Page 1 of Dirty Ink

Rachel

Getting married was supposed to be romantic.

So far all I could say about it was that it involved a lot of waiting in lines, a lot of filling out forms, a lot of unpleasant forms.

“It smells like piss in here,” JoJo complained as she spun the pen on its chain round and round. “At least on the subway, you get a little whiff of pizza now and then. They don’t even let you eat in here. And why? Because someone might spill something on these pristine yellow laminate floors? Because someone might actually have fun in this hell hole?”

I smiled pleasantly at the woman behind the smeared glass window when she looked up from the top of her glasses.

“What my vocal friend means to say,” I explained while tugging the pen from JoJo’s hand and setting it carefully back in the holder, “is that we’re very grateful for your help. And that civil servants such as yourself are the reason why this great city keeps running. And your offices here at city hall are only a tiny bit dirty because of how many people you help on a daily basis. Did I say we’re grateful?”

The woman pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “I need to go double-check something,” she said in a bored monotone.

She pushed back her chair and disappeared into the aisles upon aisles of file folders. I groaned and let my head flop over my arms on the counter. My feet hurt, stuffed into the cream pumps Tim preferred. I’d worn a shift dress of white linen and a cream cotton blazer and despite it being all natural materials, all the finest natural materials (I was assured) it felt stifling in the unmoving air of the records basement. My hair was done up in the tight, tidy bun (Tim said it showed off my neck, but I suspected he found my hair down too wild, too untamed, too…Brooklyn) and I could feel each and every pin jamming into my skull.

I dragged my head back up with a tired sigh and found JoJo giving me that look.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Don’t what?” she said, batting innocent neon-green eyelashes.

“Don’t say what you were about to say.”

She cupped her cheeks, which caught the florescent light and glowed lavender, and smiled.

“All I was going to say was, ‘Darling, shall we have the pinot grigio or the pinot bigio for lunch with Mother?’”

I rolled my eyes. “There’s no such thing as a pinot bigio.”

JoJo jabbed me in the chest. She was always more violent than she needed to be. Probably something to do with the fact that she was only a hair over five feet on a good day. She compensated with four-inch platform boots and painful displays of superior strength.

I licked my thumb and swiped at the stain of pink eyeliner she’d smudged on my dress.

“That’s my point!” She flailed dramatically against the counter. “The Rachel I know would never say, ‘There’s no such thing as a pinot bigio.’”

“But there isn’t.”

JoJo rolled her eyes this time. “But there could be—”

“There’s not.”

“But there could be,” she said. “And the Rachel I know wouldn’t just say with her nose in the air—”

“My nose wasn’t up in the air.”

“With her nose all up in the air, ‘There’s no such thing as a pinot bigio’, she would say, ‘What is a pinot bigio? I want to hear more. Is it sweet? Is it tart? Can I have it right here on my tongue because I love life and living and being loud and dancing and shining like a star and making up shit with my best friend instead of waiting in this stupid line for a sheet of paper that says I can marry this boring, vanilla-white average Joe.’”

“His name is Tim,” I said before leaning across the counter to spy where the woman had gone. The faster she came back, the sooner I could escape JoJo and her inconvenient, annoying questions like, “So, like, why do you even want to marry this guy?”

JoJo’s fingers drumming on the counter brought my eyes warily back to hers. Her chin jutted up at me as her nails tapped, tapped, tapped.

“What?” I said in exasperation.

“You know that I know his name ain’t Joe,” she said. “You know that I know his name is Tim.”

“So?”

JoJo balled a fist. I wasn’t fast enough to avoid it colliding against my arm, all tiny, bony knuckles and fury.

---