Cold Feet

Cold Feet

A Story by ZackOfBridge
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A man is apprehensive about getting married

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Their engagement was short. James had to get the girl squeezed into a white dress before her stomach pushed out. He thought it was funny, those huge choices in life often have few options. He could be a married man or he could be a dead man. In his situation, marriage was his instinct as a self-preserving man, but defied every instinct of his as a self-prospering man. 

            He had proposed while he sat on the lopsided love-seat, Emily was in the bathroom. It was an unspoken proposal. A piss soaked machine had done the proposing for him. The pink plus sign on the pregnancy test was practically a wedding band.

            He was sitting in front of the TV when she told him. On the television, penguins marched through tundra to find their monochromatic mates, their partners. Penguins keep one mate their entire life a mellow narrative said over the stock footage of a blizzard. Well they sure as hell can’t fly away from their responsibilities James thought, poor black and white b******s.

            “James” Emily called to him from the toilet seat. It was the voice that meant she needed his attention over the television. “James, what are you doing?”

            “Penguins.” He said from the couch.

            “Well, I’m pregnant,” there was a metallic ping in the bathroom. She had dropped the used stick into the garbage. No that isn’t right, she threw it in the toilet side trashcan. The sink was running and her voice unsure.  “Go out, get some toilet paper, and buy a ring too, silver please.”

              A nervous James spent time in the mall that night. He would move from one jewelry shop to the one adjacent. He did this down the strip of the mall until closing time when metal gates were pulled down over the shops.   He found the ring in the last shop. It was after he had sat alone at a table in the food court. The table was meant for four people, but there weren’t even four people in the food court.  It was getting late and the cashiers were cleaning counters. 

This shop would be the ground zero of his new life. But it could be said that the restroom of the gym where he and Emily sweated out a quickie was the birthplace of his new life but that was to him, any other day. This place, this cubic center of the mall was a stamp of confirmation; Kevin's life and priorities were about to shift.    

The salesmen stood behind the counter. The man, a youthful middle age, was a model of a high testosterone jaw line. His cheek bones poked from the skin below his eyes, his eyes glowing, bright viridian amber swallowed by the density of his pupils.  His iris was like a surviving light. His eyes nearly made James excuse the hue of this jeweler’s skin. The salesmen, even under the atmospheric golden glow of the store, glowed pink, a pink that crept into crimson. A sunburn, and a particularly prolonged burn it must have been.

“I can help you.” the salesman said to James, his skin stretched tight, the separation of his lips seemed foreign on a face so frozen. James stepped to the glass counter; jewelry decorated the necks of pale busts and freestanding white hands.                  

 “I know what you need,” the Jeweler began. James, with his hands placed flat on the glass, could feel the salesman’s voice reverberating in his palms. "You need an engagement ring and shortly after, wedding bands. You need them, but you are not sure if you want them.James looked into the face of the salesman, stillness with a closed mouth smirk as if he had not been speaking at all.                                                             

 “I could make a deal with you.” he said and his hands placed a set of rings on the counter space between them. The hand that pushed the box forward was an even deeper, nearly red shade of pink.                              

“You’ve got a sunburn. Its November,” James said, he cringed at the rings. The rings were too final. The salesman pulled his hands from the counter top and to his sides.                                         “That’s from working my other job.”

“What are you, the devil?” James said.

“I’m a salesman, and I have a pitch for you” He said and slid a paper beside the rings.  “Times are tough, I get it, Hell, I feel it too, and it’s especially tough when times of big changes leap onto your lap and take a long piss on you. I know you don’t want to drop a small fortune on a set of rings. And so these rings are free.”          

James’ hands retreated into his pockets. Free was scarier than over-priced. Free came with strings that tugged open loopholes. Nothing was free. “You’ll give me those rings for free?” James nudged his shoulders at the counter, he pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. He would feel vulnerable with them anywhere close to the pen and paper. “The catch. What is the catch?”

“You look to me like the type who would love to be free. Free of the bullshit.”

“Yeah, I’m swimming nose deep in it.”

“You must envy birds, free birds, you know, ‘I’m as free as a bird now.’” The salesman said, his voice lifting into a hymn. “How would you like to be a bird? That’s what I’m selling you, options, a plan-B. Wouldn’t plan-B have been a huge help a couple weeks ago?”

“Excuse me, how"“

“Take these rings, for free, no catch. If you aren’t ready for the marriage, you have until the vows to decide whether you want to be chained by the ankle of your fiancée or escape the responsibilities, like one of those white doves that fly as high away from marriage as they possibly can. You can be a bird, sir.”                     

 James’ burrowed hands seemed to beat with helium as they rose from his receipt filled pockets. “So I sign here?”

          “That will do it.”

             

             ***

          

            The wedding day came, two families merged in the botanical garden. Hummingbirds flittered through the air, and James watched with envy.  This envy had perched upon his mind in the previous months leading to the wedding; it had not helped his contractual decision offered to him by the sunburned jeweler, well not the decision leading him to clenching dirty diapers and waking to wailing in the night.

            There were happy, blissful wedding attenders and there were the realists. The realists were often mistaken for the cynics, the ones who saw through the veil, the ones who whispered amongst the fellow hidden scowlers. She must be pregnant they whispered over their fourth champagne. This will be the first of many, they said, and thought privately to themselves why reasonable and enlightened people like they had never been asked to give a wedding toast.

            James’ tuxedo had been fitted to his body and he felt the collar choking and itching his neck. He stood at the end of the aisle, his hand clenching the wrist at his waist. He felt he were the upright, three-piece suit-wearing target of a formal firing squad.  They watched him in smiling silence, someone coughed into their palm and the music began. The music pivoted the spines of the audience, Emily and her father appeared from the pink haze of a cherry blossom tree. She was beautifully white in her dress, she hovered with slight rhythmic steps down the aisle. A tear swam in his eye, this was to be his bride, one and only. He couldn’t do it. The birds sang songs of persuasion in the trees above the altar.

            In his head he wondered how he would initiate the shift into aviation. She was approaching, extending her hand for him to guide her up the few steps to the altar platform. The seated clapped small little claps for them. He reached his hand mechanically for Emily, but it fell limp to his side.

Free bird, he thought frantically, free bird!

            And there was a gasp; the pastor fell to his knees and scurried away on his heels. In an instant, the groom had become bird. James flapped his wings, but he felt only slapping at his plump sides. There was no wind in his feathers nor did he see the audience from a lifting birds eye view. The audience remained, some fallen from their seats and some praying to the Gods above. James was a bird as the jeweler had promised, a penguin. James the penguin stood with the rings at his feet.

          A penguin has only one mate its entire life, a mellow narrator said.

© 2014 ZackOfBridge


Author's Note

ZackOfBridge
This one was kind of thrown together over long periods of time and that is why the narrative style kind of shifts throughout.

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Reviews

I think this is awfully good. I don't generally care for long stories, but this held my attention throughout. I found the narrative to be quite cohesive.

Posted 10 Years Ago


ZackOfBridge

10 Years Ago

Thank you Marie, thank you for reading
Hahah this was so awesome Zak. It reminded me of a Bradbury short. I remember you telling me about this in highschool, and I'm glad to see it surface to my computer screen. Excellent short story man, the ending had me nervous, I wouldn't want to sign up for a ball and chain if ya know whatta mean..

Posted 10 Years Ago


ZackOfBridge

10 Years Ago

I know whatta you mean man, well thank you for reading my words Max, I very much appreciate it

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3 Reviews
Added on February 12, 2014
Last Updated on April 22, 2014

Author

ZackOfBridge
ZackOfBridge

Camarillo, CA



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A Story by ZackOfBridge