The Marriage Arrangement

by Patricia Ryan

  That shut him up for a moment. “Did you talk about marriage?”

  She hesitated. “Not in so many words, but...”

  He groaned. “Izz...”

  “He told me he loved me, Clay. That’s not something I hear a lot, and it meant something to me.”

  “Let me guess. The first time he said it was the first time he got into your—”

  “What does it matter when he said it?”

  “’Cause it’s what guys say in that situation, Izzy—some of them. It’s considered... I don’t know. Good manners.”

  She let out a disgusted little laugh. “That’s Prez. Always the gentleman.”

  “I worry about you, Izz,” he said with as much gentleness as he could summon. “You should know better than to take a declaration of love at face value and make all kinds of assumptions based on it.”

  “It wasn’t just that.” She yanked her hands from his grasp. “It was lots of things. You weren’t there. You don’t know all the little things he did and said to make me think... You’re so exasperating. Everyone’s gonna think the same thing—that I was stupid and careless and gullible. I was careless, but I just assumed if anything happened...” She shook her head miserably. “I assumed wrong. But he kept talking about the future, our future together... about buying a bigger house, traveling together, that kind of thing. I just went along with it all, assuming he was working up to popping the question.”

  Clay shook his head. “And then...?” he prompted.

  “And then,” she said quietly, “a little over three weeks ago the parent corporation pulled the rug out from under us. D&B had been in decline, so they merged it with another company. They laid off most of the staff, including me, and sent Prez back to England. I was in total shock. He just said goodbye, it’s really been a kick—something like that. I couldn’t believe it.”

  Clay couldn’t stop himself from saying, “What do you find hard to believe, Izzy? His tacky parting words, or the fact that he left? Because, I hate to break it to you, kid, but that’s what people do. They leave. Take it from me—everybody leaves sooner or later. It’s just a matter of whether they do it with any style. Doesn’t sound to me like old Prez displayed a hell of a lot of style in all this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said grimly. “As he was getting into his cab to go to the airport, he did say I’d have to be out of the house by the end of the month. I thought that was a pretty memorable last line. Certainly left me speechless.”

  “Fucking dick.”

  She nodded dolefully. “He knew I had no money. I’d had a little savings at one point, but I lost most of it on a risky investment.”

  Izzy, Izzy, Izzy... “What did you do?”

  “Panicked, mostly. Then, when I found out I was pregnant, I called him in London.” Her voice grew tight. “A woman answered the phone—young, with one of those chilly, upper-class British accents. Prez sounded nervous when he got on the line. He said he’d call me back, and he did, about an hour later, from somewhere else. He didn’t even try to sugarcoat it. Told me the woman was his fiancée, and they’d been engaged for three years, and he didn’t want any trouble. When I told him I was pregnant, he said he’d send me some money to—how did he put it?—‘terminate the situation.’”

  “Christ. What did you ever see in this—”

  “Just don’t ask me that, okay?” she said furiously. “People make mistakes. I made a mistake. Guilty as charged. Just don’t ask me to defend it, okay?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “You should talk, anyway, with your sexual history. Frankly, some of the women you’ve picked—”

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said placatingly. “I’m guilty, too. We’re both complete assholes when it comes to the opposite sex. We shouldn’t be allowed out of the house by ourselves.”

  She smiled crookedly. “Oh, shut up.”

  “Did he ever actually send you the money?”

  She nodded. “I used it to fly back to New York. Now I’m sleeping on the pull-out couch in my parents’ living room. I want to get my own place before the baby comes, but that takes money, and I don’t have any. I’ve applied for every graphic arts job in Manhattan, but it’s so incredibly competitive, and—”

  “Wait a minute. You can’t stand Manhattan. You once told me you’d never work there.”

  “That was before my life blew up in my face. It’s immaterial anyway, because no one wants to hire a pregnant woman.”

  “It’s illegal not to hire a woman because she’s pregnant.”

