Two people walked hand in hand, picking a careful path along the wet grass. He was tall, with rather too much nose in the center of a long, bland face. She was not so very much shorter, with tiny eyes, great big glasses, and an excess of chin. The eyes of each were guarded, the mind of each busy with individual thoughts. He was the first to break into the silence.
“I have spoken to the caterer about the brie. He’s promised to see to it.”
“I’m glad.” She was, too. Michael had been obsessing about that brie for six days now. He was going to be one of those husbands ready to point out every flaw in the universe. She’d guessed that when he snapped at her for the handprints on his fender.
“Clarence had that mail-order brie at his wedding,” Michael went on, as if that explained everything. To him it probably did. Family meant a lot to Michael, and Clarence was one of his uncles; she wasn’t clear which one, but it WAS the one who was always doing the wrong thing though he might be fun to be around. She shuddered: what if Michael insisted on naming their first boy Clarence?
To shake off the thought, she offered, “We could always use the mail-order brie to fill in the buffet toward the end of the reception.”
He shook his head. “In all the bother, the caterers would surely forget which was which, and serve that first.”
She shrugged; she had never expected to go walking with her fiancé in the park and spend the whole time talking cheese. “Especially if they’re working in this little field house,” she noted.
Michael looked the small brick building over, and then past it to consider the park. He was glad this was no more than one of the finalists for the reception site. This was terribly hard-used: too open, too public. If they had to utilize a park, he’d have preferred the handsome passive park in the museum proposals. He looked across the street, to the horizon: you couldn’t trust developers, though. If the museum did succeed with its passive park, it would also no doubt put up one of those huge soulless gray-white buildings that looked like minimum security correctional facilities. As well actually be married in a prison as have reception photographs with one in the background.
“They said they could run flowers along all the fences,” Bailey said, pointing at the softball diamond. “And we could do the pictures there, or maybe put the buffet tables along that way.” There was a gurgle behind her voice as she went on, “And we could have the three bars at first, second, and third base.”
Michael gazed in the direction of the imaginary bars and buffet tables, all wobbling hazardously on the uneven platform provided by the softball field. Then he glanced at his optimistic fiancée. Bit of pudge there today. Bailey’s mother was, by his estimate, a 54 double D. He hoped Bailey wouldn’t turn out to be one of those wives who ballooned up after the ceremony. She seemed helium-headed enough, at times.
“And we could put the mail-order brie way out in left field,” he went on, with not quite a giggle.
Michael smiled in mild appreciation. At times she looked rather too much like barbie.
“Drat!” She bent from the waist to reach to her left shoe. A pair of sandwich wrappers from that fast food place had blown across it, and had apparently decided to stick.
“Allow me.” He stooped to pull the greasy paper from the square toe of the shoe. She should have known to wear canvas shoes, not leather ones, for a cross=-country stroll. She would learn: one did not expect perfection in a fiancée. Adjustments had to be made, and expectations lowered.
Bailey sucked in her lips, embarrassed both to have Michael down there and by the Booty Burger wrappers, which were not helping the case for Griese Park as a spot for a romantic party. Michael was not the sort to be married anywhere that French fry boxes might dance around his feet.
She shrugged. Anyhow, she could say she’d had a man at her feet. She opened her mouth to say so, but changed her mind. He didn’t find the brie in the outfield funny.
The terrain underfoot was damp, so it was easy enough to slip. That was all there was to it. Michael knew he had just imagined a shove between his shoulderblades, and a jerk on his shoes. He came forward. With a shriek, Bailey sat down hard.
He rocked back, horrified, pulling his face out of her lap. “I am terribly sorry. Let me help you!” His sister Nan would be screaming at this point; probably Bailey had to catch her breath first.
Bailey pulled back, catching her breath as best she could. “Did I splash you? There’s mud on your knees.” Michael was the sort of person who would take this personally.
Michael hoped Bailey wouldn’t be the sort of wife who obsessed about trifles when important matters went unnoticed. “Are you all right? Are those bruises or is it just dirt?”
“Oh, I….” Bailey looked around at herself. “I think…. Oh, hello!”
She was being sniffed by a small gray and white dog and a slightly larger black and white dog. “Come back here at once!” bellowed the young man at the end of the bifurcated leash.
