Spare Change (3 page)

While the coffee perked, she hummed
Here Comes the Bride
and
painted her toenails pink. They’d be honeymooning in Miami Beach and as she
frolicked barefoot in the sand, Charlie, she hoped, would take notice. Once
they were back in their bedroom suite overlooking the ocean, she could imagine
him kissing her toes one by one. “My bride,” he’d whisper, “angel of my dreams.”
A shiver ran along her spine as Olivia thought back on how she’d foolishly
wasted all those years avoiding marriage; in actuality it was something that
made a person feel truly wonderful. Thank goodness I’ve come to my senses, she
told herself.

As Olivia sat before the mirror and applied her make-up, she could
swear years had disappeared from her face. The wrinkles which had come to be
all too familiar were strangely enough missing; likewise the droop of her
cheeks and a few dark splotches. Her eyes were greener than she had ever known
them to be, blazingly brilliant, the color of a blade of grass on the first day
of spring. Quite obviously marriage was something which agreed with a woman of
any age.

When the knock she had been
waiting for came, Olivia whooshed open the door with such enthusiasm that she
toppled over the potted philodendron which had been standing in the very same
spot for almost twenty years. “Hi,” she whispered breathlessly. She then slipped
her hand into the crook of Charlie’s arm and strolled out the door, leaving the
shattered pot and a pile of dirt strewn across the floor. 

A
t Christ the Lord Church, there
were throngs of well-wishers filling the pews and spilling out into the
vestibule. Francine Burnam, who had arrived late due to a babysitting problem,
was standing outside the door dressed in a flowered hat and billowing voile
dress. “Warm, isn’t it,” she commented as the man alongside of her mopped his
brow. Inside the church, ladies were fanning themselves and men were discretely
loosening their ties. The day had been forecasted to be in the mid-seventies,
but before noon the temperature soared to eighty-six degrees. Olivia hardly
noticed the heat, she felt the beads of perspiration settling on the back of
her neck but attributed it to the anxiety of a first time bride; as other women
blew tiny puffs of breath downward to cool their bosoms, she clasped a bouquet
of scarlet roses and marched down the aisle alongside Charlie.

The first clattering boom came just as Pastor Perkins asked if anyone
knew of a reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony.
Oh
dear,
Olivia thought,
I hope it’s not going to rain.
Any other time
she might have considered it an omen, but on this particular day, with nothing
but thoughts of love floating through her head, such a notion was nonexistent.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Pastor Perkins said, and a second roll
of thunder erupted; this one so loud it rattled the church windows and set the
steeple bell to chiming. “You may now kiss the bride,” the Pastor told Charlie,
but before the couple could lock themselves into an embrace a barrage of hail
began pelting the building. As the scattering of people who’d been standing
outside to escape the heat pushed into the vestibule, a ball of ice came
barreling through the stained glass window and shattered a scene depicting the
birth of Baby Jesus.

“You don’t suppose…” a wide-eyed Olivia asked.  Charlie smiled, shook
his head then went right ahead and kissed her. 

“Hail’s caused by hot air rising up and colliding with cold air,” he
whispered as they turned and walked back down the aisle. “It’s a natural phenomenon,
nothing to worry about.” He gave a reassuring smile and tightened his hand
around hers.    

Despite
Charlie’s seemingly logical explanation, Olivia checked both their wristwatches
to make certain the window hadn’t shattered during some lingering minute of the
eleventh hour; luckily, it was twenty-five minutes past twelve. She breathed a
sigh of relief and slipped back into the euphoric feeling of a woman in love. 

After a reception of
champagne and wedding cake, they went back to Olivia’s apartment, loaded the
last few cartons of her belongings into the back seat of the blue convertible
and headed for Wyattsville.

Olivia Ann Doyle

W
hen people start prattling on about how marrying a man
with Charlie Doyle’s reputation is opening myself up to heartache, I feel like
laughing in their face. Heartache? A lot they know! Heartache would be seeing
him walk away. I don’t give a navy bean about the fact that he’s had dozens of
other women—all that’s done with now.

