by Radclyffe
Marley was momentarily stunned. Incredibly touched that Roisin had even thought about the buttonhole she had forgotten about altogether, and astounded that her ex had the audacity to even think they weren’t going in the Jag.
“My car. It’s got class.” Marley held open the front door as Roisin gathered her matching purse and gloves. “And it complements your hair,” she murmured into subtle perfumes that lingered long after Roisin brushed past.
“Pity it clashes with indigo,” Roisin said as she headed directly for the forest green Jaguar with tan leather upholstery.
*
The reception hall at Belfast City Hall echoed with joyful laughter and cheerful conversations. The chandeliers tinkled, and gilt-framed portraits twinkled, and even the plush carpets seemed to warm to these events.
“Look at you, sure you’re gorgeous. Indigo and copper, what a lovely combination” was the first greeting.
“When will we all be here for your big day?” soon followed a few dozen times.
Roisin smiling warmly, ducked, dived, and deflected with her usual wit and charm. Marley was granted a reprieve by being a witness and having to slide off to wait with an overanxious Sharla. Jen was arriving later, determined to be a traditional bride.
Her best friend raised a forefinger and gently prodded the rosebud on Marley’s lapel. “Trust Roisin to get the finishing touches just right. Copper leaves.”
Sharla and Jen had decided on rich cream for their outfits. Now Sharla sported an indigo waistcoat. Marley’s ears shone pink. Sharla continued, glad to have a diversion, it seemed.
“I’m glad she suggested the indigo. You’d have looked a right poof in lavender. She said it would clash with her outfit and something had to go—either you or the tux! So indigo it is. Good call, heh?” She tugged at the hem of her own silk vest.
Marley’s face caught up with her ears. “Roisin told you to change my tux to indigo?”
Before Sharla could answer, the registrar called them from the annex. Jen had arrived, they were about to begin.
On entering the Registry Hall Marley???s eyes swept the tiers for Roisin. She found her almost at once, beside an overly attentive Bernie McMillan. Marley turned her back and stood facing the registrar, shoulder to shoulder with Sharla.
Several rows behind, Roisin could see her ex’s ear glow pink and knew it was nothing to do with the light through the stained glass window. Smiling, she leaned over and shook hands with Bernie’s partner. They’d both come all the way from London for the wedding, happy and excited as they were soon going to tie the knot themselves in England. Then the music began, a traditional Irish air, “My Lagan Love,” and Jen floated up the center aisle with her sister, both beautiful in stylish cream organza with indigo sashes. They were allowed to sit and the ceremony began.
After cheers and confetti, and warm kisses and handshakes, the guests convoyed up the Antrim coast to Cairndhu House for the reception. The sun shone, the sea sparkled, and Scotland stood out crisp and clean on the horizon. The Mull of Kintyre and below it the mountains of Arran etched against the crystal blue sky.
Cairndhu, an old ancestral estate now turned over to commercial activity, specialized in boutique weddings. It had splendid halls and reception rooms, beautiful bedrooms and libraries. And magnificent, well-established gardens including a famous maze. The wedding party posed repeatedly for photos in the rose garden with the sundials, by the ornate Italian fountain, on small benches by the two-hundred-year-old yew tree. And in the glasshouse with the tropical palms, and on the carved granite steps with the stately home in the background.
Marley, as witness, was on call for most of them. Roisin, as her partner, appeared beside her in dozens of shots, too. All the while they spat out the beaming smiles of barefaced liars. Roisin’s eyes shone with a million I told you so’s. It was agony to pretend to be so happy, so bloody perfect.
“Well, when you eventually tell them they can look back over these and say, ‘At least they were happy on our big day. The rift must have happened sometime after.’” She flashed another radiant smile, clinging to Marley’s arm like life itself. “God, my face hurts!”
Music and drinks followed a splendid quail dinner. The happy couple cut cake. Speeches were enjoyed, toasts were made, and soon it was time for Sharla and Jen to change clothes before heading for the airport.
