Transactional Marriage

Sasha 

The air inside the dark blue sedan tasted like cheap, chemical pine and old upholstery. Outside the tinted glass, streetlights smeared across the rain-streaked windows in long, greasy lines of yellow and orange.

Gana’s hands sat at ten and two on the steering wheel. His knuckles were bone-white against the dark leather cover. The engine hummed low, a steady, mechanical vibration through the floorboards that rattled the heels of my thrift-store pumps.

On my left ring finger, a silver band bit into the flesh. It was too tight, leaving a thin red indent near the joint. I reached over with my thumb to twist it, forcing the cheap metal around until the sharp edge stopped digging into my skin.

Neither of us had said a word since the courthouse door clicked shut behind us.

Thirty-four minutes. That was how long the whole thing took. A clerk with bad posture and a stained necktie had read the vows off a laminated card while a fluorescent light fixture buzzed like a trapped hornet directly over our heads. No music. No family standing in the back row. No white dress. Just a navy wool skirt I bought on sale three years ago and a pair of worn-through soles I kept hiding under the bench.

Gana shifted gears. The transmission clunked under our feet. His profile stayed flat, illuminated by the green glow of the dashboard screen. His nose was slightly crooked near the bridge, a tiny knot of bone that looked like it had been broken once in high school and set wrong. A faint, diagonal scar cut through the tail of his left eyebrow, pale against his dark skin.

I leaned my temple against the cold glass. The vibration rattled straight into my teeth.

“The heater’s on,” he said. His voice was raspy, like he hadn’t used it all day.

“I know.”

“Your window’s fogging up.”

“It’s fine.”

He flicked a switch on the dash. Fan blades whirred louder, blowing a blast of dry, dusty air straight onto my ankles. I pulled my coat tighter around my knees. It smelled like my closet back home, stale cedar and mothballs.

A sharp turn sent my canvas tote bag sliding off the back seat and dumping onto the floor. Something plastic rattled inside it. A bottle of generic aspirin.

Neither of us reached for it.

“Raymond’s dropping off the extra set of keys tomorrow,” Gana said, his eyes glued to the taillights of a delivery truck ahead of us. “At the bank. Before nine.”

“I have a shift at seven.”

“Then he’ll drop ’em at your place.”

“My brothers are going to be there.”

Gana’s jaw tightened. A small knot of muscle pulsed once under his skin, right behind his jawline. “So?”

“They’ll ask.”

“Let ’em ask.” He tapped his index finger against the wheel. Thump. Thump. Thump. “Tell ’em you lost your old set. Tell ’em whatever you want.”

I swallowed, my throat dry as paper. The taste of the sour peppermint lozenge I had sucked on before the ceremony was still stuck to the back of my tongue.

The image of the clinic floated up through the dark street. Bay four. Bay five. The heavy, sweetish stench of iodine, rubbing alcohol, and old sweat that hung over the third floor like a wet blanket.

My father had been sitting in the blue vinyl recliner, his feet propped up on a footrest held together with silver duct tape. A clear tube ran out from under his yellowed sleeve, thick red blood pulsing through it toward the clear plastic cylinder on the machine. Thunk-pump. Thunk-pump. The air in the room was always freezing, meant to keep the bacteria down, but Dad’s forehead was constantly dripping with a thin sheen of perspiration.

Two yards away, Thomas Smith sat in identical vinyl, his thin gray hair sticking to his temples. A cannula hooked into his nostrils, hissing every three seconds.

“Look at ’em, Thomas,” Dad had croaked, pointing a trembling, purple-spotted hand toward the door where Gana and I stood holding paper cups of lukewarm machine coffee. “Two stubborn mules. Mine thinks she’s gotta run a marathon just to stay in the same room as her brothers. Yours acts like he’s already dead.”

Thomas had chuckled, a wet, rattling sound deep in his chest that ended in a hard cough into a wadded paper towel. “He needs an anchor, Frank. Boy works twenty hours a day. Lives in a box in the sky. Keeps his mouth shut so long I forget what he sounds like.”

