MONDAY
1.
If you had been on this morning’s flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles, you’d have seen a pair of newlyweds on the commencement of their honeymoon. You would have overheard how proudly he said My Wife all through the short flight. Her voice muffled and timid, speaking into his shoulder, My Husband. After disembarking, oblivious to the heat and absurd humidity, they hovered at the arrival gate, then in front of the Terminal 6 Starbucks, where flies swirled in sluggish arcs. They’re at the luggage carousel now, standing hand in hand. Her pretty sundress wrinkled from sitting. They are good-looking, you think to yourself. The full bloom of their youth like a flash-bang to your senses. But then a black Town Car pulls up just outside the sliding exit doors and they’re whisked off.
Slowly, slowly, the newlyweds are shuttled along a jammed freeway, heading away from the busy beaches, where the sea is warm and the sand scorches bare feet. They won’t get to see the Indigenous folks peddling mango and pineapple spears, or the sheriff’s department patrolling them from atop their ATVs. Just as the surfers, out in the water, won’t ever know the dappled pattern of sunlight along Wilshire Boulevard at this hour.
They’re passing the university now, its students squabbling over politics and fair-trade coffee beans; its faculty checking their bank accounts, trying to figure out the math, How much do I make an hour? Meanwhile the Sav-on turned Rite Aid turned Walgreens is empty once more. Dust on a FOR LEASE sign is a very particular kind of sadness.
The ficus trees have become more numerous. Their gigantic, bulbous heads sprouting up and out across the street. Deeper and deeper the Town Car travels into Beverly Hills, into these landscaped expansive grounds, verdant and shaded and very green. This is where the sleek animals live. Everything expensive and pristine, the houses not like anything the couple has ever seen. Different from the mobile homes, the one- or two-bedroom apartments, the suburban neighborhoods—and there, springing up from this dense tropical jungle, is a stucco Mediterranean palace. Green-and-white candy-striped awnings fluttering in the hot dry wind, façade as pink and angry as a sunburn. This is the Town Car’s destination, the Pink Hotel.
“Our reservation is under Mr. and Mrs. Collins,” the husband tells the front desk.
The wife frowns. Her thumb slips into her mouth, the nail inserted between two pearly incisors. She repeats this new last name in her mind, over and over, but its meaning slips away. She chews harder, aware of Keith beside her, chatting up the hotel front desk manager, the assistant manager, whoever else might be nearby. His new panama hat tilted to the side for affected casualness, mustache trimmed to a neat little edge, his hand searching for hers. They are Mr. and Mrs. Collins.
The past twenty-four hours have been a series of rapid transitions for this newly minted Wife. She has not had time to adjust. Grains of rice are wedged into the dark corners of her purse from when the civil servant said, You may kiss the bride, and all their friends from the restaurant showered them with the bleached white grain. Then, like every proper wedding, even the small ones, there was champagne and cocktails and dinner and dancing. A Bloody Mary at the airport before their flight did nothing to ease this morning’s headache.
Neither had the car ride from the airport. The Town Car’s air-conditioning was no match for the heat outside. Little wife’s legs are moist and tender from when they stuck to the leather seat. And the driver’s buzzing voice, how Keith kept him talking in his persistent amiable way, runs on a loop in her head.
No one wants to take the bus or train when it’s this hot.
Waves of heat wafting off the asphalt, the concrete, the other cars and trucks and eighteen-wheelers. Commuters at a standstill. So many knuckles gripping so many steering wheels as Santa Ana winds beat against their car windows. Dust devils spinning across construction sites, flapping workmen’s shirts like flags, threatening makeshift tents beneath the freeway overpasses with collapse. All the while Keith was nodding along, asking, How crowded are the beaches?
The locals want their turf back, their driver told them. You hear them say it under their breath, they say it to anyone who doesn’t look like they belong.
Keith’s hand on hers became so sweaty, she pretended to need something from her purse. Lipstick, wallet, pens—ah, yes. Her phone. She snapped a selfie. Husband and Wife in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car.
The narrative of their wedding photographed well. The ceremony had been short, but the old courthouse had given it understated elegance. Our young couple promising each other that one day, when they had real money, they’d do it all over again. Have a huge party, with flower arrangements and party favors and a live band. Maybe a destination wedding, some other place that swam in their minds in vibrant colors like India or Hawaii or Thailand. Something to prove that marrying young had not been a mistake. They’d been together five years and had just moved in together, their first apartment without roommates. She was about to start a sommelier certification course, and Keith was moving up the ranks at his uncle’s Michelin-starred restaurant. Forge an empire, they’d written into their vows. Because they were at the precipice, the beginning of their lives. Marriage as the next step in a life well planned.
