“Why? Because I’m blond?” Cleo rolled her eyes. “No, Frank. I just know some things.”
“That you do.” Frank stood up and dusted off his pant legs theatrically. “Okay, let’s do it.”
“Jump? But we don’t have a chair.”
“A stair is as good as a chair.”
Cleo looked up at the stairwell behind them.
“But let’s go all the way from the top,” she said. “Start the year with a bang.”
They climbed to the first landing. They had to clear roughly ten steps to land on the ground floor below. It was the kind of game children played, daring themselves to climb higher and higher. He took her hand. She squeezed it back. They both jumped.
CHAPTER TWO
June
Cleo didn’t want to wear white, but she had hoped for a wedding cake. She could have ordered it herself from one of the Italian bakeries on the Lower East Side, the kind of place where every surface was covered in either powdered sugar or dust, but she’d left the planning of the meal to Santiago, who was known for his ecstatic and orgiastic dinner parties. Santiago thought they should forgo a traditional cake, and since nothing else about her marriage to Frank was proving to be traditional, she did not insist otherwise.
In fact, Cleo didn’t insist on anything about the wedding. She did buy a dress for the occasion, but the one she picked was blue. It was late June, too hot for anything elaborate, and the idea of wearing white had always seemed ridiculous to her. She hadn’t been a virgin since she was fourteen. She’d let Frank slip his hands inside her underwear in her stairwell the first night they met. It had felt like he was tracing the alphabet on her clit. L, M, N, O … POW! No, there was no reason at all to wear white.
She found the dress she did wear buried at the back of an overpriced vintage store on Perry Street, a liquid silk slip so much cheaper than everything else, she worried afterward that it might actually be a nightgown. When she slid it over her head, she felt as if she had taken a knife to the surface of the sky, skimmed a little off the bottom, and worn the peel.
Frank still managed to outdo her, however, by showing up to City Hall in a three-piece ivory tuxedo. Cleo had been waiting on the steps, eating a hot dog from the street cart nearby—she’d never had one before, she reasoned, and today was a day of firsts—when she saw his white top hat bobbing above the gray street. She put down the half-eaten hot dog and threw her head back in delight.
“Well?” Frank heel-turned so she could take him in. Behind him, a family of tourists took his photograph.
“You are an incorrigible show-off.”
“See, when you say it,” said Frank, “that still sounds like a compliment.”
He ran his hand down the silken slope of her back and cupped her behind.
“Do we look like we’re going to two different weddings?” she asked.
“You look fantastic,” said Frank. “Like a little lake.”
“You look …” Cleo paused to fully take him in. “Like yourself.”
It was true. Equal parts mad hatter and aging glam rock star, Frank looked surprisingly natural in the tux.
“Do I smell of mothballs?” Frank stretched his throat for her to smell, and she tucked her nose into the suntanned skin above his collar.
“Nope. Soap and …” She snapped her head back. “Gin?”
“Had a little one before I left. Had to! It’s my wedding day! Come on, let’s go in.”
“Our wedding day, darling,” said Cleo.
“Ours, yours, mine, theirs …” Frank launched into a singsong. He grabbed her hand, and they ran up the steps two at a time.
What is a wedding, Cleo wondered, if not a private dream made public, a fantasy suspended between two worlds like a cat’s cradle? But Cleo had never dreamed about getting married. What she fantasized about was her first solo show as an artist, a day dedicated solely to her. What scared her was that recently it was easier to imagine the opening than the actual paintings. She worried that she was one of those artists who care more about being an artist than they do about making art. It was a fear so base, so desperately ordinary, that she never mentioned it to anyone, not even Frank.
Since they had not thought to invite a witness, Frank ran back outside and asked the hot dog vendor to join them. He surprised them both by quietly weeping through the entire ceremony, which lasted less than five minutes. Expelled back into the sunshine, Cleo embraced him while Frank insisted on crunching a $100 bill into his palm before saying goodbye. The couple wandered north to Canal Street, then stopped and smiled shyly at each other, unsure how to proceed. Frank lifted his hand, still clutching hers, to check his watch.
“Got a few hours till dinner. Want to get a drink?”
Cleo shook her head. They had invited thirty guests to the wedding dinner, but inevitably more would show up. The whole thing had been presented as a caprice, a giddy impersonation of adulthood. This wasn’t unreasonable for Cleo, who had just turned twenty-five, but Frank was in his mid-forties. Too old, she thought, to consider himself too young to be married. She glanced around. Across the street, a storefront advertised $10 aura readings.
“What about that?”
Frank looked skeptical. “You think they’ll make me a drink in there?”
They relinquished the sunshine of the street and stepped through a beaded curtain into the quiet, dark shop. It smelled of incense and takeout food. The high, needling sound of harp music replaced the discord of Canal Street outside. Behind a counter displaying an assortment of crystals and beaded jewelry, a middle-aged Chinese woman smiled at them.
“You married today?” she asked, pointing to Frank’s tux. “It’s good you come here.”
She beckoned for Cleo to sit in a high-backed chair in front of an old-fashioned camera on a tripod and showed her where to place her palms either side, on two metal discs.
“So pretty,” she said, looking at her. “Now, don’t move.”
She disappeared underneath a piece of black cloth attached to the back of the camera, pressed a button, which released a soft poof, then reappeared. Cleo had not expected to feel anything profound when the picture was taken, but she had hoped for a little more than the kind of brusque efficiency one might find at the DMV. Frank took her place, and she watched as he adjusted his bow tie. She saw a flash of his younger self, the anxious middle-schooler getting his yearbook picture taken. He looked up at the camera lens from beneath his long eyelashes and smiled, timidly, as if hoping to please. The contraption released another poof, and Cleo felt her heart contract. She did love him, she did.
Afterward they stood at the glass counter, looking down at their pictures. Cleo’s aura was purple and yellow, while Frank’s was red and green.
“Does that mean we’re compatible?” asked Cleo anxiously.
“How long you been together?” asked the woman.
“Six months,” said Frank.
The woman nodded.
“Eighty percent of relationship,” she said, “is tolerating difference.”
“What’s the other twenty percent?” asked Frank.