Home: Part 12

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

January 1982

 
On our wedding night, which we spent in a Radisson Hotel, Kathy and celebrated with room service and small bottles of liquor taken from the room's courtesy bar. "This is for getting married," Kathy said as she handed me the bottle of Smirnoff. "And the Jim Beam is for my birthday. I'll drink this." It was a simple celebration. I liked that about her: a tendency toward understatement. We lay in bed and kept the television on all night, though at some point all we could watch was visual static or test patterns. 

In the morning: a Continental breakfast that Kathy had ordered while I was still asleep. I awoke to her sitting on the side of the bed. She was staring down at me, smiling.

"You're pretty when you sleep," she said.

"Pretty?"

"Yeah. Pretty." She kissed me.

I liked looking at her and thought I could do it forever. Her eyes, what had first attracted me to her, were almost gray and perfectly symmetrical. "I'm not sure I want to be 'pretty.'"

"Oh, men can be pretty. Sit up." She handed me a cup of coffee after I'd arranged the pillows as a backrest. "Don't spill. It's hot."

"I like being spoiled," I said. The cup was close enough to my bare chest that I could feel the coffee's warmth.

She lifted her own cup and touched it against mine. "To us," she said.
"To us."