Page 21 of Married in Michigan

I wonder at that, why he thinks I would go for another drive with him, and why it would a someday thing. I don’t ask, though, because he’s off and running on another old car.

“Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Joe all have a hard-on for the newer hypercars and supercars-- all the McLarens and Lambos and such. They’re both in the garage in New York, but Dad has a Koenigsegg One-to-One, and Uncle Joe has a Bugatti Chiron.” He gestures at the car next to the Porsche. “This is a 1964 Shelby 289 Competition, fully restored.” He looks at me expectantly.

I shrug, and he glances at the ceiling as if uttering a plea for help from heaven, or for patience with the very dull. “Okay. This one looks a little nicer than the Porsche.”

“A little nicer—?” he sputters, nearly apoplectic. “Clearly this is wasted on you.”

I smirk, pat his arm—which is a bit like patting a brick wall. My girl bits sit up and take notice. “Yep. Sure is.” I shrug. “Show me a vintage Hermès handbag and I may be slightly more impressed.”

“You’d have to talk to Aunt Evelyn about that. She’s got a purse collection valued at several million dollars. She hosts a yearly viewing of her purse gallery, and tickets to the event go for thousands of dollars. Proceeds to charity obviously.”

“Obviously,” I echo, feeling faint. “What is a purse gallery? And why would anyone pay thousands of dollars to see it?”

He shakes his head. “You said you’d be impressed if you saw a vintage Hermès. Aunt Evelyn has a—well, it’s hard to explain. Basically, half of her house is dedicated to their bedroom, and of that entire wing of the house, most of it is closet. I’d say, oh…five thousand square feet or so of the house is just closet. Of that closet, most of it is her purse gallery. Which is exactly what it sounds like—a gallery of museum-quality purses, displayed like the artwork they are. In temperature-controlled, biometrically locked, fire, water , and shatter-proof, lighted, all that.”

I blink for a few minutes. “I don’t even know how to process any of that.”

He laughs, shakes his head, and gestures. “Come on.”

This time, I let him lead me out of the garage. He doesn’t take my hand, and I’m an odd mixture of relieved and disappointed. The doorway from the garage to the inside of the house is, anticlimactically, just a normal door; I’d half expected some kind of Star Trek-like automatic sliding door with a disembodied voice. The anticlimax stops as soon as I’m through the door: acres of polished hardwood, floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking Lake Michigan with a view that beats even the view from the penthouse at the hotel. Everywhere you turn, you’re overwhelmed by the view, stunned breathless. And then, once you’ve gathered your senses, you start to look around, and you see the house itself—windows everywhere you turn, the floors so polished you can see your reflection in them, the marble counters, the glass-fronted floating cabinets in the kitchen and the massive range and the…the everything. This is a home to which the phrase “money is no object” was taken to its upper extreme.

Paxton stands beside me where I’ve stopped dead in my tracks two steps beyond the door to the garage. “Yeah, gets you every time.”

I glance at him. “Didn’t you grow up here, though?”

He laughs. “No. They built this when I was in middle school.”

“But I mean, from then on, though.”

“Well, still no. I went to boarding school.”

I frown at him. “That’s still a thing?”

He laughs again. “Very much so.”

I remember bits of the conversation I overheard. “You went to military school too, didn’t you?”

He chuckles. “Youwereeavesdropping.”

I shrug. “Told you—perks of the job.”

He moves into the kitchen. “Yes, I did, and thank you very much for the reminder.”

“‘Thanks so much for bringing up such a painful subject. Why don’t you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it while you’re at it?’” I eye him as I quotePrincess Bride, wondering if he’ll catch it. Probably not.

He snickers, grinning at me. “‘Whoo-hoo, look who knows so much! This man is onlymostlydead. See, there’s a difference betweenmostlydead andalldead.’”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t think you’d catch the reference.”

“Part of the reason I ended up in military school was because I kept getting other guys in trouble. One of my favorite pastimes was convincing kids to sneak out of the dorms at night. I’d…found, shall we say…a movie projector, and a buddy and I hooked it up in a nice little out-of-the-way spot in a corner of the school grounds so it was playing up against the back of an old shed, and we’d watch movies and drink booze and smoke dope and shit. One of our favorite movies wasPrincess Bride. Oh man, we must’ve watched that a hundred times.”

“Well, we have that movie in common, at least,” I say. He’s looking at me expectantly again. “What?”

“What’s your story with it?”

“With what?Princess Bride?” I laugh. “My mom. She worked a lot when I was growing up, but no matter what, she always had Sunday evenings off, and we’d watch a movie together. Usually, that one.Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,Footloose,Sixteen Candles.” I sigh, remembering. “But mostly,Princess Bride.”

“For us it was that one,Roadhouse,Big Trouble in Little China, Escape From New York,Terminator, guy stuff like that.” He chuckles again. “The thing that got us caught was when Freddie stole his stepdad's collection of 70s porn. Our little group of kids sneaking out to watch movies went from half a dozen, to a dozen or so guys, to half the school, because of porn.”