Wedding of the Century update

When the pilot's voice chimed through the cabin, giving the usual unusual spiel about them being about to land (unusual because he addressed Mary Jane by name), Peter double checked that he was buckled in. Mary Jane, on the other hand, bounced up and flounced to another part of the plane. Peter had no idea what it was called. The air foyer?

She drew a curtain between his section of the plane and her section. Then he was pretty sure she started changing clothes.

“Uh, Mary Jane? MJ? We're going to land.”

“I know. Why do you think I'm changing?”

Peter wrinkled his brow. “Do you wear different clothes for flying and being on the ground?”

It made a certain amount of sense to Peter, but only if there were fur-lined jackets and jodhpurs involved.

“Don't be silly,” Mary Jane grunted, evidently hopping up and down to make her way into something. “I wear different clothes for you and my adoring public.”

“I don't think there's going to be much adoring public at an African airport.”

“Then you get two original Mary Jane looks all for you. Do you have any eyeliner on you? Never mind, found it.”

“Good. I haven't carried eyeliner since 2007.”

Mary Jane swiped the curtain aside. Now she wore a cut-out tanktop and belted saddle trousers (both by Dion Lee) with a patent leather clutch the same lavender color (by Amina Muaddi). Peter didn’t know any of this, except that she looked like a flower with her clothes the purple petals and her hair the blazing red pistil.

“You like? I wear this when I care about not caring what I wear.” Mary Jane tittered at her own witticism. ”See, I'm wearing UGGs.”

She came down the aisle, swaying her hips in a little fashion walk, and when turbulence shook the plane, she dropped almost into Peter's lap.

Almost because she caught herself on his armrest. But Peter was suddenly very, very close to Mary Jane and noticing he hadn't burst into flame.

Blood wasn't raining from the sky.

Nothing had happened except that he and MJ were close enough to touch and Peter couldn't help but be struck by the thought… how many more chances was he going to get?

He hoped at least one more. Because he couldn't focus on her now. The landing gear were coming down and he was about to land in enemy territory.

“You'd better get strapped in,” Peter told her, helping Mary Jane into the seat next to his.

“As the bishop said to the actress.”

Peter didn't even try to parse that out.

The plane landed, smooth as butter. It wasn't that much different from a passenger plane coming down, except that Mary Jane immediately got up. She reached into the overhead compartment for a cute two-wheeled suitcase about as big as a lunch pail. Peter didn't know what she could possibly keep in it. He picked up his own duffel bag and hardshell Samsonite.

“What are you doing, tiger?” Mary Jane asked. “Leave those here. The boys will get them.”

“You're taking that,” he pointed out.

“You think this is my only luggage? Peter, this is a Lisa Mu case. I'm carrying it just to carry it. In fact, I think I have a satchel you can carry.”

“You want me to hold a man-purse?”

“Don't worry, it's butch. We can even take the Hello Kitty stickers off it.”

Peter picked up the script Mary Jane had given him. “I can put this somewhere finally.”

“Actually I need that back. I'm not allowed to have it off studio property, which the plane counts as for financial reasons, but if you took it outside…”

“The secretary disavows all knowledge of your existence.”

“Oh right, I forgot, you're a spy, you're used to this.”

“Let's not joke about that until we're back on American soil.”

The pilot opened the outer door down into a staircase. Sunlight poured into the darkened plane along with the roar of a crowd. Screaming girls, shouts of Mary Jane’s name, a total din stabbing into the cabin.

“How does anyone get used to this?” Peter asked

“Used to what?” MJ replied.

Mary Jane took up position at the head of the staircase and was instantly nuked with camera flashes, stuttering so continuously that it was like a pillar of light fisting through the open door. MJ stood there, smiling and waving, blowing a few kisses. She offered her arm to Peter, still safely in the relative darkness of the cabin.

“Come on, Pete, they're going to think you need to get dressed if you aren't out here soon.”

Peter sighed. How could it be so easy to live in the shadows but so hard to be in the spotlight? It made him wish he could wear a mask. And a full body costume while he was at it.

He took a step toward her.

“The satchel,” Mary Jane urged him. “Grab the satchel.”

Peter saw a leather satchel in the overhead compartment. He grabbed it. He didn't feel like Indiana Jones.

