Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  They take their time.

  “You look thirsty,” she decides, afterward. She turns to open the mini-bar TV. It’s stocked with bottles of locally brewed root beer.

  “Where’s the good stuff?”

  She arches an eyebrow. “What, A&W? That mass-produced sugar-water? You need to give up that shit.” She cranks a cap off. The bottle fizzes, and she holds it away from her dress, laughing.

  “Not on the—” He grabs the bottle and chugs the excess. “There.”

  “See? It’s good.”

  He drinks to taste it, this time. “Yeah, not bad.”

  She leans into him, propping her feet up on the little seat across from them. “You love it.”

  They watch the hills roll by. With a sudden patter on the windows, rain comes down.

  “Oh,” he says, “now that’s a good omen.”

  “Is it?” she asks, and then almost immediately delivers a smack to his arm as she realizes he’s being sarcastic. “It’s good. We need rain.” For perhaps obvious reasons, the windows fog. She stretches out a hand and draws a heart in the condensation. “Tavis always loved the rain.” She looks at him over one shoulder, as if to check in. “Or... was that you?”

  “Me.”

  “Right.” She settles back with a sigh. Rain patters. The heart fogs over again.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “About… everything.” All he’s done, the time he’s wasted, and everything they will never have a chance to do.

  “I know.”

  Don’t leave me, he wants to say. But doesn’t. Somehow, she hears it anyway.

  She tugs his arm, pulling it tighter around her. “Can we just let today be today?”

  By the time the chauffeur pulls up in front of San Francisco City Hall, it is pouring.

  This asshole should have had a suit jacket, or something, to put over her. “How the fuck are we gonna—”

  “Chill, big guy.”

  “Really? That’s the pet name you’re going with?”

  She lifts one shoulder. “Better than ‘asshole.’”

  “Is it, though?”

  Outside, the chauffeur has opened the trunk and pulled out a giant white umbrella. She opens it, wrestles it for a moment against the wind, and then manages to wrangle it with one hand while she opens the car door.

  “Thank you,” Robin says, sliding out and waiting patiently as Cyril follows.

  He wonders if the chauffeur is going to follow them up the steps, but she offers him a polite nod and extends the umbrella handle. He takes it. Robin squeezes in close to him, so he puts his other arm around her.

  Then they turn, and there’s a news crew. “Shit,” he says.

  “They’re not here for us,” Robin says. “Looks like a protest or something. Nobody’s gonna even notice us.”

  “If you think either one of us is unobtrusive, you’re blind.”

  “Well, what do you want to do, try and find a back door?” She opens the clasp on her purse and hands him a white disposable mask. “Here. Now we’re anonymous.”

  They spot the kids and Greta—looking almost handsome in a burgundy blouse and charcoal suit pants—idling inside the entryway lobby. The kids’ exclamations of greeting are rendered incomprehensible as they echo off the marble walls.

  “How the hell did they beat us here?” Cyril grumbles, pausing to shake the umbrella and fasten it shut. Wrangling the kids into the car takes twenty minutes, on average, and that’s without Seth’s suit and Nora’s frilly pink dress.

  “That old Lincoln does sixty, tops.” Robin laughs, opening her arms to embrace her children as they plow into her. She nods a greeting as the older woman approaches. “Greta’s Mustang could do twice that on gravel.”

  “I don’t go that fast,” Greta says, taking the umbrella from Cyril. And adds, almost confessionally, “Well. Not with the kids.”

  Robin extricates herself from the children and checks the time. Their appointment is in half an hour. The photographer's running late, but Robin assures Cyril—like he cares—that it’s fine; she apparently lives in the city and will be arriving any minute. Greta volunteers to flag her down and promptly heads back outside. Robin looks around, scanning the lobby, and then points toward a bank of windows. “I need to check in with the event office. Can you—”

  He nods. “I got this. Come on, guys, let’s go kill some time.”

  “Kill time?” Nora chortles as she makes a chopping motion. “I need a sword!”