Jen had one more tradition to perform. Marley escorted her a few steps up the grandiose curved stairway whispering in her ear as they giggled in co-conspiracy. Jen then stood before all assembled as Marley slid back in behind Roisin, the smaller woman only visible in the crowd by the crown of her flaming hair. Marley stood close behind her, and reached round to hold both of Roisin’s hands just as Jen launched her bouquet at them as straight and true as a linebacker with a hand grenade. Roisin’s eyes widened in dismay at the incoming fragrant missile. It had to be traveling at over a hundred miles an hour! Marley stretched out with both their hands and plucked the posey out of midair, crushing it securely into Roisin’s chest amid cheers and laughter and crows of “You’re next, you’re next!” and “Cheaters!”
“A rose for a rose,” Marley whispered into a flushed ear.
“I hope they throw your Oscar at you as hard as that bleedin’ bouquet,” Roisin managed to whisper back through an outwardly delighted laugh.
The afternoon had lengthened to early evening shadows, but the lowering sun still held its heat. Most guests moved to the outdoor tables to socialise or wander the beautiful grounds. A bottle of grand cru and glass flutes in hand, Marley found Roisin sitting quietly at one of the more secluded tables, partially hidden by topiary. She was concentrating on a flower plucked from the bouquet, carefully denuding it petal by petal.
Trying desperately to act debonair, Marley sat and poured the champagne, quipping roguishly, “She loves me, she loves me not?”
Roisin fixed her with a hard, unwavering stare before fiercely ripping another petal off a creamy blossom.
“No. Burial, cremation, burial, cremation…” She continued with her floral divination.
There was no doubt in Marley’s mind whose the body was.
“Roisin, there you are.” Bernie McMillen descended upon them, for once at an opportune moment. “I just wanted to say good-bye before we left. Hello there, Marley. How’s it going? Great day, wasn’t it?” She rested a hand on Roisin’s shoulder and gave it a warm squeeze. Roisin turned in her chair and smiled up at her old friend. Marley tried to turn a glower into a sick smile.
“I’m fine, Bernie. Good to see you, too. And yes, it was a grand day for them.” There, answered all in one, hopefully she’ll go away now. But Bernie turned her attention to Roisin, who rose to hug her good-bye.
“Darling, you looked wonderful today. That outfit is amazing on you. You’re like a phoenix rising from the ashes,” Bernie crooned.
Bleedin’ drunk. Marley smouldered at the wordsmith. Phoenix…fuck. That’s what I wanted to say.
The hugging finally broke and Bernie turned to leave. “Now remember, you have to come and visit us in London, okay?”
“Bernie, the taxi’s here,” a small Asian woman called and Bernie had to hasten her exit, waving good-byes over her shoulder. Marley glowered at her back all the way out.
“When she said ashes, was she talking about us?” she immediately demanded, watching Bernie disappear into a cab with the woman who had called to her.
“No. I’ve said nothing. She was just telling me I looked nice.”
“Who’s she with?”
“Abir. Her partner. They’re getting married this October in London. We’ve been invited.”
“Oh.” Marley blinked at this. “Bernie lives in London?”
Roisin sighed. “Don’t you know anything about anybody except yourself and your own small world?”
Marley wasn’t sure how to answer, so she sat quietly, feeling chastised and a little lost. Finally, unsure of what to do, she topped up Roisin’s glass.
“Are y
ou plying me with free booze? Isn’t that kinda cheap?”
“Hey! I’m plying you with the best they had on offer. I bought this.”
“And why am I being plied at all?”
Marley’s colour heightened and she nodded over at the tall green avenues and aisles. “So I can get you drunk and chase you round that maze?”
“Darlin’, we’ve been in that maze since the hour we met. We’ve only just come out, and by different exits. Why do you want to plough straight back in again?” Roisin’s eyes were sad and haunted.
Marley felt as if she was pushing molasses through her heart. Her whole body seemed heavy and slow, and her ears hummed in a high frequency. The sound of panic. Her voice, when she found it, was as thick and sluggish as her blood. “Sometimes life gets too busy. Too pressured, and I feel like I’m running in a maze, lost in circles…like a lab rat.”
