The Amateur Marriage by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

The Good Feelings Deli was not equipped for takeout, and Michael had to carry the pizza wrapped in aluminum foil that let the heat burn through to the palms of his hands. But that was all right; he felt chilled to the bone. His teeth were chattering and his feet seemed too heavy, his limp more pronounced than usual.

“Zonked,” he heard in his mind, and “zapped” and “hopped up” and “wigged out”—terms that were brand-new to him. And Destiny’s word, “wifty,” also unfamiliar. Destiny’s face rose up before him, a faint green mark on one side of her jaw where her earring had rubbed as it swung. He hadn’t noticed the mark at the time, but now it seemed indented in his memory like a scar.

When he got back to the room, he didn’t tell Pauline what he had learned. Of course he would tell her eventually, but right now he couldn’t bear to speak the words. All he said was “I talked again with Becoming on the phone, and it does appear it will be some time before Lindy’s ready to travel.”

He braced himself for questions, protests, cross-examination, but Pauline just said, “Oh,” and sat silent for a moment. Maybe she’d somehow guessed. “So,” she said finally. “I guess we’d better just go ahead and fly back tomorrow without her, right?”

“It looks that way,” Michael said.

Pauline straightened her shoulders—squared her edges, so to speak—and rose to switch the light on.

The pizza was soggy and tasteless, but Michael suspected none of them would have enjoyed it in any case. Since he hadn’t thought to buy drinks, Pauline fetched three tiny paper cups of lukewarm water from the bathroom across the hall. “Cheers!” she said as she distributed them. But she seemed to have her mind elsewhere. Several times she trailed off in mid-sentence. “Oh, good boy, Pagan; let’s just wipe your . . . Isn’t this cozy and . . . Who’s for more? Anybody want . . . ?”

Pagan took dainty, unenthusiastic bites from just the tip of his pizza slice, leaving a broad swath of crust, never removing his eyes from the television screen. “How is it?” Michael asked him. Pagan didn’t answer. In the harsh glare of the overhead bulb his eyes were squinty, and he looked hunched and furtive.

Face it, this child was just a substitute. He was not their real child, the one they’d flown across the continent to find.

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