  The security guard is not going to be thrilled with the kids running laps around the rotunda, so he takes them around the left side of the staircase into the foyer leading out to Van Ness, which is a more casual area with a café and people chatting on cell phones. The patterns on the slick marble floor make a pretty good game board, and so he challenges them to move from one side of the foyer to the other without moving in a straight line or touching the borders.

  The kids give up after a couple of tries, insisting it’s “totally impossible,” so he’s hop-stepping across the floor like an idiot when Robin calls his name. He spots her coming around the other side of the staircase, beckoning them back into the rotunda.

  “The photographer’s here and the officiant’s waiting upstairs!”

  “Great,” he says. “I don’t suppose there’s an elevator.”

  He’s just being an ass, but she’s so flustered she takes him seriously. “I mean, there is, if you—”

  “It’s fine.”

  As soon as they start up the sweeping rotunda staircase, the security guards flanking either side come forward to block public foot traffic so the prospective newlyweds can have their Kodak moment. “Here,” Robin says, whipping off his mask and stuffing it into her tiny purse. The photographer, anonymous behind a giant lens, starts snapping away.

  Tourists watch with upturned faces as they wait for Cyril and Robin to reach the second floor. Several people lift phones to snap photos. “Oh, yes, I’m sure I look just dashing,” Cyril mutters.

  “You’re fine.” Robin jogs two steps up and turns to face him, straightening his collar and the handkerchief in his pocket. When he tries to start up again, she presses her hand flat against his chest.

  He looks down, past their photographer, to the gathering crowd below. A man with what looks like a press pass clipped to his shirt aims the telescoping lens directly at them. “Shit. There’s a—”

  “They can wait.” Robin puts a hand on his cheek and turns his face toward her. “Look at me.”

  For a minute they just stand there, staring into each other’s eyes. “Okay,” he says. “And?”

  She takes his hand. “There’s no photographer. No guards. No tourists. No press. There’s nobody else in the world. Just you. And me.” She raises her eyebrows, still holding his gaze, and waits.

  It feels like forever. And to his surprise, the world does, in fact, fade away. He watches sunlight streaming in through the windows—the rain has apparently broken—flicker off of the facets in her eyes. The slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. Feels his own heartbeat. Her pulse in the palm of her hand.

  “There you go. Now—just take your time. Okay? Up the stairs. And then we get married.”

  “Wait, we’re getting married? Jesus, I’m not even sure I believe in marriage.” He’s never really had the opportunity to form an opinion on the matter.

  “It’s a little too late for you to be having an existential crisis, big guy. I had to pay in advance—and let me tell you, it was not cheap.”

  When, eventually, they reach the top of the staircase, the photographer directs them to pause for a few more shots as Greta and the kids hurry up to join them, along with the general public. “Congratulations!” someone says. The balding officiant appears and says something about moving things along, glancing meaningfully at his watch. They follow him around the second floor to a balcony looking out over the rotunda.

  And then this asshole is getting married. The officiant’s voice echoes through the chamber with
practiced gravity, drowning out the river rush of voices from below. The kids are wiggly but silent for once, and when Cyril turns to face Robin, Seth peeks around her elbow, grinning. Cyril winks.

  Robin gasps, audibly, when he pulls out the ring. “Cyril,” she hisses. “I thought—”

  “I wanna see!” Nora says, loudly. Greta hushes her.

  “You thought I was going to recycle Tav’s ring?” he says. “Jesus, no.”

  “No, I just didn’t expect you to—” Her voice trails off, eyes fixed on the diamond. Or diamonds, rather. It’s a giant rectangular stone surrounded by a constellation of smaller stones. “Is this real?” she whispers.

  “Uh,” the officiant says, apparently not used to being interrupted mid-ceremony.

  Cyril slips it on her finger. “With this ring,” he says, prompting the officiant.

  The man clears his throat. “I thee wed,” he intones.

  “I thee wed,” Cyril repeats.

  “Now, the bride may present a token of her love.”

  “I didn’t, uh—I don’t have, a, uh.” Robin’s eyes dart up, finally, to his. “How much did you spend on this?”

