Chapter Three

The next thing Angela knew, she was crumpled in a heap on a cold tile floor, a porcelain toilet seat for her pillow, and a foul taste in her mouth. Strong arms came around her, guiding her to a familiar shoulder. It made for a much more satisfactory pillow. "Take it easy, Angela." Tony's voice settled over her shaking, gelatinous body like a comforting blanket. "Don't try to move until you're sure you're done."

The young hotel clerk appeared in the doorway. "Are you okay, Mrs. Micelli?"

"No offense or anything, pal, but that's the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life," said Tony before Angela could beat him to it.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't realize you were pregnant."

"She's not pregnant!" Tony denied frantically.

"Sorry!" the clerk apologized yet again. "Since you two are just waking up, and the food got to her, I-I just assumed morning sickness. And you both looked so upset when I offered her alcohol…"

"I had the same problem when I woke up," said Tony. "So if it's morning sickness, I must be knocked up, too."

Angela couldn't help laughing at that image, then immediately regretted it, holding her aching sides. "Tony, I'm begging you, don't make me laugh. It hurts."

"Sorry, Angela. I'll endeavor to be less witty and entertaining, though of course, it's not gonna be easy."

She laughed again, then groaned in pain again. "Tony, stop!"

He mimed zipping his lips shut, then grabbed a dry washcloth folded up beside the sink and mopped her sodden face with it. "Kid, why don't you take that great spread of food next door to those fine people, and that excellent champagne next door to those fine people, with our apologies for all the noise?" As he made the request, he pointed in the direction of one neighboring room, then the other. His words were polite, his face carefully blank, but his eyes clearly screamed, get that stuff away from us before I start puking again, too!

"Very gracious of you, Mr. Micelli. Get well soon, Mrs. Micelli." The kid disappeared and Angela heard the cart distantly rolling away. Angela suppressed an absurd thrill at being addressed as Mrs. Micelli.

Tony swept her up in his arms like she was a slumbering princess, rather than an inebriated executive, and carried her to the bed they had awakened in. She relaxed into the embrace, covertly enjoying every second. "Here, lie down for a few minutes and get your bearings."

As he reached up to tuck a pillow under her ringing head, his sleeve rode up. and she noticed another set of scratches on his upper arm. She flinched. "Sorry about that, Tony."

Tony waved off her concern. "I've had far worse. Who knows?" His eyes took on a mildly haunted look. "I might have deserved them."

Good heavens, had he seriously been worrying about that? She wasn't sure whether to pity him for his fears or smack him for his stupidity. "No," said Angela firmly.

He gave her a double-take. "'Scuse me?"

For the first time, she was able to look him in the eye again. "I know you, Tony. There's not a drug in the world strong enough. Whatever happened last night, it wasn't…that."

A tension in his body, that she hadn't noticed until it was gone, suddenly eased. "All right. We'll go with that."

"I mean it, Tony. We're sharing the blame on this one, and I don't want to hear any more about it."

"Okay. Sharing's good. Always nice to have a partner in crime, and you're one of the finest around." He ventured a smile. "Say, since we're on the same team here, does that mean I can count on you to call the family for us?"

"Hell no." She flopped back on the bed and dragged a pillow over her head.

"Asking was my mistake," grumbled Tony, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her and picking up the receiver. "I should have just dialed the phone, stuck it in your hand, then run off and left you to it."

"Correct," said Angela through the pillow. "I hope you've learned your lesson."

"All right, already." His face grew pensive, and he sat the phone back on its cradle. "But before I call them, we've got to get our story straight."

"What story?"

"They're gonna want to know where we've been and why we didn't check in sooner."

"So, what, did you want to tell them the truth? Come up with a lie? Either way, where do we even begin?" She threw the pillow aside, as it wasn't thick enough to drown out either Tony's voice or reality in general. "Tony, we could tell them we were abducted by space aliens from the planet Melmac, who dumped us at the side of the road in disappointment when they found out we couldn't hold our liquor, and for all we know it wouldn't be a lie!"

