Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume)

by Bill Bernico

  “No,” I said, pointing to the last listing on the obituary page. “This one.”

  Gloria read the name and then immediately looked up at me. “So that’s what’s got into you, eh?” she said. “You didn’t really think this was me, did you? Did you read the whole thing? Down here at the bottom it says that Miss Campbell was a second grade teacher from Pacoima who was hit by a car while crossing an intersection in downtown Pacoima last Saturday. The only reason it made the L.A. papers is because she went to school here fifteen years ago.”

  I took the paper from Gloria’s hand and threw it on my desk. “So, is that a yes?” I said.

  “Yes?” Gloria said. “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, to my question of will you marry me today,” I said. “Well?”

  “All this because of an obit?” Gloria said.

  “It wasn’t only that,” I told her. “But that obit made me realize how fragile and unpredictable life can be. And I don’t want to pick up the paper one morning and read your obit for real and wonder what might have been. So what do you say? How about if we close the office this morning and go and get married?”

  Gloria took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t think it works that fast, Elliott,” she said. “Isn’t there a couple day wait and a blood test and all that other stuff?”

  “Screw it,” I said. “Let’s fly to Reno or Las Vegas and do it right now. What do you say? Do you have any adventure left in you?”

  Gloria checked her wristwatch, flipped the page in her daily planner and then looked back up at me. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the office door. “Let’s go,” she said, “Before you come to your senses.”

  We took the elevator to the lobby and hurried to the parking lot behind our building. I opened Gloria’s door and she slid in. I slid behind the wheel and headed south toward the airport.

  “What about extra clothes and things?” Gloria said.

  “We’ll get what we need when we get there,” I said. “Let’s not spoil the spontaneity now.”

  “All right,” Gloria said, smiling and holding onto my right arm as I drove. “What about all our friends and family? Won’t they all be disappointed that there was no formal wedding for them to come to?”

  “We can have the formal wedding later,” I said. “After we’ve had time to send out invitations and rent a hall and find a band and all those other things that come with weddings. But just think, when we go to bed tonight you’ll be Mrs. Elliott Cooper.”

  “I will?” Gloria said. “But what if I want to keep my maiden name? I could still wake up as Gloria Campbell, couldn’t I?”

  Gloria could tell the twisted look on my face that I didn’t approve. “What?” she said. “You’re not one of those traditionalists that insists on his wife changing her name to suit him, are you?”

  “And just what’s wrong with tradition?” I said. “The thing about tradition is that it has its roots secured in long ago. Why rock the boat now?”

  “How’s that rocking the boat if I just prefer keeping the name I was born with?” Gloria said. “I’d still be your wife and everything else would be just the way it was supposed to be when two people get married.”

  I eased my car to the curb and killed the engine, turning to Gloria with one arm over the back of my seat. “Look,” I said. “I’ve known that you were a strong-willed, independent kind of person all along, but I don’t think it’s asking too much for you to take my name when you marry me. It’s the way things should be and that’s how I want it.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Gloria said. “What if after we got married I wanted you to take my last name? How would that sit with you?”

  “That’s not even a valid argument,” I said. “There’s no precedent for it and nobody does that, so why would I?”

  “What about John Lennon?” Gloria said. “He wasn’t born John Ono Lennon. His mother named him John Winston Lennon but he changed it when he married Yoko Ono. That’s how much he thought of her.”

  “But I’m not John Lennon,” I said. “And I don’t want to be Elliott Campbell. Men in our family have always been Coopers and I for one am not going break with tradition to satisfy your women’s libber quirks.”

  “Quirks?” Gloria said. “I’ll give you a quirk.” With that she opened her door and exited to the street, walking north again toward Hollywood.

  “Fine,” I yelled out her door, reaching over to pull it shut again. “If that’s how you feel.” I pulled away from the curb and just drove. It didn’t matter where I was going as long as it was away from here. After six or seven blocks of stewing, I had time to calm down and turned the car around, returning to the spot where Gloria had bailed on me. She was nowhere to be found. I drove further up the street, looking out both sides of my car for her. A block ahead I caught a glimpse of her stepping onto a city bus that said Hollywood across the front, above the windshield. I let it go and returned to the office.

  I rode the elevator to the third floor and slowly walked back to my office. I was alone again and could re-read this morning’s paper if I felt like it. I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t feel like anything. I began to doubt myself and my convictions. Was I being too stubborn and unyielding in my views on traditional marriages? Would it cost me the woman I loved? Or was Gloria being unreasonable in her insistence to buck tradition and keep her own name? If we were to have a future of any kind, one of us would have to bend to the will of the other, but which one of us would that be? I didn’t think I was being too demanding by expecting Gloria to do the same thing my mother and her mother and her mother before her had done by leaving their maiden names behind and becoming Coopers.

  I agonized over the question for the next hour and a half, trying to play out scenarios from both points of view. When all was said and done, I decided that my future without Gloria was no future worth having at all. I got out from behind my desk, locked the office door on my way out and walked back toward the elevator. I got in and pressed the button for the lobby. When the doors opened, I found myself standing face to face with Gloria. We stood there looking at each other for a moment and before either of us could open our mouths to say anything, the automatic elevator door closed again.