  “Yeah, I know, but they’ve got ways around that. I actually did get a nibble a few days ago after a whole battery of interviews, and I decided since I wasn’t showing yet, I just wouldn’t mention the pregnancy till after they offered me the job—which they did. So I ’fessed up, and what do you know? The next day, I get a call from the woman who made me the offer, and she says, ‘Oops. My bad. I thought I had the authority to offer you this job, but I didn’t, and now my boss has hired someone else, so I guess you’re just good and fucked. Ciao.’”

  “That’s obviously bullshit. You could take them to court.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I need right now, to get involved in some long, drawn out, expensive legal battle, when all I want is a freakin’ job! Or at least some source of income. I’ve shopped my portfolio around, trying to get freelance work, but again, New York is just insanely competitive for graphic artists, plus all my contacts are in San Francisco.”

  “So where does that leave you?”

  “Besides jobless, broke and pregnant?” She smiled gamely; the effect was heartbreaking. “At least I have a place to stay. I mean, not that I want to be living with my parents at thirty-four, but it’s better than the street. It’s scary, though, you know? I mean, you hear homeless people on TV saying it can happen to anyone, but you never really believe it until you brush right up against it.” She shivered.

  “Do your parents know? About the pregnancy, I mean?”

  “God, no.” She shook her head wildly. “No. Jesus. I can’t tell them. I can’t. I mean, I know I’m gonna have to sooner or later, but... God, I don’t know how I’m gonna do it.”

  “Whoa. They love you, right? I’m sure they’ll understand.”

  “They love me, but they won’t understand.” Her eyes shimmered wetly. “It’ll hurt them. It’ll kill them.”

  “Come on, now...”

  “You’ve only met them—what, once? At our graduation? You don’t know. They’re very... Italian. Very traditional. When I say it’ll kill them, I mean they might literally stroke out at the news, both of them. My brothers and sisters will never speak to me again. My aunts and uncles and cousins...”

  “We’ll think of some way to soften the blow.”

  “There’s no way.” Her chin began to quiver.

  “No. Don’t do that.” He backed away and held his hands up. “Please, Izzy. Don’t cry.”

  “Okay,” she said with watery sincerity as her eyes filled with tears.

  “No. I mean it, now. Stop this.”

  “I’m trying.” The tears spilled out. She buried her face in her hands.

  “Oh, God.” He gathered her in his arms, cupped her head, and held it on his shoulder. “You want me to go find Presley and beat him up for you?”

  She grunted. “Right.”

  “I’m serious.” He was. A hundred percent. Which surprised him, seeing as he hadn’t struck another human being in anger since the schoolyard scuffles of his youth—if you didn’t count that little incident at Judith’s funeral. But he was more than willing—eager, even—to jump on the next flight to London, hunt this Presley Creighton down, and beat the everloving fuck out of him for having hurt Izzy.

  It gratified him to feel her chuckle. “If I thought it would solve anything, I’d let you,” she said into his tear-dampened sweater. “But there’s really no solution for my troubles. I’m just gonna have to bite the bullet and tell my parents and take the fallout.”

>   “Then what’ll you do?”

  She shrugged. He patted her back. In the ensuing silence, his pesky imagination began proposing solutions to Izzy’s problem. Most of them were pretty dumb, but one kept bubbling to the surface again and again—maybe because it was so much dumber than the rest that it just naturally commanded a certain measure of morbid fascination. Or maybe because it was the only solution that would not only solve all of Izzy’s problems in one fell swoop, but rid him of one of his own, as well.

  As he contemplated the idea, he began to think of it as being not so much dumb as outrageous. And he grinned. Dumb held little appeal for him, but he had no problem with outrageous. Outrageous acts had always, in fact, held a certain inescapable allure for him. And an outrageous act that actually served a higher purpose—well, in theory, such an act could be a thing of great beauty.

  He thought about it. He looked at it from every angle. And then he said, “Hey, Izz?”

  She sat curled within his embrace. “Mmm-hmm?”

  “I have an idea. Now, don’t just dismiss it out of hand.”

  “Okay.”

