Cry Uncle (13 page)

Or else he was just being cordial, like his
attorney.

He must have read the skepticism in her
frown, because he elaborated. “I like your hair pulled back like
that. It shows off more of your face.”

“
Kitty wanted me to wear a
veil. We spent two hours at Sears yesterday, bickering over
swatches of white lace.”

“
You don’t need a veil.” He
tucked her head back against his shoulder once more. “You look
great.”

Okay. He was in a complimentary mood. “You
don’t look so bad, yourself,” she said, returning the favor.

“
Wait till you’ve downed a
few glasses of bubbly. I’ll look even better.”

She laughed. So did he. His chest vibrated
against her chin, and his arms drew her even closer to him. Through
the juke box speakers, the singer pleaded with his darling to stand
by him.

That would be their song, Pamela decided. Not
a song of love, but a song of mutual support. That was what this
marriage was truly about: standing by each other.

***

LIZARD WAS IN RARE FORM, Joe noticed. She was
perched atop the bar, swinging her bare feet, with her peacock
feathers stuck out of the waistband of her shorts and a seagull
feather wedged behind each ear, and she was eating everything she
could get her hands on, even though the only pink foodstuff being
served was strawberry margaritas. She’d already drunk one
margarita—minus the tequila—and Joe had since limited her to ginger
ale. “It looks like champagne,” he pointed out.

As far as food went, he’d gone for quantity
over quality: cold cuts, sliced cheese, fresh rolls and rye bread,
pickles and mustard. Lois had insisted that he stock up on those
little toothpicks with the colored plastic tassels on them—because
Martha Stewart would have done it that way—and she’d banned onions
from the premises. “You eat onions, and your bride won’t want to
kiss you,” she’d declared.

He hadn’t expected to be so eager for Pamela
to want to kiss him. But when he’d seen her walking down the aisle,
slim and statuesque in her white sundress, with her hair pulled
back and her chin held high, he’d been really glad he’d listened to
Lois about the onions.

Dancing with her wasn’t the
first time he’d ever held her. He knew she was thin. He knew that
when he closed his arms around her, he wouldn’t feel pillows of
bosom cushioning his chest. Yet her body felt good. Her height
worked well with his; her hips lined up with his in an
unintentionally sensual way. When Ben E. King wailed
darling, darling
, Joe
realized how very much he wanted her standing by him.

Without having to budget
their spare change, his guests kept the juke box playing
non-stop—and at least once every fifteen minutes, someone would
select
Stand By Me
and the entire assembly would stomp their feet and clap their
hands and demand that Joe take his new wife for another spin around
the dance floor. He and Pam would put up a token protest, and then
they’d concede defeat and dance—each time a little closer, each
time a little slower.

But that one kiss to seal the marriage was
probably all he’d get from her. This marriage wasn’t about sex. And
the better Pamela felt in his arms, the more diligent he’d have to
be about remembering that.

“
Hey, Joe-baby!” Peter
Hyland bellowed as Joe and Pamela separated after their
seventh
Stand By Me.
Peter managed a marina in town. He and Joe had gone to high
school together.

“
Peter. Have you met Pam
yet?”

Peter took Pamela’s hand,
bowed and kissed her knuckles. “
Enchanté
,” he said, then straightened
up. “You got yourself a winner, Joey. Who woulda
thought?”

“
There, there,” clucked
Peter’s wife Margie, who had moseyed over with a couple of turkey
sandwiches. “It’s not that no one ever expected you to take the
plunge, Joe. It’s that for so long now, Elizabeth has been the only
woman in your life.”

“
Well, now Lizzie and I have
a woman in our lives.”

“
Lizzie could use someone in
her life. She’s threatening to dive head first into the cake if you
don’t start serving it immediately.”

Joe groaned and excused himself. Letting go
of Pamela’s hand filled him with a vague sense of loss. He’d been
holding it for most of the evening. He’d justified it with the
thought that he didn’t want to lose her in the crush of his
effusive friends, none of whom she knew. But the truth was, he’d
held her hand because it felt right. She was Mrs. Jonas Brenner,
and he wanted to hold her.

