One
Snappily Ever After

I was sitting on the edge of the claw-foot bathtub, blow-drying the insides of my sodden work boots and conducting a state-of-the-chica analysis. My dwindling bank account had a disturbing inverse relationship to my increased efforts to sell my stories.

Oswald poked his head into the bathroom and asked, "What's that funny smell?" Looking at him made me feel as ebullient as champagne fizzing over the top of a glass.

Floating over the smell of my cooked leather boots was the faintly herbal scent of multispectrum sunblock. Oswald had to wear sunblock every day because he had a genetic autosomal recessive disorder that made him highly sensitive to sunlight and subject to unusual food cravings. On the plus side, he never got sick and healed rapidly from injuries.

Otherwise, he was perfectly normal. It was ridiculous that people harbored primitive superstitions against anyone with a medical anomaly.

I flicked off the blow-dryer. "That's the smell of my botas cooking. Your grandmother told me I can't put them in the dryer anymore because the thump-thump-thump sounds like a body. Which begs the question: how does she know what a body in a dryer sounds like?"

"Why are your boots wet?"

"I fell into the pond when I was checking on my planting of native wetland grasses. They're doing great, by the way."

"You should buy an extra pair of boots."

"Of more critical importance is something to wear to Nancy's wedding. Like Thoreau, I'm wary of all enterprises that require new clothes."

"I thought you liked clothes," he said, and leaned against the door frame. He was dressed for work in a slate-gray suit of lightweight wool, a shirt the color of forget-me-nots, and a tie in a diamond-pattern silk.

I surreptitiously brushed dirt off the knee of my worn jeans. "I do like clothes. It's the enterprises that worry me. On the flip side, are you sure my old skirt and blouse are fine for the baby's christening tomorrow?"

"It's not a christening," he said. "It's a naming ceremony, very dull, and you still can't go to it because it's only for family."

"That seems rather churlish," I said. "If my niece was getting baptized, I'd invite your whole family to both the ceremony and the party afterward, and it wouldn't even be BYOB."

"You don't have a niece."

"She's a theoretical niece. Her name is Elena and she adores me."

He sighed. "A skirt and blouse are fine for our get-together after the ceremony. You can use the card I gave you to buy something for Nancy's wedding."

The shiny new credit card lay hidden beneath my favorite lace chones at the bottom of my underwear drawer. I had no intention of ever using it. "I dread going to the wedding alone."

"You'll be fine. You'll like seeing your old college pals."

Nancy and I had met at a Fancy University, but we'd run in different circles. Her snobby F.U. friends had a way of looking past me and talking around me that made me yearn to stick gum in their shiny rich-girl hair.

I decided that my boots were dry enough and shoved my feet into the damp, smelly things. "I find this whole family situation very perturbing. I'm beyond perturbed."

"Let it go, babe. Besides, once you meet them you might be glad you don't have to spend much time with them."

Copyright © 2007 by Marta Acosta.