Two Much!

39

After the ceremony I kissed the bride and she got into the Lincoln with the best man and left for parts unknown. The other witness, or maid of honor, was the JP’s ugly daughter, and so remained in her original setting: picket fence, sagging sofa, black-and-white television set the size of the mouth of the Holland Tunnel.

My escape from the race riot I’d started had been accomplished with the help of a taxi ride up Sixth Avenue. When I’d come back twenty minutes later, police cars were clustered at the end of the block where the fight had begun, and much shouting was taking place back there. The green-shirted auto dealer man, unaltered, continued to lean on the Alfa’s fender, one fixed point in a disintegrating age, until I identified myself. With neither small talk nor surprise, he handed me the keys and the provisional registration and an envelope containing instructions on where to meet Liz for the taking-out-the-license ritual in Stamford, and then he faded away while I entered my Alfa.

Life. It can be sweet. This creature smelled not like an ordinary new car but like the world’s most expensive new glove. Starting the engine (a snarling purr), waiting while a police car full of bloodied blacks went by, I joined the ebb of vehicles, edged my way cautiously through the miserable traffic of midtown to the West Side Highway, then opened it up and just had a wonderful time on the Henry Hudson Parkway, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and the Connecticut Turnpike to Stamford. I got there first and hung around outside in the sunlight until the familiar black Lincoln rolled to a stop by a fortuitous fire hydrant. Liz got out of the back, with somebody she described as “the best man.”

I looked at him. “Are you sure?” This creature was alleged to be a rock musician from Toronto, but appeared to be almost entirely rock, with little left for musician. The only word he knew in English was, “Yuh.” I didn’t try him on any other languages, but I doubt he would have shown much proficiency no matter what the tongue.

“Let’s go get it over with,” Liz said, and I handed her my three new speeding tickets, saying, “I suppose you have people who can take care of these.”

She glanced at them, put them away in her shoulder bag, and said, “Don’t make me a widow before the lawsuit’s over, okay?”

“Your concern,” I told her, “inspires me to greater heights of self-protection.”

“Mm,” she said, and we went inside to get the legal papers. Thence to the JP for a scene out of a thirties comedy — except that the old farmer marrying us wasn’t wearing a ratty bathrobe and didn’t have his false teeth out — and by three o’clock the deed had been done. “So much for that,” Liz said.

“Just think,” I said “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Drew Dodge.”

“Sure,” she said, got into the Lincoln with Yuh, and off they went. The JP, Missis JP, and Daughter JP stood on the porch by the glider and waved and waved, till they noticed the groom was still right here. “Well, so long folks,” I said, hopped into the Alfa, and spurred away. Behind me, they formed a tableau, lined up along the porch rail, mouths open, hands up to wave but not quite waving. Not what you’d call waving.