  I pressed the lobby button again and when the door opened this time, I could see Gloria with her finger on the elevator call button. That was enough to break the ice and she stepped into the car with me. The doors closed behind us and the elevator began to rise. Between floors Gloria turned and hit the red emergency stop button and the car jolted to a stop. She turned around again to face me and held both of her arms out, curling her fingers inward toward herself. I smiled and stepped up to her, wrapping my arms around her waist. I pulled her to me and kissed her. When we parted again, we both began to speak at the same time.

  “I’m sorry,” we said in unison and we each broke out in a wide grin.

  “No,” Gloria said, “You were right. I’d be proud to be a Cooper, Mrs. Elliott Cooper. What was I thinking?”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” I said. “But I’d come to the conclusion that it didn’t really matter what name you went by as long as we were together. So if you want to go on being Gloria Campbell…”

  “But I don’t,” Gloria said. “After I got out of the car and onto that bus, I kept saying, ‘Gloria Cooper, Gloria Campbell,’ over and over in my head. At one point I think I even said it out loud, probably more than once, when I noticed other people on the bus looking at me strangely. I ended up getting off the bus three blocks before my stop.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’d be proud to have you as Gloria Cooper, but just so you know, I’d be just as happy with Campbell. Either way, you wouldn’t have to get rid of any monogrammed pajamas after the wedding.”

  “Or my class ring with the GC initials on either side of the stone,” Gloria said. She hugged me again and then checked her watch again. “There’s still one more flight to Las Vegas tonight. Let’s make November sixteenth a day to remember and tell our grandc
hildren about.”

  I reached past her and released the red emergency stop button. The elevator stopped on the third floor and I hit the button for the lobby again. The doors closed and we found a way to make one more kiss last for three floors.

  We made it all the way to the airport this time with just eight minutes to spare. Since we didn’t have to deal with checking any luggage we were able to purchase our tickets and walk directly onto the plane. Las Vegas was a mere two hundred thirty-five miles away and we could be there in less than an hour. The cab took us directly to the wedding chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard. From the street it looked like a miniature country church, complete with a steeple not more than fifteen feet tall. The iron fence around the front of the chapel sported little iron hearts and coach lights, all painted white, like the chapel itself. The lush green grass leading up to the chapel door was nothing more than Astroturf. Around the side of the building was a canopied driveway where couples in a real hurry could take advantage of the drive-thru chapel and be on their way before their French Fries got cold.

  The chapel and its amenities were charming, while the huge neon sign at the curbside was pure gaudy and typical Las Vegas. Conveniently enough, there was a motel alongside as well as across the street from the chapel. And a bit further down the block was a tall sign advertising strippers twenty-four hours a day.

  I paid the cabbie and Gloria and I stepped out of the cab and up onto the sidewalk. We looked at the wedding chapel and all that went with it and then turned toward each other and laughed. It was hokey and full of clichés but still it was exciting as we walked up the sidewalk toward the chapel door. I took a deep breath and then twisted the door handle. I held the door open and Gloria walked in first.

  The ceiling was painted to resemble a cloudy blue sky with stars everywhere. Cherubs playing harps lined the sides of the rounded ceiling. There were trellises adorned with fake silk flowers of all colors. I’m sure the aroma of those flowers must have come from a spray can. Ahead of us, another couple was just walking back toward us, having just exchanged their vows and having paid their ninety-nine dollars. It was our turn now and we stepped up to where the preacher dressed like Elvis stood, ceremoniously dressed all in white.

  I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that this clown could actually be capable of legally joining Gloria and me in matrimony. I knew what I wanted to say to him after the ceremony, but I was sure he’d heard, ‘thank you, thank you very much,’ in an Elvis voice a million times before. Instead, I just stood there and listened as Elvis opened his white bible and droned on for what was arguably the longest thirty seconds of my life. When he’d finished, Gloria and I both said our, ‘I do’s’ and turned to make our grand exit. On the way out, we stopped at the front counter and I gave the clerk my credit card. She ran it though for the ninety-nine dollars, had me sign their copy and gave me my copy, along with a token gesture of best wishes. If I waited around long enough, I would probably hear her yell out, “Next.”

  Gloria and I exited to the street and took in our surroundings. I turned to her and said, “Well, Mrs. Cooper, or is it Ms. Campbell?”

  Gloria smiled and said, “It’s Mrs. Cooper, thank you.”

  “Well, Mrs. Cooper,” I said again, “Our plane doesn’t leave for L.A. for another two hours. What would you like to do next?”

  “You have to agree,” Gloria said, “That it was a gamble doing what we just did, so how about if we stay with that for a little longer and hit some of the casinos?”

  I flipped open my wallet and withdrew a crisp, new one hundred dollar bill and held it out to her. “This will be our limit,” I said. “When this is gone, so are we, agreed?”

