When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

look pretty suspicious, standing barefoot in a dirty white dress, swigging a warm Diet Coke in the Staples on 50th Street the morning after our City Hall wedding.

The wedding my father was the only witness to and which he almost missed because he got caught by the metal detectors bringing a pocketknife into the building. And his pat-down and search took a while because he wore his dressy tracksuit, the one with lots of pockets. I’m also not sure if we actually were legally married because the officiant mispronounced my name and I’m pretty sure she called me Gonorrhea instead of Eugenia. Story of my friggin’ life. She said, “And do you, Gonorrhea Andrea Stanislawski…” so I don’t know if my vows actually counted.

Harry leans against the copy machine and reads his statement from a crumpled sheet:

…we are prepared to face life’s hurdles together, drawing strength from each other, but perhaps more importantly, stepping forward to catch one another when our individual weaknesses cause us to falter. Where I waver in the face of decision, Gigi forges ahead with certainty. Where she is plagued by self-doubt, I give her my steadfast faith in her. Gigi and Johnny have brought a happiness to my life that I did not know possible. I cannot imagine a future without them…

“OK, Captain My Captain, let’s just take it down a notch. Can you stick to facts, please? Date and time we met, then go chronologically through the important stuff: first date, Christmas, Valentine’s, Johnny’s birthday, et cetera. They don’t need the whole fucking Odyssey and shit,” I say, pressing start on the copy machine and wishing my Coke was still cold.

Harry turns to me and says, “I’m sorry but I believe those are two quite different literary references and not really comparable, Gonorrhea.” I laugh so hard I start to cry.

It’s the third time since we got married fifteen hours ago that I’ve cried hysterically. The first time was when Dad wrapped Harry in a huge bear hug after the ceremony and said, with tears in his eyes, “Take care of my girl.” I lost it. Not just because of that but—Ma is Ma, and I knew she wouldn’t be there, but still. It hurt. I told Johnny I was crying because I was so happy but he knew. He knows a lot.

The second time was at the bar. We went to meet Sharon and Stacy and Danielle and their husbands and boyfriends and they had filled the whole back of the bar with white balloons and got us a cake, it was all a surprise, and I couldn’t help the tears. The girls got three matching pink halter-top gowns, sequined on top and satin to the floor. They got dressed up so I could still have wedding photos with bridesmaids standing behind me. We did them outside. One with some firemen in front of their truck and one on the subway steps in front of the bar. They brought four bouquets of pink roses, one for me to throw, which I did, to a whole bar of New Yorkers having their after-work drinks. They barely looked up at me because, you know, it’s New York, there’s always some crazy drunk woman throwing something at somebody and you just learn to ignore it. The bartender caught it, though, and we got a free round.

Later, Sharon, four drinks in, came up to Harry, put her hands on his face and said what she had said to every groom who had married one of her best friends: “I will hunt your ass down and fucking kill you with my bare hands if you ever hurt her.”

Harry, slightly traumatized for a second before he understood that this tradition of hers had made him one of us, said, “Sharon, I would expect nothing less,” and they hugged. Then Harry toasted my girls: “To the beautiful bridesmaids and their love for the bride; may we all be spared their wrath.” Then they all did a shot and laughed. I grabbed my phone and took their picture when they weren’t looking, to freeze this moment, the three of them laughing with my Harry, him loving them and them loving him back, in those ridiculous pink dresses. And all of them doing it for me.

But that was last night and now it’s this morning and this is the third time that I’m crying in public. Of course, it wouldn’t be so bad if we had slept. Or not drunk all the alcohol in the West Village, or if I’d taken the bag with the passports and every document for my marriage visa with me, instead of leaving it in the back of the cab we took from City Hall to the bar. I only realized when I got a voicemail at 10:30 last night, several bottles of champagne into my new marriage:

I’m lookin’ for Miss…Miss or Mr.? I don’t know, Eugene? I can’t see this without my glasses. Yeah, anyway, I found some papers in a taxi, they look important, this is Robert in Ridgewood. I’m off Myrtle Avenue.

Robert in Ridgewood had our passports; Johnny’s birth certificate; photos of the three of us; letters from our friends saying they knew us as a couple; bank statements Harry had to get from England; pay slips from his job; proof of his new job; a mortgage statement for his house in London. Robert in Ridgewood was holding a thousand irreplaceable pieces of paper that we had collected for weeks to submit with this application. Papers that had to have the right dates, in the right format, signed and verified by the right people. If any of it was missing the whole application would be rejected and we’d have to start all over again, and lose the hundreds of dollars we’d already paid in application fees.

I had planned everything to make this part as easy as possible. I made sure that every piece of paper was there, every box checked. All we would have