"Ay-oh, oh-ay!" Tony protested. Somehow, she found the overused exclamation soothing. A thread of normalcy, as it were. "There was no liquor! Not enough to knock me off my feet this badly, anyway. I had three beers. For comparison, I had three beers after dinner last Friday and I was still together enough to write a five-hundred-word psychology essay and beat you at three straight rounds of gin rummy."

"For the last time, I let you win! But your point remains valid." And it was. Tony drank socially, but she had never seen it affect him this way. Even after his community-service-motivated binge on her birthday a few years back, he'd kept his head enough to rebuff her advances, remember where he was the next day, and bake a truly delicious double-fudge cake with walnuts. "I'll admit, I can't hold my liquor as well as you can, but since I know myself and I had to drive us home, I didn't have any." Angela took a moment to wonder where her Jag had ended up, then decided she had bigger worries for now. "Not even a sip." The room had quit spinning, so she sat up and propped herself against the headboard. "I'd say give me a breathalyzer test, but if my mouth's a crime scene, I think I just contaminated it pretty thoroughly." She noticed a packet of pillow-mints on the bedside table. She popped two in her mouth at once and then offered the package to Tony.

He took one gratefully. "Come on, Angela, let's put our heads together. What's the last thing you remember before I sat on you this morning?"

"Well, my new friends were asking me to join them for the chugalug."

Tony rolled his eyes. "New friends? Try swooning groupies."

"Don't be a jealous husband," she told him half-seriously. After all, even in her disoriented state, it seemed she'd had both the sense and the good taste to leave the party with him, rather than any of the others.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "All right, I'll be good-don't smack me with your rolling pin, wifey."

"I don't have a rolling pin. You're not stupid enough to let me into the kitchen. And you promised to stop making me laugh."

"Okay, back to the swooning groupies. Do you think any of them could have maybe slipped you something? Some kind of party drug, maybe?"

Angela went over the few fragmented shards of memory left to her. "No, I don't think so. They would have had no opportunity to slip it to me without my knowledge. I didn't touch that greasy, disgusting pizza, and the only beverage I had was punch, which I got from the common bowl with all of Gamma House crowded around, watching."

"That's right. I had come back downstairs by then and I was watching you like a hawk." The memory was comforting. "I didn't like the look of that Mike kid."

"The Mikester's a perfectly nice young man—he just wasn't for me. I don't think I could have kept up with him."

"I think our disgruntled neighbors would disagree with that assessment of your capabilities," said Tony meaningfully, indicating the wall behind her. The neighbors didn't comment. Either they hadn't heard this time, or they'd been mollified by the peace offerings he'd sent. "Anyway, if I remember correctly—and to be fair, that's a big if—you were trying to shake him when I found you."

"I wasn't trying to shake him, exactly. I just wanted you to stay close so he wouldn't get too handsy. I didn't want to have to hurt his feelings. That's why I asked you to come join us for the chugalug."

As half-formed images swam haphazardly around Tony's brain, a single brief but clear one stuck out like a snapshot. Angela standing by the punch bowl, stein in hand, her eyes widened in their private signal for come and be a protective buffer—this person/place/thing is driving me nuts. Like most couples, they had worked out many such silent cues during their years together. Not that we're a couple, Tony reminded himself, though the marriage license on the table said otherwise.

"I remember," he concurred. "But neither of us touched the beer, we stuck with punch instead. You were driving, and I had an early class that I didn't want to be hungover for." Tony groaned and struck himself in the forehead with his palm. The blow hurt more than he was accustomed to, and he groaned again—in pain this time. "Marone a mi, I missed the big chemistry test! I've been studying stoichiometry every night this week." Or was it now last week? They really needed to find a bank or something so they could check the date. "I had it down—every last equation. I even learned how to pronounce the word stoichiometry, finally! I was going to ace that baby!" It was a stupid thing to be upset about at a time like this. But Tony had seen the look of disdain on that snooty Professor Petrie's mouth every time he raised his hand to make a comment or ask a question in his dopey accent. He'd so been looking forward to rubbing his A in the jerk's face.

To her credit, Angela didn't belittle his frustrations. "Maybe the teacher will let you take a make-up test?" she suggested.

"Nah, not this guy. But we've got bigger fish to fry." Tony's stomach gurgled, and he immediately regretted the metaphor. Ugh, not fried fish! "What happened after the chugalug?"