“Oh, they’re all right.” Bailey was glad of anything to distract from the dirt on her fiance’s trouser leg. “What are YOUR names?” She smiled at the dogs, who smiled back, tongues out.
Michael stepped back, raising an eyebrow as the dog walker said “Well, this is Beaufort, and this is Bonbon.”
Both dogs were flailing feathery tails as Bailey reached out to scratch the head of the smaller dog. Michael, with the tiniest of shrugs, reached down a hand to the other.
“They’re so cute!” cried Bailey, addressing dogwalker, Michael, and the dogs at the same time.
“That’s their job,” said the dogwalker.
Beaumont looked like a teddy bear which had gone primitive and returned to walking on all fours, while Bonbon had obviously been a tiger in a previous life and was irked at being found in a smaller body. She took hold of Michael’s thumb, still wagging her tail.
“Yes,” he told her. “You’re fierce. You’re ferocious. I knew it at once. Give me that thumb back. It’s mine.” Shaking his thumb loose, he held it just above her eye level, so she could bounce up and grab it again.
Bailey was scratching Beaufort under the chin. Long black hairs, sticking out on each side of his head like eyelashes, made him look thoroughly exotic. The fuzzy round head twisted to offer another spot to be skritched, and Bailey obliged.
Bonbon was enjoying the thumb game, but spotted something on the ground that looked like food, and moved closer. The double leash made it necessary for Beaufort to accompany her. “Bonbon!” barked the dogwalker. “Drop it!”
Bailey watched them go, waving in reply to the dogwalker’s nod, and then looked up at Michael. She had liked the little dog but had even more enjoyed the sight of her fiancé playing with the other one. It was the first thing she could remember him doing that didn’t seem rehearsed. Her head tipped to the side. How did she know he hadn’t rehearsed it, though. Michael was one of those people who never did anything for the first time: prepared for everything, surprised by nothing, irritatingly unflappable. So why couldn’t he buy his own Brie?
“You’re going to be soaked through,” he pointed out, reaching out with the hand Bonbon had been savaging.
He was correct, of course: what else? Putting a hand on a drier patch of park, Bailey pushed herself up without his help. Most of her weight was on that hand and one foot when the foot slid straight forward, so straight it might have been pulled. She landed square in the mud again with a solid splop.
Michael was moved to point out, “Those shoes aren’t suited to walking in wet weather.”
Bailey found this unreasonable. Dashing some of the new mud from her hips, she snapped, “But these are your favorite shoes!”
He frowned at her feet. “Are they?”
“You said you liked them best.”
“I don’t remember that.” Michael frowned a little more, but gave it up. “The color is very nice.”
Very nice? She slapped both palms on the ground behind her, making two more loud splops. “And here I’ve been making sure they were clean every time I come in so I could be sure to wear them again when we went out!”
Michael supposed he could have paid more attention. Most women were like that: they worked long and hard to make their appearance seem spontaneous and effortless, and then expected you to appreciate al the effort that had gone into it. “Well, you really needn’t go to all that trouble. We’re already engaged.”
Her mouth screwed into a little pout. “And you don’t like them!”
“I didn’t say that,” he pointed out, quite in a reasonable tone. “I just never gave them much thought.”
“Oh, well. In that case….” Reaching out with muddy paws, she pulled the shoes from her feet and wiggled her toes.
“My dear!” Michael had never noticed Bailey’s toes particularly. They seemed perfectly acceptable toes, if you cared for toes. He didn’t think much of this tendency to undress in public, despite one fleeting recollection of distant days when he could go barefoot in public.
She set the feet flat in the mud, preparatory to pushing up, and wiggled the toes. “That feels good.”
Pleasant, Michael thought, to see her for once when she wasn’t looking left, right and backward, worried about what people were thinking. He reached out again, offering the hand nearer to the less muddy of her own.
“Thank you,” she said, and stepping out of the depression her struggles had made in the landscape, walked over to her discarded shoes. She looked left and right, and, spotting a garbage can, walked over and dropped them in.
“My dear!” Michael said again.
“Hey!”
