Chapter 32
Kay looked up, wiping her eyes, and saw Garfield moving away, and Dan now sidling up to the bar beside her. On an alcohol-fuelled impulse, she reached up to his face and pushed the errant strand of hair away from his eye.
“You should teach your wife to do that,” she said. “It’s important. You can’t be a driving instructor with only one working eye.”
“Good point,” he said. “I’ll do that. How are you, Elaine?”
“I’m Kay now.”
“Oh!” He looked surprised. “And is that permanent or…”
“Not sure yet.”
“Well anyway, Kay or Elaine, I’ve been trying to find you all evening. You’re a hard woman to track down.”
“I’m a rare bird.”
“That you are. You’re also, I see, in need of a drink. But enough of the margaritas. Let me buy you a proper cocktail.”
He ordered a Jack Daniels for himself, and something called a Velvet Dream for her. One of Lorna’s friends introduced him to it, apparently. “Jamaican gold rum, pear brandy, yellow Chartreuse, Capelletti amaro sfumato rabarbaro…” There were other ingredients, but Kay lost track, because all she could hear was the sound of his voice. The drink, when presented to her in its tall glass, looked magnificent, with two distinct layers of red and yellow, lots of crushed ice, a mint sprig and, best of all, a swizzle stick.
“I love a swizzle stick,” she said, getting a little stuck on the word swizzle .
She stirred it, then took a tentative sip. “Oh my giddy aunt, it’s amazing!”
“Isn’t it?”
“I love you,” she said, and then she laughed. “Whoops. That just came out. Sorry. What I meant to say was, congratu… congratulations. I’ve not met your wife yet, but she looks fab. I’m… I’m sure you’re going to be…”
“Shh,” he said. “Have another sip.”
So she took another sip, and then she started to cry.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t you like it any more?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What then?”
“Nothing important,” she said. “Only that I just made the biggest mistake of my life.”
“What did you do?”
“You know what I did. You made me an offer. Just one word, you said. And I ran away. ”
“But I thought you said, because of your job you…”
“I resigned from my job, just like I resigned from my name.”
Dan blinked, and took a giant slurp of his own drink. His mouth was quivering as he said, “You did that? Why?”
“Just tell me this, Dan. Why the hell did you marry her if you don’t love her?”
“I’ll tell you, but first I just need to get this straight. Are you saying that you now wish you’d accepted my offer?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not just saying that because it’s impossible, because I’m married now, so there’s no danger of it actually happening?”
She shook her head, and plucked the swizzle stick out of her drink. “If this was a magic wand, I’d wave it and unmarry you right now.”
“So go on then –why don’t you wave it?” he said.
She stared at him with a surprising steadiness, for she wasn’t nearly as drunk as she’d been behaving. It was a kind of act, she realised, done almost unconsciously, to allow herself to say some things she wanted said, even if they’d come back later to bite her on the nether regions. But now he was taking their little game too far.
“You’re a bad man for saying that, Dan. I’ve already been hurt badly today, defecated on from a great height. I don’t want to be hurt any more. Enough now. Please! Just go away and leave me alone.”
“Wave it, Kay.” A gentle half smile was playing on his lips. He was staring at her with an urgent kind of wonder, and something else she couldn’t quite understand, repressed in the ridges of his mouth and cheeks. Was he laughing at her? She prayed he wasn’t laughing at her.
“Okay!” she said. “This is stupid, but okay.” She waved the stick. “I hereby magic you unmarried.”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. It shook her, the sudden, brief intimacy, the hint of that leathery, autumnal scent.
“It must have worked,” he smiled, waving his naked ring finger at her. She hadn’t even thought to check before if he’d been wearing one.
“Looks like a fairy stole it,” he said. “Maybe the same one who tried to steal your dad’s.”
“Please don’t do this,” she begged. “Don’t mess me around. It’s not fair.”
“I promise you I’m not,” said Dan, suddenly serious. “Look over there.” He pointed at Elle, who was on another stool further along the bar, chatting to Garfield. “We didn’t really get married today. She’s just a performer from Bluebird.”
Kay’s heart was pounding. “What are you talking about?”
“The wedding was a fake. I set it up as a kind of test, just to see what you’d do.”
She wondered if she was hallucinating. What had the barman put in this Velvet Dream ?
“It was Garfield’s idea,” said Dan. “This was a few weeks back, when I was trying to track you down. I found out you worked for Bluebird and managed to get an interview with the governor. I thought he was going to tell me to get lost. He comes across as tough, but he’s a good man, and he cares deeply about you. He admitted you weren’t happy. You were brilliant at your job, he said, but you were only half alive.”
“Garfield said that?”
“He did. I asked him what would happen if I showed up as one of your clients and told you I loved you. He didn’t think it would work. Said you still blamed yourself too much for what happened – still believed you were this congenital liar who couldn’t be trusted with a serious relationship. He said I’d need to shock you out of this half-life you were living, give you some kind of ultimatum, like a wedding. I guess he was also after some business. I didn’t mind. When you showed up today at the Register Office, I thought for a moment our little gambit had worked, but then you walked away.” Dan took a swig of his JD, licked his lips. “I was ready to give up at that point. I didn’t ask Sondra to call you, but I was glad she did. I thought maybe there was still a chance if you showed up tonight.”
“But Sondra was so upset when I turned up at the wedding.”
“We had to make it convincing – although I think her tears were real.”
“And when I saw you with Elle earlier, you looked like regular newlyweds.”
“Jerry texted me to say you were coming over, so we put on a show. I hoped you’d notice I was slightly disengaged from her prattle.”
Kay crinkled her eyes, still trying to figure it all out. “Such an elaborate set-up, and it so nearly didn’t work.”
“Well, as Bill Clinton once said, if you don’t succeed, you run the risk of failure.”
“Did he really say that?”
“I believe so.”
She couldn’t help herself any longer. Putting down her drink, she got off her stool and threw her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his chest. “I don’t know if I’m dreaming this,” she whispered. “If so, I never want to wake up.”
“If it’s a dream, I’m in it too,” he said, kissing her hair. “I vote we stay here. Real life can go take a flying leap as far as I’m concerned.”
She giggled, and peeped past Dan to see Elle and Garfield at the bar, now joined there by Sondra and Jeremy. All four of them were grinning in her direction and raising their glasses. She smiled back and waved.
“Is Elle really a doctor and all that other stuff you said about her?” she asked Dan.
He shook his head. “She came up with that character profile as a way of proving to you that none of those things matter in the end. Even if she could juggle knives while reciting Shakespeare backwards in six different languages, I’d still have chosen you.”
Kay laughed again. She didn’t think she ever wanted to stop laughing. “I can’t believe you did all this. I’m supposed to be the faker in our relationship.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “Our relationship?”
“Yeah!” she grinned. “Our relationship.”
They kissed, and she heard a cheer from their little fan club further along the bar.
“So what now?” Dan asked eventually.
“Well I guess you’re not going on your honeymoon then.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Do you have to be married to go on a honeymoon?”
“Technically, I think you do.”
“But this is a dream, remember? Dream rules apply.”
“Of course, you’re right.” Kay frowned, pretending to search her memory. “According to Rule 81, Subclause 6B, if I remember correctly, it is allowed, so long as you take me with you.”
“I have to take you, do I?”
“Oh yes, the rules are very clear about that.”
“Fair enough. And where should we go on this honeymoon?”
She didn’t even need to think about this. “How about Guatemala?”
THE END