The
Annulment
by
Jenae Marks
Courtney woke to the
sound of Buddhist chimes, growing gently louder every five minutes.
She fumbled off the expensive and tasteful alarm clock, images of a red
face and the feeling of rough fingers becoming scrambled.
Courtney had a
baby-girl face, especially in the morning.
Usually there was a plucky, almost hard quality about her face, but sleep
erased it, 'til she looked like one of those dreamy, wispy 11-year-olds you
sometimes see in ads for cotton clothing or expensive sheets.
Sometimes you see real girls like that, not all glossy and fake, just
truly wispy and too vague to be on the make in any way yet.
She'd noticed this
about her face, and it made her feel differently in the mornings, like a
younger, less in-the-know version of herself, from some previous life, long ago.
Fucking hell of a
dream, she thought, pulling on her new pima robe and pressing the button on the
espresso machine.
She heard the tick,
tick, tick of the espresso machine and smelled the grounds. She started fussing with her robe, tugging it closed and
pushing the collar off her neck. Catching
a glimpse of her expression in one of the accent mirrors, she didn't see a
starlet lounging around; she saw a little control freak.
That's what Jack called her. Now
Linda was doing it too. Sitting at
the table, she lit a cigarette, and then snuffed it out.
She picked a piece of lint off her slipper.
What was with that
dream? She hadn't thought of that in years.
She thought she'd put all that daddy-touched-me pain behind her long ago.
At 14 she had an
affair, her first, with Trina, her dance teacher.
Trina spoiled her emotionally, got her to talk all about it for hours.
Sometimes Courtney would cry and Trina wouldn't make any moves at all,
just hold her really patiently. Trina
had really, really loved her.
Courtney had been too
young to settle down though, too curious about boys, about kids her own age.
She was grateful when Trina made a graceful exit by moving to New York.
They never got caught, thank God. She
didn't give a fuck, but Trina was a great teacher.
Now she held the
lighter to the tip and took a deep drag. So
why this awful dream? The espresso machine beeped. A nice homey sound.
It was Linda, her assistant's, day off.
Better to be alone if I've had a dream like that, she thought, feeling
really raw. Her foot tapped.
She flicked her ash. She
felt heavy raising herself up and lifting the milk out of the frig.
Today she was
supposed to sign the annulment papers.
She smiled and kind
of giggled thinking about Jack. She
and Jack Frost had met at the Blockbuster Awards.
Everyone thought it was so strange that they'd hit it off.
There'd been a lot of champagne, and then at the after-party there was a
lot of tequila. She was pretty much
a lightweight when it comes to drinking. (She
only weighed 109 pounds.)
They started hooking
up at events, "Hey! I know you".
But the nice thing
about it was that he wasn't trying to fuck her. That was just a joke they had.
He'd never made a move on her. They just really hit it off.
She would introduce
him as Butchina, the dyke of my life. He
said if she didn't stop it some jealous man was going to cut his tongue out.
Jack was very famous
as the best part of that amazing sit-com. She
remembered how funny it had been at the time, and it still held up in
syndication. In the re-runs, you
could see even more clearly how rough it had been.
As it got a little less funny through repetition, the sheer, like,
avant-garde meanness of it was more evident.
Anyway, he had never
matched it, but he was working and people still totally respected him.
Even the sneaker commercials were not scoffed at.
In her mind the basis
of the joke—of course we're not fucking each other—was that he was almost as
old as her dad. She didn't focus on
his height or his weight, but he probably did. She felt bad about that.
He couldn't seem to hang out with her without getting a little tight.
"When I'm with
you, I feel like an idiot. Then I
drink and I act like an idiot."
"Poor
Jack", she pulled at some more lint. The
espresso tasted really bitter and thick.
She went to look for
one of those new pre-made meals, everything calibrated to the last spec of fiber
or gram of vitamin-whatever. Maybe
the Spanish one.... She pressed the start button on the microwave and sat back
down in front of the ash tray.
About a month ago she
and Jack had been hanging out in Vegas after the Nouveau Tropicalia opening.
Everyone was completely cracking up and being ridiculous.
And she kept insisting "I will fucking marry you,
Butchina". And he was yelling
"Cow shit! Cat Shit!
Parakeet Shit! Prove It!"
And they and their
friends, some new, some of old, some real, some less so, staggered into an awful
little chapel full of the ugliest plastic flowers, really thick plastic
petals.
And they were
laughing so hard, she almost peed and he said so did he.
(To be honest, they'd both had half a tab of X.) And somehow they
actually ended up married.
They even slept in a
honeymoon suite, but she just cuddled him.
He stroked her face a couple of times, but then started to snore.
She had a feeling he had a real girlfriend somewhere he was hiding from
the press. Besides, they were just,
like, too damned drunk.
The very next day the
story came out. But the idiot press
got it wrong, or maybe it was deliberate, because it sounded like she'd married
that other Jack Frost, the football player.
Maybe that was
better, though, so Jack's real girlfriend wouldn't feel too jealous or
embarrassed.