City Hall

She watched him sign his name.  It was all very somber. 

She wished she could have thought of something to say that would make it all feel better, make him feel alright about what she was doing to him.  Instead she said: “Your given name is Calder?”

He placed the pen down on the desk and looked at the clerk who stood waiting impatiently across from them.

“Yes.”  It was terse.  It discouraged a follow up.

It was her turn.  The clerk had a skeptical eyebrow raised but pursed her lips instead of commenting.  Even with the withering comment left unsaid Maggie blushed with embarrassment.  She didn’t even know the name of the man she was marrying. She took the pen with trembling fingers and added her signature to the forms.

Trying not to look as nervous and unsure as she felt she dotted the ‘i’ in Ramirez and slid the forms back at the clerk.

Grey’s head was cocked slightly and he was squinting at the paperwork as it was gathered into the liver-spotted, bejeweled fingers of the judgmental office worker.

“Your given name is Magdalena?”

She couldn’t help the small wisp of a smile that sprang to her lips.  She guessed they were even.  Maggie heard the clerk cluck her tongue as she walked into an adjoining office with their papers.

They stood silently there at the city hall office, waiting for the papers to be notarized.  Waiting for the Justice of the Peace.

Maggie could tell he loathed her.  At least, she thought to herself, at least it’s an honest feeling and not some manufactured performance. At least this was real.  It might be the only real thing about their marriage.  Well, the loathing and the child, she supposed.

 He’d seduced her with his impeccable impression of a nice guy.  Charmed her into a state of vulnerability and infatuation and she’d been a fool. 

But he’d been a fool to underestimate Maggie Ramirez. 

He had every right to be furious with her, and she accepted his fury, let him stew in it.  She was, afterall, blackmailing him.  She’d have been furious had the roles been reversed.

He was well dressed for the occasion, not too formal or too casual.  She admired his taste and the tailoring of his suit.  But then, when one had more money than entire third world nations, she supposed looking effortlessly flawless came easy. 

She adjusted the modest décolletage of her plain dress and felt fairly shabby standing there next to him.  She was uncomfortable in the dampness that still clung to her shoulders from the hurried dash they’d made in from the freezing rain.  She hadn’t had a coat she thought appropriate.  She shivered a little.  He didn’t even look wet.  Perhaps raindrops knew better than to land on him. 

The self-righteous clerk returned, carrying the notarized papers with her and leading the Justice of the Peace, who looked harassed and distracted.   

He approached them without sparing a glance at their faces and began to run through the laundry list of questions he was required to ask.  Maggie and Grey answered in the affirmative when appropriate, in the negative when necessary and he checked off various boxes on a long form.

Not the wedding little girls dream of, Maggie thought to herself.  This felt distinctly clinical and sterile.  She stole a look at her groom.  His jaw was tight, his shoulders tense.  He looked more funereal than anything.  His normally handsome features read as harsh, brooding, unwelcoming.

She squared her own shoulders and lifted her jaw a little higher.  She may be guilty here, but he was no innocent.  She refused to feel sorry for what she was making him do.  Or how she’d managed to make him do it.  She thought of the prenuptial agreement he’d had his lawyer draft for them – to her exact specifications-- and felt a grim satisfaction.  Not at peace, exactly, but at least assured that this whole ordeal wouldn’t be for naught. 

If the Justice had bothered to look up he’d have seen a man and a woman who could barely stand the sight of one another.  But the man began the ceremony with a heavy sigh and his eyes on the prompt book.  He paused for their responses but didn’t really listen; he waited for the ring exchange without really watching.  He granted them permission to kiss and didn’t notice that they declined the offer, only signed his name on several sheets, nodded absently and disappeared through an office door somewhere into the bowels of City Hall.

And it was done.  She wore a plain gold band and was now someone’s wife.  If felt strangely final and un-real at the same time.  Her child would be safe and very, very well provided for.  Her father would be angry but she would not be disowned.  She would have a place to live and funds to live on and a name that was respected and admired in the community.

The two stood there for a few moments, adrift.  The troll-ish clerk passed a slim packet of documents at them.

“For your records.” She said, dripping with disdain. “Do you want a picture?”

Grey laughed, surprising both the clerk and his bride.

“No thank you” Maggie answered as calmly as she could, her cheeks flaming.

“Fine,” said the clerk dully. “Make sure you go to the social security office before you go to the RMV” she cautioned Maggie and then shuffled back to her desk without so much as a “have a nice day.”

Grey turned from the desk and offered his arm, a strange look on his face, half smile, half menace.  “Mrs. Delaney?”

