Take A Picture (It'll Last Longer)

Have you ever gone to a foreign country and realized that the booze there is twice as strong as it is in your home country only after you were so piss drunk you couldn’t really walk? I have.

Have you ever woken up at ten thirty with the worst hangover known to man only to realize that the only other person in the room is the person who didn’t stop you from drinking the night before because he himself got into a drinking contest the previous night with a forty-five year old Frenchmen? I have.

Have you ever woken up at ten thirty with that bad hangover to chastise your travel buddy for getting into said drinking contest and causing both of you to have colossal hangovers only to realize that both of you are naked? I have.

Have you ever woken up, finding yourself naked with a colossal hangover from the previous night to find the person you are naked with is not only your husband of two days but also that they don’t have as bad a hangover as you do, mainly because they drank less than you thought last night? I have.

So, here I am, taking a shower, trying to get the scent of Ben’s sweat off of me while he pounds on the bathroom door trying to get to stop being so mad at him because of what happened last night. As if I can really remember what happened last night. Basically, the argument went like this: I woke up, freaked out that Ben and I were naked, he told me to calm down which made me freak out more which upset him which made me mad because he wasn’t that drunk to begin with and could have stopped me from full on seducing him last night which made him made because he doesn’t see what’s so wrong with married people sleeping together which made me mad because I never said sleeping together was part of this deal which made him mad because he doesn’t want me referring to our marriage as some sort of business arrangement which made me mad because it’s not a real marriage to begin with which made him mad because according to the state of Illinois, it is a very real marriage indeed, which I couldn’t dispute so I decided to take a shower instead.

Now that you’re up to speed:

“You can’t be pissed with me about this, Catt!” Ben yelled at me through the door. “Neither of us were exactly coherent. And it’s not like you could say it was bad…”

“Shut up!” I screamed at him through the door.

“We’re married anyway! And you yourself said we had to make it believable!” Ben yelled back.

“By believable I meant playing house not playing Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee!” I screamed back.

“This is part of playing house,” Ben yelled at me.

“I don’t know what sort of house you played as a kid, but this never happened to me when I was playing house,” I shouted at him.

“Why is it my fault?” Ben shouted back.

“Because you could have stopped it!” I yelled at him.

“How exactly could I have stopped it?” Ben screamed at me.

“You could have done something!” I shouted.

“While you had me pinned down or when you were telling me not to stop?” Ben yelled at me.

“This is why I wanted sex left out of the equation!” I hissed at him. “Because it just screws things up.”

“How did it screw anything up?” Ben yelled at me.

“It just did!” I shouted at him.

“How?” Ben demanded to know.

“We’re friends, we aren’t supposed to have sex!” I screamed at him, turning off the shower and stepping out.

“So you’ll got at it with total wankers like Jon but heaven forbid you shag someone you actually like,” Ben yelled at me.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I screamed at him. “Do you even get it at all? We start going at it and then once you get your green card and this entire thing is over, what happens then? We can’t just all of a sudden go back to being friends! This was just a big mistake from the beginning!”

“Oh really?” Ben yelled, sounding more hurt than angry.

“Really!” I shouted back at him. “I can’t even look at you right now!”

“Well, I’m going for a walk!” Ben screamed at me.

“I won’t wait up!” I screamed at him. I heard the hotel door slam shut and then turned on the blow dryer.

I had primped and polished myself for a day of just hanging around the resort in only twenty minutes time then checked my e-mail and phone messages. Ben still wasn’t back from his walk but I was still mad so I didn’t care. I headed down to the lobby to check the itinerary of what was going on at the hotel that day and found there wasn’t anything but bingo for old people and a Barney knock off for the under three crowd. I headed back up to the room to raid the mini-bar and found that Ben still wasn’t back from his walk. He had taken his camera with him so I figured he was going to get lost on the beach taking pictures of things and I didn’t count on him coming back for a long while.

I ordered room service for lunch then took a nap because I was hungover and jetlagged at the same time, which is no picnic by the way. When I woke up, it was almost time for supper and there was no sign that Ben had returned back to the room at all. I sighed and tried his cell only to find that it was in the room with me and very loud. I called down to the front desk to see if they had seen him, but the man there, who sounded as if he was from Germany rather than Mexico, informed me that Ben hadn’t been seen since that morning.

