Green Card #4

When you do something truly crazy, like marry a total stranger 21 hours after you meet him, people tend to look at you differently.

It’s easy to misinterpret the stunned silence as approval [or possibly envy] and to mistake the wide-eyed smiles for admiration instead of diplomacy. But who knows, maybe my co-workers really did approve of, envy, and admire my chutzpah.

I was the center of attention at Langer’s Deli on the night of my wedding, and I loved it. I felt brilliant and charming and beautiful because I was suddenly married to the most attractive man I had ever seen — who, I was convinced, was going to be a millionaire someday. He had told me so when we met, and I believed him absolutely. I felt as though I had stumbled onto the greatest piece of luck ever discovered. I was in love.

A young woman I recognized as a former child actress was seated at one of my tables with several other people. She remarked on how happy I looked.

“I got married today, ” I said, beaming. I told her the story of how I married a stranger for his green card and fell in love with him.

“That is so romantic,” she said, ” but if it was a movie, nobody would believe it.”

Later, when Christos came to pick me up, I enjoyed knowing that the eyes of all the waitresses, cooks and bus boys were on us as we left. But I was exhausted and had to be at work at the Mayflower early the next morning. Continuing our ‘honeymoon’ was out of the question, at least for the moment. I was simply too tired.

“Why don’t you quit?” said Christos.

“Quit? I can’t afford to quit,” I said. “I have to save enough for an apartment so I can get my son back.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I help you.”

Did I say I was in love? No, that was lust. This was love.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said, hoping he would insist.

“Is okay,” he insisted. Yes, it was definitely love.

I agreed to quit my job at the Mayflower Hotel the following day, and keep working at Langer’s. Christos would find work and we would bring my son out from Minnesota to live with us. Life was good. We crawled into my single bed and cuddled together until I fell blissfully asleep.

Early the next morning at the Mayflower, I was surrounded by waitresses wanting to know if I had really gone through with the marriage. Between the breakfast and lunch rushes, I regaled them with my new husband’s crazy driving and charmingly mangled English.

It was quite a heady experience, with everyone wishing me well, so I was not prepared for the reaction I got from my friend, the aging bartender with whom I had casually flirted for weeks.

“At least now we know what your price is,” he snarled and turned his back on me.

It felt like a slap in the face. I didn’t understand what he meant for a moment but then I remembered. Word must have gotten around about the $300; he was calling me a whore. I tried to explain that I wasn’t paid, but he wouldn’t speak to me again.

At the end of my shift, Miguel, the Mexican bus boy who had his own unhappy green card marriage, was waiting to say goodbye in the basement locker room. I cleaned out my locker and we walked together to a ramp that led to the sidewalk above, where Christos would be waiting for me.

I held out my hand to say goodbye, and suddenly Miguel grabbed my shoulders and gave me a strong, hard kiss that seemed to last a long time. When he let go, his eyes looked deep into mine, revealing such grief that I could barely breathe.

I knew that Miguel was telling me, without words, that he loved me.

“Goodbye,” said Miguel.

I walked out of the shadows and up the ramp in a daze, wondering what might have been. Had I made a terrible mistake?

“Hello,” said Christos, waiting above me in the sunlight. In his hand was a single red rose. For me.