I’ve done my own share of
dating; but let me tell you, there’s never been a man who makes me feel the way
Charlie does. I can say flat out, I am crazy in love with him. Charlie heats up
such a fire in me, I get red-cheeked just thinking how he stretches a line of kisses
down the back of my neck.  

Still, such talk can make
any woman wonder whether or not she’s doing the right thing—so, two weeks
before the wedding I went and had my fortune told. 

m about to marry Mister
Doyle, I said to the gypsy, and need to know if he’s a man who will love me
forever. Keeping that question in mind, she had me pull a card from the deck;
then laid a crisscross of other cards alongside of it. Right off, she said the
cards showed I had a terrible dislike of anything having to do with the number
eleven. Well, I was about to explain, it was with good reason, but before I got
a word out, she pointed to the card with a picture of eleven cups and said one
was tilted to the sky, which meant the number eleven would someday bring a
blessing. Not likely, I thought, but still, there was something about the
woman—the way her eyes looked right past me and focused in on things from
another time. It’s said that only gypsies have the true gift of looking at a
person and seeing their future, so I was happy as a red hen when she said a man
named Doyle would be loving me for the whole of my life and then some. 

Could a woman ask for any
more than that?

A Dinner to Die For

C
harlie’s apartment had the look
and feel of a bachelor’s place—Esquire Magazines stacked high on the end table,
pipes scattered about a wooden rack meant to contain them, overstuffed chairs
with the indentation of his behind still in them. Despite all of this, Olivia
began to think of the place as
home
the minute she entered. She hung her
dresses in the closet, set her perfume bottles on the bureau and placed her
toothbrush in the bathroom holder alongside Charlie’s.

“Don’t bother doing that stuff right now,” Charlie said. He circled his
arms around her, playfully tugged her blouse loose from the waistband of her
skirt and slid his hands across the bare skin of her back. “First things
first,” he whispered and pressed her tight to his chest.

Olivia felt the thumping of his heart; it was synchronized to precisely
match the beat of hers. Love you, the hearts drummed—love you, love you, love you.
Charlie eased open the row of buttons on her blouse and kissed her neck. He
continued for a good long while, then led her off to the bedroom.  Twining
themselves together, they climbed into bed and he kissed her in every spot
imaginable. Then, in the bright of day, with the sun shining in on them, they
made love. While other husbands were watching the final innings of a baseball
game and housewives were basting a roasted chicken, they fell deeper and deeper
in love.  

This was a day more special than anything Olivia had ever dreamed; it
was a day to be forever held in memory, a day that she would keep for all the
years of her life. Trying to hold onto the moment, she took the bedside clock,
turned it face down and buried it in the bottom of a drawer—but hiding time is
not a thing that will slow it. Moment by moment the sun slid behind the horizon
as a dusky twilight settled into the sky. When the sky was black as a raven’s
eye and only minutes of their wedding day remained, Olivia suggested they jump
into the blue convertible and start for Miami Beach that very night. But as
fate would have it, Charlie’s friends had arranged a round of parties in their
honor. “When they’ve gone to all this trouble,” he explained, “it would
downright
rude
for us to not attend.” She agreed, although somewhat
reluctantly.

For the next five days Charlie squired a smiling Olivia from place to
place, introducing her to the ladies of the Wyattsville Social Club. “It broke
our hearts when an outsider stole our Charlie away,” Emily Carter whispered
jokingly. Barbara MacIntyre made a similar comment. The widow Mulligan latched
on to Olivia’s arm and started asking about the secret for capturing such an
eligible bachelor.   

“Secret?” Olivia said, “There’s no secret. I simply fell in love with
him.”

“Love?” Widow Mulligan replied, “At your age?”

Six days after the wedding, Charlie carted four suitcases downstairs
and packed them into the trunk of his blue convertible. He tucked a road map
into the glove compartment and slid behind the wheel then he and Olivia headed
for Miami Beach, Florida. “We’ll take our time,” he told her, “drive seven
hours or so, then stop for the night. By Monday we’ll be sunning ourselves on
the beach.”