“We got six months, maybe eight,” my father had said, his voice dropping low, scraping like gravel under a shoe. He didn’t look at me. He looked at the floor tiles. “I wanna see a ring on her finger. I wanna know she’s got somebody when the machine stops.”

Gana hadn’t moved. He had stayed leaning against the doorframe, his suit jacket folded over his arm, his face completely blank. But his brown eyes had tracked my father’s hand as it shook against the vinyl armrest.

“All right,” Gana had said.

One word. Flat. Like he was approving a routine loan transfer.

I had stared at my coffee cup, watching the oily film form over the top of the brown liquid. My brothers had spent the entire morning sending me texts about their new partner track bonuses, their summer homes, their three-car garages. I was twenty-six, working thirty-five hours a week behind a counter, sleeping on a mattress that sagged in the middle.

“Fine,” I had whispered.

The car jerked as Gana hit a pothole. My forehead bumped against the glass.

“Watch it,” I muttered.

“Didn’t see it,” he replied. He didn’t slow down.

We swung into the dark mouth of an underground parking garage. The tire tread squealed against the slick, epoxy-painted floor. Row after row of concrete pillars flashed past, painted with yellow numbers. 402. 403. 404.

He pulled into a bay marked RESERVED - 12B. The headlights reflected off the whitewashed wall in front of us, highlighting a spiderweb pattern of thin cracks in the concrete.

Gana cut the engine. The sudden drop in noise was deafening. The only sound left was the quiet ping... ping... ping of the hot exhaust pipe cooling down underneath us.

He didn’t make a move to open his door. His hands stayed on the wheel, his shoulders hunched slightly under his tailored charcoal coat. He smelled like clove soap, leather, and something metallic, like copper coins held in a warm palm.

“Your coat’s torn,” he said, staring straight at the concrete wall.

I looked down. On the right seam of my sleeve, a thread had pulled loose, leaving a tiny triangular flap of gray lining hanging out. “It’s old.”

“Buy a new one.”

“I like this one.”

“It looks cheap.”

A cold spike ran up my spine. “Sorry I didn’t dress up for the courthouse. Next time I get fake-married, I’ll rent a gown.”

Gana turned his head slow. His brown eyes were pitch dark in the dim garage light, heavy-lidded and rimmed with faint red veins from lack of sleep. A deep, stubborn crease was carved right between his eyebrows, making him look like he was staring into a harsh sun even in the shadows.

“It isn’t fake,” he said. His voice was lower now, barely above a growl.

“Feels pretty fake to me.”

“The paper’s real. The judge was real. My dad’s got a copy of the certificate sitting on his bedside table right now.” He reached out, grabbed my left wrist, and pulled my hand up into the space between us. His fingers were large, rough around the knuckles, his grip firm enough to stop my pulse from moving. He dragged his thumb over the cheap silver band, forcing it tight against my skin. “This is real enough.”

My breath hitched in my chest. His skin was warm, almost hot, a sharp contrast to the cold air filling the car.

“Let go,” I whispered.

He didn’t let go immediately. He stared down at where his thumb rested on my knuckles. A small pulse jumped in his jaw. Then, with a sudden, jerky movement, he dropped my hand like he’d been burned.

“Keys are in the glovebox,” he said, hitting the door latch. “Grab your bag.”

He stepped out into the garage. The heavy car door slammed shut behind him, the sound echoing off the concrete walls like a gunshot.

I sat alone in the passenger seat for five seconds, watching his tall, dark shadow walk toward the heavy steel door near the elevator. My fingers were still warm where he had held them. I rubbed my wrist, pulled the red-marked silver ring straight, and snatched my canvas bag off the floorboards.

The air outside the car smelled like gasoline and wet cement. My heels clicked loudly against the floor as I hurried to catch up before the steel door swept shut.