Ruby Read Free Page B

said.
    “I would love to be able just to walk down to the ocean early in the morning and stick my toes in,” David said.
    Olivia turned to face him. “Should we do it? It would be so romantic.”
    Rex raised a hand. “Not in the Hamptons, okay? I hate that scene.”
    “No,” Olivia said. “We would buy this house in Rhode Island that we saw.”
    “Even though your whole family still lives there?” Winnie said. “That sister?”
    “We would let them visit us only once a year. On the Fourth of July.”
    David said, “Are you sure about this? You said you were scared of owning two sets of everything.”
    Olivia nodded.
    “We could drive up and show them,” she suggested.
    “I thought we were going for dim sum,” Rex said.
    “Dim sum, then we’ll go look at the beach house,” David said.
    “Goody,” Winnie said. “A road trip.”
    “She even has to come on our honeymoon?” David said.
    “Magnolia’s meeting us at the dim sum place, so she can come along,” Rex said.
    Olivia leaned into David.
    “Oh,” she said, surprising herself by starting to cry. “I’m a June bride.”
    A person doesn’t have a right to so much happiness, Olivia thought. But here she was, filled with it. Everything that had come before seemed small and distant now. She imagined riding this happiness through the years, through the rest of her life.
    “Next,” a woman called.
    She was tall and skinny with too-white skin and stiff black hair and red lipstick that bled past her lips, all of it together giving her the look of a vampire. Her clothes were black and clingy, her shoes thick cork-soled platforms that made her fall slightly forward as she walked toward them in a cloud of tobacco and lily of the valley perfume.
    “I’ve come to suck your blood,” David whispered into Olivia’s neck.
    The woman thrust papers at them and motioned for them to follow her into the justice of the peace’s chambers. His name, according to a removable plaque on the door, was Rolioli. Vince Rolioli. Like the woman, he had stiff black-lacquered hair like the Dave Clark Five dolls Olivia had had as a little girl. Behind her, Winnie giggled.
    “You got your witnesses?” Vince Rolioli asked.
    Olivia nodded, waiting for him to stand. Then she realized he was standing, all four feet something of him.
    Winnie was holding Arthur in his top hat, and Olivia squeezed her arm. “You look beautiful, Winnie,” she whispered, because it did work—the chocolate brown crushed-velvet minidress and the big black Breakfast at Tiffany’s hat that let just enough of Winnie’s blond bob show and the Prada shoes Winnie got at a You! shoe giveaway.
    Olivia looked around, trying to memorize everything: Vince Rolioli and his assistant, and Winnie and Arthur and Rex, grinning in his faded jeans and beat-up leather jacket. And David. He had on Levi’s, too, with a white button-down shirt and a vintage fifties tie. Olivia studied his brown curls, his beautiful nose, his eyes—brown and a little too small for the rest of his face. She even made sure to look at his ears, and the sliver of his neck that showed above his collar.
    Then, satisfied, clutching the small bouquet of daisies from the deli, she took a deep breath and said, “Let’s go.”
    The Honorable Vince Rolioli read his part with great feeling, as if he had once aspired to the stage. Olivia and David’s vows sounded almost childlike beside his thundering words.
    It was Rex who had remembered to bring a camera, an old Polaroid. Vince Rolioli’s assistant agreed to take a picture.
    “Smile big,” she said, demonstrating how, showing off her own lipstick-smeared teeth. The four of them obeyed, arms around one another’s shoulders, lips parted for wide, eager smiles.
    The camera flashed and then spit out a snapshot. Olivia found herself holding her breath as she watched the black fade and the colors appear—David’s tie first, and then the pink flowers on Olivia’s hat, and slowly each of them