Olivia, a bit nervous about travelling such a distance in a
convertible, counted up the number of days they’d be on the road—three. Fine,
she thought, figuring that would bring them to the ninth day of their marriage,
by the eleventh day they would have arrived safely in Miami Beach. She smiled
and snuggled closer to Charlie, contemplating the three overnight stays at
quaint little roadside inns.

The first night they stopped in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They’d
driven the full length of the road looking for a place to stay—a Cozy Inn or
Honeymoon Haven—but the only spot with a room available was Sleep Planet, a
motel fashioned after a space ship. “It’s not what I’d imagined,” Olivia said,
her lower lip quivering.

Charlie took hold of her and kissed her in such a way that the lopsided
bed seemed somehow to level itself and the worn spot on the carpet became
nearly invisible. “Once we get to Miami Beach,” he whispered, “we’ll spend
fourteen days at the Fontainebleau, now,
there’s
a place you’re gonna
love.”

Love?  Olivia didn’t need another thing to love—she had Charlie, what
more could a woman ask? He was a man who watched out for her, did things to
please her, saw to her needs. Finding a man such as Charlie was the reason that
she, a person who had never relied on a soul other than herself, had fallen
head over heels in love. “A woman doesn’t need to
love
the place she
sleeps,” she sighed seductively, as they climbed into bed, “when she’s so in
love
with the man sleeping alongside of her.”

The second night they stopped in Georgia; but then the car began
overheating and they had to make numerous stops. At the end of the third day
they’d only gone as far as Jacksonville. Even though they’d crossed over into
Florida, it was another three-hundred miles to reach their destination. Olivia,
no longer fussy about
where
they bedded down, said, “If you’re weary of
driving we can honeymoon right here.”

“Nonsense,” he answered.  “I promised you two weeks in Miami Beach, and
that’s what you’re going to get.”

“If you’re sure…” she noticed a bit of weariness around his eyes. 

When they finally arrived at the Fontainebleau on Tuesday, the tenth
day of their marriage, the spasm knotting Olivia’s back relaxed a bit. “See,”
Charlie said, “I told you, nothing to worry about.”

Olivia knew better—tomorrow would be the eleventh day. Regardless of
what the gypsy had said, anything could happen. One of them could drown in the
swimming pool, or get a severe sunburn, possibly be mugged by some drunken
sailor. “I don’t know about you,” she told Charlie, “but, I am thoroughly
exhausted. Let’s just stay in bed all day tomorrow. We’ll order room service,
enjoy the view from our window.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said with the slyest of winks, “that sounds good to
me.”

So on the eleventh day of their marriage, they did just that. In the
morning they ordered up a tray of bacon and eggs; at noon they called down for
sandwiches, and in the evening the tuxedoed waiter delivered a cart with
chilled champagne and candles. After drinking such a sizeable amount of
champagne, Olivia could barely open her eyes the next morning, but when she did
the first thing that came to mind was that the eleventh day of their marriage
had come and gone without disaster. She bounded out of bed, ready, she claimed,
for a dip in the pool.

Day after day, they swam in the pool, warmed their toes in the sand and
walked along the beach; they dressed in their finest clothes and dined in
restaurants with crystal candlesticks and starched tablecloths. Every evening they
drank glasses of dark red burgundy and toasted their love.
Here’s to us
,
they’d say, reminding themselves how fortuitous it was that they’d found each
other.  

On their eleventh day in Miami, Olivia suggested they play it safe—avoid
the swimming pool with its ten feet of water where a person could drown, skip
the beach where sand crabs and jelly fish could attach themselves to a person’s
skin, stay out of the sun which could quickly blister any spot not slathered
with sunscreen. Charlie, who could almost swear there was a bucket of salt
water sloshing around in his left ear, agreed; so they held hands, strolled
Collins Avenue and shopped the boutiques. Olivia bought tee shirts in every
imaginable color, sunglasses circled with rhinestone trim, three ceramic
flamingos and a conch shell with a dolphin painted on the side of it. On the
way back to the hotel, she spied another souvenir stand and claimed that she
had to stop for some post cards to send to the girls at the Southern Atlantic
Telephone Company.