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Stella aced every question easily and within the hour, the meeting was over. As they started to leave, the lawyer asked Richard, “Have you two set a date yet?”
“August third,” said Richard, pulling a date out of thin air.
“Oh,” he said. “Well…that’s interesting. Not too many people get married on a Wednesday.”
Richard was stumped. He hadn’t even thought about theday.
“I don’t see why not,” Stella chimed in. “It’s the easiest day to get a hall booked, right, honey?”
Richard smiled in reciprocation. “Right.”
That was his morning. He had the driver drop her off at her apartment, then he went in to work, where he found himself divorced from work entirely.
He was in his office looking up marble designs. He had been for a couple of hours. He had no idea there were so many marble designs in existence. It was like discovering an entire treasure that he never had any idea existed. The feeling of finding something new was exciting him with every page that he came across.
The little glass ball that Stella gave him had grown to fascinate him. At first, he sat at his desk, turning the old scuffed piece of glass over and over in his hand. It didn’t appear to be anything of any great interest, yet…
He studied the design of it and found himself trying to figure out how it was done. The design inside was curvy and multicolored. Clearly done with some kind of paint, but he didn’t see any seams where the creator must have put the paint within the glass. That lead him to start looking up how marbles were made. He ended up watching videos of factory productions on marbles. Which in turn led him to looking up designs and names.
Stella had been half right about one thing. Marbles were more of a thing in the past than it was when she was a kid, but he could see that it was more of a thing in his father’s age. In his search, he found himself finding old black-and-white videos and movies of children playing with marbles and trading them away like trading cards. He discovered several games that children played with the marbles, including one that amounted to hitting them outside of a drawn circle. It was a little reminiscent of pool or billiards.
He wondered what games Stella played when she was little. He imagined her in little curly pigtails and an overall style dress, squatting in a circle with all the neighborhood boys, beating them one by one with her skill. That led to the idea that Stella was a tomboy, chasing after her twin brother and climbing trees and rolling down hills…
He didn’t know any of this about her, of course, but now he wanted to know if that was her life. It certainly wasn’t his. He’d always wanted to be one of the boys in the neighborhood. Jumping off porches and crawling through the mud and splashing in puddles during rainstorms. It was funny how his childhood hadn’t even occurred to him until now. Something about being with Stella made him remember how much he missed.
“I believe surfing on the web is against company policy.”
He looked up to see Rebecca standing at the door, her bright red lipstick on her lips as she smiled so sickeningly wide that it looked more wound than a smile. He glanced over at the clock. It was noon. His secretary’s lunchtime. That’s why he didn’t get a heads-up.
“What do you want, now?” he sighed, clicking off the video that he was watching.
Rebecca walked all the way into the room and said, “I spoke with your father’s estate lawyer today. Just wanted to know how long they would wait around for you to prove you have the intention to marry your fictitious fiancée. Seems they’re just waiting to meet her. I thought that was really interesting since so much time has passed already and they haven’t heard from you.”
“They’ll meet them in due time,” said Richard. “I’ve just been busy at work. You remember work, don’t you? It was what I assume you did before you married my father.”
She gave him a dull glare, speaking her offense with only her eyes. “You are just delaying the inevitable,” she said. “I don’t know what you hope to achieve with all this, but the time is going to come when you’ll have to pay the piper. You can’t keep lying to people forever.”
He rolled his eyes and got up from his chair. “You know, it must be very nice to spend your day walking around an office pissing on everyone else’s life instead of getting your own. Why don’t you go haunt a house or something, Rebecca? I’m very busy.”
“I can see that. Since when are you into Little Rascal shorts?”
He stiffened and he restrained himself from blowing up at her. Something in him wanted to protect Stella, even though her name hadn’t even been mentioned yet. It was like she was subtly attacking her by digging at him.
“I’ve got a meeting to attend, so let me show you the door.”
He took her arm and she yanked it out of his grip, then smiled as pleasantly as if she’d been offered a drink. “I can see my way out, thank you.” She walked to the door and Richard walked behind her, ready to close the door shut once she was gone. As her hand reached the doorknob, she paused and turned around to him.
“Oh, I almost forgot to ask,” she said, “Is your fiance allergic to anything? Nuts or anything like that? I wouldn’t want her to react to the party.”
She was smiling, but her eyes were searching for some sign that she’d thrown him off with the question. Surely he wouldn’t know such a thing if she wasn’t real or someone he’d just hired.
“No,” he said confidently. “I’m sure whatever you have will be fine.”
She gave him a nod, then said as she turned she said, “All right. I guess I’ll see you at the party, then.”
After she was gone, Richard realized he was clenching his teeth. He pulled out his phone to text Stella when the phone on his desk buzzed. His secretary. He sighed and put the phone back into his pocket and walked back to his desk to answer it.Nowshe was back at her desk. Lovely.
“Yes?” he said as he pressed the button on the phone.
