The Bridal Suite

After the wedding, Sarah agrees to give up her place at the Golden Gate and, while they decide about their place of permanent residence, will move temporarily into the Swan town house. She insists her new husband let go of his man Edgar, a slipshod gambler, to make respectable room for Gloria and her baby-sitter. Laudette is in full charge starting on the wedding night and going through the couple’s upcoming honeymoon cruise. Sarah, ever distracted, is used to leaving Gloria entirely in the capable hands of Miss Lord. The child takes it for granted.

The peach of Zion Beehive spends one last night in the Golden Gate Hotel in the sumptuous bridal suite. The big bed is as soft and inviting as any mire of sin and luxury she could have hoped to wallow around in. The two-faced choir girl’s dreams of ease, comfort, and indulgence are fulfilled but, cruel irony, Sarah couldn’t be more unhappy. She sits uncomfortably in an armchair in the sitting room while Swan pops the cork on the champagne and loads up some crackers with black caviar. She holds one hand over her mouth, rubs her stomach with the other, and shakes her head no when he offers her the gourmet victuals. Jovial Swan is not at all fazed by her refusal. He slurps up the caviar, takes the champagne down in great gobbles, and while doing so maps out the game plan for an eighty-eight day, summer-long, around-the-world chain of honeymoons. Tomorrow they will embark from the Bay Area aboard the luxury liner Regina Mare, voyage south on the Deep Blue Sea, putting in for sun and surf at the resort ports of Guayaca and Costa de las Santas, then through the Isthmania Canal, across the Titanic Ocean to the South of Elysee. They will visit the most fashionable gathering places in the Old World, go on a safari in the Dark Continent, and come back by way of a slow boat from Shunyu.

The new bride is not so confounded that she does not notice the interruption of her services. The itinerary her husband outlines suits his taste for the sporting life perfectly but holds little interest for her whose practice of sending mental notes, apologies, and enticements to the dead has now become a habitual and rabid obsession. It pains her to leave the area where Corn Dog was last seen alive. The sounds, sights, and smells of the scene of her crime keep her company while she tries to make contact with him. She says, “I thought fifty-fifty meant split down the middle, husband. You never talked the trip over with me, asked where I wanted to go and for how long, or whether I wanted to go at all.”

“Come now, Cupcake, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. The will does allow us a grace period for a honeymoon before we pick a place to make our home sweet home. Besides, you look as if you could use a vacation. I understand. The wedding was a big strain. The cruise will be relaxing. We have the biggest stateroom on the boat. And I can’t wait to show you the Old World. It will be a thrill to see it together. I’ve rented a splendid place for two weeks in the Emmenthal Altos. It comes with fifteen servants, Old World style. Granted, you might not go for mountain climbing, but the scenery around the chalet is breathtaking; snow-capped peaks and high pine valleys with superb views of the Zimmerschloss. And there are many things to do: horseback riding, shopping in the nearby village of Ritzfrau—very quaint—and you’ll have a chance to meet my friends the Duc and the Duchesse du Fondue. Ever think you’d be dining with real Emmenthaler nobility? And then we go to Mondo Banco. The casinos, of course, can be quite a lot of fun, glamorous, clamorous, very elegant. But even if you don’t catch the gambling bug, I’m certain you’ll find the shopping fabulous there. But have you ever gambled?”

“No,” the contrary pea lies, “I never have, and I don’t intend to start. As for shopping, funny, now that I can buy anything I want, I find I don’t really want anything. I’d just as soon stay home, curled up with a good book.” Or a bad one, she thinks, reflecting on her growing collection of occult literature and doubting she will find much to add to it in such mundane places as Ritzfrau and Mondo Banco.

“Oh, you’ll see, it’ll be a grand time.” Harry goes on, his mind splashing in champagne. “Travel will be a welcome change from reading, an extension of the same thing, actually. All right, I admit the hunting trip is more my line than yours, but not every girl gets to see what a big game safari in the Dark Continent is like and to stand in the shadows of Mount Bondo. Anyway you can indulge me a bit, can’t you? The worst is over now, my sweet, and it will be nice to spend some time, just the two of us, won’t it?” The smooth older man figures to have his own way. He reaches out to hold her hand.

Perhaps in Jujuba, she thinks, the natives might have a trick or two for contacting the dead and keeping them as restless as the living they left behind …

Sarah has gotten used to going to bed early, tickling herself, and fantasizing about the risen Corn Dog. Until she met Harry she had never spent a whole night with a man, and with him, not many times. She doesn’t want to start making a habit of it now. “You’re right, darling, I’m tired. It’s been such a long day today and tomorrow we leave on the trip, so not tonight, thank you.”

“But this is our wedding night. Come on, now, Cupcake, we’re married. We can talk openly to one another. We can’t let a little fatigue spoil everything, can we? Probably a little deep tissue massage and seminal hydration would pick you right up.”

She does not think the joke is funny. “Just to remind you of the deal, my dear: outside you can treat me as the passive half of everything you do and you won’t hear any fuss from me, but on the inside, what you call my deep tissues, I’m still my own woman. I think that for our marriage to work separate bedrooms are in order, don’t you?”

“Well,” says the playboy, “they say familiarity breeds contempt and absence makes the heart grow fonder … and the frond grow harder. Maybe it is best to pretend we’re not man and wife. I can see how it could make visiting one another seem like a little extramarital fun.”

Having not touched her for more than seven weeks, the wolf in him is ravenous for her tender flesh. Yet the playboy knows the animal in women; that they’ll starve you if you approach too hungrily. He sits there making sheep eyes at her, hoping she’ll soften up.

But the look Sarah gives back is anything but tender.

He falls to one knee in front of her, takes his grim stony-faced wife in his arms and tries to rub her the right way, but the bride bridles, “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m tired. Please, it exhausts me just to think about it. Now, excuse me.” In tears, she rises and runs off to the bedroom, leaving Harry sitting on the couch in the sitting room, out-of-breath and with an uncomfortable tightness in his wedding pants.