Nadia reached for the marriage license, but Reed got there first. He held it a brief moment, grinned at it as if it was a private joke, then hastily folded it in thirds and stashed it in his suit jacket.
“Honey –”
“What? Oh, you wanted to see it? Here.” He grabbed the page from his pocket. Slowly, she opened it. Gazing at their names, curlicued and official, at the date, at the word. Marriage. At the deep and crooked creases now crossing it. She traced them with a finger, wondering if they’d ever smooth out.
“We’re married.” She looked up at Reed. He smiled at her.
“Well, yeah. What did you think we were doing today?” A quick kiss on the mouth. She felt a surge of warmth and happiness. This man, this handsome and smart and powerful man, was her husband. Her husband.
He patted her ass familiarly. “Come on, babe. We gotta get to dinner. Early reservation.”

The cabbie was playing some kind of Caribbean music, and the car smelled like banana candy. A tatty air freshener hung from the mirror. A smiling banana with dreadlocks and a knitted cap. She nudged Reed. “Rastanana!” she whispered, pointing.
“Huh?” He was on his phone. “What is it, Nada-baby?”

She hated that nickname, but he always forgot. When her parents heard it for the first time, meeting him last month, they’d looked at her quizzically. “Porqué se llamas nada?” her mother had asked her in the kitchen. “Why does he call you nothing?”

“It’s a Rasta banana. A Rastanana.”
“Where?” Still looking at the phone. Her smile was fading. It wasn’t even that funny.
“Right there. Hanging.”
He finally looked up, and looked genuinely amused. “Oh. Ha! Haha! That’s cute.” He put an arm around her and squeezed, breathing in deep as he kissed her hair. “You’re so adorable!” She relaxed into him and sighed. “And that dress makes your ass look great.”
“Reed!” She blushed and smiled.
“What? I can’t check out my own wife?”

She remembered the party, not even a year ago now, when she’d first seen him. Had already heard his name bandied around campus but hadn’t expected to be so struck by his appearance. He was like a chiseled profile out of one of the tattered old comics her brother used to buy at the corner shop for 50 cents. A Superman come to life. She found herself staring, and completely at a loss when he caught her eye and stared right back. By the end of the night, all her lipstick smeared or kissed off and her eyes bright and heated, she’d touched the mirror to check she was real. She felt the same wonderment now.

He paid for the cab – he always paid for the cab – and they stood in front of the restaurant. Her hands had a mind of their own, finding and tucking the flyaways in her careful updo, smoothing the satin dress where it was creasing at her stomach.
“Hey, don’t be so obvious about it, huh?” Reed winked. She felt her face burn. They were going to tell his parents over dessert. That was the plan. She wasn’t really showing, anyway. Not yet. Mom had told her it was the same with her first, with Arturo – barely even an extra curve until 6 months, then suddenly a belly like a melon, hard and round and full out of nowhere.

Reed opened the door for her and they stepped inside, and in the momentary blindness from sunlight to candlelight, she was seized by a stranger and lifted into the air. A man, tall and strong and smelling of drink. She was filling her lungs to scream when she heard a woman beside him squeal “REEEEEEEDYYYYY!”

Her father-in-law set her down and gripped her shoulders, a little too hard. Next to her, Reed was laughing and so was his mother. She managed a smile. The man—Alec, she remembered his name now, Alec, but you can call him Dad— cleared his throat.
“Welcome to the goddamned family, Nada.”
“Nadia.”
“…Nadia. Dammit. Forgive me. I’m terrible with names.”
“That’s OK.”
Then a hostess was showing them to the table, and Reed’s mother—Judy? Julie? Jodie?—was saying, “What took you so long?” and Reed was saying, “The traffic was bad,” and she was saying, “A cab? We could have sent our driver, you know how good he is with that kind of thing,” and Nadia was thinking she shouldn’t mention that her own father was a cab driver, or had been for a few years when they first arrived.

They sat down and for a few seconds, everything was quiet. Everyone looking at one another, smiling. Nadia wondered if she was expected to say something, and then a waitress walked by and Alec snapped at her and said “A Manhattan, sweetheart, and show me the wine list,” and Reed’s mother turned to Nadia and said “I’m Jodie. You are just so exotic looking. Like Sophia Loren. Isn’t she honey?” and Reed and his father said, “Absolutely,” at the same time, and laughed.
“Thank you,” Nadia said, and took refuge in the menu, full of words she didn’t know with no prices to be found. Reed put a hand over hers.
“They’ll order for all of us, babe,” he said. “That way we’ll all get a little taste of everything.”