  “Give it a chance.”

  “I said okay.”

  “This is my idea. Are you listening?”

  She pulled away and looked him in the eye. “Why are you stalling?”

  Why was he stalling? “Because the idea is a little... unorthodox.” He amended that. “Very unorthodox. But it’s a very good idea. I mean, I think it’s a good idea.”

  “And this idea is...” She made a get-on-with-it gesture.

  “That we get married,” he said. Then, like an idiot, he grinned and shrugged.

  She squinted at him. “I’m sorry, did you say...”

  “That we should get married? Yes.”

  Both her eyebrows sprang up; he pushed them both down. A heady charge of excitement coursed through him, the same kind of charge he felt right before he jumped from an airplane. An adrenaline rush, that’s what it was—a surge of energy that prepares your body to do something that your mind perceives as dangerously fucked-up. He loved that feeling. He loved this plan. This was going to be great!

  From the expression on Izzy’s face, he suspected she didn’t share his enthusiasm.

  “That’s crazy,” she said.

  “Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Some of the world’s best ideas have been the craziest.” He sat up higher. “One day Benjamin Franklin goes out in a lightning storm with a key on the end of a kite string. The next day we’re plugging our microwaves into the wall socket.”

  Izzy frowned, opened her mouth, then shook her head as if trying to get water out of her ear.

  He seized her shoulders and bored his gaze into hers. “One day, Izzy Fabrioni and Clay Granger get married.” He grinned broadly. “The next day, Izzy’s got a home, financial security, and a husband and presumed father-to-be to display to friends and family.”

  “What does Clay get?”

  “Freedom to walk out his front door without being accosted by women auditioning for the role of Mrs. Granger.”

  “It doesn’t seem like you’re getting all that much compared to me.”

  She was arguing with him. This was good. This meant she was seriously considering this lunatic scheme. Yes! “I’m getting more than you think. My life hasn’t been my own for a long time. Not since Judith died.” The subject of Judith slowed his racing heart and injected a sober element into his thinking. He let go of her shoulders to drag both hands through his hair. “One guy tried to fix me up with his sister at the funeral.”

  Her eyes widened and then narrowed. “Was that the guy you ended up punching out?”

  “Yeah. I told him my wife had just died, for God’s sake. He had the balls to tell me I should lighten up. He said, ‘You knew her for what? Not even five months? Get over it and move on.’ So I decked him. His sister helped him up and he left.”

  “Why didn’t you call me over?” Izzy asked. “I would have held him down so you could have really whipped his ass.”

  He laughed and hugged her. “That’s my Izz. So, what do you say, coffee bean? Shall we take the leap? It’ll be fun. I’ll go to Tiffany’s and get you a rock the size of your fist.”

  “I’ll get mugged.”

  “No one will believe it’s real. Also, you’ll be living here in North Moon Bay, where that sort of thing is simply not done.” The quaint waterfront village on Long Island’s north shore, where Harry and Clay had both settled down after growing up in Manhattan, was a mitten-shaped peninsula within commuting distance of the city, but far away enough to have avoided suburban sprawl.

  “In my house,” he added for good measure, grinning. “The house my grandfather left me. You were there once, remember? You said you liked it.”

  She didn’t say anything, just gazed past his shoulder, as if contemplating the wallpaper. But he knew what she was really seeing: an enormous Victorian dream house, complete with cupola, wraparound porch and leaded-glass bay windows. Women always offered to have his babies when they saw that house.

  “Those woods are all mine, too,” he threw in, trying to sweeten the deal. “Seven acres.”

  “Shut up,” she said, a grudging smile tugging at one corner of her mouth.

  “Then, of course, there’s the pool, and—”

  “Shut up.” She made a sound like a groan mixed with a chuckle, and shook her head. “This is crazy.”

  “Agreed. Your point?”

  She chewed on her lip for a minute, her gaze darkening. “There are some things we’d have to... come to an understanding about first.”