  “Everything.” Well, almost everything. After paying for the ring, he has about five thousand dollars left.

  Her eyes go wide. “Oh my God. Cyril, I—” She swallows, thickly. “Oh my God. What are you gonna do, when—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. Nothing matters except her, here, now. This is his only chance to give her something, so he will give her everything he has. While she is still here, with him.

  “Boy,” she whispers. “When you fall, you fall hard.”

  They take pictures all the way back down the stairs, too. Stop here. Pose. Robin, you stand in front of him. Okay, no, that’s not going to work. To the side a little? Yes. Cyril, turn toward her and put your hands on her arms. Okay, let’s get the kids in. Ma’am, are you part of the—are you sure? Okay, that’s fine. Would you mind holding my bag, then? Excellent. How about just Robin and Nora? And then Cyril and—yep, right there, just like that! Beautiful. Kid, you’re a natural.

  As they make their way slowly down to the rotunda, this asshole is, surprisingly, not thinking about how ridiculous he looks next to this drop-dead gorgeous woman. He is thinking about whether he will be able to look through the photos when she is gone. Or will they just sit in an album on a shelf, untouched, gathering dust? Will Nora pull it down one day, and will it break his heart to show her, but also break her heart because he’ll know that no matter how much it hurt, he should have done it every day?

  Maybe he’ll have copies made for Greta and her husband. So that when he fails, they can help the kids remember their mother.

  God. He’s going to lose her.

  He’s going to have to watch the kids lose her.

  She squeezes his hand. “Come back to me.”

  Let’s get a closeup of the ring. Do you—you didn’t have a bouquet, did you. Okay, Cyril, hold her hand so her fingers are—no, a little—yes. Let’s see, is it still raining? Do you have an umbrella? Oh, that’s perfect. This is going to be amazing. We’ll go right out on the steps, and—

  “Oh,” the photographer says. “Looks like there’s a news crew outside.”

  Actually, there are multiple news crews.

  “Shit,” this asshole says, under his breath.

  “They can’t be here for us,” Robin says. “Can they?”

  “Us? No. Me—yes.” He turns to Greta. “If you can keep the kids out of the way for ten or fifteen minutes—”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “Good.” He nods to Robin. “You go with them. Once I draw them off—”

  She snorts and takes her purse back from Greta. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Let me—”

  “Go apeshit and get yourself syndicated and have news crews camping on our lawn again? Uh, no. I’m coming with.” She pulls her phone out and taps out a quick text. “Okay. The driver’s bringing the car. We just have to get down the front steps to the street.”

  “Uh,” the photographer says, suddenly out of her element, “where should I—”

  “You,” Cyril says, shaking the umbrella open, “are still on the clock. Come with us.”

  Robin grins. “It’s part of the experience!” She slips her arm through his and pats his hand. “Let me do the talking. Here. Put on your mask. Pretend it’s a gag.”

  The instant they step outside, into what is now a light sprinkle, the cameras rush them. Five microphones are shoved into his face, and he would grab several and rip them out of the reporter’s hands if he didn’t have an umbrella in one hand and Robin on his other arm.

  “Mr. Blanchard, when did you get out of prison?”

  “Why are you at the courthouse today?”

  “Is your release related to the president’s call for—”

  “Where are you—”

  Robin holds up a hand. “Hey!” she snaps, loudly. “One at a time!” She points to a woman in black. “You.”

  “When was Mr. Blanchard released?”

  “End of August,” Robin answers. “And it was public info. You guys are ridiculously slow.”

  “Why are you here at the courthouse?”

  He cannot resist an interjection: “What does it look like we’re doing? Jesus, at least pretend to be journalists.”

  “Where are you living?”

  “Are you still part of Anonymous?”

  “Mr. Blanchard, what will you be—”

  “Mr. Blanchard,” Robin announces loudly, looking straight into the cluster of cameras, “is now teaching piano in Sonoma County. He is currently accepting new students, both children and adults. You can contact him at Cyril Teaches Piano at Gmail-dot-com.”

