every thirty seconds to throw up. Oh, God, Janie. It’s over. We’re not getting married. Not now, anyway. Not in Italy. And the way everything seems to be going against us… maybe not ever. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe HIS mother is right. Maybe we should just forget it. Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”
I know! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Not meant to be? Holly, I know you don’t feel well, but are you NUTS? You can’t just forget it. You guys HAVE to get married. And you have to get married here, in Italy.”
She just looked at me through miserable, swollen eyes. “Why?”
“Because I already told Darrin!” was what I ALMOST said. I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to have told anyone, though, and at the last possible second changed it to, “Because it’s what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve been planning this forever. And Mark wants it, too, I know it. More than anything. You can’t just give up because of a little food poisoning!”
To which she responded by barfing some more.
I got her back to bed, somehow. Then I found Peter outside with more of those breakfast rolls, and asked him to get his grandmother. Frau Schumacher came over, looking very concerned, and went in to see the stricken couple. Her expression, when she came out of the room again, was grave.
“No good,” she said to me. “Zey vill not make the drive to Roma and back today. Tomorrow, yes. But not today.”
“But it HAS to be today,” I cried. “There’s no other time! The mayor said Wednesday was the only day… and we leave Friday anyway.”
But I know Frau Schumacher is right. She’s downstairs making some hot broth for Mark and Holly to choke down—it doesn’t matter if the lights go out right now, since it’s daytime. A beautiful day, as a matter of fact. The sun is beaming down, and the pool is sparkling, and the breeze is causing the palm fronds to sway gently….
Damn it! Why did they eat those oysters?
And why does this country have to be so BACKWARD??? If a person wants to get married here, and has all the right forms from back in the US, why CAN’T she??? Why do they have to send her all over creation for MORE forms??? Is it some kind of test to see how dedicated they are to the idea of being married? I mean, it’s just a FORM,anybody can get a form—
Holy crap.
Anybodycan get a form.
PDA of Cal Langdon
PDA of Cal Langdon
Honest to God, I don’t know how this happened. Last thing I knew, I was sleeping blissfully.
Then, not five minutes ago, a small but very determined missile hit my bed, tearing off my very comfortably arranged sheets and shouting in my ear that it was time to get up and get in the car.
I vaguely recall that this missile seemed feminine in form—not an unpleasant way to be roused. Until I realized just which, precisely, female the form belonged to.
Then a cup of coffee was shoved in my hand, and I was urged to dress. Which I did. And then, when I wandered downstairs, wondering what was happening and why Frau Schumacher was at the stove, making what appeared to be soup of some kind, I was very rudely snatched, shoved outside, pushed into the passenger seat of the car, and driven off at considerable speed down the driveway by someone who is apparently not exactly familiar with a stick shift.
A someone who looks remarkably like Jane Harris.
On crystal meth.
Oh, that’s right. It’s all coming back to me now. We’re supposed to be escorting Mark and Holly to Rome so that they can apply for some sort of form at the US embassy.
Except that for some reason, Mark and Holly do not appear to be in the car with us.
“Um, Jane,” I ask, in what I hope is a soothing tone that won’t startle the young woman beside me, looking so wild-eyed behind the wheel. “Aren’t we forgetting something? Or should I say, someone? A pair of someones?”
She seems barely to register my presence in the car, she’s checking so frantically in the rear view mirror for a hole in the oncoming traffic so she can make the turn onto the strada principale.
“Mark and Holly have food poisoning,” is her surprising response. “They won’t be able to make it. We have to go without them.”
“I see.” I’m trying to sound as reasonable as I can, seeing as how she is clearly unaccustomed to driving and conversing at the same time. “And am I to understand that we’ll be applying for whatever form it is they’re lacking?”
“Yeah.” She tosses something into my lap. Looking down, I see that it’s a pair of passports. “Don’t worry, I got their passports. Their birth certificates, too.”
This strikes me as highly amusing.
“And do you really think that the US embassy is going to issue this form to us just because we’re holding our friends’ passports and birth certificates,” I ask, playing along, “simply because we ask them to, as a favor?”
“No,” comes Jane Harris’s somewhat startling reply. “They’re going to issue the form because we’re going to tell them we’re Mark Levine and Holly Caputo.”
This is definitely the funniest thing I’ve heard all morning.
“Isn’t that going to be a little difficult?” I ask. “Seeing as how Mark is dark-haired and wears glasses, and I’m fair-haired, and have twenty/twenty vision?”
Next thing I knew, Mark’s glasses were hurled into my lap.
“I filched them off his bedside table,” my kidnapper explained. “And you can’t tell his hair is that dark in the picture. It’s black and white. You could say it got bleached in the sun, or whatever, if anybody asks. Which they won’t.”
Sadly, I’m starting to wake up now. Even more sadly, this is all starting to seem less and less like a dream, and more and more like a real-life nightmare.
“Wait a minute. Are you serious?” Because she LOOKS totally serious. And we are hurtling down the strada principale—past signs that say ROMA—at a very serious speed. “We’re going to POSE as Mark and Holly?”
“Why not?” She is passing a large truck carrying—predictably— numerous live chickens, stacked high. They squawk at us hysterically. “All we have to do is show our IDs and sign some forms. What’s the big?”
“The BIG,” I say (since when did people start leaving off the word ‘deal’ when asking what the big deal is, anyway? Is this an artist thing? Mary does this, as well), “is that that is what I believe is called forgery. And probably perjury. And maybe a whole bunch of other things, as well.”
Jane Harris has not once turned her head in my direction. She is wearing sunglasses, which makes it extremely difficult to see her eyes, and thus whether or not she has gone absolutely and completely bonkers.
“Oh, please,” she’s saying. “Like we’ll get caught. Mark’s a doctor, remember? No one can read his signature anyway. And I’m an artist. I’ve been forging Holly’s mom’s name on report cards and tardy slips for ages. I think I can easily manage to do Holly’s. You can just scribble something for Mark’s.”
This has progressed from a pleasant game to an entirely unpleasant situation.
“Jane,” I try again. “Are you kidnapping me and forcing me to go to Rome with you to commit fraud against the US government?”
She refuses to see the gravity of the situation, replying merely, “Oh, shut up and drink your coffee and keep writing in your little machine there, if it makes you feel better. There’s some of Peter’s brotchen in the back if you want it. And I’m not kidnapping you. I’m not demanding a ransom from anybody for you. As if anybody’d pay it if I did.”
There must be some sort of Italian law that forbids this sort of thing… taking advantage of a man in a less than wakeful state, and forcing him to drive hundreds of kilometers to a city he only just came from a day or two before, where he will be forced to impersonate another man….
She’s wearing Adidas, but I can see still see the cat tattoo. Is it because it’s so early, or can it really be…