She winced.  She tried to reassure herself that she’d done the right thing.  That this was what had needed to be done.  But something about the way he looked at her now made her feel nauseated.  She wished she’d insisted on a late afternoon appointment, she was still in her first trimester and was prone to awful bouts of morning sickness.  Suddenly the too-strong scent of that clerk’s cloying perfume threatened to turn Maggie’s stomach.  She could smell the mustiness of the old carpet beneath them too, wet from rain, and that warred with the pungent odor emanating from the percolator in the corner and she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold down her breakfast. 

She looked around, wild-eyed, for a receptacle.  Government offices weren’t so liberal with open trash bins anymore and Maggie couldn’t locate one in her panic.  Trying not to breathe, lest she exacerbate the problem, she wheeled on her heel and started for the door, not running, exactly, but moving very quickly.

In the wide echoing hallway outside the office Maggie looked left and right for a ladies’ room.  The quick side-to-side motion of her head brought her perilously close to retching and her heart thudded obnoxiously in her ears.  She did not want to throw-up in front of Grey.

She took a few steps away from his voice, he was calling her, but she just couldn’t be near him, not if she was going to vomit.  She was shaking and she wasn’t going to be able to hold it at bay.  Tears welled in her eyes.  She was already mortified.

Maggie felt a hand on her shoulder and she couldn’t fight the impulse any longer.  She bent in half and threw-up, eyes closed, terribly humiliated.  She waited to hear the splatter of her breakfast on the floor but it didn’t come.  She retched again, expelling more than she’d even thought she had the capacity to hold and she was aware of tears sliding down her face, and her nose began to run.

She became aware that the hand was still on her shoulder.  She took several deep breaths through her mouth and the nausea passed.  She stayed bent-double for a moment, eyes closed, willing it all to have been a dream.  A bad dream.  She wondered if maybe she should also be naked, then her humiliation would be complete.  A small crowd of passersby was amassing, she could hear them saying things like “poor dear” and “is she all right?”

Finally Maggie found the courage to open her eyes.  There was a small dark plastic bin a couple of feet below her face.  She looked at her own sick dripping over what looked like a nest of thin paper strips. She looked at the hand holding it steady for her; saw the too-shiny band on his ring finger.  She wasn’t sure if she was more grateful or embarrassed.

She turned slightly and straightened her back a little. She couldn’t look in the bin. A pair of olive green loafers came into view and she knew before she followed the fat ankles up to the tweed a-line that the miserable clerk had followed her out here.

The woman was carrying some plastic office gadget, trailing a plug along the marble floor. When she saw what Maggie had done to the bin she recoiled dramatically and made an ‘ugh’ sound.  Maggie took the opportunity to better examine the piece of machinery in the clerk’s knobby little hands. Grey had apparently stolen the receptacle from the office paper shredder.   She wasn’t sure why, but she felt like sticking her tongue out at the clerk and saying “Nah-Nah”.  She managed to fight the instinct, instead standing up fully and reaching for the bucket.

Grey let her take it and at last removed his hand from her shoulder.  She was surprised to feel a little adrift when it was gone.  She couldn’t look him in the face, despite her fierce curiosity about what expression he must be sporting.  The small clusters of strangers around them were whispering and chatting and she felt distinctly awkward, on display.

“Well, just in case anyone had any doubts, thank you for letting the town know for certain that this was a shotgun wedding.”  He was quiet and cold.  Maggie winced at how mean-spirited he sounded.

“Who’s going to clean that out?” The clerk demanded all passive aggression.

Maggie could just kick her in her tubby shins.  “I’m so sorry—“  She started to apologize wearily.

“Here, buy yourself a new one.”  Grey bowled over Maggie’s apology, removing a bill fold and tossing a large bill at the woman.  He put his hand under Maggie’s elbow and steered her down the hall toward the large double doors leading out of City Hall. 

As they walked he stopped in front of a janitor’s closet and directed her to leave the bin.  She couldn’t.  She felt far too guilty.

“Let me just bring it into the ladies’ room and wash it out first.” 

He looked impatient.  “I want to get the fuck out of here.“  He said levelly.  “If you don’t want to walk from here I suggest you put the fucking bucket down and come with me.”  He didn’t move.  He expected her to do as he’d ordered.  She started to, but stopped herself.

“Wait in the car if you want.” She said boldly.  “I’m not leaving my mess for someone else to deal with.”  He looked like he had a snide reply but she turned over her shoulder and back-tracked to a ladies’ room, the one she’d been unable to locate in her blind panic before.    She walked proudly, all fire and brass, so that he could see she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him.

But when she was safely within the rest room she felt her knees become jelly, and despite her instincts about public restrooms she sank to the floor for a moment.  She hoped nothing too awful got on her dress.

