Chapter 17 Miz
17
MIZ
Kal: I have a bit of a development.
Me: Uh oh. What?
Kal: Silvio knows.
Me: WHAT? How?
Kal: He found the rings.
Me: So??????? Couldn’t you have said they’re props?!
Kal: Sorry. He wants to be our witness tomorrow. He’ll take photos for us too.
Me: Oh Christos.
Kal: Might as well ask Aimé to be yours…
Me: Fudge
He sends me a link to an Aster song.
Me: Dude, now is not the time to work on your playlist.
Kal: It’s for you, an apology song.
Oh. Right. I missed the title: “Yikirta.” Sorry .
Kal: Having people we know in the photos is a good thing. You’ll ask her?
Me: Not leaving me a choice, are ya?
Kal: Of course you have a choice. But we have to think of what’s good for the case. We have to do everything possible. We owe it to ourselves. And our best friends being there is natural.
Me: Okay, easing up on the WE…
Kal: Sowee.
Despite my panic, I burst out laughing. How am I supposed to break all of this down for Aimé now when I’m still digesting the idea myself? I would have liked, like, a month or so to get used to the idea of signing for Kal, but our time being tight, I sucked it up and accepted an early date of October 1st.
But now it’s September 30th, and I still haven’t told Aimé, who slept over because we are going on her first morning run. She’s even taken the day off work tomorrow, expecting to be out of commission after the long run. While I get ready in the bathroom, I give myself a pep talk in the mirror. “Tomorrow, you are not getting really married. You’re just signing a piece of paper. And saying some words. Easy peasy.”
“Who’re you talking to?” Aimé says groggily, surprising me by popping her head in. As she lifts a coffee mug to her lips, I spy powdered sugar on her upper lip. She snuck a stale doughnut from the box of leftovers I brought back from the clinic yesterday. A terrible idea, eating one of those before a run, but I guess we can be queasy together, just for very different reasons.
“It’s a little psyching up I do before I head out in the mornings,” I lie.
“Oh cool,” she says, genuinely believing me. I almost feel guilty.
Outside, the dawn air is perfection for a run—cool, foggy, with a drizzle as light as a baby’s breath. Is rain the day before your wedding good luck too? Nature doesn’t care what’s fake or what’s real, right? I do my ritual of doing a squat and touching the ground as Aimé watches.
I set a brisk walking pace up University Avenue so that we will be warm by the time we get to the Queen’s Park loop. The avenue is so open this early in the morning I’m almost tempted to run in the middle of the road, as if it is a race day. We speed up to a jog as we enter the loop. At Aimé’s draggy half-asleep pace, one trip around, just under a kilometre, takes forever. I feel like I’m dying. If there is one morning when I need to pump it out, it’s today. A little into the second and final lap for today, Aimé perks up.
“You know what?” she says. “I am gonna do a marathon.”
“Said sugar and caffeine,” I say with a smirk.
“No, really. What’s the sense in doing something half-assed like a ten k?”
“It’s not half-assed,” I admonish. “Pace yourself, or you’ll burn out. You’re high right now.”
Aimé’s old muscle memory for explosive speed reactivates with each stride. “I quote, the body is capable of much more than we realize!”
Oh lord, words I used to talk her into doing a long-distance race come back to haunt me. “Not right out of the gate! I also said, With the right gradual training . You’re going too fast.”
She lifts her chin haughtily. “I don’t appreciate a defeatist attitude from my coach.”
She has that look on her face that means business, and then she shoots off like bullet. I, on the other hand, stop. It’s kind of beautiful to witness this old Aimé, but this actually is old Aimé, so the consequence is going to be epic and not in a good way.
Sure enough, within moments, she starts to slow. She wilts, bends double with her hands on her knees, crouches to a squat, then sinks to the ground under a tree. Once she has completed crashing, I swallow my I told you so and stroll over.
“I’m so old,” Aimé wails at me.
I kneel in front of her. “Easy there. Longer on the exhale.”
“I should have consecrated the ground like you.”
“There’s no superstition to it,” I say with a smile. “You just don’t sprint until you see the finish line, love. And in long distance, that comes way later than in four hundred metres.”
“I think my uterus is cramping. Has that ever happened to you?”
“Lie down, and put your feet up against the trunk.” I guide her into the position. “Close your eyes. Breathe. This too shall pass.” I copy her, with a view of the tree canopy and our feet, and wait until her ragged wounded-animal heaves even out into steady breaths.