Last month’s family dinner had been at the Queens apartment where she’d grown up. Her mother bought new curtains and prepared a feast of dishes she saved for special occasions. Nadia had filled her plate—eating for two, now, laughed her father—but Reed had picked at the food, barely disguising the discomfort on his face. “He has a sensitive stomach,” Nadia explained to her parents, who smiled and nodded. It was sort of true. He’d told her once that he only ate food that “looked good.” The foods she loved, the ones she’d grown up with, didn’t look like much.

Alec’s Manhattan arrived, along with a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket filled with ice. She looked at the champagne. Reed squeezed her thigh. “Nadia’s on some meds,” he said. “Can’t drink tonight.”
“Awww,” said Jodie.
“More for us!” laughed Alec, hoisting his cocktail. “Kidding, kidding.” He turned to the waiter. “Bring the girl some seltzer.”

They hadn’t even been together that long—if they were even together together—when she found out she was pregnant.
“But—you’re on the pill,” he’d said.
“What?”
“You—I thought—“
“I wasn’t.”
She was stupid and her family was Catholic and she’d never really learned about all of that stuff, just picked up bits and pieces from older girlfriends and TV shows. At first she’d been insistent he use a condom—she did read the subway ads, after all—but later, when he’d begged and pleaded to feel her better, please her better, she’d caved. And now she was having a baby. His baby.
“You weren’t. …OK.”
The silence had lasted seemingly forever. She’d seen his mask slip—the beautiful carefree boy, carefree no more. She’d felt terrible for causing that in him. But she had to say what came next.
“I’m keeping it.”

Because she’d told her mother already, in a fit of panic and self-pity after she’d peed on not one but three different at-home tests, and her mother had reminded her that Arturo had been a mistake too, and look how he’d turned out. Un milagro. And she’d always wanted children, even if this wasn’t exactly how she’d expected it.

He’d walked out of the room then, and she’d started to cry, and he came back almost immediately, looking lost and guilty, and he’d gotten down on one knee.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he’d said, and she wasn’t sure if he was telling her, or himself. All she was sure of was that she’d be an idiot not to accept.

Her seltzer arrived and everyone hoisted glasses.
“To…” Alec began, then stopped.
“To someone new,” Jodie interrupted. “To Nadia.”
“To Nadia!” they all chorused as her cheeks burned. The seltzer was a little bitter, but not bad. She sipped at it again. Jodie was staring at her.
“She’s very beautiful, Reed. And very young.”
“She’s twenty-one.”
“Twenty-two,” Nadia said. “A few months ago.”
Jodie smiled. “Alec always forgets my age, too. How hard is it to remember that I’m always turning 35?” They both laughed. Nadia felt Reed squeeze her thigh under the table.
“How’d he manage to snag you?” Alec took a deep drink of champagne and smacked his lips. “You’re the prettiest one yet.”
How did he snag me? Nadia thought. When everyone wondered how I got him…
“Your son is very charming,” she said.
“Reeeedddddyyy!” Jodie leaned over and pinched his cheeks. “Bless your heart!”
Reed poured some more champagne into his glass.
“Who was the last one?” his father asked. “Anne? Anna?”
“Annie,” Reed said. Nadia had never heard of Annie.
“She was Jewish, right?” Alec finished his glass, began pouring another. “Good riddance.”
“I never liked her, Reedy,” said his mother. “You could just tell she wasn’t into you for the right reasons.”
“She wanted your money, boy. Our money.” Alec snorted. “Always the same with those people.”
“So where are you from, Nadia?” Jodie looked at her intently.
“Mé—“
“Memphis. She grew up in Memphis.” Reed squeezed her thigh again. Hard. She’d never even been to Memphis.
“Oh, the South! How interesting. And does your family still live there?”
“They live in…” she hesitated and looked at Reed, who smiled and nodded. “…Queens.”
“Oh, how nice. I hear there are lots of Italians in Queens.”
Nadia’s brow furrowed momentarily, but she felt the hand squeeze again. She smiled.
“We, uh – we moved there when I was small.”

