Liam and I were eating dinner at our favorite dumpling shop when he proposed. The streets were frosted with sparkly ice. The wind was slippery and had jewel drop flakes that melted on smells of spicy pork and slurpy tamari sesame noodles. The walls were red and the tablecloth was black paper. I looked at Liam’s frosty cheeks and dew coated eyelashes. I said I’d have to think about it for a couple days. Five minutes later I said yes.
I gleamed promisingly as he unlatched the lid of my velvet case. He sucked in his breath, admiring my golden curves and the tantalizing sparkle of happily ever after that I stood for. The saleslady, Estella, who always secretly changed from her heels into pink crocs as soon as her boss left, snapped the lid of my box closed and rang me up.
I found a silk turban in a thrift shop and I laced it with glitter and silk flowers to wrap around my hair for the ceremony. Our friend, Brett, lent Liam a kimono that his girlfriend had bought him. They’d split up and he didn’t want it anymore. We went to the nearest mall and took sloppy photobooth pictures and glued halos of fairy dust and calligraphied the details around our laughing faces and sent them off as wedding invitations.
The toothbrush was stiff bristled and plastic pink. It spoke to me. Iwent to the drugstore on the corner but the saleslady wearing yellow crocs said toothbrushes were nonreturnable and smirked. The snow was coming down as through a sifter and I went home and made a rose tinted cake. The toothbrush talked to me while I worked.
I showed it to Liam when he came home from his art class. The toothbrush told us stories about its travels through the mountains in China. It told us of its past lives. It had been a penguin last. It offered to grant us one wish.
April rolled around and Liam and I couldn’t decide what our wish would be.
On April 16th I was finally removed from my drawer. Chester, the pink ringbearer placed me in the middle of the silky pillow on which I was to wait. It was a misty spring afternoon, and I relished the delicate scent of wet flower petals and pollen.
Chester was a pest with a soft side for the deviled eggs that had been arranged as appetizers on the picnic tables. He was gorging himself when a pin striped fellow wearing a beautiful emerald brooch approached him. I leaned towards the edge of my pillow, trying to get a better view of the lovely jewel, but at the same time, Chester reached for another egg and I plummeted into a foamy cloud of yolk. From my fluffly bed, I heard the gentleman chide the boy for not being in place yet. The boy muttered something indignantly, but dutifully shuffled off. The last thing I saw as I was lifted high into the air and swallowed whole was the hand which bore me. It was cuffed in a sleeve of pink pin stripe.
It was spring and while our friends in the backyard, I walked down the aisle to Rain Dogs by Tom Waits. Liam waited for me in a shiny bubble at the end. His freckle-glossed nephew, Chester, held out the ring cushion...It was empty.
Chester shuffled and looked at the egg yolk sun. I slipped the toothbrush out of the sash of my sunflower dress and placed it on the pillow. We both took one end of the toothbrush and closed our eyes and wished. The toothbrush sang and leapt into the air like a baton, raining a dolphin of wishes and magic on all of our guests. It shimmied in the glowing air, and glided to the hand of a man in a pink pin striped suit with a glassy faceted emerald brooch. He twirled it, and grinning crazily, slowly sunk into the ground. A tiny winking pink flower bloomed where he had stood.
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