Take A Picture (It'll Last Longer)

“They’re going to be here any minute!” I yelled at Ben. “Put on your pants!”

We had taken the day off from work so that we could wait for the people from Immigration Services to show up. They were supposed to be there at ten thirty and it was already nine forty-five but Ben still wasn’t dressed. He thought it would be cute to turn off my alarm clock so we slept late. I woke up at nine, freaked out and shoved him out of the bed so we could get ready. I was dressed and eating breakfast by nine fifteen but Ben was still in bed. I had to basically force him into the bathroom and then threatened to have the hot water turned off if he didn’t get out of the shower.

Now Ben was lounging around in the living room in his underwear and a t-shirt, eating some sort of frosted cereal and watching The Today Show. I was the one rushing around, cleaning up the apartment and trying to look professional, despite the fact that I was totally freaking out. I couldn’t even begin to contemplate what would happen if they decided they were going to send Ben back to England after all and so I had to make sure everything was absolutely perfect. Ben seemed as though he couldn’t care less.

“Hurry up! They’re going to be here! They can’t see you eating cereal in your underwear!” I hissed.

“It’s my place. I can sit around and eat cereal in my underwear if I want to,” Ben snorted.

“Damn the day I put your name on the lease,” I said annoyed.

“Hey, if they don’t like the fact that I sit in my own apartment and eat the food I bought with my own money, maybe I don’t want to live in this country anyway,” Ben said.

“Quit making jokes like that! It’s not funny!” I said to him, annoyed.

“Calm down, Catt!” Ben sighed. “Look, it’s going to be fine. I don’t know why you’re so freaked out about this.”

“I don’t know why you aren’t more freaked out about this!” I said to him, annoyed.

“Because there isn’t anything to freak out about,” Ben shrugged.

“There’s plenty to freak out about!” I said. Then I heard the buzzer. I rushed over to the intercom and pushed the button. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Dawes? This is Agent Clampton and Agent Morris from Immigration Services,” a deep male voice said.

“I’ll buzz you up,” I said politely. I did and then turned sharply to Ben. “Put on your pants!”

“I have not finished my cereal and I refuse to put on my pants until I have done so,” Ben said adamantly.

“Why are you being so difficult?” I said annoyed.

“Because you haven’t let me finish my breakfast,” Ben said. I rushed over and snatched up his bowl of cereal.

“There. You’re done,” I said. “I’ll go put this in the sink and you can put on your pants.”

“I wasn’t done with that!” Ben said childishly.

“Well, now you are,” I said. “Now go put on some pants!” I rushed off to the kitchen and then realized how ridiculous we were going to look, me in a nice skirt, heels, and a blouse while Ben was wearing the shirt he got when he toured the Guinness Factory and a pair of nappy jeans. It was too late to tell him to change into something nice because a knock came on the door. I rushed to answer it and found two gruff looking men on the other side.

“Hello,” the man with the deep voice said. “I’m Agent Clampton.”

“And I’m Agent Morris,” the second man, who was slightly shorter with a more squawky voice said. I shook both of their hands.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Please, come in.” I invited the two men to sit down on the couch that Ben had recently vacated.

“Catt! Where did that pair of socks I laid out earlier go?” Ben moaned from the bedroom.

“Did you check on top of the dresser?” I yelled back at him.

“No,” Ben said. I heard him struggle to put on his socks while standing up. He fell over with a thud then walked into the living room, acting surprised to see the two men sitting on the couch.

“Mr. Dawes, I’m Agent Clampton and this is Agent Morris,” Clampton said.

“Was Agent Bond unavailable?” Ben asked with a smirk. The two men chuckled and I rolled my eyes.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked them.

“No, we’re both fine,” Morris said in his squawky voice. He reminded me of a parrot.

“We just need to ask you a few questions and then we can be out of your way,” Agent Clampton said, magically producing a clipboard from inside his coat pocket. I fell into a chair and Ben came over and sat on the armrest beside me. Clampton clicked his mechanical pen and looked at the first question on the survey. “Alright then, how long have you two been married?”

“Close to two months now,” Ben said proudly.

“And how long have you known each other?” Clampton asked.

“Five years,” I replied.

“We met in college,” Ben added.

“Really? Where did you go?” Clampton asked.

“Nortwestern,” Ben and I said at the same time.

“Really? My niece Heather goes there,” Morris said. “Journalism major.”

“So were we,” Ben and I both said.

“Good program there,” Morris nodded.

“The best,” Ben nodded.

“Okay,” Clampton said, “and where were you born?”

“London,” Ben said. “At St. Mary’s Hospital.”

“Do you have a copy of your birth certificate on hand?” Clampton asked Ben.

