“See?” Robin said.
“You’re a regular gypsy,” I said.
“I’m good, I’m bad,” Robin said, “though I might be a little ugly.”
“No,” Avey said.
“Yes!” One of the cooks called Robin’s name, and she jumped. “Goodness. They’ll have my head on a platter before I know it. I’ve got to get your order filled.”
The place was really bustling, the air enough to swoon. Waitresses worked their way through the aisles, each with a silver ball on a silver chain. Two construction-type guys sat hunkered over plates full of biscuits and gravy and pancakes and butter and bacon, all good things for hungry working men. Young and upcoming professionals decked out in Calvin Klein shades and Gucci skiwear clambered round tables loaded with grub, grandmas and grandpas, as well, gnawing on bones and sucking down fries, their grandsons and — daughters righteously porking along. Here was the ontology of oneness in a world gone mad, the music of chaos and bliss, some bright and risen band of lovelies playing for our ears only. Or maybe it was the way things had been and would always be, plain as a mountain, jeering at my stupor with good-natured amplitude until finally, like a man who’d been anesthetized, like it knew would be, I came round. The fragrance of so many meals, and the gorgeous din, the coffee in my mouth, hot with sugar and cream, these were a euphony all their own. Since I could remember, this was the first time my body had keened with a sense the world calls delight. My head swam loud with textures, tastes, colors, sound. On every wall hung pictures of the famous who’d graced the joint, a regular Vegas pantheon. There was Crystal Gayle in a white lace dress, and The Oak Ridge Boys with pompadours and smiles, the Denvers, too, John and Bob, and Wayne Newton, and Sammy Davis Jr, and Three Dog Night. The cheese factor was as high as the spirits. Hosannas from the sky couldn’t have sweetened the pot.
“Avey,” I said. She didn’t answer. She only looked. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s like this place fills me with a huge sense of, I don’t know, well-being, I guess.”
“That is so weird,” Avey said like a high school bimbo, though I loved her for it anyway, “because that’s exactly how I feel, too.”
“It’s a Brady Bunch thing,” I said.
“I wish I could live here.”
“Me, too,” I said. “With you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Me, I mean, with you.”
Steam like genies swarmed from our plates when Robin set them down, boysenberries oozed across my crepes, cheese over Avey’s eggs, them and mounds of butter. A smorgasbord of syrup magically appeared — strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, maple — the whole goddamned works. And though I’d never asked, Robin had brought me a giant glass of milk. If Avey’s face was a picture of mine, we must have looked the King and Queen of Earth.
“Say, Robin.”
“Yes, dear?”
“You wouldn’t by any chance know a silver-haired man called Super?”
“Super Duper? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You know him?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“You’ve heard of him then,” Avey said.
“Nope.”
“Then how’d you know his name?”
“Silly! Everyone is super-duper to me!”
Avey and I laid into our meals. For a solid five minutes we didn’t say a word. Finally I looked up. Avey was staring with a smile.
“What?” I said, looking at my shirt to see if I’d drooled. “Do I have a bat in the cave or what?”
“Can’t a girl just smile?”
I took Avey’s hands. I leaned across the table and kissed her. “Marry me,” I said. “Today. Right now.”
“AJ.”
“Marry me. We can go into Nevada and get hitched today. It’s no secret the way I feel about you. Besides, you heard what that woman said.”
“That they’re fairies?”
“That it’s in the stars, you. Marry me.”
Avey took a sip of water. She leaned into her seat. “AaaaaaJaaaaay.”
“AJ nothing. Let’s do it.”
My girl was smiling, the way humans do when the world turns strange, my girl was stirring her eggs. I waited, watching her smile stay and stay, until she put her hands on the table and brought her face to mine.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
I ran to the man with golden teeth and hollered for our check. “Snap, snap, Mr Wonderful,” I said. “We are getting married!”
“I no tell you a lie, eh? We take care of you.”
“You’re beautiful, my friend,” I said, and meant it.
And then Robin appeared. “What’s the matter,” she said, “are the alien’s coming?”
“We, Robin, are getting married.”
“Well, can you feature that?”
I grabbed her face and gave it a giant kiss. “You are a freaking angel.”
Robin waggled her silver ball. “The more you give, the better it is,” she said. “Empty your cup!”
From the phone booth outside we called a cab, and the next thing we knew, we were at the County Clerk’s applying for a license to get hitched. Avey and I both were as amazed by how well the world seemed to work, given the mayhem it had been cast into, as we had been by the mayhem at its peak. Last night, we were trapped in a cabin on a mountain that snatched up the life of our friend and set us fearing for our own. Today, our friend was gone, and we were eating crepes and eggs in a diner full of merrymaking fools, and rushing off to marriage. You never know what’s coming for you, I said to Avey. And what’s coming for you, Avey said, is always what’s best, even if you don’t know it. That was good enough for me, then: she was holding my hand. I told the preacher who answered the number off our list we needed someone to make quick work of two desperate lovers.
“Chomping at the old bit are you?” the reverend said as though he were hard of hearing.
“Right now,” I said. “Can you do it?”
“Think you can hold the old horses for about an hour?”
“What time is it?” I said.
“Noon, of course,” he said. “Listen. The old wife’s got leftover turkey and stuffing on the table as we speak.”
“Where’re you located?”
“I’ll tell you what, son. We aren’t going anywheres today, what with this infernal weather. If you can be here by one, we’ll be pleased as punch to do you right.”
Good thing we’d hit the Wells Fargo inside Raley’s before heading to the diner. I’d left just two bucks in my account, the balance a fire in my pocket. To hell with Super, to hell with Basil and Lucille. We didn’t need them. The cab would cost plenty, that much we knew, but I didn’t care and neither did my girl.
Our driver was a tiny guy, smaller than me, a hundred pounds, if that. He looked a lot like the rat from Reservoir Dogs, actually, the one with the scrawny van dyke and yellowy teeth played by Steve Buscemi, an impression that sealed when he crammed a thumb against a nostril and honked some junk from the other. A scarcely concealed agitation entered his voice when we told him our destination.
“Lucky for you it’s slow today,” he said. “I don’t normally go nowhere past Elk Point.”
No doubt his attitude changed after I said there’d be an extra twenty in the deal if he’d shut his mouth and drive. For about fifteen minutes everything was peachy, me and my mud-paddy necking away like a couple of teenaged horn dogs. But there’s always something, and the car began to shudder.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Didn’t nobody tell me the gas gauge was busted.”
“Look,” I said. “We’re on our way to get married.”
“So what do you want, a toaster?”