She had asked for the early slot, and the hall gave it: Thursday, nine, before the renewals queue thickened. The extended vows are read on Saturdays, at the posted fee, and Saturdays were full into the spring. Their notice had stood on the board for the required period, and nothing had been said. Someone had hung a cloth over the board above the door and the cloth had slipped, so NOW SERVING presided over the ceremony with nothing to call. The chairs were the café’s, lent as always, the mark burned under the seats where only the stackers see it. The witness with the phone was told where to stand.
The registrar said the sentence about the room first, which is required, and which is about the room. Then he asked the required question twice of each of them, as the schedule requires; each answered once loudly and once quietly, which the schedule also allows. A screen behind him showed the license number and, beneath it, the two of them as a single line of the day’s activity, the same weight as the eleven o’clock.
09:00 license · 09:20 license · 09:40 license · 10:00 license · 10:20 license · 11:00 license
The cloth had slipped off that too.
Then the vows, issued, read a line at a time and given back word-perfect. I am present. I take what is offered and offer what is listed. I will attend, on the days and between the hours, and beyond them where the schedule is silent. She said the lines in the order printed. Under his cuff, where the witness could not see and the form has no field, her thumb lay on his pulse, counting nothing, keeping the place.
He said the same lines. At the word attend his voice went down half a step and stayed there.
The gifts were declared at the side table, the book open, the amounts in the second column, the clerk’s pen quick and unembarrassed. Anything given without an amount was entered in words, in a third column, narrower than the others and older, which the clerk filled in last and slowly. Somebody had given more than they had, and the column held it without comment.
The license came out for signing. Thursday’s stamp was already wet on the pad from the morning’s renewals. He signed in the box, at the fee posted for a Thursday. She signed in the box. And then, off the script entirely, while the registrar reached for the blotter, she put her hand flat on the wet ink, and lifted it, and showed him her palm.
The registrar looked at the page, which was still legible, and let it stand. Then he took the pad, pressed his own thumb to it, and put it in the margin, beside the box for anything further, which he initialed, and dated.
One of the witnesses, further back than the phone, was crying without any of the usual reasons and stopped when the next couple came in.
They came down the hall the long way, past the queue, his hand at the small of her back and lower than the photograph will show, her marked palm closed around nothing, carried like change. The chairs were already being stacked for the eleven o’clock, café-mark inward. Outside it had rained on schedule and stopped early.
The queue moved up one.