It was about that time I started to get nervous. Ben had never been that gone without checking in. Even if he was furiously mad at me, he had always called me in a matter of minutes to let me know that he was still alive and would then proceed to contact me once every fifteen minutes until I told him to stop. There really was nothing I could do to look for him short of combing the beach inch by inch and I knew if I did that, there would be good odds of him returning to the hotel room, not finding me, and heading back out. I decided it would be safer to wait in the room until he got back from venting. I watched a movie in Spanish and didn’t understand a word of it and then polished off the leftovers from my lunch the previous day.

I looked at the clock every once in a while nervously because it had been almost seven hours since he had left the room and I was suddenly remembering all those stories I saw on 20/20 and Dateline about people who go to Mexico and get kidnapped or robbed or murdered or raped. While I was watching the local news to see if I saw a picture of Ben’s mutilated corpse, the door swung open and Ben came in smelling like sea salt. I had never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life and in my excitement rushed over and threw my arms around him, squeezing him as tightly as I could.

“That’s more like it,” Ben smiled wryly. I pulled back and glared at him.

“Ben Dawes, if you ever and I mean ever run off for seven hours without calling me again, I will wring your neck!” I yelled at him. Ben was thrown off seeing as he had gone from my favorite person to my least favorite person in a matter of seconds. “I thought I was up here, alone in a foreign country where I don’t know the language and you could have been off anywhere doing anything with anyone!”

“I wasn’t doing anything with anyone!” Ben said to me defensively.

“You could have been mugged or lying in a ditch somewhere…” I began.

“Oh,” Ben said sounding a little relieved, “I thought you were accusing me of going off to strip club on the sly or something.”

“This isn’t funny!” I growled at him. “It’s past suppertime! Where have you been?”

“Just taking pictures on the beach,” Ben shrugged. “I guess I lost track of time…”

“Lost track of time? It’s sunset! How could you not look up realize that you’d been out for ten hours?” I hissed.

“That’s why I came back. I saw the sunset and went oh shit. Not the typical reaction a photographer gives a beautiful sunset, mind you…” Ben began.

“Quit it! This isn’t a joke!” I glared at him. Ben looked at me stunned for a moment and then a smile crossed his face.

“You were worried about me, weren’t you? You were seriously worried about me,” Ben said, as if it were some sort of personal victory.

“Of course I was worried about you,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s just this morning you said you couldn’t even look at me,” Ben shrugged.

“Because I was upset,” I said to him, “but running off without even letting me know where you were doesn’t exactly make me feel better either.” Ben sighed and sat his camera down on the dresser. He then walked over and sat on the edge of the bed looking up at me uncertainly.

“Why is this so hard for you, Catt?” Ben asked me. “Why is everything a fight?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him annoyed.

“When Jon first starting going out with you, he had to fight to do every little thing, from getting your number to taking you out to even calling you his girlfriend,” Ben said. “And you’ve just gotten worse since then. You fight everyone who tries to get close to you. To be your friend. Don’t you just get sick of fighting?”

“I don’t fight people,” I shook my head.

“You’re fighting me right now!” Ben pointed out. I sighed and joined him on the side of the bed. “Catt, would be so bad about letting your guard down just this once? Sure we’re friends, but we’re also married. We’re supposed to be there for each other and take care of each other. And we’re supposed to share everything, no matter how much it hurts. And we’re supposed to want to need each other when we don’t need each other at all.”

“Wow,” I said to him. “That’s profound.”

“I just paraphrased the speech your father gave me the morning before we got married,” Ben shrugged. I knew that was too smart for Ben to think up on his own. “The point is, Catt,” he said taking my hand, “we wouldn’t have gone off and done something as crazy as this to keep me in the country if we weren’t thinking about it already.” I didn’t know what to say and I wondered if there was anything I really could say to him.

“I can’t think about this right now,” I said finally.

“Okay,” Ben nodded, “you wanna go down to one of this resorts seven fabulous restaurants? Apparently the bar and grill has the most fantastic cheesecake south of the border…”

“Have you been reading informational pamphlets again?” I asked him.

“I couldn’t help it,” Ben sighed, “they have them hanging up above the urinals downstairs right at eye level. You can’t look away. It’s madness…”

“Too much info,” I sighed. Ben smiled and put his arm around me, giving me a squeeze.

“Are we good for now?” Ben asked.

“As long as you don’t get in any more drinking contests with fellow tourists,” I snorted.

“I make you no promises,” Ben said as we got off the bed to head downstairs. Ben stopped over at the dresser to pick up his wallet out of his camera bag.

“Hey, Ben,” I said to him.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking as if he hoped I had come to some sort of startling revelation. I just beamed and sang at him.

“Turn around bright eyes.”