Worship at the Fair

I didn't sleep well Friday night, and I'll tell you why. Ann had been acting weird all week. Not bad weird. Excited weird. She kept checking her phone and then hiding the screen when I walked past, and Friday night she said, "Big day tomorrow, Marc. Wear comfortable shoes." That was it. No explanation.

So there I was at twenty-nine years old, standing in the ticket line at the Ashford County Fair on a bright Saturday, feeling like I'd been hit with a pillowcase full of sand. Ann, who is twenty-eight and apparently runs on sunlight, was bouncing next to me on her toes.

"You look terrible," she said, grinning up at me.

"Thanks! I feel great. Really alive."

"Sarcasm. Fine, I'll allow it." She pulled a folded paper out of her canvas bag and held it like a menu. "Okay, so, remember how things have been kind of... flat? Between us?"

I did remember. Four years married, and the last few months had been polite nods across the dinner table and sex that felt like filling out paperwork. I'd been meaning to bring it up for weeks and never found the words.

"Yeah, I remember," I said.

"Well, I wrote something. Three pages. Laminated them, actually, because it might rain later."

"You laminated it?"

"Marc. Do you want to hear it or not?"

The line moved forward. Ann bought our tickets while I watched, and she waited until we were past the gate before she unfolded the thing. It really was laminated. Three pages, stapled, with a title across the top in her nice designer lettering: The Worship Protocol.

"Okay, so here's the deal," she said, walking slow so I could read. "Today you worship me. All of me. Every part, top to bottom, before sundown. I wrote rules because you like rules, you're a data analyst, you love a spreadsheet, don't even argue."

"I wasn't going to argue! I genuinely love this. What are the rules?"

She flipped to page two. "Rule one, you ask before you touch. Every time. Rule two, when I tell you to kneel, you kneel, and you only get up when I say. Rule three, you say one true thing each time. Not a compliment from the compliment store, an actual true thing. Rule four, we check in, out loud, like, 'still good?' 'still good.' Rule five, safeword is 'popcorn,' because we will literally be surrounded by popcorn all day."

"Popcorn. Got it." I looked around at the fair, the food stalls and the game booths and the smell of fryer oil drifting over everything, and I asked the obvious question. "And all of this happens here? In public?"

"Hidden in public," she said, and tapped page three. "I scouted. There's a quiet patch behind the 4-H pavilion, there's the llama barn, there's the far end of the tractor lot. Nobody's watching, and if somebody does wander up, we're just a couple of weird adults being weird. We stop, we adjust, we keep going."

"When did you even scout this?"

"Tuesday. You were at work." She folded the pages back up with a snap. "So? Yes or no? I need a clear yes, Marc, that's kind of the whole engine of this thing."

"Yes! Absolutely yes." I meant it, too. My chest actually felt lighter, which sounds dramatic but there it is.

"Good. Then rule one starts now."

* * *

She stopped us right under the big entrance arch, that painted plywood thing with WELCOME TO ASHFORD COUNTY FAIR in letters that have been repainted maybe six times. Families streamed past on both sides, strollers and sunhats and somebody screaming about cotton candy, and Ann looked at me and pointed at the ground.

"Kneel."

I knelt. On hot asphalt, in front of a hundred strangers, and honestly? Only like four people even glanced at us. Most folks are busy.

"Now recite. 'Ann, today I will worship every part of your body before sundown. I will ask first. I will be honest. I will say popcorn if I need to stop.'"

I said it. She made me say it twice because the first time I rushed it. A guy selling balloons looked over and shrugged like he'd seen stranger things at a county fair, which, fair.

"Still good?" she asked, quiet, just for me.

"Still good," I said. "Very good. Weirdly good."

"Up." She took my hand and we walked in past the arch, and she was practically humming. I hadn't seen her that lit up since our honeymoon in Door County, and I'm not exaggerating, I really am not.

* * *

First stop, obviously, food. You can't do a whole day of anything at a fair without eating something terrible. Ann got a corn dog and I got a funnel cake, and we ate standing at a wobbly table while she quizzed me on the rules like a driving test.

"Rule three?"

"Say one true thing each time."

"And rule one?"

"Ask before I touch. Even your husband privileges have been revoked, apparently."

