Fiction: Proposals by Marie Anderson

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We’d driven 400 miles from Carson City to Vegas for his grandma’s 90^th birthday. During our middle school years in Carson City, Jack had lived with his grandma while his parents raged against each other. His grandma’s home had been a haven for me too, an escape from my parents’ alcohol-fueled battles.

Two years ago, she’d moved into an assisted living center near Vegas, to be closer to penny slots and the free nightly dancing fountain shows in front of the Bellagio Hotel & Casino. But not long after her move, a fall had broken both hips, and dementia had begun its relentless assault. The director told Jack that she’d be moved into memory care soon.

During dinner, she kept asking me who I was. After dinner, as we said our goodbyes, she gave me a long hug and whispered in my ear. “I gave him my ring, Jilly.”

“What ring?” I whispered back. “Who?”

But her eyes had gone vacant.

*

“Jill, will you do me the honor?”

I looked away from Bellagio’s Fountains dancing to the Game of Thrones theme. But Jack was no longer standing next to me. He was kneeling, holding a ring in his open palm, a single round diamond sparkling in the ring’s setting.

His grandma’s ring?

My voice vanished. They say when you’re dying your life flashes like a sped-up movie. But I wasn’t seeing death. What I was seeing was my buddy since kindergarten, Jack and Jill just like the nursery rhyme, going up the hills of life together, tumbling down together. We were best buds linked by our shared nerdiness, our love of all things Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns. We’d comforted each other through ugly parent divorces, schoolmates’ bullying, being picked last for teams, romance and job disappointments. But marriage? I loved Jack, but did I love him? Did he love me? Would this be the death of our friendship? Was his proposal triggered by his grandma’s looming dementia?

Around me people lifted their phones, filming us. A deep male voice shouted, “Don’t keep him waiting! Say yes, Bitch!” I scanned the crowd around us. The voice came from a big bald tattooed guy. In the Vegas Strip lights, his skin looked orange.

I looked back down at Jack. My voice still frozen. I wanted to whisper, why, Jack? Why do this so publicly? In front of all these lubricated Vegas tourists? I felt my head move left to right, not up and down.

“Say yes! Say yes!” the crowd chanted. The Game of Thrones music soared. The Bellagio fountains danced and glittered.

Then: Pow! Pow! Pow!

Gunshots? People screamed. Ran. Bodies crashed into me. I fell, my ankle burned. More shots. I curled into a fetal position, shut my eyes. Something warm and heavy pressed over me.

“It’s okay, Jill. You’re safe. I got you covered.” Jack lay on top of me. I started to cry.. Who would keep Jack safe? A line echoed from a Joni Mitchell song—You don’t know what you got til it’s gone.

“Jack,” I gasped. “Oh my God, Jack. I—"

A deep voice interrupted. “You can get up, folks. The idiot wasn’t shooting bullets.”

A cop stood over us. Jack helped me up. Two other cops were leading away the big bald guy. “I was just shooting firecrackers up the air, Occifers!” the guy was shouting. “Jus’ tryin’ to wake the bitch up! I made that pistol! Gimme it back!”

The Bellagio Fountains had gone quiet. The next performance was thirty minutes away. The crowd had scattered. Now just loud, laughing Vegas visitors sauntered by, holding drinks and phones.

“Want to wait for the next show?” Jack asked. “We’ve got a good spot.”

“Jack, I—”

He shook his head. “It’s okay. I guess I jumped the gun.” He blushed. “So to speak.”

My ankle throbbed. “I think I sprained my ankle. Yeah, I’d like to wait. Give my ankle time to settle down.”

We leaned side-by-side on the railing facing the fountains. The desert air cooled. We didn’t speak. Strip automobile traffic soothed like a waterfall.

The fountains came to life, soaring to Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy of Gold, the gorgeous score from the spaghetti western Jack and I had watched together many times with his grandma during the years Jack lived with her. His grandma considered the movie’s star, Clint Eastwood, the handsomest man on earth.

 No, I thought, looking at Jack. Clint Eastwood is not the handsomest man on earth.

“Jack?” I touched his arm. He turned, but I was no longer eye-level to him. He looked down to where I knelt.

“Jack, will you do me the honor?”

Marie Anderson is a Chicago area married mother of three millennials. Her stories have appeared in dozens of publications, most recently in Bookends Review, Roundtable, Fiction on the Web, and Third Wednesday. Since 2009 she has been leading and learning from a local public library's writing critique group.