Part 10 (2/2)
”You're kidding.”
”No. I'm not.”
Barb looked at me as if I were a mugger about to swipe her purse. And then her face relaxed. She closed her eyes, made a counting-to-ten face, then opened her eyes and looked at me. ”We can't get married right now. City hall is closed.”
”We'll go to Las Vegas. We can get married in a chapel on the Strip.”
Barb stared at me. ”Did you take every c.o.c.ktail waitress on this side of the harbor to Las Vegas, too?”
I'm stubborn. ”Those are my terms. Take them or leave them. We get married first.”
”You're nuts.”
”No, I'm not nuts. I simply know what I want.”
She looked at me. ”But I'm already married.”
”No you're not. You're a widow.”
Barb looked at me for a good half minute. ”Okay. Fair enough. Let's drive to the airport.”
”Are you - ”
”Jason, shut up. Let's drive to the airport now. We'll catch a nonstop or hub through Los Angeles, and that'll be it.”
Within five minutes we were back on the highway, pa.s.sing the final crash cleanup occurring on the other side of the median. Barb was in tears and asked me not to slow down. I thought this was cold, but she said, ”Jason, I will have to drive past there at least four times a day the rest of my life. There's plenty of time for me to look then.”
I said, ”We don't have any luggage.”
”We don't need it. We're going to Las Vegas to get married while the mood seizes us. Ha ha ha.”
”You think they'll believe that at immigration?”
Barb yelled at me, but I took it. ”Jesus, Jason, here you are, dragging me halfway across a continent to get married maybe two hours after your brother is killed, and you're asking me whether or not I should have a carry-on bag? So that some customs guy believes that we're going to get married?”
”But we are going to get married.”
Barb screamed out the window and lit another of many cigarettes. ”This is about Cheryl. Isn't it?
Tell me - isn't it?”
”Leave Cheryl out of this.”
”No. We can't have anyone discussing little Miss Joan of Arc.” She threw her cigarette out the window. ”Sorry.” ”You're right. It does have to do with Cheryl.”
”How?”
I didn't say anything.
”How?”
I kept silent.
Barb is a smart woman. She said, ”Now I don't know if you're doing me a favor, or if I'm doing you one.”
”You're probably right.”
”You're as nuts as your father. You think you're not, but you are.”
”What if I am?”
”The harder people try to be the opposite of their parents, the quicker they become them. It's a fact. Now just drive.”
”What are we going to tell people when we get back?”
”We're going to tell people I freaked out. We're going to tell them that I went crazy and drove out toward the daffodil farm, and you saw me and followed me, and that I deliberately got lost, and that you had to hunt me down somewhere in all that scuzzy wilderness out there. That's what we're going to tell them.”
”But your car is in the garage.”
”I'll think of something. Just drive us to the airport.”
The airport journey was different from the taxi ride Cheryl and I took in 1988. Back then all the bridges we had to cross seemed exciting, almost like roller coasters. Crossing them with Barb, they were just these things you didn't want to be stuck on during an earthquake.
And of course Kent was dead, too. I tried to speak about him, but Barb would have none of it.
”As far as I'm concerned, for the next twelve hours you are Kent. Just drive.”
We dumped the truck in the long-term parking lot and headed to the terminal. Customs preclearance was a snap. Barb was bawling as she showed them the engagement ring Kent had given her, and they waved us through with Parisian-style shrugs and smiles. The ticket clerk had pa.s.sed along the message to the flight crew that we were going to get married; inside the plane it was broadcast, and we were upgraded to business cla.s.s while everybody whistled and cheered, making Barb cry all the harder. The drinks, meanwhile, kept coming and coming, and Barb kept drinking and drinking, and on the ground she was one big wobble; escorting her from one gate to the next at LAX was like trying to propel a shopping cart full of balloons on a windy day, and on the second flight she simply cried for most of the trip. We landed just after midnight.
In the decade since my first trip there, Las Vegas had been rebuilt from the ground up. Pockets of authentic sleaze peeked out here and there, but the city's aura was different, more professional. I could look at all the new casinos and imagine people sinning away like mad, but I could also envision management meetings and cubicles and photocopiers tucked away in the bowels of the recently spruced up casinos.
I asked the driver to take us to the stretch of chapels between Fremont Street and Caesars Palace, a piece of the Strip that had remained unmolested by progress. The chapel where Cheryl and I had been married was still there. I paid the cabbie while Barb got out. We didn't say anything as we went into the chapel, and I was disappointed that the old guy who'd performed the first ceremony was no longer there.
A couple from Oklahoma was in front of us. We witnessed for them, and they witnessed for us, through a secular version of a wedding ceremony that did good service to the term ”quickie.”
Within fifteen minutes we were wed, and another cab drove us to Caesars Palace, which had also been renovated in the intervening decade.
We checked in as husband and wife, and we were walking through the lobby to the elevator bank when we heard someone calling our names. I had the same sick feeling I had when I was twelve and got caught pilfering raspberries from the neighbors' patch. We turned around. It was Rick, this guy I'd gone to high school with. He'd aged faster than most, and was much larger than I'd remembered. His head was s.h.i.+ny.
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