“I can understand that. Well, the rat part.”
“Roisin, I forgot you were in there with me.”
Roisin watched her struggle silently.
“Please let me try and find you again.” Marley hung her head as she gazed unfocussed at the little hope-filled bubbles bursting in her glass. The silence lengthened and she hadn’t words to fill it. Just feelings that pulsed out into the space between them.
“I’ll give you a clue.” Roisin spoke very quietly. Marley strained to catch her words.
“I’m right over here.”
Claiming the Angel - JD Glass
JD GLASS lives in the city of her choice and birth, New York, with her beloved partner. When she’s not writing, she’s the lead singer (as well as alternately guitarist and bassist) in Life Underwater, which also keeps her pretty busy. Her novels include Punk Like Me, Punk and Zen, Red Light, and American Goth from Bold Strokes Books.
Claiming the Angel
JD Glass
These are the things that go down hard. In these last few weeks work has been changing, home has been changing. We’re working the same shifts, we’re working split shifts—it seems like we’re never not working. And something else is changing, too: you. In these same last few weeks, I see the way they look at you, our coworkers, our peers, the way everyone responds to your smile, their gazes lingering as you walk by. And I see too what they want.
They want you, and you don’t know it. You’re mine, but others want you. I hate that the only thing I have for you lately is snappy jokes or sharp retorts—because in these last few weeks of overwork and undersleep, of not enough “us” and too much of everything else, I’ve forgotten how to speak.
But Shannon hasn’t—and she makes you smile. Oh, it’s not the same smile, not the one you had for me, but all the same, it’s something I can’t seem to do lately.
What I can do, what I’ve been very successful at, is eliciting the surprised snap of shock and hurt in your eyes before you shrug it off. I think you’re turning off to me, I think I’m pushing the buttons to do it.
The other day at dinner with your family you said something, the sort of thing you’re likely to say, and I shot you down, another quick joke, another bitter smile.
Your cousin’s dark appraisal under raised eyebrow said more to me than a thousand words ever could—and mute again, I couldn’t even apologize. I wanted to.
I think your family hates me.
Even mine has noticed—I ran into my brother Pat today after that call, outside the ER entrance where so many emergency vehicles parked it seemed like a tailgate party.
“So how you guys doin’?” he asked after the usual catch-up are-you-okay inquiries and the squaring away of details that always follow these sorts of incidents. “Anything, uh, going on?”
We’d been so busy, I’d forgotten about even that, and the combination of concern and awkwardness in his question seemed to me the perfect reason to make yet another one of my dumb jokes, at my expense, at yours, about the whole thing. That’s a lie—I didn’t even think about it—I just answered.
Pat stared for a moment, as shocked at me as I was. “Baby girl, you’re fucking up,” he told me quietly.
Anger and remorse made something squirm painfully under my ribs. “I know.”
“You’re gonna lose her if you keep this up.”
“I know,” I answered again. “I’m handling it.”
“You better,” he warned, “because”—he nodded, and not twenty feet away where another unit had parked behind mine was patrol, and who else but Shannon was the first to greet you as you stepped out from the ER doors—“you’ve got serious competition.”
“I’m not worried about it,” I told him, but inside? Inside I wondered if you noticed her the same way she did you to my eyes. I wondered if you had a clue of what she wanted, and if ultimately she could bring something to you, give something I couldn’t—not lately, not anymore. It left me scared and silent, “outside” voice forgotten, or maybe even gone from disuse, along with the words I needed to tell you something other than “I’m tired,” or “I’m in a bad mood.” Those…have been the nicest things.
I didn’t really notice Pat’s friendly slap on the shoulder of good-bye, and I barely nodded to Shannon. God, she always managed to piss me off lately, and instead I walked over to you and opened my mouth wide and far enough to kill the spark of welcome in your eyes.