  And then Robin grabs his hand and pulls him down the steps, through the mob, and they are at the street, and the Lincoln is pulling into the loading zone. The chauffeur jumps out, placing herself firmly between them and the camera as they get into the back, basically photobombing everyone who gets in their way.

  “Ms. Matheson,” calls a voice. “Will you be taking Mr. Blanchard’s name?”

  “Oh, please.” She laughs. “He’s taking mine.”

  The chauffeur closes the door, but Robin keys the window down.

  Cyril yanks her arm away from the switch. “What the hell are you—”

  She sticks her other arm out the window and waves. “Bye!”

  He leans over her and rolls the window back up. “We’re gonna be plastered all over the evening news.”

  She brushes off her arms and hair, showering him with droplets. “You seriously underestimate the turnover rate at which current events are happening these days. I basically gave them an infomercial. You're wearing a mask, and it’s drizzling. If this even makes it on air, it’ll be two sentences and your mugshot.”

  He sighs and sits back. She pops open the mini bar and takes out a root beer.

  “So you’re really trying to make this piano teacher thing happen?”

  She shrugs. “You’ll be good at it. And you’re gonna need some cash flow after buying this monstrosity.” She holds up her hand to model the ring. “Is there a return policy or something? Because after I die—”

  “No.”

  She sighs. “Well, I’m getting cremated, so if you had any fantasies about me wearing any fucking twenty-thousand-dollar ring for eternity you can kiss those goodbye. Maybe you can sell it on Ebay, or—” She snaps her fingers. “Shoot! We forgot Jamie!”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  She reaches to roll down the divider between them and the chauffeur. “The photographer!”

  The drizzling rain has tapered to a mist when the Continental pauses to deposit them in front of a restaurant. “Thank God I made reservations,” Robin says. “I’m starving.”

  “What is this?” The sign says Mandalay.

  “It’s Burmese. You ever had Burmese?”

  “No.”

&
nbsp; “Me either. Greta says it’s fantastic.”

  “Oh, well, if Greta says—”

  “She has better taste than you.”

  He hauls open one of the two solid wood entry doors, letting Robin precede him into a waiting area bordered by plastic palm trees lit up with Christmas lights and a massive gilt altar laden with incense and oranges. Left of the altar hangs a signed portrait of Jacques Pepin.

  The staff is friendly but not overly cutesy; fortunately, a Hawaiian shirt and a flapper dress don’t necessarily code as “just married” anywhere outside the courthouse, so they get to enjoy their braised string beans and coconut rice with relatively little fuss. Robin pokes at her phone. “Jaime made it out. She’ll meet us at the gate to Chinatown in an hour.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “I agreed to get married, not tour the city.”

  “Cyril, I am going to get as much mileage out of this dress as humanly possible.” She uses her chopsticks to gesture at him. “And I don’t know when you’ll ever wear that getup again, so I’m enjoying it.”

  “I’ll wear a Hawaiian shirt every day if that’s all it takes to make you happy.”

  “Holy cow,” she says, when they exit the car again, this time to no rain and a matte gray sky. “I am stuffed.” She looks around, brightens, and waves. “You found us!”

  The photographer, now hung with several different cameras, nods. “Don’t worry about me. Do your thing, and I’ll do mine.” She twists an attachment onto the end of one camera and lifts it to her eye.

  Cyril turns away. “Where are we going?” It seems like she’s got this all planned out.

  Robin points across the street, through the arch of Chinatown’s iconic entry gate. “There’s a little park a few blocks that way. I brought the kids once. It’s really cute.”

  They cross the street. “Wow,” he says, as they pass a row of tents. “Scenic.” He yanks her out of the way of a needle on the ground. “Jesus.”

  Robin sighs. “It’s been a rough year.”

  The photographer stalks them down Grant Avenue, snapping photos as Robin occasionally pauses to peer into a shop window or comb through a street-side vendor’s stall. She pulls a card out of her purse and buys a couple of insects embalmed in resin for the kids, handing the bag to Cyril to stuff into a pocket.