“So,” I begin, preparing to confess. I know I don’t have to—I could still choose to go with a random witness. After all, it was Kal who couldn’t hide an itty-bitty jewellery case properly and got himself caught. But it will be worse for me if I sign for him, then tell Aimé. She is bound to find out anyway.
“Hmm?” Aimé says, turning her head to look at me.
I take a deep breath. “I found a person for Kal.”
She puckers her mouth and frowns, looking back up at the sky, confused. “I thought we let that go after the gong show at SanRemo.” The version of that day that Aimé knew ended with Nardos storming out of the bakery and Kal and I finishing the pastries and then going our merry ways. I was perfectly happy to keep things between Kal and me as promised, but now I don’t have a choice.
“The person is me,” I announce. I bite my lip, waiting for her response.
She twists her head, slowly, and stares at me. I begin counting the clouds in the sky. Don’t talk me out of it don’t talk me out of it don’t talk me out of it. An ambulance rushes by, sirens blaring, matching the alarm bells going off in her head, I’m sure.
“Mizan Begashaw,” she says. I know she’s waiting for me to look at her, tell her I’m joking. I turn to face her, the bits of wood and dried-out soil scratching my scalp.
One look at my face tells her I’m not joking. “You?!” she gasps. “ You? Who doesn’t do marriage? You’re the worst person on earth to do this, and you’re signing for him?”
“Why you gotta make me sound like I’m diseased?” I come up to my elbows to make my case. “As his best friend who has no interest in actually getting married myself, I’m, in fact, the best person to sign for him twice over. And we’re not doing doing it. We’re just signing on it.”
She rolls over and sits up carefully. “Never thought I’d live to see the day Ms. I-Don’t-Get-Married gets married.”
I sit up fully too and begin stretching my leg. “Ears on, Miss Audio Specialist! Ain’t nobody getting married married. No tidar . No gabicha .” These are ten-dollar words that one picks up over the course of being in six weddings.
“ No hablo bien espanol, mamacita ,” Aimé says, bouncing up, her aches and pains suddenly forgotten.
“It means matrimony and…also matrimony ,” I say, as we walk back toward home. The traffic up and down the four-lane avenue is slightly thicker than when we left this morning, people trickling into downtown from all ’burbs in all directions. “Don’t ask me why we have two different Amharic words for the same damn concept.”
“One must be for when friends get married.”
I grin at her. “Touché. But my point is that there is no hubby-wifey concept here. This is strictly paper.”
Aimé stops walking and stares at me. “What is happening with you these days?”
“Why does anything need to be ‘happening’ with me?” I say, exasperated. “What has our civilization come to that people are so skeptical of altruism? People give organs to strangers, and that is permanent. I’m not offering Kal a kidney, or a heart. You give a heart, you die. Permanently.” I cross my arms and raise an eyebrow at her. “Now if you’re jelly that I’m getting married before you, then I can’t help you.”
“Didn’t you just say you’re not getting married?”
“I know you know what I mean.” I clasp my hands and walk toward her. “Speaking of which,” I begin. “Please be my witness?”
Aimé laughs loudly. “Who the hell else is gonna do it?”
“Yes! Thank you thank you thank you.” I grab her and plant a big kiss on the side of her head, then flop on her heavily, making her practically carry me as we walk.
“All right, calm down. But you know what…? Maybe this is a good thing for you.”
I stop. “Eh?”
“Now you get a taste of what all the fuss is about, a walk-through, a dry run.”
“You’ve been talking to Kal way too much.”
Aimé stops us and looks at me, real concern in her eyes. “Are you sure you’ve got this?”
“Absolutely. I’m so happy I can do this for Kal. Why should he have to lose his future because of racist board bitches? He deserves to—”
“I’m talking about you,” she interrupts. “Can you handle it?”
This reminds me of when she cornered me with a similar question the day we went scouting for wives for Kal. I brush her off now as I did then. “Girl, please. A little bit married for a little bit of time? Pfft , bring it! I am Mizan Begashaw, the child of parents who’ve been a little bit married their whole adult lives.”
“All right,” she says, sounding more like she wants to be convinced than she actually is convinced. We continue our walk in a peaceful silence.
“Oh, by the way,” I say as we near home, “the ceremony is at eleven tomorrow.”
She sighs. “Of course it is. You’re lucky I took tomorrow off. Anything else you have to spring on me? You two planning to adopt an orphan too?”
I rub my fingers along my jawline, as if she’s presented an intriguing notion. “Hmm, let’s put a pin in that. No, just gotta figure out my dress. But I have something that could work.”
I have an actual wedding dress, in fact—Sosina’s.