But Lizard needed attention, and that was his
job, not Pam’s. Wading through the crowd to the bar, he spotted the
kid hovering over the tiered white cake Lois and her mother had
baked as a wedding present. “Lizard, stop drooling on the
frosting,” he reproached, looping his arms around her waist and
swinging her off the bar.

“
I’m starved,” Lizard
whined. “Birdie said I could have cake.”

“
Did she say you could have
cake this very instant?”

“
Yeah.”

Liar
, Joe thought, but he was in too good a mood to give Liz a
hard time. “All right, then. I know better than to mess with a
Voodoo Chief. Cake time it is.”

Brick placed a knife in his right hand. Kitty
placed Pamela’s right hand in his left. Lois yelled that someone
had better turn the damned juke box off, because the bride and
groom were going to cut the cake.

Revelry ensued, cheers, applause, whistles
and a boisterous chorus of “The bride cuts the cake, the bride cuts
the cake,” to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell.” Pamela looked
abashed; Joe imagined she was used to far classier receptions. Her
cheeks glowing pink, she slid the blade through the top tier of the
cake, cutting a neat wedge. As she lifted it onto a plate, she
whispered, “If you smear this on my face, I’m having the marriage
annulled tomorrow.”

Joe had been to a few weddings where the
bride and groom had shoved wedding cake into each other’s mouths.
While he could see the slapstick humor in it, he had to agree it
was kind of tasteless. “I’ll be neat,” he promised as he took the
plate and a fork. He daintily broke off a small piece of cake and
slipped it between her lips.

Her eyes grew round. “Whoa! It’s rum
cake!”

“
In that case, cut me a
piece.”

She laughed and cut a second wedge for
him.

Birdie sidled up to him. She had helped
Lizard with her outfit that afternoon, making Joe think of the old
saying about birds of a feather flocking together. “It’s too early
for cake,” she objected.

“
Liz told me you said she
could have cake.”

“
The truth bends in Lizard’s
hands,” Birdie remarked. “All right, then, you and your bride eat
your cake, and then you go home and have your
honeymoon.”

Joe glanced at the wall clock. It was
nine-thirty. The party had been in full swing for hours, but he
knew it would rage for hours more. He wasn’t sure he ought to
leave.

Now
he
was the one bending the truth. He
wanted to stay at the party because he knew there was no honeymoon
waiting for him and Pam once they left.

“
It’s past Lizard’s
bedtime,” he noted. “I suppose we might consider getting her
home.”

“
No, no, no.” Birdie wagged
a bony finger at him. “I take her home with me. You take your bride
and have a honeymoon.”

Joe sighed and looked
apprehensively at Pamela. He had introduced her to Birdie right
after the first
Stand By
M
” dance, aware that Pamela and Birdie were
going to have to get to know each other so they could coordinate
Lizard’s schedule. Pamela hadn’t blinked at the older woman’s odd
attire, although she did have a little difficulty understanding
Birdie’s speech. Despite the many years she’d lived in Key West,
Birdie still spoke with a Haitian accent.

Evidently Pamela wasn’t having much
difficulty understanding her now. “You’re going to take Lizard home
with you?” she asked.

“
That’s right. You have a
honeymoon tonight. You get Lizard back tomorrow.”

Pamela nodded. “I think she’s right. It’s
time for us to say good-night to all your friends.”

It occurred to Joe that Pamela was exhausted.
Her eyes were bleary, her hair limp.

“
Okay,” he said, wishing
there could be a real honeymoon for him and Pamela. He was married.
His wife belonged in his bed, didn’t she?

No, of course not. This wasn’t that kind of
marriage, and he knew it. If he did anything that even remotely
resembled what a husband did with a wife on their wedding night,
she’d have the marriage annulled quicker than if he’d crammed cake
into her mouth. He’d better keep a lid on his libido.