Angela scrunched up her face in concentration, then shook her head in defeat. "That was the end of the line for me. Do you think someone could have spiked the punch?"

That did seem like the obvious conclusion, but it didn't quite add up. "With what? Propofol? It'd have to be something very strong to get us to do something like this, especially after being diluted with enough punch to mask the taste."

Angela's face fell. "Yeah, I guess a guy would have to be drugged up to his eyeballs to want to marry me."

Tony felt pretty low. "Well, I may be tops in chemistry, but apparently, my English skills really stink. Angela, I didn't mean it like that. Actually, I was thinking more about the stuff that apparently came after the wedding." His eyes traveled over her bruised throat. "Savage biting's not usually my style." Whatever he'd drunk, it had robbed him of his usual finesse as well as his inhibitions.

Angela softened. "Okay. And just so you know, claw marks aren't usually mine, either."

"Guess we bring out the best in each other, huh?" He smiled sheepishly.

She returned the smile, then pressed onward. "What about you, Tony? Do you remember anything after the punch?"

"I remember you and me finishing off the entire bowl, bragging about it, and your boyfriend Mike slamming the empty bowl over my head to shut me up. After that, nothing."

"For the last time, he's not my boyfriend," said Angela. She bit her lip thoughtfully. "Wait, we drank the whole bowl? Just the two of us?"

"Yeah, probably," Tony admitted. It had been a competition. A stupid competition, but a competition nonetheless, and since they were both very competitive souls with a history of egging each other on, it seemed par for the course. "Everyone else was chugging beer."

"So if it was something in the punch, we got an awfully high dose of it." The punch theory was making a little more sense.

"And if it wasn't, we've got more digging to do."

"But first, we need to take care of…of that." Angela gesticulated helplessly at the marriage certificate on the table.

"And we've got that pesky loving family back home that's probably worried sick about us," sighed Tony.

"I'll call the City Clerk about an annulment if you call and talk to the family," she bargained.

"I'm getting the worse end of that deal, but fine." He reached into the drawer under the phone and handed her the yellow pages. She started flipping to the government section, while he picked up the phone and punched in their shared number. It picked up on the first ring. "Hello?" said Jonathan's voice on the other end. His voice was a little shaky, as if he was nervous about something.

"Hey buddy, it's me. You sound nervous. You waiting on a call from a girl?" That would explain why he'd been camped out by the phone. That was usually Samantha's territory. Tony eagerly pounced on the potential excuse. "I can call back later if you want to keep the line open."

"No!" Jonathan yelled. "Don't hang up, Tony! Are you okay? Is Mom with you?"

Tony felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't spared enough thought for how the family must have been feeling when they hadn't come home last night. He should have called as soon as he'd awakened. "Yes to both. Sorry, pal-o'-mine, we didn't mean to scare anybody."

"Then you shouldn't have dropped off the face of the earth for two days!"

"Two days?!" Tony repeated. Holy crap, what had they ingested?

"Two days?" Angela echoed incredulously.

"Close enough. Today's Saturday. You've been gone since Thursday night. We tried to go to the police yesterday and file a missing persons report, but they said we had to wait until you'd been missing for forty-eight hours. Right now, you're at forty-two."

The family had been keeping an hourly countdown? Wow, he and Angela really had given them a scare. Tony felt pretty low. "I'm sorry, Jonathan. We're fine, I promise. He held the receiver to Angela's ear. "Angela, would you tell your son you're okay?" In Jonathan shoes, he'd have wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth.

"I'm alright, sweetheart," Angela promised. "Sorry if we worried you. Everything's fine."

That was broadly true. In the grand scheme of things. Tony placed the phone back to his own ear. "There, you see? Are Sam and Mona home?"

"They went down to Ridgemont to look for you again. They made me wait here in case you guys called or came home. Or a mortician dropped by to deliver your bodies."

Tony did not comment on the bitterness in Jonathan's voice, knowing full well it was justified. "You say they went to campus to look for us again?"