She was trembling and felt like crying.  She took several breaths, in-and-out, to calm herself.  She wondered if he really intended to leave her there.  There was nothing in the pre-nup to prevent him from being an absolute ass to her if he so chose.

After a few minutes she felt enough strength return to her legs to chance standing up.  Finding herself relatively steady she proceeded to a stall with the bin.  She wondered if the paper shreds would clog the toilet.  With a sigh she realized that leaving it for the janitor had probably been the better strategy—the janitor would have the better way of disposing of this mess, have the right chemicals to use to clean the plastic out.

Biting the insides of her cheek she dumped the contents into the toilet and flushed.  It was an old toilet, looked to be almost as old as the building, art-deco style, vintage.

It struggled to swallow the mass she’d unloaded in its bowl and she groaned. 

After a moment of indecision she finally left the gurgling mess and went to rinse the bucket in the sinks.  These too were old fashioned, lovely, stained from years of use, but still exquisite.  And quite unaccommodating for the task at hand.  The way they were formed made it impossible to get the rim of the bin under the faucet of the sink and Maggie felt almost angry enough to curse.

She struggled for a minute or two, trying every angle, every possible approach, until finally giving up.  The janitor likely had a big, deep basin of a sink designed specifically for filling and dumping mop-buckets.  She was furious at herself.  She was furious with Grey.

Defeated, frustrated, and chagrined, she finally hid the bucket in the stall she’d clogged and began washing her hands in one of those stubbornly deco sinks.  After her hands were clean, rinsed clear of the pinkinsh-slime that passed for soap in government buildings, she lifted some cool water to her lips and rinsed out her sticky, sour mouth.  She sipped and spat several times before finally swallowing a few handfuls, soothing her raw throat and refreshing herself.  She blew her nose with some of the rough, thin toilet paper they socked in the stalls.

Looking at her blotchy reflection in the dingy mirror she decided to splash some cool water on her face before leaving the insular solitude of the Ladies’ room.  She almost didn’t want to leave, except that she wanted to be comfortable.  Wanted to take off her shabby dress, put on pajama pants and curl up with a pint of ice cream in the solitude of her own room at home.

She paused halfway through pumping the paper-towel dispenser and realized with a shiver that she no longer had a home, not really.  She was married now.  Her father’s house was not her own any longer.  The urge to cry swelled high in her throat again but she forced it back. All she wanted was to go somewhere soft and warm and forget today had ever happened. 

She needed to brace herself for a long, awkward, uncomfortable day.  They needed to tell her family.  They needed to tell his family.  Then they needed to find some place to be for the night, the week, however long it took to find an apartment or something.

And, on top of all that, she realized she’d have to walk from city hall since she’d been a prideful idiot and stormed away from the man who drove them there that morning.

It was raining. It was freezing. She didn’t have a coat.

Maggie closed her eyes, took the time to say a Hail Mary, pulled the rough brown paper from the dispenser and dabbed her face and hands dry.  With a deep, fortifying breath she strode to the door, determined to display more confidence than she felt.  It was the way she survived.  It was how she’d got Grey Delaney to marry her.  The heavy old wooden door swung on whining hinges and she stepped back into the cavernous hall.  The scene that had formed around her incident had dispersed and the building seemed to be back to its normal, dreary city hall routine.

Only one individual stood still amid the streams of passing citizens.

He’d waited for her.  She was honestly surprised and a little flustered.

“Well?”  He asked, an imperious eyebrow cocked high.

She splayed her hands. “Well what?”

He smirked.  “Where’s the bucket?”

She looked quickly away from him and strode toward the exit.  She heard him expel a snort of laughter behind her and moved even more quickly and determinedly toward the exit.

He had no trouble keeping pace with her, his long strides moved easily alongside her much shorter ones.  They walked through the double doors of City Hall and into the gray drizzle of that miserable morning.  Neither had brought an umbrella.  She noted that Grey slipped their documents inside his suit jacket.

They walked together and yet not together in the direction of his BMW.  He opened the door for her. 

“Mrs. Delaney.”  He gestured.

She glared at him but got in the car and buckled her seat belt as he closed the door for her.  She had just a moment to breathe, close her eyes and say a silent little prayer before his door opened and he slid into his seat.  He didn’t bother to fasten his safety belt.

He put the key in the ignition and the car purred to life.  She wondered if he remembered going down on her in the back seat.  Then she wondered how many girls he’d had in this car and she ground her teeth together and tried to focus on something else.

He put the car into gear and turned to her with a sardonic smile.  “Your place?  Or mine?”