  This was his cue to say, Of course, it will be a platonic marriage. I wouldn’t dream of laying a finger on you. Instead, for some reason, he hedged his bets. “You call the shots, Izzy. We’ll play by your rules.”

  She paused only briefly before saying, “We’ll have to have separate bedrooms. There’s no question about that, right?”

  “Right,” he said quickly. “Hey, you’re not even my type.” He winced inwardly. Could you come off as any more of a douchebag?

  For a stinging nanosecond she just stared at him, and then she glanced away. When she looked back, her features were horribly calm and composed. “It should hardly need to be pointed out that you’re not mine, either. Especially not after Prez. I’ll never fall for another lothario again.”

  “Lothario? You make me sound like a guy who wears gold chains and silk shirts and smokes skinny brown cigarettes.”

  “Don’t forget the part about banging strangers at parties. You’ve got to admit, Clay, you’ve got a pretty... shall we say, active social life? Aren’t you worried that your getting married will put a damper on it? I mean, the world is still going to be full of Tanyas and Barbies.”

  “I’ll deal with it.” He shrugged. She just looked at him, as if waiting for him to elaborate, so he was forced to add, “I’ll be discreet. I promise I won’t embarrass you.”

  A heartbeat’s pause; she looked away and nodded.

  He stroked her hair; it felt like heavy silk. “The last thing I’d want to do is hurt you.” A soft-focus drama played itself out in his mind: the memory of coming home from school the day after he’d turned eleven to find his mother tearing from room to room in their sprawling apartment, smashing vases and candy dishes and mirrors, screaming, “Enough!—I can’t take it anymore!” in her native French. He’d found his father and an actress friend smoking cigarettes in their robes in the sitting room of the master suite while, in the background, his mother cried and shrieked and broke things. His father had simply shrugged and arched an eyebrow, as if to say, I don’t know what’s gotten into the woman. That was the day his mother had packed her bags and flown back to Switzerland for good. Clay had seen her only a handful of times since then, although they spoke on the phone occasionally. He’d seen her picture twice in the tabloids, both times wearing oversize sunglasses and clutching the arms of younger men.

  “What happens when you want out of t
he deal?” she asked. “Maybe you’ll meet someone and fall in love—”

  He laughed harshly. “I do that two or three times a week. It usually lasts for about half an hour.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously,” he said. “Ain’t gonna happen. I know myself well enough to state unequivocally that I have no intention of ever settling down with anyone. But if you find someone and want a divorce, no problem. Hell, if you want to file papers the day after the baby’s born, be my guest. I’m just trying to help you out here.”

  “I know.” She gripped his shoulder. “And I appreciate it. More than I can tell you.”

  From downstairs came the muted blare of noisemakers.

  “So you’ll do it?”

  She laughed incredulously. “This is crazy.”

  “We’ve been all over that. We know it’s crazy. But we’re gonna do it anyway. Right?”

  She groaned, but she was smiling that billion-watt smile. “Right.”

  “Yes!” He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed.

  The door flew open; Harry’s linebacker silhouette filled the doorway. “There you are! You guys, it’s almost midnight and—” His eyes widened as he took in the rumpled coats and the embrace. “This can’t be what it looks like.”

  “We’re getting married,” Clay said.

  “Clay!” Izzy exclaimed.

  “Look,” he said, “everyone’s gonna find out sooner or later. That is the point, after all.”

  She sighed and slumped against him.

  “You and Izzy,” Harry said slowly, as if waiting for the punch line. “Getting married.”

  Clay nodded. “Will you be best man?”

  Harry stood in silence for a moment, his expression gradually softening from incredulity to sanguine acceptance. He tapped the brim of his Yankees cap. “Can I wear this?”

  “I wouldn’t recognize you without it.”

  “Then I’m your man, homie.”

  Clay caught Izzy’s eye. “‘Homie’?”

  Harry cocked his head toward the stairs leading to the first floor, where the sounds of celebration were escalating to a fever pitch. “The countdown’s gonna start soon. If you can disentangle yourselves, you should join us.”