There’d been no one to give her away, no one from Keith’s family present to bless the union. A quick ceremony and then on to the next thing. Yet in front of the civil servant, entombed by the thick mahogany walls of the courthouse, beneath murals of California’s forefathers panning for gold, missionaries looking to God, Native Americans harvesting corn and wheat, they became serious. Even solemn. Their friends from the restaurant, who had arrived laughing and jubilant, quieted down. Hands were folded in laps. Legs crossed and uncrossed and crossed again. Keith took a sprig of lavender from his almost-wife’s bouquet and fastened it to his lapel. Someone rearranged her blouse so that it looked more appropriately prim. They pinned back her bobbed hair. Lipstick was reapplied. Her step became heavy, so did her gaze and the thumping in her chest. A new and unexpected transformation was taking place that she had not prepared for. No longer Kit Simpkins, she was to be Kit Collins.
Kit Collins. Kit Collins. Kit Collins.
The name ricochets off the walls of her mind. She cannot get its rhythm, has not been able to shake its alien feeling or understand why she bristles at its pronunciation. Who is this Kit Collins?
I now pronounce you man and wife.
The kiss that followed was fine. Somewhere in the courthouse an alarm went off. Somebody had exited through a wrong door. High and whirring, the sound reverberated through each of Kit’s limbs. They were playing their roles, she told herself. Keith, the proud groom. Kit, the blushing wife. Rice raining down around them. Had she blushed?
On to the reception they went. His uncle’s restaurant done up with votives, with tiny lights in all the oak trees and sycamores, crisp white wines chilling in silver buckets. They danced and danced, ties on the men’s heads, the women barefoot and tilting. Kit’s cheeks ached from smiling. Finally, Keith (not a good dancer) wildly swung his arm and the bottle of sauvignon blanc in his hand thumped his best man in the nose. Friends turned into employees once more, Keith directing them to clean up the blood, Kit softening his tone. He just needs to get to bed.
Back at their new apartment, the weight of the night embarrassed them. Made them like shy children. Keith joked about consummation. They were overwhelmed and exhausted. That they did not have sex on their wedding night seemed a bad omen. Kit stayed awake, a feeling of failure sweeping over her. The thrust of it surprising. She spent the night unpacking their wedding gifts. Spreading them out so it seemed like there were more. The fine bone china from her aunt laid out on the kitchen table. Something to aspire to, the note read. There were only two place settings. Her aunt had not been able to make it to the wedding. Regretfully must decline. Which was expected, they’d not seen each other in many years. Her uncle didn’t even bother signing the card. It would have been nice if something of her mother’s had been sent. Something borrowed, something blue.
Why did you take everything out of their boxes? Keith mumbled, harried, tripping over a blender her stepfather had given them. He, too, had been unable to make it to the nuptials. Busy with the twins, his email had said. A photo of his new wrinkly babies attached, both in powder-blue onesies.
Then it was a rush to finish packing for their flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles, Keith worrying about making a good impression.
This trip could change everything, he had said, rearranging his curls once more. And Kit wanted to ask, Hasn’t everything changed already?
* * *
They’re smiling at her now. The front desk employees. She must take her thumb out of her mouth and say hello. Their faces bright and merry from greeting the handsome young newlyweds. Sweat has collected at the back of her neck. Keith is busy signing paperwork. His signature slanted but solid.
The lobby of the Pink Hotel is a stark contrast from the boiling heat outside. Her bare arms are chilled from its sudden cool air.
“Welcome, Mrs. Collins.”
She opens up her face so they are pleased. “Thank you,” she says with a smile.
Around them a ballet of perfectly groomed bellhops, their costumes royal green, buttons polished gold, collects and disappears with their luggage. One of them hands her a bottle of water, emblazoned with the hotel’s crest. Something to keep her from biting her nails. She twists off the top and catches a whiff of their apartment. Its new-paint smell has stubbornly clung to her summer dress.
“Congratulations,” they tell Keith, and she knows what they mean. That slight clenched feeling returns to her jaw.
Copyright © 2022 by Liska Jacobs
