Nikandros told the clerk that he would take Kristina’s last name instead of vice versa.
“Now Nikandros,” the clerk said, “you and the bride have to apply for the license using your current legal names and then the form says that the bride’s name will be your name. See the blank where we fill that in.”
WITH HER EAR PRESSED TO THE EARTH BY ROBERT EARLE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 19
Nikandros told the clerk that he would take Kristina’s last name instead of vice versa. He held the counter with both hands in a way that suggested he meant to impose this proposition, just as he insisted the marriage take place in San Francisco. To Kristina, San Francisco was full of buildings that could crumble at any moment as they had in 1906, crushing her parents. She assumed she survived only because she was so small, a baby. She had many pictures in her mind of squalling in the rubble. But they couldn’t be real memories. Her real memories of earthquakes came from the verses her Uncle Alexei came across in the Bible when he read it out loud at night. The Bible was full of earthquakes. Ever…