Free Home is the Sailor by Day Keene

bastard.
    A parked radio car roared off after the foreign license. I drove on, shaken. Corliss began to knead my right thigh in a nervous gesture, setting me on fire.
    I snarled at her. “Don’t do that.”
    She spat back, “Why not?”
    I said, “Because if you do I’m going to pull over to the curb, and the passers-by will be shocked.”
    Her lower lip thrust out. “You wouldn’t dare.”
    “If I burn for it,” I told her.
    She believed me.
    I parked in a three-hour zone on Spring Street. Corliss’ eyes were still sullen. She said, “We’re nowhere near the license bureau.”
    “First the rings,” I told her. “It so happens the Nelsons only marry once, and we always do it right.”
    The sullen look left her face. Her lower lip quivered as though she were going to cry.
    “If you cry I’ll slap you,” I told her.
    Her lower lip continued to quiver. She pressed the back of my hand to her cheek. Her voice was small. “With love. From me to you.”
    I found a small jewelry store up the block. The lad who owned it took one look at my uniform and, brushing the clerk aside, insisted on waiting on us himself.
    “An engagement ring and a wedding band. Right, mate?”
    I said, “That’s correct. For cash.”
    He dipped back of the counter and came up with a black plush tray of rings.
    The one Corliss said she liked best was eighteen hundred dollars. The wedding band came to three hundred more. It was a trifle too large for Corliss’ finger, but she insisted on having it, saying the engagement ring would keep it on.
    I counted the cash on the counter, plus the tax, and we were out on Spring Street again, me grinning all over my face. The jeweler had put the rings in small satin-lined white boxes. Out on the walk I took the boxes out of my pocket and reached for Corliss’ left hand.
    She put her hand behind her. “No. Not now, Swede. Please.”
    “Then when?”
    She said, “When we’re married, stupid,” then took the sting out of the name by kissing me. “That is, if you still want to marry me.”
    I made a fist and rolled my knuckles across her thigh. Brutally. Hurting her. Making her wince. So there would be no misunderstanding.
    “What do you think?”
    Corliss knew what I meant. For a moment Spring Street faded out and we were back on the lip of the cliff in the moonlight and fog with the Buick dying on the rocks beneath us. Her upper lip curled away from her teeth. A strained look came into her eyes. She ran her hands over her breasts as if they hurt her.
    “I think we’d better look up the license bureau,” she said.
    We had to wait in line at the bureau. Corliss gave her name as Mrs. John Mason, twenty-three; occupation, tourist-court owner; married status, widow. I signed on as Swen Nelson, thirty-three; occupation, seaman; unmarried. Both of us white Americans born in the U.S.A.
    Then the matter of V.D. clearance came up. The clerk asked for our certificates. I told him we didn’t have any. He said he was very sorry, but he couldn’t issue a license until we had taken a blood test and suggested we go to one of the laboratories that specialized in giving them. I asked him how long it would take to get a certificate.
    He said, “It usually takes three days. But sometimes they come through in two.”
    Corliss asked, “How about San Diego? Would we have to have a certificate there?”
    The clerk said, “It’s a state law, miss.”
    In the hall Corliss thrust out her lip in a sullen pout. “You promised to marry me. Today.”
    I was as disappointed as she was. I blew my top. “What the hell do you want me to do? Fly up to Sacramento and get a special dispensation from the governor?”
    I might have saved my breath. Corliss didn’t even hear me. She repeated:
    “You promised to marry me. Today. I won’t wait three days. I won’t.”
    Her lower lip stopped protruding and quivered. She began to cry without sound.
    I could sense hysteria building in her. The last thing I wanted to happen