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

to do the day after the wedding was put the marriage certificate in the package and let the lawyer do the rest. Then we’d pick up Johnny, have pizza at our favorite place and take Harry to the airport. But instead the stack of papers that our new life hinged on ended up in tatters in some guy’s apartment on the fifth floor of a walk-up in Queens. And now I was standing next to a broken copier and crying in Staples.

The copier jams again. I kick the machine through angry tears and shout, “Motherfucking-fuck-shit-ass-fucking-machine!” The copy guy behind the counter looks up blankly, hoping he doesn’t have to come over. Harry pulls me gently away from the copier and takes out his pocket square for my sobs. I look at the purple silk edged in navy blue. I realize that I’ve just married a man who owns a pocket square.

“Darling, don’t do that, don’t cry. It’s alright. Let me get us some help.” I try to calm down and watch Harry approach the counter. “Excuse me, sir, so sorry to bother you, would you mind helping us, please,” and the copy guy gives him that look that New Yorkers often give Harry, like they’re not sure but he might be a time traveler who’s just arrived from the 1800s.

“We’ll be OK,” I whisper to myself. Despite its reputation, New York is full of good people who do the right thing, and Robert was one of them. When we got to Myrtle Avenue it was almost midnight but he didn’t mind and he gave us everything he found. Harry offered him $100 in thanks but he waved us off and said, looking at our wrinkled, sweaty wedding clothes, “Get outta here with your money. Good luck.”

We needed it. Almost everything had been mangled, torn, covered in footprints or coffee-stained in some way after an evening on the floor of a taxi. First we went to my place in Brooklyn. We reprinted my statement and the photos and used a pencil eraser to get the footprints off the bank statements. I ironed the letters from our friends. Then we went to Harry’s place in Manhattan to find the duplicate mortgage statement. That took a couple hours because Harry’s whole apartment was in boxes, ready for the movers. When we finally found it, the hotel reservation for our wedding night long forgotten, we did a quick stop at a deli for a sunrise breakfast of cold caffeine and Doritos so we could get to Staples when it opened to make copies, put everything together, print the form and get to the appointment with the lawyer on time. The last thing was Harry’s personal statement. We couldn’t find the USB stick he saved it on and there was no choice now but to write the whole thing again.

The copy guy comes over to fix the machine. He resets it, trying not to make eye contact. Harry strokes my hair, hugs me. I calm down for a minute. Then, panicked, I say, “Shit, I just remembered, you know what we haven’t done yet?”

“Anal?” Harry says, innocently. I laugh so hard my laughs are silent, until I start crying again. Harry hugs me. “I’m sorry, darling, I wanted to make you laugh, don’t cry.”

“Be serious. This is really hard,” I say, sniffling, wiping my nose, and then we both say, without missing a beat, “That’s what she said,” and even the copy guy has to laugh.

Then Harry says, “You mean calling Sharon’s mum about picking up Johnny? I’ve already done that. Now should I go and collect him? My statement’s done and you’ve almost finished here.” He runs his hand down my arm gently, holds my hand, pushes my hair behind my ear.

“Yeah, you’d better go,” I say.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Harry asks. No. I need him. There’s so much I want to say, so much I’m worried about. But we have to get Johnny, we have to finish this application, he has to catch his flight, he has to start his new job. Whatever I feel has to wait.

“No, it’s fine. You go, let me finish this. Call me when you’ve got him.”

I wait for Harry to leave before I start welling up again. Hot stress tears. The copy guy looks up at me from the machine. “You OK, miss?”

He realizes too late that he shouldn’t have given me an opening. I take off: “No, this is such bullshit. This was my wedding night, I said I didn’t care about not having a real wedding and going to City Hall because we had to, because of his job, and finding a school for Johnny over there, and so many things, we just didn’t have time. But look at me! Look at my dress!”

The copy guy glances at my white mini-dress, blackened by a night of subways and taxis, but quickly looks away because he knows he’s not supposed to look at customers’ dresses, even if they ask him to. “I mean, I know it’s not a real wedding dress but it’s my wedding dress, you know?”

The copy guy is so young he still has acne and he doesn’t know. “Um, would you like some water or somethin’?” he asks, trying to remember if he got any training about managing the copying needs of crazy brides.

“Sorry, no, that’s OK. Thank you, though.” He begins to creep away from me but I start up again: “It’s just, it’s a lot, you know, I’m going all the way to London. We have to say bye to everybody and pack everything, my kid’s only five, I mean, what if it doesn’t work out? And look at this, do you know what this is called? A fuckin’ pocket square. He has, like, four of these. What the fuck?” I show the copy guy the purple handkerchief in my fist.

“Um, do you want to call somebody maybe?” he asks. I notice his name tag.

Johnny.

I can see my Johnny,