She’d been nine, and they’d left Mexico on a bright November morning. Her father, after living in the city for years, had finally arranged things for everyone, but hadn’t planned on his family being totally unprepared for the bitter cold. As they drove further north, Nadia marveled at seeing her breath in the air, the unfamiliar sensation of shivering, uncomfortable yet fascinating. They stopped at a thrift store somewhere in the Midwest and walked out with new-old coats, the ones they would wear for their first three years in America.

Appetizers arrived. They were like tiny works of art, little elements arranged precisely in balance. Nadia thought of her chemistry courses at school. Perfectly weighted equations. How the flavors and colors and textures were all just molecules, reactions. Fooling our brains, really. Reed leaned forward and scooped up some kind of shellfish.
“Mmhmmm, you should try this,” he said between bites. “Delicious.”
A waiter arrived with some wine. Alec swirled it in his glass, sipped, grimaced, spit it out.
“Bring something else,” he snapped. “Something I can actually drink.”
Nadia met the waiter’s eyes, shocked, but he simply nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, and left.
“They usually do such a good job here,” Alec said, “but now they’re hiring this new staff…”
“Mexicans,” said Jodie.
Reed squeezed her thigh again. It hurt this time.
“You know that Trump, I think he’s onto something with that wall idea. Keep the bastards out. Let them ruin their own country.” Alec tried to take a sip, forgetting his glass was empty. “Where’s that goddamn wine?”
“I never liked Mexicans. Remember that maid we had, Reedy?”
“Consuela?”
“Something like that. Remember how she stole my earrings?”
Alec guffawed. “Honey, we fired her and then you found them in the settee, remember?”
“Well she should have found them in there, anyway.”
They all laughed. Nadia could feel her heart pounding. Could anyone hear it?
The wine came again. Swirl, sip…and nod.
“Now this one is good. Don’t try to give me any others like that last one.”
“No, sir.”
“What do you think about that Trump guy?” Alec asked the waiter, as he poured the wine. His hand shook, just slightly.
“I don’t really follow politics, sir.”
“He’s gonna ban your people, you know. Build a wall on the border. Send them all home.”
Nadia could see the waiter’s jaw clenching, unclenching.
“That’s…very interesting, sir.”
“Home to Meh-hee-ko.”
The waiter finished pouring, nodded, and left. Nadia looked at Reed. Reed smiled as if nothing at all was wrong. She felt a clenching deep in her belly. Raised her glass of seltzer. The others smiled and raised their glasses to meet her. She took a deep breath.
“Salud a todos! Por mi tierra, por mi patria…por México.”
No one moved.
“She’s Mexican?” Alec put down his glass. “Your fiancée is Mexican?”
“Wife,” Nadia said.
“Wife?”
“You said you’d told them, Reed,” Nadia whispered, tears starting to prickle behind her eyes.
“You’re married?” Alec shouted.
Jodie was gulping at her wine, hand shaking. “You know, you’re both very young. No need to rush into…”
“You always told me to do the right thing,” Reed said, and there was the scared little boy again. Pleading. Trying so very hard.
Jodie looked at Nadia’s glass of seltzer. Looked at Nadia.
“She’s pregnant,” she said, as if she was pronouncing someone’s death.
The silence expanded in a circle around Nadia. Why wasn’t Reed saying anything?
“I’m pregnant,” she finally said, not looking at Reed.
The waiter came to collect the appetizer plates. No one spoke.
Jodie coughed. Took Reed’s hand. “That’s not what we meant, sweetheart. There… there are other ways to…”
“We’ll pay for it,” Alec said. “I know a good clinic. Upper East Side. And a divorce lawyer, too.”
Nadia felt as if she was deep underwater, pressure crushing her ribcage, water filling her lungs. She was looking at Reed, trying hard not to drown. Pleading with him to save her.
Finally, he turned to her. The carefree, beautiful boy.
“They’ll pay for it,” he said, and smiled.

The creases, Nadia thought. They’ll never smooth out. They’re too deep.

It was worst in the winter. On the grey gusty days like today, record-breakingly cold. The frigid air stabbing his lungs with each painful breath, a tickling at the back of his throat, a warning.

Don’tcoughdon’tcoughdon’tcough…

When he was in a rush, as he always was – blame NYC, blame Latino time, blame the shitty apartment heater that took forever to produce a lukewarm shower, blame the extra rum last night, blame whatever – the feeling got worse. Because then he was running for the train through the punishing air, gasping needles of ice, and inevitably…coughing.

