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paranoid
stick-in-the-mud hypocrite.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’re not breaking God’s law. Hell, if God is love
and love is for everyone, why shouldn’t you be able to express yourself in
God’s house?”
    “Frankie, this ain’t Massachusetts, this is the Dominican
Republic.”
    “Yeah, right. The place where it’s okay for two men to fuck
for money, but it ain’t okay for two men to love for love.”
    “Look, Sis, we’re not talking about me and Étie, we’re
talking about you and Étie. We know exactly why we’re doing this.”
    “Yeah, so you can get your man over to America to be with
you so the two of you can enjoy what everybody else in America has a right to
enjoy—being with the person you love.”
    “There are some rights we’re still waiting on.”
    “The kind of rights it’s worth breaking rules over, Junie.
What’s getting ready to go down here is one of those by-any-means-necessary
situations and we need to make this a full-out production. A church ceremony
would be the icing on the cake!”
    “Read my lips, Frankie. No church wedding.”
    “Come on, Junie.”
    “No,” I said firmly. “Besides, we’re saving that for when
Étie and I can get married.”
    “Huh?”
    “When the laws change, when society changes, and it is changing. Then we’ll get married in a church.”
    “Well why the hell didn’t you say that in the beginning?”
    * * * * *
    That Friday we all gathered in the little courtroom in
downtown Santo Domingo. I, along with Wilhelm, Alejandro, Carlton, a civil
servant on her lunch break, a courtroom peace officer and a tourist couple from
Toronto, stood by as a magistrate administered the vows to Étienne Saldano and
Francesca Templeton Chapelle DaSilva in poetic Spanish.
    I kept my camera busy throughout, marveling at the beautiful
lie so stunningly, yet simply, captured in my lens. If ever there was a tableau
so sacred and profane, this was it. My sister and my lover were the picture of
perfection; she in an uncharacteristically understated summer Chanel, he in
cream linen slacks and shirt, a gold-cocoa tie, as luminous as his skin tone,
knotted neatly at the collar.
    When the magistrate pronounced them man and wife, Étie
initiated the kiss with a gentleman’s modesty, but Frankie, actress that she was,
went the whole nine yards, filling my baby’s mouth with more tongue than I
thought was necessary. But in spite of my tinge of jealousy, I rapid-snapped
the gesture from every angle imaginable and then joined the others gathered in
cheering, applauding, hugging and kissing the new couple with an enthusiasm as
festive as the Charles and Di nuptials.
    That night I made love to my baby sister’s husband as if it
were my honeymoon night. And in a sense it was. It was our honeymoon
night. Ours.
    The next day, Sunday, I flew back to Los Angeles to begin
prepping for my photo shoot with Snoop, which would take place that Wednesday
in a faux Compton setting at a studio in Burbank.
    Everything was going well. I talked to Étie and Sis every
day and they emailed me wonderfully convincing pictures taken by resort
staffers of the “loving couple” enjoying their honeymoon vacation—scuba diving,
parasailing, dancing the night away in the resort disco, romantic candlelight
dinners. It was a full Hollywood production so convincing that it seemed like a
reality show that was actually reality.
    And that’s when I got the panicked call from Étie.

Chapter Eight
     
    I couldn’t believe it! My sister actually tried to fuck my
man! Goddamn you, Frankie! You and your fucking burning bush!
    “She come to my room, baby,” Étie tried to explain as calmly
as possible, but he was obviously very upset. “And she drunk. I invite her in.
We talk. I go to pee. Come back and she naked! I say to her, ‘What you doing,
Francesca?’ ‘Nothing yet,’ she say, ‘but I’m here to do my husband.’”
    “What?!”
    “That’s right, baby. That what she say! I tell her,
‘Francesca,