“You do?”
“Mmmmm,” I said. “I took Helen to Europe a year ago. We went and looked at all the things you’re supposed to look at, and I met a Pigalle whore while she went shopping for shoes.”
“Is yours still good, Harvey?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Why, you silly! Then we don’t have anything to worry about.”
“We don’t?”
“I have a passport,” she said. “I have a perfectly fine passport, because six months ago there was this gentleman who was going to Europe, and he wanted me to—”
She broke off, snapping the poor sentence right in the middle. Jodi, alas, was somewhat embarrassed to talk about her professional career in front of me. This embarrassment was something relatively new, since she’d been delighted to discuss the theory and practice of whoring the day we renewed our happy acquaintance. And, strangely, the same reserve was developing within me; I was unwilling to discuss my profession, a subtler sort of whoring, now that Jodi and I were fleshmates once more.
“Wait,” I said. “We’re supposed to be husband and wife.”
“That’s right.”
“But we aren’t,” I said. “Your passport is in your name, and mine is in my name, and we’re not married. So how on earth can we travel as husband and wife?”
She poured me a fresh cup of coffee, passed the Vat 69 bottle to me, and pointed from the Scotch to the coffee. I took the hint and sweetened my Brazilian brew.
“Harvey,” she said, sounding a little like a melodious version of Al, “don’t be a stupid.”
I looked at my watch. It was getting to be eleven o’clock, and around that time even a casual sort of person is expected to report to MGSR&S and get to work running somebody up some flagpole or other. I took a sip of the alcoholic coffee and squinted at her over the brim of the cup.
“A stupid?”
“A very stupid,” she said. “You have a passport and I have a passport. And all we need to travel as man and wife is a marriage license.”
“A marriage license?”
“Of course. Then everyone will realize we got married after we got the passports. Which is perfectly valid, and which leaves the passports every bit as valid.”
Now she was beginning to make sense. I may or may not have been a stupid, but I could see the merit in what she was saying. Still, I had to get to the office. So all I had to do was hurry on to MGSR&S, while she went out and picked us up a marriage license — Wait.
“Jodi,” I said. “Really, girl, that’s all well and good, but you don’t understand. I mean, girl, how can we come by a little thing like a marriage license?”
“Easy.”
“Have it forged?” I asked brightly. “I suppose Anthropoid Al knows someone who’s handy with a pen but—”
“Not a forged one, Harvey. A real one.”
“So much the better,” quoth I. “Very much the better. But how and where does one acquire a real marriage license?”
“I’m not sure where,” she said. “Anyplace, I guess. But the how part is easy, Harvey “
I watched while she carefully broke a seeded roll in two, spread butter upon each half in turn, and stuffed bites down her throat. When the roll was gone I was still patiently waiting.
She said: “It’s simple, Harvey. We get married.”
So I never did get to the office that day. Instead, I got married.
First, of course, I explained to Jodi that I already was married, for better or for worse, as they say in ceremonies. And while divorcing Helen may have been an admirable notion, it was an unwieldy solution. It would take even longer than arranging for fresh passports.
“You really ought to divorce Helen,” Jodi told me, her eyes calm and serious. “I mean afterward, when we get back from Brazil. Not now, but later on.”
“Jodi—”
“I know what you’re going to tell me,” she said. “You are already married. I know that, Harvey. And you know it, and maybe even your wife knows it, though from what you said about her it’s hard to tell. But somewhere in Maryland there’s a little guy behind a marriage license counter, and he doesn’t know you’re married.”
“That,” I said, “is bigamy.”
“So,” she said, “what?”
So what indeed. I went, not to my office, but to the garage wherein I had deposited my ranch wagon the night before. Just a night ago, a night that seemed like ages. I took the car back, power-steered to Jodi’s hotel, power-braked at the curb, and went in for her. She came out with two suitcases. We were taking virtually nothing, but one suitcase, she insisted, would make a bad impression upon the Justice of the Peace. So we took two empty ones instead of a single full one, and we loaded them into the rear end of the wagon, and we loaded ourselves into the front end of the wagon, and I pointed the wagon at Maryland’s marriage mill, and we set out.
The town for which we were bound was providentially named Cherry Park, for obvious reasons. It was on Maryland’s northern border, and it was the marriage capital of the area, since neither a blood test nor a waiting period was required there. This made it a paradise for impulsive souls and syphilitics, and Jodi and I qualified on the first count if not the second. Huzzah for Cherry Park, where all roads lead to City Hall, and where an as-tounding number of young things park their cherries every day!
Huzzah, indeed.
We went to City Hall, found the marriage license bureau (which was not hard, since it dominated two rooms of three-room city hall), and filled out brief forms. We walked next door, where there was a line at the Justice of the Peace’s little shantie. Finally it was our turn. She said she did, and I said I did, and he said we could. I gave the license, signed and duly noted in Maryland’s ledgers, to Jodi, who folded it neatly and placed it in her purse. And back we climbed into the ranch wagon.
“Now what?” I wondered aloud. “Back to New York?”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No.” She let out a long breath. “I’ve never been married before,” she said. “And I have never before had a wedding night, and I would feel rotten spending my wedding night in my own apartment. Find a good motel, Harvey. And then we’ll have a good wedding night.”
It was not hard locating a motel. The motel industry is a natural in a marriage mill, and the enterprising fellows of Cherry Park were missing no bets. We found a place called Honeymooner Lodge, and I parked the wagon and carried our two suitcases out of it. They were part of a set of matched luggage, which should have shattered the we-never-did-this-before illusion, but this hardly mattered. I walked to the desk and signed the book Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Christopher and only felt like half a liar. The son behind the desk didn’t even ask to see our license, and I could have killed him. I mean, we had a license, and I wished he would ask for it.
Our room was clean and spacious. It had a huge double bed, and almost before I had closed the door Jodi was leaping happily upon the bed, bouncing hither and yon to test the springs.
“I’ll bet you’re starved,” I said. “I mean, nothing to eat since breakfast, and that was long ago. We ought to be able to find a decent restaurant down the road, and—”
“We will,” she said. “After.”
“After?”
“After,” she said positively. She was wearing a black dress (inappropriate as hell; whoever heard of getting married in a black dress?) and she proceeded to correct the inappropriateness of the garment by the simple expedient of removing it. The girl had not only gotten married without an unblack dress, but beneath it she wore a black bra. Lacy, and peekaboo in style, and provocative. Then she took it off, and her big boobs beamed at me, and I stopped thinking about bras and dresses and began thinking very seriously about Jodi.