Shona has an operatic soprano. Ave Maria, gratia plena . . . Maria gratia plena . . . The concrete walls of the station amplify and echo her voice, and even without a microphone she sounds as if she’s performing for the King at the Royal Albert Hall. Shona sings so expressively, she makes everyone tear up, even Duncan. Especially Duncan.
While Shona sings, a gleaming Mia, dressed in a white sheet and carrying the white towel bouquet, glides through the rows of people, taking her time, smiling left and right. She looks like an otherworldly specter. She said she wanted to walk down the aisle, and she’s savoring the opportunity.
Julian gives her his hand to help her up. She balances out the rocky door with her weight as they bob and sway toward each other as if on deck of a ship.
“Ever since they met, on top of this rickety door masquerading as a stage, Bride and Johnny have had quite a tumultuous time together,” Peter Roberts says. “Love being a majestic bird, they fell in love deep inside a cave, while outside and above, they’ve been baptized by fire. Tonight, they have returned to the cave to unite themselves in holy matrimony, because they know it is in the cave that the life of the world began, the old world and the new. They will be together until death do them part,” Robbie says.
“Not even then,” whispers Julian and Mia says, “What?”
“To commemorate this joyous occasion, they’re going to speak at their own nuptials. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard correctly. Who goest first?”
“I do,” Mia says. “Every love affair should begin and end with a joke or a poem. I have the joke. And Johnny Blaze has the poem.” She stands half facing him, half facing the audience.
“What is the Ideal Man?” says Mia. “The Ideal Man should lavishly praise us for all the qualities he knows we haven’t got! But he should be quite pitiless in reproaching us for any virtues we never cared to have in the first place. The Ideal Man should worship us when we are alone.” Coquettishly raising her brows, she bares her white neck to Julian, which he obliges by kissing. The audience hoots and whistles. After a few soaked moments, a flushed Mia steps away, clearing the thickness from her throat. “Worship us, yes,” she says, “yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene—in public or private—whenever we want one. And after a dreadful week of fighting he should, if necessary, admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and then be willing to do it all over again—from the beginning, with variations. Are you that Ideal Man, Johnny Blaze?”
“Without a doubt,” Julian replies.
Chortling with joy, she offers him her hand to kiss. “O, Johnny, do you have a poem to make them cry?”
“I do.” He takes a breath. “What is your substance, whereof are you made,” he says, taking both her hands in his, “that millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since everyone has, every one, one shade, and you, but one, can every shadow lend. Speak of the spring and autumn of the year, the spring does shadow of your beauty show, the autumn as your bounty does appear—in you is every shape I know. In all external grace you have some part, but you like none, none you, for constant heart.” Julian’s eye throbs. Pressing his palm into his brow, he looks away from her emotional face and into the clapping audience.
“We will now recite for you a short dialogue from George Bernard Shaw,” Mia says. “Are you ready?”
“Always, Ghost Bride.”
“On your knees. If you can,” she adds, a gentle reference to his torn-up calf.
He descends to his knees, wincing slightly. Her soft hand remains in his.
“A man cannot die for just a story and a dream,” Mia says. “I know that now. I’ve been standing here with death coming nearer and nearer, and reality coming realer and realer, and all my stories and all my dreams are quickly fading away into nothing.”
“Are you going to die for nothing, then?” Julian says.
“No,” says Mia. “I have no doubt that if I must die, I will die for something bigger than dreams or stories.”
“Like what, Ghost Bride?”
“I do not know,” Mia replies. “If it were for anything small enough to know, it would be too small to die for. What about you, Johnny Blaze?” She gazes down at him. “Will you be ready