuckle. “You just made very clear to me that I didn’t make a mistake.” I turned around and tossed the full cup of coffee in the trashcan by the door.
“See you at three-thirty, darling.”
Chapter 15
It was scheduled to last two hours. Time could only pass more slowly had I spent it in Hell for a fraction of eternity. The room was equipped with the most taunting clock in the entire world. It was nothing more than metallic numbers mounted in a ceiling-to-floor circular pattern on the wall opposite the windows. The second hand on the clock was like a three-and-a-half-feet-long needle piercing my heart with every painfully slow, silent tick. At least when clocks made a ticking sound you could be reassured that time was passing, but those silent seconds could have been lasting forever and no one could have been sure without looking. Watching the clock was highly discouraged. It was an example of unengaged behavior. So was requesting pain killers for a stress headache.
