Purple Hearts(21)

“I never said anything about knitting.”

“He’s just trying to be cautious, Cassie,” Frankie said, in a much nicer voice than I could manage right then.

“Then how about you take my last name?” she muttered.

I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. “I don’t want to do that, no.”

Frankie looked at his watch. “We should keep this moving if we don’t want to wait in a long line at city hall.”

I read, “I am a private first class in the Sixth Battalion, Thirty-fourth Red Horse Infantry Division, United States Army.”

From all that, I watched Cassie write the word “private.”

She looked at me, sipping her coffee. “I play keys and sing lead vocals for The Loyal, a band I started here in Austin.” She smiled a little, glancing at Frankie before she wrote it down.

I looked at my sheet. “My favorite food is salami on crackers.”

She giggled. “Sorry. I don’t know why that’s funny. Mine”—she wrote—“is my mother’s tembleque.”

We went back and forth.

I run six miles a day.

About twice a month I sign up for yoga classes then cancel.

I like RPGs. Fallout and stuff.

I like to read critical theory and trashy magazines about celebrities.

I don’t really like to read. I wasn’t good at school. I liked Huck Finn, though. And Where the Red Fern Grows.

I like records. Vinyl.

Me, too. My dad had some growing up.

Things as big as My mom died to small things Cassie said couples know about each other even after a short time, like I wear boxers to bed. Cassie preferred a tank top and underwear. She pointed to all of her tattoos. Right forearm, some sort of lion with wings. A sphinx. Traditionally female in myths. Symbol of wisdom. Left forearm, the cycle of the moon. Upper right arm, flowers, apparently the same kind that grew in her mother’s yard. Upper left, a black star, for David Bowie.

I showed her a scar on the back of my head. I told her it came from my father, by accident. I didn’t elaborate.

We’d decided that whenever anyone got suspicious, we would start acting in love. Touching each other, laughing together, whispering secrets in each other’s ears. That would distract the person asking questions; either they’d think it was cute and understand the timeline more, or they’d think we were disgusting and understand the timeline more.

We would Skype every two weeks, hopefully during times when other members of my company were present, in case they had to serve as witnesses as well.

I gave her my health insurance forms to sign. We exchanged e-mail addresses.

We agreed that my paychecks would be direct-deposited into a joint account we would set up later today at Austin Credit Union. She would withdraw her cut on the first of every month.

Cassie’s leg had started to twitch under the table.

“And now,” Frankie said, holding his camera, “is the perfect time to capture your proposal.”

I looked around. “Here?”

“Why not?” Frankie said. “It’s perfect. It’s in public. There are witnesses, but nobody to hear our conversation. And we can say you were so overcome with love you insisted on going immediately to city hall.”

Cassie glanced at the fake velvet box Frankie and I had picked out from the Walmart Supercenter off 290. “Oh, lordy,” she said, and picked it up, unclasping it.

“Don’t!” Frankie said, glancing in fear at the waitress. Cassie dropped it on the table.

Frankie jutted his chin at me, speaking with his eyes. Do it. I guessed it was better the less staged it looked. We couldn’t rehearse this one. I looked at Cassie. She wrinkled her nose.

I took her cool hand and pulled her up to a standing position. I made sure the waitress had paused behind her counter, watching. Here goes nothing.

I cleared my throat, and got down on one knee. Cassie laughed, a genuine laugh that I felt move through her body. I laughed, too. “Look me in the eyes,” I muttered.

She did. I started smiling, tried to stop myself, and realized I didn’t have to stop myself. I was supposed to be smiling.

“Cassandra Lee Salazar, will you marry me?”

She said yes.





Cassie


City hall broke the skyline of downtown Austin in angles, all slanted brown tile and sweeping glass. Frankie parked on the street, but I didn’t realize we weren’t driving anymore until the white noise of the talk radio had bleeped off and the car was quiet. I spun the too-tight gold band on my finger, trying to remember the chords I had found this morning, a rhythm for my heartbeat to follow so it would slow down a bit, stop jumping around.

“Before we go in,” Frankie said, looking at us with sentimental eyes, like we were prom dates, “I have this idea. My parents do it in couples’ therapy.”

“Your parents go to couples’ therapy?” I asked.

George and Louise Cucciolo were the most in-love couple I knew. They were always making out in the kitchen when one of us went to get more snacks. They went to Italy every year on their anniversary.

“Yeah, they like it. Helps them ‘grow,’ they say.”

Luke and I glanced at each other and shrugged. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was, which was that it was probably easier to “grow” as a couple when you had disposable income to throw at marriage experts and trips to Europe.