Leaving Las Vegas

We pack up. We are leaving Las Vegas today, but first there is stuff to do. It's his idea to go to a chapel and get married before we get in the car and drive to the Grand Canyon, and by the time we have got cleaned up we are starting to worry about the time. We have been warned the drive is long, to stock up on fuel every chance we get on the journey.

'Where you guys from? newcastle? That's where the brown ale is from! Where nou heading? Grand Canyon? Guys stock up on gas every chance you get, between here and there is nothing.'

I am feeling abit stupid in my dress as I walk through the hotel in my shades. I walk the way I would walk in fancy dress, act as if you are wearing a suit, something normal, don't hesitate just walk. I don't want to look at passerby's in the eye to see how stupid I might look . He is luckier, he wears jeans and a shirt, and not for the first time I wish I was a guy. The first place we go is the chapel where Bon Jovi got married, we liked the look of this because it is Graceland. We look at the leaflets of the wedding packages and I change my mind. What they are offering is for Elvis to walk me up the aisle, and sing three songs. Since there are just the two of us the idea makes me mortified- some poor Elvis singing to just the two of us, and us having to applaud? Me trying not to laugh the whole time. It also occurs to me I don't want to walked down an aisle. I don't belong to anyone to be given away, not even a fake Elvis. The walk will seem long with the minster and him looking. I don't like to be looked at I decide.

We head to the drive through chapel, where a man comes to speak at our car window as soon as we pull up and whispers to us in a husky voice.

'You guys wanna get married? You can do it here sure, yeah, right, you wanna stay in your car? Yeah, yeah I can do you a deal'

There is something in his tone that sounds like he has illicit marriages tucked inside his coat. We are already here, but this is Vegas, and it wouldn't be vegas if there wasn't some kind of hustle and striking of a deal. The car in front of us in the drive through has broken down, so we leave the car and hop onto the back seat of a cadillac, through the window like so many where you can pick up burger and fries the Native American minister says his stuff.

He is wearing his shades most of the way through, a safety guard I suppose, and I laugh most of the time at nothing in particular, except that I am in a silly dress, perched on the back of a cad. I laugh coz someone has to and he won't.

'I now pronounce you man and wife'.

And here I am 5 minutes later, slipping on shorts and pulling the dress over my head in the parking lot, sipping a much awaited coffee and watching the next wedding to go pull up. The bride is gone in a blink, all that remains is the sparkly shoes and the garter I wear over my shorts as some sort of self evidence.

Just married, apparently. We hop in the car and just drive. Drive towards Arizona and the over Hoover Dam. We drive in the heat mistaking sounds of tiny flies bombarding the windshield, me for confetti, him for rain. When we arrive it is dark. We are just in time to see the canyon be lost to the dusk.

Falling asleep to: the jingle of ice cubes in my own unfinished glass