Sin City (38 page)

“You know that woman in the shop?”

“No,” says Norah.

“The wedding chapel shop. She was really quite a character. And she told me such a lot. I mean, she knew the reasons for all our wedding customs – why we throw confetti or old shoes, or put marzipan on wedding cakes. Well, actually she got it from a book; a really pricey one with all these glossy pictures. She kept trying to flog it to me, said it would give my wedding a whole new depth and meaning, but I just didn't have the money. I asked her about orange blossom and she looked it up for me, said it stood for happiness and fruitfulness, and also for innocence because the flowers are white. And she said if the bride wears it as a wreath, that's a sort of funeral thing as well – dying to your old life and entering a new one. I was all ears, of course, since it fitted in with all the stuff we'd talked about – you know, the death of the old year, and a new start and everything. When she'd gone, I had a dekko at the book myself and it kept on mentioning death, which seemed a bit peculiar. But it said that in Greece and China, white was the colour of the spirit world and always worn at funerals. And I mean, when you come to think of it, all corpses wear white shrouds.”

I shiver a moment, despite the sun. Marriage
is
a sort of death, particularly this marriage. I have to die to my own country and background, even to my language, die to Jan and possibly to Norah; to all I know, all that's safe and easy. And the word death is still my father's shroud. Oh, Daddy … He should be there tonight, walking down the aisle with me, my orange-blossom dress symbolising his happiness, my fruitfulness, the dark Jewish grandchildren he'll never even see. I squeeze Norah's hand. My father would have liked her.

“Norah, you must come to Israel. If I have kids, I want you to be their grandma, or their godmother or aunt or something. We've got to stay together. This whole trip was meant, I know it was. I'm meeting Reuben later and the first thing I'll mention will be you.”

Well, not quite the first. We'll kiss first, I expect, and then he'll tell me how incredible I was last night and how I'm naturally and wildly passionate and how he intends to use that passion, harness it, develop it and …

I try and shift the smug smile from my face, concentrate on Norah. “Listen, Norah, you can become a Jew, you know, even if you're born a goy.” I use the word self-consciously. Reuben taught me my first words of Yiddish in the bath this morning, including some highly private lovers' words which he said not to repeat. “I mean, it takes a while, of course, and you have to be accepted and go through various rituals and so on, but I'd be there, as well, going through them too. And Reuben's made me see how vital a religion is, something to work for and believe in, and a community and heritage and …” I break off. Reuben made it vibrant and exciting. I need him here to inspire and rally me again, to provide me with the rousing words, to change Norah's whey-faced stumbling to a victory march.

“Oh, look!” I shout. “Another wedding chapel.”

There are dozens of these chapels in Las Vegas, so I suppose it's not surprising if we pass another one: one I hadn't noticed on my morning's recce. No great loss, in fact. It's horrid – despite the flashing sign which boasts “Featured Internationally on Network Television!” The chapel doors swing open as we watch. A bride and groom are just emerging, though they're not even arm in arm, but looking in opposite directions – he staring at the ground, she dodging the confetti being hurled by a fat and sullen adolescent girl. His child? Hers? They're both old enough to have a teenage daughter. He's bald, she's greying, and neither of them have bothered to dress up. They're both wearing jeans and she's carrying a heavy leather handbag which looks quite wrong with her corsage of white flowers. I wish they'd smile. I wish somebody would smile. The child looks close to tears. No wonder. Kids are outcasts in Las Vegas.

I sidle up behind them, peer into the chapel. It's
tiled
– yes, honestly, just like a public toilet, except the tiles are mauve and flowered. Actually, there's a toilet bang next door, exactly matching, even down to its pale mauve loo-paper – handy, I suppose, for Big Day nerves, but really a bit off. Everything is heart-shaped, even the wastebin in the chapel, the guest-soap by the basin, and the lilac-coloured stepping stones which make a cutesy little path up to the door.

I sneak back across the stones before Norah sees the toilet and starts begging for a pee. She's picking up confetti, grovelling on her knees for paper hearts and petals. They used to throw rice in the old days, so that lady in the shop said, as a symbol of fertility again. I'd be getting a bit worried about fertility myself, if Reuben hadn't used a … a thing. That proves how much he cares. I mean, most men never bother, or say it's like making love in waders. He made it quite exciting, got me to put it on – not just one, a packetful, by the time we'd finally (reluctantly) got into our clothes again.

Half of me is still back on his floor. Undressed. I just can't help myself. It really was so special – our wedding night, our honeymoon. Yeah, we're married already, in the most important sense. Reuben was right: we didn't need rings or even chapels, just our naked passion, naked skins. I close my eyes. I want to keep those memories for ever, my own free wedding album – not coloured photos, smiling-stiff and posed, but black and white in the moonlight on the rug, humping, thrusting, all ways up, always in slow motion. I can feel his hands again. I'm sure he had more than just two hands, more than one hot mouth. Hands and tongue, hands and teeth, hands and …

“Where's the dress?” Norah's asking.

“Oh, not here. They haven't got a shop here.” I open my eyes to a gigantic 3-D frankfurter (which looks like a stiff prick complete with yellow mustard sperm) circling round and round outside a take-away. What a sight to greet you as you step out of the chapel – an ejaculating sausage! And the reek of grease and onions blasting out your orange blossom. I turn my back on it, help Norah to her feet. (She's brushing off the dirt from paper horseshoes.)

“No, ours is prettier than this, much prettier. It's called the Veil of Peace – you know, a sort of pun: veil as in wedding veil.”

Norah looks confused again, so I take her arm and march her on. Actually, the names are quite a hoot. There's the Hitching Post and the Happy Ever After, and the Chapel of the Hearts and Flowers (which has a huge red heart outside proclaiming “Cupid Lives Here”, then, smaller: “10 per cent handling charge on photographs. All cheques OK. NO PARKING”), and the Wee Kirk O' the Heather, which has tartan decor, and even one called We've Only Just Begun. There were nearly sixty thousand weddings this last year in Vegas. If we're lucky, ours will be the very first for
this
year – if we get that cancellation. The guy seemed fairly hopeful. He said the couple who booked the midnight slot have cancelled and re-booked three times already and he's pretty sure the girl will call it off again. Gosh! She must be in a state – worse than me. I'm not really in a state, just excited. And scared a bit. Scared and thrilled. Scared and worried. Scared and gloating.

You don't have to have a chapel. There's this special service called Weddings on Wheels – “Have minister, will travel”. The Reverend travels anywhere. He went to Circus Circus to marry a couple sitting tandem on a roundabout-horse, and another on a real horse, halfway up a mountain. (
They
were married naked, which should appeal to Reuben. You can't get much more basic than your birthday suit, and think how much you'd save.) He's even tied the knot in county jails, when a bride or groom was doing time; or at airports when they're changing planes and have only got five minutes, and one homely couple he married on a bus.

We'd better catch a bus ourselves. Norah's flagging. I take her arm, jog her to the bus stop, and fifteen minutes later, we're alighting at the Veil of Peace. I'm somehow disappointed. It looks smaller now, as if Norah's fears have shrunk it, even spoilt it. Was the paint so faded, the sign so garish? It's also far more crowded, people queuing to be married, mostly foreigners – Mexicans, Koreans, Japanese. I suppose their own native countries' marriage laws are stricter. The only white-skinned bride-to-be is dressed in a full-length Lurex evening gown. The effect is rather spoilt by dirty white gym shoes showing underneath and the fag-end stuck between her lips.

I vowed to give up smoking, but perhaps I'll wait now till we've settled down. After all, marriage is quite stressful. So is emigration. Though I've got to see the good side, remember Reuben's point about a second chance. LA is called the City of the Second Chance, and it
was
for Reuben's parents, compared with their ghetto in New York. They made it in LA – though Reuben despises what they do there: the phony shallow fashion trade and his mother's sideline, haute couture for dogs. He also hates Los Angeles itself – it's lack of history, lack of culture, the importance of possessions and facades, the fear of growing old, the frenetic keeping up. He's not that keen on Vegas, damns all Nevada as a barren poisoned state, good for nothing except testing missiles and dumping nuclear waste.
His
second chance will be in Tel Aviv. And mine.