Michael and Bailey turned. Their friend the dogwalker was waving the red handle of the leash, which was all he now held, as Beaufort and Bonbon, still connected to each other but not to him, leapt across the park, their lack of synchronization offset by their glee in their newfound (relative) freedom. Michael whistled, and they glanced at him, but after another “Hey!” from the dogwalker, moved on by, ready for a race.
“They’re headed for the street!” Bailey slid in the mud, but dug in a heel and launched herself after the pair.
Michael was running with her, stooping now and again in futile grabs at the trailing leash. His fingers closed around it twice, but, with no handle, found it sliding from his grasp each time.
He was NOT going to be outrun by anything with such tiny legs. With another burst of speed, he got far enough ahead of the leash to grab it toward the middle, and flip the loose end toward his other hand. Digging his feet in just as they all reached the sidewalk, he learned that Bonbon, particularly, was made up of a good deal of muscle. He tripped forward but kept his grip and avoided landing on his face on the concrete. He pulled back, his shoes digging again into dirt.
“That’s got you!” he announced, as the dogs swung around to face him. They started forward. He nodded to them, reaching with his free hand, but his eyes sought Bailey. He seemed to have lost track of her. He had heard her shouting “Don’t hit the puppies!”, and realized where she must be.
She had flagged a blue Buick that had come around the blind corner. It had, fortunately stopped, as she was right in the middle of that lane of traffic. Michael’s mouth dropped open.
“Thank you! Thank you!” said the dogwalker, joining him. “Bonbon’s been chewing the leash again.”
“Hmmmm? Oh.” Michael was still staring at his barefoot fiancée who, realizing the danger had passed, was bowing to the Buick and gesturing to it to move along.
“Leash broke.” The dogwalker was trying to attract Michael’s attention and relieve him of the leather band while dogs bounced cheerfully around his ankles.
“Oh. Oh? Of course. No trouble.” Mchael released his grip.
“Come on, you two. You’ve had enough exercise for one day.” The dogwalker twisted the end of the leash around his fist. “And I’ve had enough for the whole week. Thanks again.” Michael murmured acknowledgement.
Bailey, meanwhile, had mounted the curb and come back, favoring one foot. Either she’d sprained something or had scraped it running barefoot on the asphalt. “What happened? The leash broke, huh?”
Michael took a deep breath. “What were you thinking? You might have been injured! Even killed!”
“Thank you! Thank you for letting me know!” Bailey put her right hand in hr left. “And you would have been so embarrassed!”
She was trying to shift the engagement ring, but Michael’s eyes weren’t on hr hands. Those feet, those silly feet. He was appreciating for the first time that he was apparently marrying a woman equipped with toes. Something basically ridiculous about toes. It went along with a woman ridiculous enough to risk her life for a couple of mophead puppies. Pleasant, really, if one could go along with that as well.
He looked up at angry eyes. “Nnnnnno,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been embarrassed until the reception, when I realized I’d have t eat all that brie myself.”
Bailey had worked the ring past her knuckle, and was about to say something devastating, as soon as she thought of it, when she took in what Mchael had said. She froze for a moment, wondering if he was laughing at her.
One way to find out. “And you wouldn’t want to be part of some cheesy reception.”
He laughed, and put out a hand. To take it, she had to do something with the ring, so she jammed it back on her finger, at least for now. “That was brave,” he said. “Too brave, perhaps, but I wouldn’t have thought of it. Had I missed the leash, the dogs might have needed you where you were. For that matter, if the leash broke once, it might have broken again when I pulled at it.”
Bailey, realizing that it had been a close call for Bonbon and…whatever the other dog’s name was, felt a moment’s impulse to cry. But it was important to remind him, “It didn’t break. You’re the one who saved the puppies.” She still felt like crying, so to stop herself, she reached up and kissed him.
Michael wasn’t sure he liked her kissing him in public than he liked her taking her shoes off in public. But when he stood back to tell her so, it seemed a good deal more reasonable to kiss her in return.
“Remember you?” she demanded, when he’d finished. “Of course I’ll remember you.”
“You’d better,” he told her. “And I’ll always remember your perfume.”
That was a pity, for Bailey couldn’t remember it herself. She’d remember what it was later, she supposed. They set off back across the site of a possible reception, hand in hand, pausing only by the garbage can so Michael could retrieve her shoes. He thought of everything.
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