We'd been married for fifteen hours and known each other for a full twenty-four when my wife left me forever. I was nineteen and on a road trip with some college buddies. We’d stopped for a few beers and when my order was taken, time stood still for me.
The waitress was so tiny, doll -like, Oriental in appearance with black almond shaped eyes and a fragile beauty that challenged you to resist her.
The afternoon slid into evening and soon my friends went back to the motel and it was just me left nursing a whiskey sour and drowning in Lily Mae's soul.
"I finish my shift at midnight.” she said. “We go somewhere? Enjoy ourselves, yes?”
“Yes.”
I left the bar with my Cinderella and headed on to another. We drank sparkling white wine and tequila chasers and I fell in love over a cheap Formica table.
We talked into the night, she told me her plans, she wanted a little house with a front garden and a back garden and a loving husband to hold and welcome into her world.
I told her I was going to make a lot of money, run my own business, employ hundreds of people, and be somebody one day.
She smiled and nodded then. "Yes, you can do that, I know you can."
"Lilly Mae, such a beautiful name."
She gave a shallow laugh and twisted the chain on her pendent slowly and purposefully as though she was literally wrapping me around her little finger.
"You think so? My mother named me after her friend who die just before I was born, my mother says that when she die her spirit entered my soul and I became her."
"You don't believe that." I said.
"My mother says she loves me because I am Lily Mae, her Lily Mae, but she doesn't mean me, she means her friend, I know that. I learn you can spend your whole life believing someone is something they're not."
We drank fancy cocktails and ate peanuts and little sausages on sticks in a basement bar down an alley off the main drag.
Before I could stop myself the words gathered in my throat like demonstrators at a protest meeting and when given the signal, unleashed their feelings bold with emotion.
"Marry me Lily Mae, right now, then we can be together, live in a little house with a front garden and a back garden, what do you say?"
A huge grin formed and her lovely face was transformed into delight.
"Okay."
I punched the air with my fist and knew for the first time in my life that I was on the right track.
We married a few hours later at the Little Temple of Love Hearts, Vegas.
When I placed the cheap newly purchased ring on her finger, I noticed the tiny black lily tattooed on her knuckle.
She smiled, "To remind me who I am, " she said.
She was her namesake, a white petal unfolding to embrace the sun. We caressed and kissed, bit and rutted and became one, two bodies entwined like the strongest of ropes, connected and existing there and then because of each other.
The next afternoon after spending the whole of the first day of our married life together in bed she announced she was going to get some more ice.
I nodded and said “Sure, don’t' be long.” Then I lay back reclining on the shabby double bed glowing with achievement.
Hell, I was only hanging loose with the guys, a college break. Now here I was, a married man with a bride too beautiful to look at for too long.
But she never came back.
So I did what was necessary to end my legal obligation, I went back home, graduated, held down a job, got married again after a lengthy engagement and fathered a family.
I no longer live in hope, I accept my lot in life, I wait to die, I'm disappointed, thought there would be more to it, in the end I'm just a man.
"Your tea." says the surly waitress, slopping a chipped mug in front of me, she's too old for this job, poor defeated bitch. Her complexion is almost yellow and her papery wrinkled skin struggles to bind her old bones together. I look at her hand; the faint outline of a small black lily is just visible.
We lock eyes and the loss of our future is unbearable.