"Yeah, we went and searched for you yesterday, too. Started at Gamma House, but it was all locked up with a sign on the door saying their charter has been revoked. Went to all your teachers, they hadn't seen you, either. Dr. Petrie says to tell you you're a truant and a punk, by the way."

"Noted," said Tony unhappily.

"After that, we looked around the quad and the library and some of your other favorite haunts, but the only sign we found of either one of you was Mom's Jag in the parking lot, locked up tight. That's when we went to the cops, but like I said, they weren't any help."

As maddening as it had surely been for the family, Tony was relieved they hadn't been able to go through with filing a report. He couldn't even explain his recent whereabouts to himself, much less an officer of the law. "Listen, tell Mona and Sam we're fine, and we're coming home as soon as we can rent a car or something."

"All right, but I'd wear a batting helmet and a Kevlar vest when I walk through the front door, if I were you," Jonathan warned. "You know how chicks are when they get all riled up."

"Tell my son I heard that," said Angela dangerously. "And if I hear it again, he's going to be the one in need of a batting helmet and a Kevlar vest."

"Your mom says put a lid on it, Jonathan," Tony relayed.

"Tell her to show up alive and well, and I'll do whatever she wants." That little quaver was back in his voice.

"Hey, Jonathan, it's okay. We really didn't mean to spook anybody. Something really weird happened."

"What?"

"We're still puzzling it out."

"What, did you get abducted by aliens? Are you calling from the planet Melmac?"

"Hah! You're your mother's son, all right. Nah, we're calling from…" Niagara Falls had romantic connotations, and Tony didn't want to give Jonathan any ideas about what had happened between his mother and housekeeper. Especially the kind of ideas that may have been correct. "Scenic Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." Tony strained to remember what he'd learned in middle school geography decades ago. That would be about the same distance away from Fairfield, right?

"Wow, those aliens really know how to party," Jonathan droned sarcastically. "So, what, about seven, eight hours away?"

"Eh, probably."

"What do you mean, 'probably'? It's the second half of a two-way trip. You went there, you know how long it took the first time!" Jonathan sounded like he was about five seconds away from his head exploding.

Tony could sympathize with that. "Eight hours," he replied, trying to sound more confident than he felt. "Tell Mona and Sam to start bringing the oil to a boil and sharpening the stakes. We'll be ready. We love you."

Great, thought Angela as Tony hung up the phone. Just when I'd thought I couldn't possibly feel any worse. "We really scared them, didn't we?"

"Yeah. I think they're planning to ground us for sure," said Tony.

"Fine by me. I'm done partying for the foreseeable future." Angela let her head fall back against the headboard. It was uncomfortable, but she didn't deserve a pillow. "Give me the phone. I doubt the city clerk's office will be open on a Saturday, but we've got to try."

Tony passed her the touchtone phone and collapsed into a chair. "If we've been unintentionally drinking, this is the worst hangover of my life. If it was aliens, they're as cruel as they are powerful, and I say we swear our allegiance to them immediately. Whatever it takes to prevent this kind of suffering from being unleashed on our loved ones."

"Tony, shh! It's ringing." Every ring was like a pair of cymbals crashing, with her head in between them. She didn't want to have to call back.

"Hello, you've reached Armin with the Niagara Falls Office of the City Clerk," a nasally voice answered. "Our hours are between 8am and 5pm, Monday through Friday. If you're hearing this recording, you've reached us after hours. If you're calling to register as a voter, try the library. If you're calling with a public records request, leave a message with your name and contact information, and we'll get back to you in one to two business days. And if you're another of those idiot tourists who got married on a whim and is regretting it in the harsh light of morning, go petition for an annulment in your home jurisdiction, and quit burdening our local bureaucracy! And while you're at it, sign my petition to extend the waiting period for a marriage license in this state, because this is getting ridiculous!"

The message had grown increasingly loud and angry toward its end, and Tony had heard the last few sentences quite clearly. "Touchy, ain't he?"

"But he makes a good point," Angela admitted. "We've got responsibilities, and we can't wait around here for another two days. We really should head home and sort this out from there. And also sign that petition of his, if we ever get a chance."

"We'll have to rent a car or something. Jonathan says your Jag is still where we left it," said Tony. "I wonder how we got here?"