  Gloria snatched the bill from my fingers. “Agreed, Mr. Cooper,” and pulled me by the arm up the street. Almost every commercial enterprise on every block advertised gambling of one sort or another. But we didn’t want to walk into the lobby of some cheap hotel just to try their slot machines. As long as we were here, we wanted to see the big, famously recognizable places that were known around the world. I looked up the street and could see the top of the Luxor, an Egyptian-themed casino. That’s where I wanted to go. I pulled Gloria toward the monument that filled several city blocks.

  Inside the ceiling was more than a hundred feet high and left you with the feeling of a wide open space even though you were inside. We hadn’t walked more than a dozen steps when I looked down at the floor and spotted something green. It was a twenty dollar bill. I snapped it up and looked around me. No one else paid the slightest bit of attention to what I’d just done.

  “This is going to be my lucky day,” I said, pocketing the bill. “I can just feel it.” I walked up to the nearest cashier and broke the hundred dollar bill that Gloria had been holding. I got five twenties and gave Gloria three of them. “There,” I said. “Now we both have sixty bucks to spend on whatever we want.”

  It took only forty-three minutes for the Luxor to add a hundred-twenty dollars to their net worth and just forty-four minutes for Gloria and me to leave the over-sized black glass pyramid casino behind. We caught a cab at the corner and told him to go straight back to the airport. So far, between the discount wedding, two cab rides, forty-three minutes in the casino and four plane tickets, this day had set us back more than five hundred dollars, not counting what it would cost to get my car out of the LAX parking lot. My mental calculator told me that we’d have to work more than three days at the private investigations business just to break even.

  Our plane touched down shortly before seven and again our exit had been extradited by not having to deal with any luggage. We found the car, paid for our parking and drove back to the office to check for phone messages before going home. There was only one message on the machine when we got back to the office. It was from Dad, asking where we were and instructing me to call him when we got back. We decided not to return the call, but rather to drive over there and tell him in person.

  On the way to Dad’s house Gloria twisted in her seat and turned toward me. “You know, Elliott,” she said. “Something just occurred to me.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Where are we going to live?” Gloria said. “We both have our own place, and as I see it, that’s now one place too many. So which of us is going to move in with the other?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “Let’s kick it around and see which one seems more practical for us. My place is closer to the office and could save us some money on gas, but your place is bigger and could accommodate my belongings as well as what you already have in there. My place would cost us less to live in, but your place would be ideal if the two of us someday became three. Sounds to me like it’s a horse apiece.”

  Gloria wrapped her arm around mine. “Say that last part again,” she told me, a smile creeping onto her face.

  “I said it sounds to me like it’s a horse…” I said.

  “No,” Gloria said. “The part just before that. You said something about the two of us.”

  “I said your place would be ideal if the two of us someday became three,” I repeated.

  “Yeah,” Gloria said, sighing. “That was the part. Three of us. Just think about that.”

  “But you just remember what we talked about,” I reminded her.

  “Huh?” Gloria said.

  “About goofy names,” I said. “We both have to agree on a name before we saddle any kid of ours with something he’ll carry around all his life.”

  “I remember,” Gloria said. “If we have a boy I was thinking maybe we could name him Matthew Clayton Elliott Cooper.”

  I turned to her for a second and smiled. “Really?” I said.

  “Think about it,” Gloria said. “By the time you’re starting to think seriously about retirement, your son could take over the business, like you did with Clay and like he did with his father. It would come full circle and the business would eventually be run by a Matt Cooper again. Somehow that just feels right, doesn�
�t it?”

  “That’s great if we have a son,” I said. “What if you double-cross me and have give me a daughter?”

  “Well then,” Gloria said. “There’s no question. She’ll be named Moon Unit Cooper.”

  Gloria got the reaction she was after and threw her head back and let out a hardy laugh. She pointed her finger at me and said, “You should see your face right about now.”

  I had to admit it was a good one and laughed along with her. We were still giggling as we walked up to Dad’s porch and rang the door bell. We didn’t wait for him to answer the door. We just let ourselves in.

  “Anyone at home?” I said.

  “In here,” Dad answered from the living room.

  Gloria and I walked in and sat across from Dad. He grabbed the television remote and muted the sound on the program he’d been watching.

  “Did you get the message I left at the office?” Dad said.

  “We got it,” I said. “But we decided to stop by instead of calling back.” I reached over and held Gloria’s hand and then looked into Dad’s eyes. “We got married this afternoon,” I said.

  Dad sat up straight. “You what?”

  Gloria stood and then reached out for Dad’s hands, pulling him to a standing position. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “We flew to Las Vegas and got married, Dad.”

  It was the first time that she’d called Clay ‘Dad’ and it sounded a bit strange coming from her. Dad must have thought so, too, by the look on his face. Gloria released him and they both sat again.

  “What brought this on?” Dad said. “Isn’t this kind of sudden?”

  I explained to Dad about how I’d seen the name Gloria Campbell in this morning’s obituaries and how it gave me a new perspective on life and how it can turn on a dime. I left out the part about Gloria and me having the argument and how she caught a bus back to Hollywood.

  “That’s terrific,” Dad said. “But what about…?”