“It’s in the bedroom,” Ben said before getting up to retrieve the information.

“How old are the two of you?” Morris asked me.

“Well, Ben just turned twenty-six and I’m going to be twenty-five in December,” I replied.

“Your parents know about all this?” Morris grinned at me. Mixed in with the squawky voice, his grin made him seem more and more like a pedophile by the second.

“Yeah,” I said. “They love Ben. My mother especially.” Ben came back into the living room with a bunch of things in his hands.

“Copies of my birth certificate, my passport, my expired green card, my expired visa, and my award from the dentist for being cavity free,” Ben said, handing them all over to Clampton. The agent took them and looked at them all a moment before folding them up and putting him in his file.

“Alright,” Clampton said, “I think we’ve seen enough here.”

“Is everything all right?” I asked him worriedly.

“Oh, everything’s fine,” Clampton laughed. “Everything’s perfectly in order here. To tell the truth, this is the easiest job we’ve had all month.”

“We try to stay organized,” Ben said. I wanted to give him a kick in the shin because I had spent the better part of the morning cleaning up after him.

“It’s refreshing to see a couple so in love like the two of you,” Clampton remarked as he and Morris stood up. “Normally we get people just trying to keep some loser in the country.”

“Most of the time they just separate after they get the green card,” Morris shook his head. “It’s pathetic. But the two of you look like you could last a good fifty years.”

“Yeah,” I said nervously, “that’s really unfortunate.”

“I noticed there’s a spare bedroom,” Morris remarked in a scary To Catch a Predator sort of way. “A little one on the way?”

“That’s what my mother thinks too,” I muttered, annoyed.

“Not yet,” Ben said. “But we’re going to have four. Name them after characters in Greek myth.”

“Who said anything about four?” I snorted. “Not unless you’re having at least two of them yourself, mister.”

“My wife said the same thing,” Morris nodded. “Now we have six.”

“Hear that, Catt? Six!” Ben said to me exuberantly.

“Well, here are the forms you need to fill out,” Clampton said handing them to me. “You’ll need to turn them in to your local county registrar as soon as possible. He’ll send them off to D.C. All in all, you should have your card in at least six months.”

“From now?” I said, hardly believing bureaucracy could be that slow.

“At least six months from now. It might be a year or so,” Clampton nodded, “but they won’t kick him out of the country. You don’t have to worry about that Mrs. Dawes. Not unless he does something extreme like kills a person.”

“Hear that?” I said to him. “Best behavior, Ben.”

“Agent Clampton, do my wife’s cheating ex-boyfriends count as people?” Ben asked Clampton.

“Ben!” I said horrified.

“You don’t know how often we get that one,” Clampton chuckled. “Nice to meet the two of you.” He and Morris shook our hands then headed out the door. As soon as they were gone, a wave of relief swept over me. I jumped up and threw my arms around Ben and he hugged me back.

“I’m so glad that’s over,” I sighed.

“Me too,” Ben smiled.

“So, let’s fill out these forms,” I said, putting the forms down on the coffee table.

“Why do we have to fill them out now?” Ben moaned. “Can’t we go out and celebrate?”

“Ben, the faster we fill out these forms, the faster they can get notarized, the faster they can get sent to D.C. and the faster you can get your green card,” I said to him.

“And the faster you can divorce my ass?” Ben said with a frown.

“No,” I rolled my eyes. “Quit being so melodramatic! I just don’t want to piss off those Immigration guys. They liked us enough and I don’t want to cause trouble. They can send you back to England in a heartbeat if they want.”

“But they aren’t going to!” Ben sighed. “Can we do something fun? We do have all day off work, after all.”

“Fine,” I sighed, “but the second we get back, we’re filling out all the forms. I can take them down to the Registrar’s office on my lunch break tomorrow.”

“Are you that eager to get rid of me?” Ben said sourly.

“Did I act eager to get rid of you?” I asked him, annoyed. “If you recall, the Agents said we were in love and I didn’t flinch once when he called me ‘Mrs. Dawes’ did I?”

“Maybe not,” Ben admitted.

“What has been with you lately?” I asked him. “All you’re worried about is that I’m going to leave you once you get your green card! Where is all this insecurity coming from?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said sheepishly.

“Well, you better snap out of it,” I said to him. “Agent Morris said we were going to last fifty years!”

“He also said you were pregnant,” Ben pointed out.

“And you claimed to be organized,” I rolled my eyes. “I think everyone in the room was lying a little. I bet Clampton doesn’t even get asked questions about cheating ex-boyfriend’s.”

“Was Clampton lying when he said we were in love?” Ben asked me.

That was the first question I had been asked all day I didn’t know the answer to.