Peter took Mary Jane's arm, though he felt like he was stepping into the path of a river of molten lava. To his immense surprise, he heard his own name shouted, a chorus of flash photography catching him beside Mary Jane like a steel trap snapping shut.

“I can't believe I didn't think to give you any walking lessons,” Mary Jane muttered. “We had the whole plane ride.”

“I know how to walk.”

“You do very well for someone with no formal training,” she said mollifyingly.

“You should see me tie my shoelaces.”

Each step was a new barrage of flashes, another shouted question, a simple shriek of excitement. It was all something Peter hadn't seen outside of movies.

They were on an airstrip, not much different from any in the States. In the distance was the Serengeti, small townships clinging tight to the brown-bleached horizon, but there was no seeing more of them through the constant bombardment of the evening haze.

The crowd of admirers and well-wishers and publicity hounds was contained by stanchions backed by armed guards. A spotless red carpet led from the plane to a waiting limo. During a lull in the barrage, Peter saw stars dotting the deepening night sky. Like even miles away, flashbulbs were going off.

Mary Jane was an old hand at it. At the bottom of the stairs, they were greeted by a guy in a sash. Peter took him for some government functionary. He handed MJ a bouquet of flowers. She gave him a half hug and a kiss on the cheek and they were welcomed to Wakanda, officially.

Mary Jane walked the red carpet, seeming to luxuriate in brief interactions with everyone lining the velvet ropes, but she always kept moving. The hand she had holding Peter's squeezed steady pressure into his fingers. It was about the only attention anyone paid to him.

The crowd hung on every coy blandishment that fell from Mary Jane's lips. They seemed to want to photograph every moment she existed, every angle she could be seen from. Like they wanted the great ravenous maw of their readers to be fed the view God would have of her.

Peter was shocked out of his bemusement by the sound of his own name being rediscovered. He turned to see a stringer holding a Handicam, his status obvious from his white skin. The man saw that he'd caught Peter's attention and held up the camcorder.

“Hey, Peter, how does MJ’s pussy taste?”

Peter almost started toward him, but Mary Jane dug her nails into his hand and whispered to him through tight lips. “Don't worry about it. Water off a duck.”

“That guy deserves a punch through his nose,” Peter said, though he managed to keep his voice too low for anyone but Mary Jane to hear.

“Do that and you might as well hand him a winning lotto ticket.”

A coachman… or whatever they called those these days… opened the door to the limo. Peter took it that the vehicle was provided by the Wakandan government, but it was precisely as luxurious as Mary Jane’s usual rides.

Mary Jane took it for granted, like the light coming on after she flipped a switch. She sprawled out, belting herself in. Peter looked through the back window to see the trunk being loaded up with MJ’s luggage, as well as Peter's two pieces of baggage. The handlers were impressively bulky; not the out of shape lugs Peter was used to seeing in orange safety vests.

The trunk shut. Mary Jane gave a few last poses through the open window before the car glid into motion and she rolled up the glass. 

Seeing Mary Jane go out of her PR brightness was like watching a Barbie doll come to life. “You know what I'm weirdly reminded of? Weirdly because it really doesn't have much to do with today… this early role I had in Manhattan Manhunt. Not a great title, not a great movie. I was the female lead, technically, but it was such a guy movie that there were like five dudes above me on the call sheet. I was just the hero's wife, but it was a good role. I got to cuddle up to a hot guy in bed, run around on the beach. We even filmed wedding footage for an afternoon. I had fun being a bride. I think my mom's watched that scene a hundred times. If they made a sequel where I had a baby, she'd rent out an IMAX theater for it.”

They drove on a newly paved road, all the concrete the same color. There were no other cars on the road, but there was the occasional cart or pedestrian, using the road simply as a big map telling them they were going the right direction. In places, the road branched off into other directions, usually leading to a hut village, an office park, or a rural temple… these were always built upon lakes. There were miles of grassland between every address.

“Your mom sounds nice,” Peter said, worried he'd let the silence stretch on too long.

“She's no stage mom, that's for sure. She’d be happy with me making six figures and working at a daycare, if only I was married and rawdogging it.”

“There’s an expression I didn’t think you’d use.”