And, with every cough, he felt his left foot constrict. As it always did. As it had since he was 25. Shrinking cough by cough, millimeter by millimeter until he was limping. Right foot still running for the train but its partner trailing behind, a little boy trying on his old man’s work shoe for size. He hated this. HATED it.

When the symptoms started, nearly a decade ago now, he’d accidentally found the secret to reversal in a moment of desperation. Some kind of crazy cosmic joke. Because the only way to grow the foot back again was…to laugh. And Marco Reyes? Well, he didn’t really do laughs. Not since he was a little boy in the schoolyard, ignoring the taunts and jeers from the other side of the four-square court.

But here he was, running, limping, coughing, the next train not coming for 52 minutes after this one, and he had a choice. If he laughed, he might be able to keep the shoe – but who guffaws out of nowhere in a stream of pissed-off frozen commuters? Not a man in a business suit with a leather briefcase and an important meeting in an hour.

He left the shoe behind. Found a seat. Layered the foot with extra socks and wedged it into a spare shoe he’d stashed in the leather briefcase.

No one could ever say Marco Reyes traveled unprepared.

•••

Over the years he’d learned the names, hours, and locations of pretty much every cobbler in the greater Queens area. They were all disillusioned, grumpy old immigrant men. Like meeting dozens of versions of his dad, if his dad had stuck around a decade or two longer. There was an Egyptian on 36^th, a Greek off of Hoyt and an Ecuadorian out by Junction. Past Flushing Meadows, a sea of Chinese guys, but he’d given up trying to communicate with them a few years back.

He’d learned that cobblers are nosy, no matter where they’re from. They’d stare at the shoes he brought them uncomprehendingly. They bore signs of wear that were unusual, to say the least. When he overcorrected, he burst seams and ripped leather. When he undercorrected, the soles wore off in the front, the only part of the shoe his newly-tiny foot could stay lodged in, and the rest got covered in scuffs. Sometimes he asked them to make removable inserts of various sizes, just for the left shoe. Then they stared at his feet to puzzle out the defect, eyes challenging him to bring it out into the open. He never did. Instead he rotated, cobbler to cobbler, salvaging shoe after shoe while maintaining his dignity.

He’d learned too that many shoe stores lost display shoes, or had to abandon them after they got dirty or scuffed on the shop floor. As fate would have it, they usually displayed his size, and the remainder of the pair was his for a song. At first he told the employees it was for his dad who lost a leg in Vietnam, but the stupid lazy kids working in those places didn’t care about his lie. They didn’t care about any part of their job. So he stopped saying anything at all.

•••

Next station was his and he wiggled his left foot experimentally. Still loose. He took out his phone, looked at it, shook his head, chuckled at the blank screen. Wiggled his foot again. Chuckled again, residually, at the joke that didn’t exist. There. A perfect fit. He sighed without thinking. A man a few seats down met his eyes and smiled. Marco froze. Not his type. A little too thin. A little too old. A lot too blonde. He glared in response. The man kept smiling. Some people just couldn’t take a damn hint. He flipped the bird, and the man colored and turned away. Marco stood as the train slowed and the doors opened, feeling newly powerful. He had a meeting to attend.

He’d worked at this place almost seven years now and knew he should have more to show for it. Sure, he missed the trains on a semi-regular basis, especially in the colder months. Sure, he used his share of sick days (after one awful cold, it took him 13 hours of Netflix comedy specials to get his foot back to size). But he worked his ass off. He knew the markets backwards and forwards. Knew all the comparables. Was awake until the wee hours researching. Had purged any trace of his childhood accent and spent any spare cash on quality suits (and cobbler bills). He’d climbed. And he knew he could climb higher. He’d been prepping this meeting for months, and knew his boss would be proud.

The empty conference room smelled vaguely of carpet cleaner and ink toner. He set up the laptop, queued up the presentation, made sure it was displaying properly on the projector. Then laid out the reports, precisely collated and stapled, in full color on thick paper. One at every seat, pens laid across them at 45 degrees. Pens! He’d heard their president despised ballpoints so he’d splurged on split-nibs, calligraphy style but easily refillable. Left bowls of mints in the middle of the long pseudo-ebony table. At precisely 10:00, his colleagues began filing in, and some others as well. He smiled, shook hands. Their president was running late, and in the meantime small talk reigned. He hated small talk, so popped a mint whenever he thought he’d be drawn into another vapid exchange.

Then the door opened, and in walked the man from the train.

