Chapter Text
In the autumn of 1990, when the trees in Central Park begin to turn gold, Jupiter Jones marries a complete stranger.
Jupiter’s never been a particularly sentimental person. She's never given a second thought to flower arrangements, wedding cakes, or white designer dresses. Even so, she didn’t imagine she’d slink to Manhattan City Hall on a weekday afternoon and meet her husband for the first time right before she says “I do.”
She has to fake a fever to get out of her cleaning job with her mother and Aunt Nino. The timing will be tricky, too - when they get home, if she isn’t in bed moaning with the flu, they’ll be suspicious. City Hall is a short hop on the A-Line from where she was scrubbing toilets; it’s a small distance to travel for new life full of new opportunities. Jupiter’s lived in America her entire life but isn’t a legal citizen. Without citizenship, she can’t go to college. She’s already twenty-one, and she’s tired of living on autopilot, cleaning houses every day with her mother and aunt.
Although tired isn’t precisely the word to describe someone resorting to a green card marriage. Jupiter hates her life. Every dead-end day, she feels her potential slipping through her fingers.
Across the street from Manhattan City Hall is a packed-out pizza joint named Chicago Pie. Jupiter locks herself in the bathroom and changes from jeans and flannel shirt into a sundress, low-cut and full-skirted with a purple rose pattern. It’s one of two dresses she owns. With her hair in a ponytail and her sneakers on, she looks like a coed ready for a summer picnic, not a bride on her wedding day.
Sitting at a red checkered table beside the restaurant’s front window, she orders a soda and waits.
Kiza shows up first. She arranged this meeting, after all. She and her father live in the Abrasax Building, where Jupiter has a regular cleaning job. They can’t afford a maid, but Jupiter runs into her on a regular basis. Kiza’s a freshman at Columbia, and when Jupiter said something about wishing she could go to school too, the conversation snowballed right into “green card marriage.”
The arrangement isn't only for Jupiter's sake; the guy she's marrying is fresh out of the service, and his discharge was "other than honorable," whatever that means. Being married somehow helps with his living arrangement. Jupiter’s hazy on the details, and she doesn’t particularly care. They won’t ever see each other again, except when they meet one more time to sign divorce papers six months from now.
Kiza plops down and leans across the little round café table to grasp Jupiter’s forearm. She’s trembling more than Jupiter. “You look beautiful! This is going to be fine, everything’s going to be fine. Isn’t it going to be fine?”
“Don’t worry, Kiza. I won’t tell your dad you set this up,” Jupiter promises for the hundredth time, squeezing the other woman’s hand.
After stealing a few sips from Jupiter’s soda, Kiza glances out the window and waves in greeting. A man stands on the sidewalk, staring down at Jupiter through the glass. He’s younger than she expected, but aside from that he’s very military – tall and well-built, with close-cropped blond hair and a neat beard. He’s wearing enough black for a funeral, tight jeans and t-shirt and combat boots, with a grey leather jacket thrown on top like an afterthought. His ears definitely stick out, and his expression would be stern if his lips weren’t so full. He’s not Jupiter’s type, but he isn't terrible to look at.
As he surveys Jupiter, his eyebrows draw together and a worried line forms between them, like he isn’t pleased with what he sees. Kiza waves again, gesturing toward the door. He walks down the storefront and comes inside, navigating the maze of packed tables with the mindfulness of someone who is aware of how he appears, and is trying not to make an intimidating impression.
Before Kiza can introduce them, the man sticks out his hand. “I’m Caine Wise. I’m here to help you.”
“Holy shit, Caine. You promised you wouldn’t make this weird,” Kiza says, burying her face in her hands. She’s bright red, she looks like she’s having an anxiety attack. Jupiter has never met Kiza’s father, but she knows he’s a police detective. Is she having second thoughts about facilitating this illegal arrangement? “You swore you wouldn’t freak her out.”
“What?” Caine retorts in genuine confusion, a touch defensive. He glances back and forth at the two women, the cleft between his eyes deepening.
“I said get some roses or something, you idiot.” Kiza’s tone is like that of a younger sister, mortified by her older brother’s hopeless behavior. It’s then that Jupiter notices the single white carnation in his other hand, a tiny thing with a short stem, wilted from being cooped up in his fist.
He's on the verge of cramming it into his pocket, so Jupiter reaches out and plucks it away. Swallowing the lump of nerves in her throat, she flashes a smile and tucks the flower behind her ear.
“I’m not freaked out.” She stands up and takes the hand he’s still got extended in introduction. He grips gently, shakes once, and lets go. “Nice to meet you, Caine Wise. I’m Jupiter Jones, and I’m here to be your wife.”
~~~~~
Kiza stays long enough to sign the marriage certificate as their legal witness, and then she bails. After the entire process is finished, standing in front of town hall with a gold band on her left ring finger, Jupiter shakes Caine’s hand one more time.
There’s a boisterous wedding party next to them, friends cheering and tossing flower petals at a bride in a fluffy white dress and a groom in a suit. He’s got her bent over backward, the two of them shoving tongues into each other’s mouths, and a few passerby give wolf whistles at the happy couple.
Caine glances at them, shuffling from one foot to the other like a kid waiting to be dismissed from school.
“Thanks again for doing this,” Jupiter says.
“Good luck with college,” Caine replies.
“What?” Jupiter says, surprised.
“Kiza told me you were going to college.” He surveys her sharply, like he's been misled and he's reevaluating his first impression. “Aren’t you?”
She doesn't like the way his scrutiny feels. He's obviously fine with the fact that they're breaking the law together, but for some reason he cares about her motivation for marrying him? What if she wasn't doing this for the sake of college admissions? Would it matter? A tiny part of her wants to sit down and explain everything, to wipe that look of confused disappointment off his face; if she had time, and if it mattered at all what he thought of her, then maybe she would. But right now she's keenly aware of how late it is and how long the subway ride home will be.
