"Gatlinburg"

Give me the first word that comes to mind, she says, pen pressed to the magazine page.

They sit at the small kitchen table, waiting for the oven to warm their dinner.

He says nothing, his attention hard to his new cell phone as he works through its features.

She says his name, says, What word comes to mind?

Nine p.m., both are fresh home from work. Both are tired. In eighteen days, they marry. The apartment’s a mess. They’re out of stamps, have bills to mail.

He looks up at her. Any word? he asks.

The first, she says.

He thinks. Accoutrement, he says.

She studies him, her husband to be, and knows everything about him. Still, at times, she can’t figure him out. I mean a real word, she says. An American word.

It is a real word.

Well, it’s not a word I’d use in every day talk, she says. She gets up, opens the oven door to check on their meal. Heat and the smells of food that’s lived too long in the freezer vapors over her face. She closes the oven door, the food needing a minute more. I’m not even sure I know what accoutrement means, she says.

It means accessories, trappings, he says. It’s all the bits and pieces that come with something. Why did I get this? he asks, setting the cell phone down. What was my reason for having interest in something so complicated?

The kitchen’s scarred linoleum floor curls slightly at the wall. After they’d lived together for eight months, she issued him an ultimatum: marriage or move out. He took a week to decide. Their wedding registry is at Target. She’s always dreamt of being a bride, envisioned being proposed to in a hot air balloon high over the river, and then heading to Paris. She’d been handed a hundred-dollar engagement ring at the Steak & Shake. Gatlinburg is where they’re honeymooning.

She sits back down to her magazine. Gatlinburg, she thinks. She hates telling people where they’re going after the wedding. Gatlinburg? they say. Why Gatlinburg?