It took him and Pamela a good ten minutes to
work their way through the mob. At the front door, Pamela tossed
her bouquet over her shoulder. Lizard elbowed at least three women
out of her way so she could catch it.

A few guys showered Pamela and Joe with beer
nuts as they swept out the door. Pamela’s laughter was breezy,
lighter than the sticky night air. “Lord, it’s hot out here,” she
said. “Does it ever cool down?”

“
For three days in January.”
He took her hand again, casually, as if it didn’t signify anything.
It truly didn’t, he told himself—other than the fact that he’d just
gotten married and this woman was his wife.

His wife
. What a weird concept.

“
Well,” she said, her
laughter waning as they strolled to his car. “I owe you an
apology.”

“
For what?”

“
That champagne was
delicious.”

He feigned indignation at her implied insult.
“You thought I’d serve lousy champagne?”

“
As a matter of fact,
yes.”

“
I’ll have you know, Pam,
that I’m a pretty classy guy.”

“
You are,” she agreed, a
serious undertone in her words. When he leaned past her to unlock
the passenger door, she brushed her finger across the floppy petals
of his orchid boutonniere. “It was a nice party, Jonas. Not like
any I’ve ever been to before, but I had fun.”

“
I’m glad.” He honestly was.
If she was stuck being his wife for the next however-many months,
he wanted her to be, if not thrilled, at least passably happy. He
wanted her to feel at home with his friends, in his place of
business.

He helped her into the seat, then jogged
around to the driver’s side. “How about, I’ll detour to your
apartment and we can pick up your car?”

“
All right.”

He revved the engine and
eased away from the curb. A quick glance at her informed him that
she’d grown subdued. He couldn’t blame her. Just the two of them,
alone in his car, driving through the darkness.... It was a heavy
dose of reality. God help them, they were
married
.

The silence made him uneasy. “You’re a good
dancer,” he said.

“
It’s a miracle I can still
walk. That bartender—Brick, was that his name?” Joe nodded, and she
continued. “He kept stomping on my toes when we danced.”

“
He’s a good
guy.”

“
He doesn’t talk much, does
he.”

“
One of his finest
attributes.”

“
And Birdie... What is it
with the feathers?”

“
Why do you think everybody
calls her Birdie?”

“
Can she fly?”

“
I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He chuckled. “She and Lizard go down to the town beach almost every
day. They like to collect gull feathers. When Lizard absolutely
refused to carry flowers, it was Birdie’s idea to make her a
feather girl instead of a flower girl.”

“
It certainly was original.
And in the spirit of compromise, it worked.”

They had reached the parking lot of the
apartment complex. Pamela smiled and let herself out of his car
once he’d braked to a halt next to hers. His car seemed painfully
empty without her in it.

He wasn’t supposed to be thinking along the
lines of a real marriage, of having Pamela fill his car and his
life. He hardly knew her enough to consider her a friend, let alone
a spouse. Why should he be so fixated on the slight shimmy of her
hips as she settled behind the wheel of her own car? Why should he
be inhaling deeply, trying to capture her lingering scent?

Too much champagne, he supposed. Too much
dancing and laughing. The party had worked its magic on him,
infused him with benevolence, made him want to embrace the world
and everyone in it. Especially Pamela.

His wife.

He checked his rearview mirror to make sure
her car was directly behind his. She knew the way to his house, but
even so, he wanted her to arrive there with him.

He wondered what he was going to do with her
once they were home. Kitty had brought Pamela’s suitcases over
earlier that day, and he’d put them in Pamela’s room. When they got
home, would she want to unpack and go straight to sleep? Or would
she be practical and request that he show her where the utensils
and spices were stored in the kitchen, and where the laundry hamper
was located?

He wanted just to talk with her awhile, maybe
sit with her in the living room with a couple of cold
drinks—lemonade would do, if she’d reached her booze limit. He
wanted to get used to her presence in his house. He wanted to stop
thinking of her hips, and her silver eyes, and the hollows of her
cheeks. He wanted to stop remembering how soft her lips had felt
beneath his when the judge had pronounced them husband and
wife.