“Listen Caine, I need to get home before my family realizes I'm gone. It was nice to meet you. Have a great life, and I’ll see you again at Chicago Pie in six months, right?”
Caine shrugs and nods, like she’s his commanding officer and she’s just given him an order. “Sure. Have a great life, Jupiter.” Cramming his left hand into his jacket pocket, hiding Jupiter’s cheap silver ring on his finger, he turns on the spot and strides away without looking back.
Jupiter watches him go, pulling her arms around herself and letting out a long relieved breath. The hard part’s over; now she’s just got to deal with college applications and scholarships, and breaking the news to her mother that she’s going to leave home.
~~~~~
Once she has her wedding certificate, Jupiter spends every second of her scant free time curled up on her bed in her uncle’s basement, scribbling college admission essays. She sneaks off to the local public library to use the typewriter to fill out application forms; she sends pre-stamped envelopes to the Brighton Beach School District for copies of her high school transcript. Her gold wedding band is tucked away into her coin-purse, alongside the dried white carnation, and she’s been scrupulously ignoring it since the day she left the courthouse steps. She has been paying plenty of attention to her citizenship paperwork, though, waiting for the American government’s immeasurably inefficient bureaucracy to get into gear and send her a social security number.
Even though the arrangement is only temporary, it’s surreal writing a man’s name beside hers in the space labelled “spouse.”
Caine Wise.
Jupiter Wise … nope, definitely not. She’s keeping her maiden name. If she ever gets married – properly married – she’ll just insist her husband takes the name Jones.
College applications feel like her real job now, except she’s still obligated to spend sunup to sundown cleaning with her mother and Aunt Nino.
One month after her wedding, Jupiter’s doing her regular weekly stop at Katharine Dunlevy's apartment, in the Abrasax Building on the Upper West Side. It’s the same building where Kiza lives with her father. Every time Jupiter comes to work here, she idly wonders where Caine is, and if his living situation worked out like he wanted it to.
Feeling particularly restless today, she leaves her supplies inside Katharine's apartment and steps into the corridor for a breath of fresh, bleach-free air. The elevator dings, and an attractive man wanders out, looking lost. He’s wearing designer clothes, an asymmetrically cut suit with neon-colored lapels that Jupiter swears she saw in this month’s Vogue. A pair of John Lennon sunglasses perch on his elegant nose; he’s pretty enough to be in a boy band.
“This isn’t the penthouse,” he says aloud.
Jupiter can't tell if he's asking a question, but she decides to answer anyway. “This is the ninth floor, you're looking for the twenty-eighth. They generally keep penthouses at the top, just below the pigeons.” She holds up her arms like she’s measuring something, hands wide apart. “You missed it by this much. Nice effort, though.”
He laughs, and he lets the elevator doors close, and he chats Jupiter up with the swaggering overconfidence that all attractive wealthy men seem to have. He obviously mistakes her for a resident. At first she intends to correct him, to confess that she’s the cleaning lady who just finished scrubbing toilets in 9C, but he doesn’t let her get a word in edgewise. Before long she stops trying and clasps her hands behind her back, hiding her dry nails, and smiles at him.
“I don’t live in New York. Obviously I’m not a native,” he says, his posh English accent doing funny things to her insides. Jupiter's father was the son of a British diplomat, but he died before she was born. Did his voice sound like this, the same smooth timbre and slow vowels? “My brother’s in the penthouse, and my sister’s just below. Did I mention my name? How silly of me, I must’ve forgotten. It’s Titus Abrasax - Abrasax like the building! I just arrived from Oxford, on a minibreak before I go back to school.”
“I’m applying to college, too. I’m going to major in astronomy,” Jupiter says, brightening. “What do you study?”
“A little bit of everything,” Titus replies, with the detached air of a man whose job future is already secure in his family’s business, whatever that happens to be.
He’s cute and charming, if a little smarmy. He’s definitely rich. He invites her to dinner on Sunday. Jupiter hasn’t been on a date in a while; she hasn't done anything fun in ages. When he offers to stop by her apartment and drive her to the restaurant in his Porsche, she says she’ll meet him there instead. At worst, she’ll get to listen to his accent while she eats an expensive meal on his dime.
Taking her hand and bowing, like a prince out of a fairy tale, Titus flashes a dazzling smile. “The hours will crawl by until Sunday.”
Jupiter excuses herself and walks into the stairwell, just in time to catch her mother and aunt on the way out.
“I’m finished with 9C,” she says, shooing them back inside before they can see Titus – more importantly, before he can see them. “No more to do here, let’s move on to the next building.”
She has to go back to Katharine Dunlevy’s apartment for her cleaning supplies, of course, but by then Titus is gone.
On the drive home from Manhattan to Uncle Vassily’s house in Brighton Beach, her mother turns around to look at her in the back seat. “You have been smiling all afternoon, Jupiter. What are you daydreaming about?”
“I have a date on Sunday,” Jupiter replies.
“Really?” Aunt Nino almost drives the car into oncoming traffic, craning her head to see her niece.
“He’s an Abrasax, like the building. He's visiting from England, and he’s taking me to dinner.” Jupiter nibbles on her thumb, trying to hide her grin.
“Heaven help us,” Aleksa grumbles. “The last thing you need is one of those rich British boys who thinks he can take advantage of you because you are a working girl.”
“Mama, you let a British boy take advantage of you,” Jupiter says.
“Ooch, your father was only half British, and he was a man. Now there are only boys, with no honor or loyalty in their souls, always trying to get into your pants. I have a pepper spray, you will take it with you.”
“I won’t let him take advantage of me. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll take the pepper spray,” Jupiter replies.