A saleswoman approaches, head tilted like it’s a medical condition.
“You know that there’s a summertime dress, right?” the woman says in a Southern accent, with smiley antagonism.
“Oh. No, I didn’t.”
“That’s why it’s on sale, honey,” she says through nicotine-striated teeth. “What are you looking for?”
“A wedding dress,” Elise says. “But not for a wedding.”
“I’m not following, sugar.”
“We’re going to the courthouse,” Elise says.
“Uh-huh.”
Elise then looks at the lady, pulling her braids insecurely.
“Baby! You’re not gonna cry, are you?”
“I just want to look like a bride.”
“Well, praise the lord! Let me find you something, honey,” the woman snaps her gum. “And I’m Cheryl-Lou, got that? What’s your date?”
“November nineteenth.”
“So soon! We’re gonna try wool suits, honey. Let’s do Audrey-Hepburn-daytime-wedding, mmkay? Real class. Grace Kelly at a royal luncheon.”
She hangs garments around the changing room, whose carpet teems with silverfish, as if serving a queen.
Elise finally likes a suit with pearl buttons. The shoulders stand up, and the pencil skirt tapers.
“That. Is. Divine,” says Cheryl-Lou, manically destroying her gum with her tongue and teeth.
“Yeah?”
“Hold on,” the woman says, putting up one finger. “Shoes.”
She brings back Fendi pumps. “Try these.”
“How much are they though?” Elise asks.
“They’re eighty percent off, girl! That’s because of these here marks,” she says, pointing to damage. “Who’s the lucky man?”
“His name is Jamey.”
“What’s he like,” she singsongs.
“He’s—I can’t explain him.”
“You don’t have to. I can tell by the way you say his name.”
Cheryl-Lou arranges Elise’s hair, and they both look into the mirror.
“Beautiful,” the saleswoman says quietly.
Elise looks at the reflection, worried. “Really?”
Cheryl-Lou is mad. “Yes, really. Are you scared or something?”
Elise holds the woman’s eyes in the looking glass and shrugs.
Cheryl-Lou shakes her head vehemently. “Life’s too short, sweetie, to think twice.”
“I know this is what I want.”
“Then what’s the trouble, little lady?”
That’s a good question, Elise thinks.
Standing in line to pay, she thinks about being sixteen and trying to make up for leaving her mom high and dry, doing penance one baby’s bath at a time, cleaning up beer bottles and ashtrays every Sunday morning, handing over a hundred dollars a week from her Payless job, fifty from the Burger King night shift, a kiss on the cheek, coming through on a promise made, patience.
Every time she walked the block back then, sweating in the July sun, or using an umbrella in the soaking rain, picking up greasy food in white bags, the grit of the sidewalk sticking to her wet legs—she would always walk slowly on the way home, and she would know that not everyone was walking with intention the same way she was.
Outside Gimbels, Elise stops to watch a crew breakdance in the drab midtown nowhere land. The star is skinny, shirtless, sweating in the cold. He smiles as he pops and locks, spins on the folded cardboard, his boys moving on the sidelines, calling out, uh-huh-ing when he backflips. She wolf-whistles, drops a dollar in the hat, watching, suddenly grinning.
Jamey puts a quarter into the corner pay phone, and dials the lobby number he knows by heart. He watches girls draw in chalk on the sidewalk while it rings.
Teddy the doorman sounds wary when he hears Jamey’s voice. “What is it, little fella?”
“Teddy—I want to ask you a big favor.”
“Uh-oh,” he says, and means it.
“Can you be a witness at my marriage? At the courthouse this Saturday?”
Jamey cradles the phone to his ear.
Teddy quietly laughs. “Yes, son. I can and will. My oh my. Wait till I tell Claudia.”
“Will she please come? Lunch is on us—we’ll drink Champagne,” Jamey says, warmed and moved, his voice thickened. But then he laughs. “You think it’s strange I’m asking.”
“I do indeed. And I’m not even gonna inquire about why you having a courthouse wedding, son.” Teddy laughs again. “I’m just gonna show up.”
“You’ll be happy for me.”
“Very good,” he says eventually, with tenderness, or concern.
Before daybreak, Jamey lies in that half-sleep state when the heart just goes feral, attacks the brain, shits in it, scratches the backs of his eyeballs, howling and frothing. Then he wakes, and can’t recall a single dream, and there might not have been any dreams.
He’s going to ruin her if he marries her.
You’re confused and irrational, he tells himself sternly, just get up and go forth.
He takes a shower, makes coffee, forcing one thing after another.
In the shadowy bed, Elise looks up, bleary-eyed, to accept the mug. “Yo, I didn’t sleep at all,” she claims angrily, like a child, even though she did.
He cups her chin for a kiss. “Good morning.”
She pulls away to light a cigarette. “What’s good about it?” she jokes.
Her heart is like a bird caught in a house—she can’t even catch the poor thing to calm it down and set it free.
They walk hand in hand down the street, a gangly girl in white with cornrows and a red mouth, and him in a suit, hair slicked like an Irish gangster.
The day’s so cold it burns throats, and the air irradiates bodies, cell by cell. The leaves are done, so the city is light and pigeons, and windows reflecting sun.
They wait in line at the courthouse. Gretchen and Jacek arrive, and hand Elise a bouquet of violets. Teddy and Claudia huff up the stairs in elegant coats, with a gold-wrapped present.
Teddy takes Elise’s hand. “Very nice to meet you,” Teddy says.
The line of couples winds down the street, waiting to pass through the secretary’s X-ray vision—this old gal in Lucite spectacles makes private bets on who will last, and has been doing so for years.
In the City Clerk’s Office, the judge—a man with broad Nigerian cheekbones and an aura of goodwill—reads vows.
“James Balthazar Hyde, do you take Elise Dawn Perez to be your wife?”
“I do.”
“Elise Dawn Perez, do you take James Balthazar Hyde to be your husband?”
“I do.”
Gretchen uses their Polaroid to take a loud picture of the couple kissing.
At Chanterelle, they clap when the waiter pops the Champagne. Everyone glows from butterscotch shadows reflected by the walls and sun leaking in the ruched curtains.
Jacek toasts with e.e. cummings:
…love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky