Sin City (46 page)

It's a little long, in fact, but there wasn't time for shortening hems. In fact, we were almost late by the time we'd finished with the bride and started on the bridesmaid. I glance across at Norah. She looks transformed as well. I somehow managed to wrest off her old cardigan and cover up the bra-hooks with a lacy stole from
my
case and I also lent her stockings (sheer ones, not thick lisle), and she even dared a dab of lipstick and a hint of eyeshadow. I catch her eye and smile. We both keep smiling like a pair of loons. She's so thrilled she's coming with us. I talked Reuben into it, said I couldn't leave her. Wouldn't. I'll really make it up to her in Israel, pay her back, make her someone special. I love her. Now Reuben loves me, it's easier to love. It's like money making money. All these hostile feelings I had towards my mother, or the irritation I felt with Dr Bates or Sister Watkins have simply disappeared. I can include them in my love now – them and everyone. I love the Jews, the whole great race of Jews, even the Shylocks and the Fagins. I love the Arabs. Reuben says I have to hate them as the Enemy. I can't.

I check my watch again. Ten to twelve. A restless breeze is ruffling up my skirt, the clouds fidgeting above me; everything impatient. The other waiting couples are all inside, in a cramped and stuffy room which smells of cheap cologne and hair-oil. I'd never fit in there – not just my flouncy petticoats, but all my layers and layers of happiness, my flowing train of elation and excitement. Anyway, I want to be outside with the cold and clouds and the huge miraculous night. I've hardly seen the Vegas sky before. The man-made lights are so brilliant and obtrusive, they quite eclipse the real stars. Not tonight, though. Tonight they're like confetti, flung in handfuls.

I glide towards my bridesmaid. I love the swish my dress makes – swish and rustle. “Norah, you're not too chilly, are you?”

“No,” she smiles, smoothing down the gooseflesh on bare arms. Her stole has fallen off. I pick it up, drape it round her shoulders. I long to warm her with my own warmth, shine down on her cold world, thaw it like the sun.

“Happy?” I whisper.

She nods, though her smile has slipped a little, like the stole. “He's late.”

“Don't worry. He said he might be – just a fraction. He had such a lot to do and I held him up a bit.” More than just a bit. I smile again, a private smile for Reuben.

I loop my skirts up, rustle to the corner where I can see the big main street. Hordes of people, streams of cars, their headlamps steady golden eyes against the ever-changing tangle of the rainbow lights. I couldn't make out anyone, not in all that glare. The place looks like a film set. Crowds of New Year revellers are swarming in the streets, singing and dancing between the hooting scrum of traffic, marching arm in arm along the pavements, smashing magnum bottles against the parking meters, so that champagne foams like Omo in the gutters. I feel they're all my guests – dressed up in my honour with paste-and-tinsel tiaras, or funny hats and paper flowers; drinking my champagne, tramping out my wedding march. There's even a full orchestra. They've bought these things called noise-makers which I saw this afternoon on all the stalls. It's such a happy noise. One guy's got a whistle; another blows a trumpet, shakes his little bells: wedding bells, fanfare for the bride. “I love you all,” I whisper, as I skitter back to Norah. I can't just walk. My feet are too excited; my body wants to float.

The chapel doors are opening, the couple booked before us emerging hand in hand. They're young, both very handsome – Mexican, I think, dark and sultry-looking, with that coarse strong hair which reminds you of a horse's mane. I smile at them, but their world stops at each other's eyes. It's obvious that he's wonderful in bed, licks her front and back. She'd only look at him like that if they'd gone pretty far together. Love bonds you. People only call it lust or sin when they've never done it, or had cold or clumsy lovers.

Oh, hurry, Reuben, hurry. I want your eyes on me like that; your hands against this silky dress so you'll know I have nothing on beneath it, only shoes. I take my watch off, hold it in my hand as if that way I can control the time – and Reuben. Two minutes to go. The chapel director has come out of his office and is flapping round us. If a bride or groom is late, he says, then he's sorry, but the couple lose their slot. He's booked solid as it is, and if he hangs around for us, he'll make everybody else late. But not to worry, he'll fit us in later, between bookings, as soon as my friend shows up.

Friend. Reuben's not my friend. He's my flesh, my cause, my life.

“We've still got fifty seconds,” I say, as coolly as I can. Sweat trickles down my back, contradicts my voice. I can hear the fifty seconds hammering in my head. Ten to go. Seven, six, five, four, three …

“Happy New Year,” I say to Norah, looking past her as I hug her, so I won't miss even a second's-worth of Reuben. The time doesn't matter, actually. It's just a fiction. They said “Happy New Year” at the fireworks and that was only nine o'clock. (We heard it on the radio, in bed.) Nine o'clock in Vegas is midnight in New York, you see, and since they show the Vegas fireworks on eastern-time-zone television, they have to stage them three hours in advance. It's like they move the New Year forward here, to fit in with New York. Television rules, okay? (As usual.) The whole time thing's frightfully complicated. There's a place near here, on the Colorado River, which stands between two time zones, so you can cross back and forward from the old year to the new; cling on to the past for one hour more, or leap into the future at eleven. It makes me feel quite weird; more so when I think of Jan in England. Her New Year started hours and hours ago, whereas people in Tahiti or Hawaii have still two hours to go.

I'll decide my own time. My New Year can only start with Reuben. The clock will strike the moment he arrives.
This
midnight means nothing much at all. It's merely local custom, a convenience for other, simpler people like the couple after us who've just been summoned from the waiting-room to take our place. They both look really scruffy; he couldn't find his razor, she didn't iron her shirt. I loathe them. They're smiling, shaking hands with the minister. He looks wrong as well – no robes, no flowing vestments, just a loud blue suit with two-tone shoes like some vulgar flash tycoon. Has he really taken orders, learnt his Bible, or was he simply borrowed from the nearest business school? And where's our Rabbi? I suppose he's late like Reuben, or did his price go up for New Year and we were twenty dollars short?

The chapel doors close behind the three of them, almost in my face. I'm tempted to wrest them open, yell out “Wait your turn!” How can I, with no Reuben? I stare dully at the wood (fake wood). There's a notice on the doors: “PLEASE – no food or beverages. No bare feet. No chewing gum.” That's ridiculous, uncalled-for. Brides are hardly likely to march in barefoot with a double strawberry cornet instead of a bouquet, or bridegrooms smuggle in Kentucky Fried. Why ruin everything, remove all the dignity of marriage? And look at that really hideous drinks machine, stuck right outside the chapel, with dirty paper cups littered on the floor. If they had to have it there, couldn't they have chosen something tasteful, without that massive-breasted cowgirl holding out her Coke to us and winking one green eye? The place looks like a bar-room, not a church.

A new couple wander up. I think they're only tourists, gawping at my dress, but the chapel director is already muscling in.

“Wanna get married, Sir?”

He makes it sound like some cheap souvenir. “Wanna baseball cap? Free hot dog, free wedding?” Hardly free. Every time I've been into his office, there's someone writing out a cheque or handing over money. Marriage is a cash transaction here.

I follow his expensive gold-trimmed loafers back into the office. It's the only place that's warm. A radio is blaring. A bomb attack in Phoenix: ten dead and fifty hurt. A fire in Reno – three children and a baby burnt to death in bed; a madman on the loose in Salt Lake City; pile-ups on the freeways everywhere. The newscaster signs off: “Happy New Year.” Yeah,
very
happy.

The chapel doors re-open and the two slobs shuffle out. Their wedding took under seven minutes. The basic chapel fee is fifty dollars, which must work out at not far short of eight dollars a minute.

The director darts back to check on me again. He's wearing a red carnation like a groom himself, a strained and harrassed groom.

“No,” I say. “He hasn't come. Not yet. Yes, of course I understand.” Go ahead – marry anyone you like. Mustn't waste a minute. That's eight whole dollars.

I hate this place. Everything is fake. Fake ministers, fake grass (they've bought it by the yard); fake stained glass (it's perspex); fake candles (all-electric); fake flowers (dye and plastic); even fake marriages. I bet half these couples are only here because they're semi-sloshed, or had a big win at the tables and decided to get married just on impulse. It happens all the time. The director told me so himself when we had our chat this morning. He seemed to rather like me (he doesn't now), offered me coffee, sugared it with funny (tragic) stories about a guy who married ten times in succession, after nine quick-fire divorces, and another chap who turned up at this chapel with a girl he'd met just half an hour before. They divorced as well. Hilarious.

He stays open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so he can catch every passing drunk, cash in on every instant lust or whim, keep his till ringing round the clock. He's pretty fake himself, with his hair so glossy dark it's either dyed, or stick-on like his regulation smile. Does he have to bare his teeth at me when he's obviously pissed off?

I escape into the waiting room. It's far too cold to hang around outside now. Anyway, it's really rackety. I don't know why these chapels are all built near busy roads – brakes screeching, throb of engines, whoops from passing drunks. Norah follows like a spaniel. There are no spare seats so I slump against the wall, Norah fussing with my dress. The next couple are summoned, get up, hand in hand. Japanese. He's in just his shirt sleeves, she in a simple cotton skirt. I'm overdressed – that's obvious – dolled up for St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, when this chapel's hardly bigger than a shack and not much more substantial. How could I have chosen such a dump? A painted plywood gingerbread-house for the most important ceremony of my life. Except it isn't going to happen, by the looks of it. It's a wonder no one's laughing. The only real traditional bride, three-foot deep in tulle and outswanking all the rest, with just one small thing missing – the bridegroom. I laugh myself. Ha ha. Norah jumps.

“Have you seen him?”

“No,” I snap. “Do you imagine I can see through walls?”

Norah looks ludicrous as well, the Blue Pearl on her eyelids smudged into blue bruise, her varicose veins showing through sheer stockings and that stupid beaded dress with its white bra back. I drag her outside again. I can't keep still, can't stay in that room with all those smug and smirking couples. Everyone in couples. A few doting mothers, giggly friends. Anyway, maybe Norah's right. Maybe Reuben
has
come.

I use my eyes like searchlights, sweep them over chapel, shop and street. A huge jacuzzi-limousine is drawing up, all forty-foot of it. You can hire that for a hundred dollars extra – book a half-hour champagne trip of Las Vegas. There's a hot tub in the back with mink-upholstered seats and black glass in the windows to ensure your privacy. I'd rather have Reuben's cracked enamel bath with its badly fitting plug – so long as he was there.

He isn't.

Maybe he's been held up by the crowds, even hurt. They're getting really vicious, judging by the racket. I trudge back to the corner, so I can check on the main street again. The bright and happy New Year has already turned to ashes. The crowds aren't dancing any more, but fighting and rampaging; smashed bodies in the gutter now, not just broken bottles. Policemen are hitting out with truncheons, clawing bloody louts apart. A girl vomits down her own ranch mink. A desperate baby howls and howls, abandoned in a pushchair looped with streamers. The pavements are ankle-deep in litter: burst balloons, spent rockets, limp and dirty flower-garlands adrift on pools of beer. I can still hear all the noise-makers – screeching whistles, shrill and jangling bells. Music for a nightmare, not a wedding.

I feel a cold hand on my arm. It's Norah, come to find me. She looks haggard, terror-stricken. She also needs a pee. I take her to the toilets, mooch out into the tiny square of courtyard where I waited before, just this afternoon. Then, I was with Reuben, sprawled out on that wrought-iron bench, yet really in his bed – one with him, joined to him. Now I'm all alone, grown old in half a day. I pace up and down, up and down, trying to think of nothing, grey and faded nothing. Ten minutes later, Norah joins me. Her stole has slipped again. Her teeth are chattering. Her eyes stray to the bench as well, then look away. I try and whistle, but no sound comes out at all. Norah breaks the silence first.

“He's not coming, is he, Carole?”

“He
is
!” I want to scream. “Of course he is.” How can she be so
dim
? “He's got things to do, that's all. He's a busy man. Important. Important people are often late for things.”

He was late before. This afternoon. He said four sharp at the Courthouse, then turned up at twenty past. Those twenty minutes were deliberately sadistic, spun out each cruel second like an hour. It was horrid in that queue, especially on my own, with everyone else in brash and cocky twosomes. Some were really foul, pissed and pushy, or reeking of BO. Even after Reuben joined me, I didn't feel too bright. He seemed terribly on edge and sort of snappy. I assumed he was just tired after our wild and sleepless night together, or maybe simply anxious about all he had to do still, when the queue was only moving at a snail's pace.