I can start again in Israel – wipe out that shoplifting offence, pretend Beechgrove never happened, work for an ideal. Israel! Land of Milk and Honey. How beautiful that sounds. (Reuben called me milk and honey on the rug last night.) And home to both of us. He said when you enter Israel as a Jew, the immigration people hand you out a badge which says, simply, “I've come home.” I haven't got a home now of my own, with my mother still in hospital and preferring gin to either milk or honey. I'll be free at last, free of her and the fear of growing up like her, free from social workers and Jan's bad-tempered landlord, free from scrounging or the dole. Reuben says they give you food and lodgings for absolutely nothing if you work in a kibbutz.

Norah needs a home as well, the first she's ever had, a second chance after all those years of hospitals. She's got to be included. I know she's not that young or fit, but there are lots of things she'd do quite well, have the patience for – looking after children, for example. They could use her in a kibbutz where all the children live in common while their mothers work. She could be mother to my own kids while I'm out working with my husband.

Husband. The word sounds strange still, almost foreign to me like that very foreign bridegroom just emerging from the chapel, his new wife hugely pregnant. She looks a child herself, barely seventeen. I feel scared for her, scared for me and Norah. New lives mean pain and labour, blood and sweat. I turn away. I'll go and find that lady in the shop. She was kind – plump and motherly, called me “Carole honey” as if she'd known me all her life, sold marriage like ice cream, as something sweet and nourishing.

“Come on Norah. Let's go and see the dress.”

The dress is there, but not the lady; only her assistant, a brittle supercilious girl who says Martha's gone to lunch and can she help? I shake my head, feeling stupidly upset. Martha seemed the only stable thing in a day of avalanche. I cheer myself by paying homage to the dress again. Norah seems quite awed by it –
and
its price. I tour the shop with her. She keeps stopping at the rings.

“I love the matching ones, don't you? His and hers. That book said rings mean union – two people pledged to one another, completing one another.” We did complete each other on that rug, he joined to me, joined everywhere: fingers linked, tongues entwined, skin sweating into skin. I dart back to the book, read out just three lines to Norah, in the hope they'll change her mind.

“Listen, Norah, rings are a royal symbol. You see, in lots of different countries a bride is seen as queen – queen for the day, at least. That's why she wears a train and has ladies-in-waiting to hold it up for her. Well, bridesmaids, anyway.” I catch her eye. “See how important bridesmaids are? You've
got
to be my bridesmaid. You won't be holding up my train, alas – not at that price. But you can hold my ciggies, if you like, and a Gold Rush marble ashtray.” I'm trying to make her laugh again. Every time
I
feel good, her misery reproaches me.

The salesgirl is watching us, hawk-eyed. Are we going to buy the book? A ring, perhaps? An outfit? She strides purposefully towards us, hard-sell smile in place. “Is your mother looking for a dress? We've got some very nice two-pieces.”

“She's … not my mother.” I stare down at the floor and Norah's lace-ups – scuffed at the toes, worn down at the backs. My mother crams her feet into three-inch heels, wears fishnet tights at forty. No – Norah's not my mother, but we've got to stay together. I'm certain of that now. She'll never have a daughter or a husband. Which is why I won't desert her. I shan't beg or plead with Reuben; I'll simply tell him, straight. He understands conviction.

Norah has moved to the far end of the shop and is spelling out the words on a Certificate of Marriage in the shape of a huge slot machine which is hanging on the wall. It's written in a curly purple script and framed in gold, with a frieze of dice and playing cards. I start reading over her shoulder. “These partners in wedlock have agreed that their marriage will be based on honesty, faithfulness and devotion. As husband and wife, they will enjoy the pleasure of sharing the warmth of each other's touch, the joy of each other's smile and the comfort of each other's nearness …”

I was ready to scoff, but the words are really beautiful. I read them out again, aloud, as Norah's getting stuck. My voice is drowned by the chiming of a clock.

“Good God! Is that the time? I'm meeting Reuben in just two hours and I haven't done a single thing he asked me yet – not even seen the guy who takes the bookings. Come on, Norah – quick!”