“And the very last thing that I need,” I came right back at her, “is a husband to keep me here, and an illegal one at that! Besides, why can’t Caroline or Jolene do it? They like him at least.”
“Well, isn’t that obvious?” Jewel said. “How could we hope to marry them off to rich college boys if they’ve already got a husband at home?”
“Then marry him yourself.” I started to get up, but she pushed me back.
“I shall never marry,” she proclaimed, drawing herself up to her full five-foot height. “It’s a matter of principle.”
I didn’t bother to question the reasoning behind that statement. “Well, what about that little tart, Cathleen? She likes anything that shaves.”
“She might lift her skirt for anything that shaves,” Jolene spoke up knowledgeably. “But she doesn’t marry it.”
“Cathleen won’t have me,” Luca said dismally, and from the way he said it, I knew he’d already asked.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it,” Jewel said. “All you got to do is marry him and then wait a while and get a divorce and go on with your lives. You’re both young. A year or two wasted on a marriage of convenience isn’t so bad.”
“Convenient for whom, I’d like to know.”
Jewel puckered her lips to consider the situation further. “I suppose, in all fairness, there should be some kind of fee paid.”
“Oh, I couldn’t accept pay from Darcy,” Luca said.
“Not her, Luca dear. I meant that you should pay Darcy something for her trouble.”
Cautiously, I turned to him. “How much would you be willing to pay?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. Fifty dollars.”
“Piss on that amount. I wouldn’t even kiss him for fifty dollars.”
Before he could come back at me, Jewel stepped in. “It is a bit on the low side, Luca, honey.” She turned back to me. “Of course, before we dicker any further, I think we should decide if the marriage is to be consummated.”
Luca’s cheeks went red. I made a face at her. “If that means will I sleep with him, the answer is no, no, a thousand times no, not for a million dollars.”
My emphasis did not impress Jewel. “Then how about three hundred dollars? Three hundred dollars for one unconsummated marriage. Do you think you could raise that to pay Darcy if we gave you enough time?”
Luca nodded miserably.
“And how about you?” Jewel gestured in my direction. “Since the warm glow of having helped another human being isn’t enough to satisfy your miserly nature, would three hundred dollars do it?”
“No!” I had just been on the point of considering it, but I knew what miserly meant and I resented being called names. It wasn’t miserly to want to own your own life—not other people’s lives, mind you, but just your own. Everybody owes themselves that much. Marrying Luca would mean I’d have to put off travel and adventure indefinitely, and even though it might also provide me with the money I’d need to get to Kathmandu, it still seemed one hell of a sacrifice.
“I bet I know what would sweeten the pot,” Jewel said, looking at me shrewdly. “What if I was to pay for your honeymoon and send you both away to the seashore for a whole week?”
She had my interest now, if not my cooperation.
“You’ve never seen the ocean,” she reminded me, as if I needed to be reminded. “Luca and you could go up to Wildwood, New Jersey. I’ve heard about it. They got the ocean and a promenade. And you could stay in a hotel and everything. Wouldn’t that be something, Darcy? Staying in a hotel and getting waited on instead of doing the waiting on?”
“Where are you going to get the money to pay for it?” I wanted to know.
She looked down her nose at me. “I don’t gotta tell you everything about my personal financial affairs. Never you mind where I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Is it a deal?”
But there was one thing left for me to find out. “Who’s going to pay for the divorce?”
“Luca will,” answered his negotiator.
“All right,” I conceded. “But only on the condition that he starts saving for the divorce just as soon as we’re married.”
And that was how I came to marry Luca D’Angeli, partly for the money, and partly for the chance to travel and to finally use my cardboard suitcase that I’d gotten for my birthday.
We stood in front of the justice of the peace. Neither one of us had bothered to wear our good clothes, and Luca promised to love me, and honor me, and all that other manure, and I promised the same. And as we stood there, trying for the justice’s benefit, not to act as if the situation were wholly repugnant, I looked into Luca’s eyes for the first time in months, and I saw something that made me happy even as it terrified me. But the moment passed too quickly for the truth of what we were doing to penetrate, and he was as much a stranger to me on that day as he had been on the first day, peering out from behind his father. You see, I did not recognize him. Still I did not recognize him.
4.
Kindle to Love or Wrath
When the ceremony was over, we got on a train that would take us to Philadelphia and from there to Wildwood. My entire wardrobe, consisting of two pairs of pants without holes in them, and one dress that did not fit me (its rightful owner being Caroline, whose body was different from mine, to say the least) was packed into my suitcase, which I kept on my lap for the whole long ride to New Jersey. I was afraid that someone might steal it, and even at the end of the ride when the conductor offered to take it
