I put down the book I was reading and watched my bride moving around the kitchen of the tiny apartment, getting ready to put dinner on the table. “You’re gorgeous,” I said, loud enough for her to hear.

She turned to me, held my gaze, and smiled. I knew that look. Dinner would have to wait. I dropped the book and went to pull the Murphy bed down from the wall. We undressed quickly and came together in a rush, her body melting into mine. She was eighteen, I was nineteen, just two kids in a hurry to be grown-ups.

Our apartment in the Hennepin–Lake district of Minneapolis was an “efficiency,” meaning a living room, a galley kitchen, and a bathroom. The living room doubled as a bedroom when you opened the mirrored doors and pulled down the bed. It was all we could afford. I had accepted a job with Northwest Airlines and asked her to pack everything we owned and move two thousand miles away from home, to a city we didn’t know, with a climate we would struggle to survive. There were days when homesickness brought her to her knees, tears streaming down her pretty face. I begged her not to leave. But on days like this, we could make the hurt go away, for a while at least.

Afterward, lying in each other’s arms, I remembered a review in the Minneapolis Tribune. “Hey, there’s a new movie out this weekend. It’s Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman. What do you think?”

“Paul Newman? Oh, he’s a sweaty man,” she said; “Let’s go see it.”

I laughed out loud, and I’d never let her forget that Paul Newman was her sweaty man. I went to find the newspaper to check movie times and figure out where the theater was located. Meanwhile, she retrieved the large Mason jar we tossed our loose change into. We sat on the side of the bed, emptied the jar onto the blanket, and counted the coins. We were in luck—just enough money, just enough time, and a pretty good idea of how to get there. Dinner would be peanut butter sandwiches and laughter as we navigated the streets of Minneapolis. Like the old cliché, we were poorer than church mice.

Now I know—never again would we be as rich as in that moment.

 

C.W. Spooner’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of publications, including Lost Coast Review, Spitball Magazine, Sandy River Review, Balloons Literary Journal, and riverSedge, as well as anthologies from Main Street Rag, Wising Up Press, and the Lake Forest Writers’ Roundtable.