"Not revoked, transferred. I'm the gatekeeper now. You'll get them back at sundown." She licked powdered sugar off her thumb. "Oh, and rule six. You don't get to rush. If we don't finish the list today, we finish it another day. No pressure. This is supposed to be fun, not a deadline."

"You laminated a deadline."

"Marc."

"Sorry. Sorry. It's great. I love the lamination."

She laughed so hard she almost dropped the funnel cake. God, I'd missed that laugh. Where had that laugh been all spring?

Then she got serious again, wiped her hands on a napkin, and stood. "Okay. Llama barn. I checked the map twice, there's a dead spot behind it. Come on."

The llama barn smelled exactly like you'd expect, hay and llama, and around the back of it there was this little patch of grass between the barn wall and the fence line, shaded, with nobody around. You could hear the fair, the Tilt-A-Whirl and the announcer calling the pie contest, but you couldn't see anybody and nobody could see us. She'd really done her homework.

"Kneel," she said, and I knelt in the grass, which was way nicer on the knees than the asphalt, credit where due.

She slipped off her sandals. She'd gotten a pedicure sometime this week, deep red, and her feet were bare on the grass and she wiggled her toes at me like she was presenting evidence.

"Rule from page three," she said. "Each foot, each toe, one kiss, and one true thing about me. Ten toes, ten true things. Take your time. Ask first."

"Can I kiss your feet?" I asked, and saying it out loud felt strange and great at the same time.

"You may."

I started with her left foot, big toe first. "This one's for the way you laugh," I said, and kissed it. "Like, actually laugh, not polite laugh."

"Second toe. For how you handled the Henderson account meltdown without even blinking." Kiss. "Third toe, for driving my mom to her appointments all last month when I couldn't."

"Aw. Keep going, don't get sappy on me yet, we have eight more toes."

"Fourth toe, for the way you take your coffee, which is a crime, but it's yours." Kiss. "Fifth toe, for still being the person I want to tell things to first. Good news, bad news, all of it."

She was quiet a second. Then, "Okay, that one hit. Other foot. Still good?"

"Still good," I said. "You?"

"Very good. Keep going, mister."

Right foot, pinky toe first. "For planting those tomatoes in April even though you hate dirt." Kiss. "For remembering my dad's birthday every year when I forget." Kiss. "For the way you argue with the GPS." That one got a snort out of her. "For drawing logos at midnight and never charging the small nonprofits. I saw the invoices, don't think I didn't."

"Nosy," she said, but her voice had gone soft.

"Last one." I kissed the big toe on her right foot and looked up at her. "For this. For writing three pages and laminating them because you thought I'd like that. I did like that. I like you."

She looked down at me with the sun behind her head, and the Tilt-A-Whirl screamed somewhere off to our left, and she said, "Okay, big toe achieved. Feet done. Legs are next, and I'm wearing a skirt for a reason."

"Can I ask a question?"

"You just did."

"Can I touch your legs?"

She smiled and reached down and took my hand. "You may. Stand up slow, though, you're not twenty-five anymore."

"That was one time. The knee was fine by last Thursday."

* * *

The next item on the list wasn't behind the llama barn. It was, of all places, a picnic table near the food stalls.

"Table seven," Ann said, like she was reading off a reservation. "I scoped it out Tuesday. It's got a long tablecloth, see? Nobody can see under there. And the angle's wrong from the benches across the way."

"You scouted picnic tables on Tuesday?"

"I scouted the whole fair on Tuesday, Marc. Keep up."

So we bought lunch. She got another corn dog, because Ann at a fair without a corn dog is not Ann, and I got a funnel cake I set on the table, because my hands were going to be busy. She sat down at table seven, spread her skirt out, and patted the bench across from her. Then she flipped the tablecloth so it hung down on my side, a big yellow cloth with a rooster pattern on it, and looked under the table at me.

"Well? In you go. Sit on the grass, there's room. Rule one still applies. Ask."

"Can I touch your legs?"

"You may."

So there I was, a twenty-nine year old data analyst, sitting in the grass under a picnic table while his wife ate a corn dog six inches above his head. It sounds insane. It was insane. It was also, and I don't know how to explain this part, one of the best thirty minutes of my marriage.

I started at her ankles and worked up slow, kissing along her calves, and she just kept eating and chatting at me through the tablecloth like this was completely normal.

"These are good corn dogs this year," she said. "More cornmeal than last year, less batter weirdness."