Angela, digging into her purse to see what kind of funds they had to work with, came up with a pair of boarding passes with Amtrak stamps on them. "Looks like we took the train. At least we were smart enough not to drive, under the influence of whatever we were under the influence of." Or lucky enough. Thoughts of what could have happened flashed through her mind—twisted hunks of flaming metal and bloody flesh strewn across a dirty freeway, the two of them standing side by side in a courtroom wearing those hideous orange jumpsuits, visiting their children from behind a bulletproof windowpane. Their family and friends crying over their grave. Jonathan packed off to a father who barely knew him, and God only knew what would become of Sam. Angela's own body lying next to Tony's in a white satin coffin, both decked out in their Sunday best, their skin pickled with formaldehyde. Wait, what are we doing in the same coffin? Angela tried to adjust her worst-case scenario and put them in more appropriate individual coffins. Hm. That image was less creepy but more sad.

Tony, bless him, interrupted the dark, bizarre tailspin her thoughts had gone into. "Were we smart enough buy return tickets, too?" he asked hopefully.

Angela did an extensive search of her purse, and then rifled through Tony's wallet briefly. "No. Imagine that. We made an oversight while high."

"We're a walking PSA. Maybe we should go public with our tragic story, and inspire children to stay sober," Tony snarked, picking up the phone book to look up another number.

Angela's heart somehow managed to sink even lower. Tragic, Tony? she wanted to snap at him. That's pushing it a little, don't you think? I mean, you could do a lot worse.

Tony called in reservations for them in business class and provided her credit card number. Was this some kind of symbolic attempt at keeping things between them businesslike, she wondered? At that, she almost lost it and dissolved into another fit of hysterical, humorless laughter. "Business class, Tony?"

He hadn't made the connection. Understandable, if he was as ill, tired, and emotionally exhausted as she was. He shrugged, and scratched the stubbly cheeks that had done such a number on her poor skin. "Well, coach was full, so I went for the next cheapest thing."

She quelled the urge to complain that he never took her anywhere nice. She had always admired his sense of humor, and appreciated the way he always laughed at her jokes, no matter how stupid. But he hadn't been laughing when she tried to kid him about this sham marriage of theirs, and lighten the mood a little. If anything, her attempts at humor were only making him grouchier.

She supposed she could understand why he was so much more upset about the whole thing than she was. She'd been carrying a torch for him for longer than she cared to admit. The idea of being his wife, for however short a time, and however ridiculous the circumstances, felt like a silly, unexpected gift to be enjoyed while it lasted. Like that dumb old show "Queen for a Day." Tony, unlike her, had had a first marriage that had actually been worth remembering, to a wife whom he'd loved very much. He probably didn't appreciate having it made into a mockery by this drunken farce.

While she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth again, Tony called them a cab, and they headed out to meet it on the front steps. Or at least, they tried to. With no idea which direction they'd entered from, they wandered up and down several hallways, looking for an exit, stairs, or both. They finally had to flag down a bellhop to escort them to the front office to check out.

The old lady manning the desk greeted them with annoying cheer. "Oh, hello again, Mr. and Mrs. Micelli. You're looking much better this morning."

"Are you being sarcastic?" asked Tony, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"No, you looked horribly motion sick when you checked in yesterday morning," the old woman explained. "Not uncommon in our guests. Most of them are coming from very far away, and have a long plane, train, bus, or car ride under their belts." She gave them a warm smile. "I must say, most of them don't handle it as well as you two. Our honeymooners tend to be tired and moody by the time they reach us, after the ordeal of a long journey and a wedding. But you two never stopped smiling at each other, even though you clearly didn't feel well, physically. It was adorable." She nodded at Tony. "Especially the way you kept calling Mrs. Micelli your little baked potato with extra butter." Then she turned to Angela. "And the way you kept proudly announcing to every stranger who passed by the desk that he was your husband." She gave them each a motherly pat on the cheek. "You know, I don't say this to many of the newlyweds who pass through my hotel, because it's usually impossible to tell so early on, but I can tell you two are going to be very happy together."

Hot tears stung the back of Angela's eyes. The old woman painted a beautiful picture of their short honeymoon. She wished with all her heart that she could remember it.