I push you, I wound you, and all I really want to do is throw myself at your feet, swear it will never happen again, then swim in you, under you, through you.
But I don’t know how to speak, and all I do know is that when Shannon said something that made you smile again, I really wanted to see her teeth scatter like Tic Tacs from somewhere under my hand.
I seethed instead, steaming on a cool gray day like the fog and mist that rose from the ground, only I was hot, so hot I thought I’d explode.
During the call, it was your hands that covered mine briefly, a split second of the brush of your wrist where it was bare above the gloves on mine as you handled the tools that breathed for our patient.
Our eyes met just as briefly in the jostle and jolt of the rig and nothing else mattered but what we were doing—and we did it together.
This one…it was bad, really bad: a member of service went down, and if we did our job right, and if luck was on his side—lots of it, the miracle kind—he might come back up, eventually. We acknowledged it in that glance, the silent pact made: we’d fight like hell and try any way—anything, everything, to save that precious spark. We barely managed it, but we delivered something viable to the ER as opposed to a forensic package—though that still might happen, later, out of our sight, out of our hands.
There was a lot of paperwork afterward thanks to the multi-service response and involvement; Shannon ambushed me with more of it when I finally returned to the station at the end of my shift, perhaps not quite an hour after yours. The sly smirk I wanted to wipe off her face in the worst way widened when my cell rang—and it was you, telling me you’re home.
“Home and alone?” the smirk said. “And you’ve at least another”—she glanced at the forms—“hour. Maybe an hour and a half.”
I focused on the paper and the line of print before me. I wondered why the pen didn’t melt or snap in two as I shoved it across the white field. I heard a low, steady sound and realized I ground my teeth while spearing through the page. It wasn’t loud enough to drown Shannon’s words as she placed her hands on my shoulders and spoke.
“Jean…Tori’s going to promote soon, and everyone knows it. She’ll be transferred, her shift will change. You know how this works—and who determines the ‘needs of service.’ You need to play ball and work with me, baby girl, so this can all work out all right.”
Her touch was more than familiar, it was intimate: the touch of family, friends, and once, for a little while, something…more. She rubbed her thumbs over the knots in my neck. It was gentle, sure, effective, but it wasn’t you.
Suddenly, I didn’t know and I didn’t care that Shannon was my superior officer, or my cousin, or an
ything, and I stood up and tossed the papers across her desk.
“I’m done,” I snarled out as I faced her. “Report me, write me up, suspend me—I don’t fuckin’ care anymore—I’m not gonna just let you come on to my wife.” Teeth like Tic Tacs flew through my mind’s eye again and it took real effort not to clench my fists. I couldn’t stop the hot that flowed through me.
“Temper, Jean,” Shannon said softly. She leaned back against the wall next to the door frame. Eyes lighter than mine calmly, coolly, considered me, and the smirk was gone. “You’re sharing that a little too much lately. I’d like to see you both remain in the same battalion—same days on and off. She still thinks she’s in love with you—maybe, just maybe, I’m looking out for both of you—instead of just you—for once.”
All the anger flew away, leaving me somehow deflated, except for the little bit left that I focused on myself. Of course. I’d been suspicious of seemingly everyone and their motives lately, which made me moody and raw, and now, I felt guilty on top of it—for accusing my cousin, my first cousin, as related to me as if we were half siblings—of something she wouldn’t do. Oh, I wasn’t stupid, I knew there was a real attraction to you underneath whatever Shannon said, but she wouldn’t poach. Not unless she thought I was really fucking up.
Not fucking up meant doing my job, doing it right. I sat back down and finished the paperwork without another word between us. “Take tomorrow,” Shannon said when I finally managed to finish everything without requiring either new forms or writing instruments. “I think you need it,” she told me as I walked out the door. “Tell Tori the same.”
My hands were numb on the steering wheel as I drove home, as numb as my mind, and when it hit me, I swore to the uncaring radio I hadn’t even been listening to. We’d had plans, you and I, we’d had dinner plans—I had the impression you wanted to tell me something, and I have fucked up again.