In that endless moment, Marco realized two things: one, the man absolutely recognized him, and two, he’d completely forgotten he had a mint in his mouth. It slid towards his throat.

Don’tcoughdon’tcoughdon’tcough…

He coughed. Twice. Then extended his hand to their president. Another cough was building, tears gathering in his eyes with the effort of stopping it.

The man looked down at his hand and nodded. Marco realized he’d just used it to cover his wet cough. The rest of the table looked slightly disgusted. He withdrew his hand, and…

Don’tcoughdon’tcoughdon’tcough…

…made it to his chair before a few more discreet coughs escaped. Then a few more. His foot felt about an inch smaller all round. Why hadn’t he put water bottles out instead of the damn mints?

“Reyes, everything all right over there?” His boss was frowning. He nodded, gave a thumbs up. The meeting was called to order.

And after all of his planning and preparation, Marco found himself not listening to anything that was said. Unconsciously tuning out all of the words he’d written, now confidently repeated by his superior. He was out of the conference room and back on the train, locking eyes with that man, that man (sitting across the room now!), receiving an appreciative smile, reliving his response over and over. The harsh glare and the unnecessary gesture. The man’s embarrassed retreat and his own surge of victory. Triumph over someone weaker. A rare feeling. One he treasured.

“Reyes? …Reyes?”

He looked up at his boss. Intently. Assuredly. As if he’d been paying close attention. “Yes?”

“Can you come up here and talk a little more about the comparables you outlined in Section 2?”

Another cough. Another. He could barely feel toes to wiggle them.

“I can talk from right here, it’s no problem.”

“I’d like you to reference the visuals. Come on up.”

But Marco Reyes couldn’t come on up. He knew his foot wouldn’t allow it.

And now he was thinking of all of the late hours that went into this particular moment, this particular sell. And that morning, the run for the train and the icy air and another lost shoe sitting on the pavement. Thinking of that sad little shoe, all alone in the bitter cold, suddenly struck him as funny. Very funny.

To his absolute horror, he began to laugh.

His colleagues stared.

“Did I…miss something?”

“No,” Marco replied, giggling. Giggling! His foot was growing, straining uncomfortably now against the extra socks. “I’ll come up!”

As he stood and walked, trying to push down the bubbles of hysterical laughter pressing their way out of his chest, he glimpsed their president. What the hell must he be thinking of him? He’d flipped the BIRD! Like a middle schooler!

He couldn’t suppress it anymore. He pointed to the visuals and burst out laughing, barely making out words as he caught his breath.

“Here…here we see…projections for best case scenarios…”

His foot was growing more and more painful as it pressed against the shoe. He couldn’t stop.

“And the…HAHA!…I’m so sorry. The comparables…”

RRRRRRRRIP! The shoe gave way with a violent tear, separating sole from upper and heel from front. Those nearest him looked down, aghast. Everyone else was staring in mute fascination at Marco Reyes, who never laughed, crying with laughter.

“…THE COMPARABLES! They…hahaha!…haha!…they show that…”

By this point his left foot had ballooned to a point he’d never experienced. The socks gave way, elastic threads snapping, and his knee was forced up. Now everyone was standing, gasping, pointing to his freakishly growing foot, at least five times its normal size. He was crying now. His stomach was cramping from all of the laughter, and his foot – he could actually feel its bones and muscles stretching and struggling to grow, the skin barely accommodating in time. It was excruciating, and suddenly he was swaying, falling, caught.

They helped him out of there, his boss and their president. One on each side, as if they were helping a star player off the field. No one said anything, until Marco saw the EMTs approaching. He turned to the man from the train and smiled a genuine smile, a last desperate peace offering.

“I hope you liked the pens,” he said.

“Oh,” he said. “The pens? I always bring my own.”

Hi, I’m Gabriella. I’ve done some fun creative projects in the past, including a blog about visualizing vocabulary, a whole host of design work, playwriting, and more.

Right now I’m working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guyana, South America, but I decided to try something to keep myself writing and drawing. This is what I came up with… so welcome to A Story There.

You know those times when you overhear an intriguing snippet of conversation, or witness a highly charged moment, and feel as if you’ve only gotten a tiny piece of the puzzle? You think, “There must be a story there…”

A Story There takes those moments…bits of dialogue, weird marginalia found in a used book, snapshots of the daily lives of strangers…and expands them into original short stories and illustrations.

Want your own moment brought to life? Email astorythere@gmail.com.

I can’t wait to get started!