Chapter 24: Three for Forty-Nine Ninety-Nine

We got married on a Saturday in October, in aisle F of the flea market, in front of a table of hubcaps.

I rode there on my green Schwinn.

Carlton rode next to me on his blue one, in a gray suit with the pant leg clipped, wobbling.

"I can do this," he said.

"You can."

"I'm not going to fall."

"You've fallen twice."

"That was in the driveway."

"The driveway counts."

He pedaled harder, grinning, and the bell on my handlebars rang every time I hit a bump.

It was a clear blue morning.

The gravel lot was already half full, with people unloading cars and setting up tables under striped awnings.

Somebody was frying churros.

The smell of it rolled over the whole market, sugar and hot oil and cinnamon.

We locked the bikes together to a pole at the entrance.

"Do I look okay?" I asked.

I wore a white dress I'd found for forty dollars at a thrift store in Silver Lake and hemmed myself.

The tape on my ring had gotten a little gray.

"You look like the best thing I never spent money on," Carlton said.

"That's still not a sentence."

"I know."

"Come on."

Aisle F was packed.

Harold stood at the head of it in a good suit, with a boutonniere that somebody had clearly hot-glued.

Opal stood next to him, in a navy cardigan, holding a clipboard.

She had counted the guests, the folding chairs, and the cupcakes.

She'd negotiated the cupcakes down to forty cents each.

"Thirty-seven people," she said to me, as I came up.

"Four hundred and ninety-one dollars and sixty cents, all in."

"And the flowers?"

"A gift."

"From who?"

"A woman at the stall by the dishes. She called you the bicycle girl and wouldn't take a dime."

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