Dating Without Novocaine

by Lisa Cach

  “What else have you been discovering?” I asked Louise, in hopes of something cheering. She had a mini psychology library in her apartment, and between that and working with fifty-odd counselors and social workers, she usually had good access to interesting information. She was enough of a cynic about life and love that she was constantly looking for a scientific explanation for personal things that the rest of us took for granted.

  “Along with the proximity, is familiarity. It’s not that we know what we like—we like what we know. So the more time you spend with someone, the better you like them.”

  “Doesn’t that work the opposite way?” Scott asked.

  I made a face at him. He grinned.

  “Same thing happens with music, or a piece of art,” Louise explained. “Or fashion. You ever notice how when something new comes out, you swear you will never wear it, and then six months later it’s in your closet.”

  “Unfortunately,” I agreed.

  “Then there’s similarity,” Louise went on. “Age, race, ethnic background, educational level, social status, family background, religion.”

  “I can see that. Less to argue about,” I said. “Less to get adjusted to. And if you got involved with the person because they lived close by, you probably have a lot in common already.”

  “Social status?” Cassie asked, turning away from the monitor. “You mean, like class differences? Where are we, India?”

  Cassie was maybe the one person I knew who I could imagine being equally comfortable in the company of a drug addict who had dropped out of middle school or a middle-aged society matron from the West Hills. She was so firmly in her own world, the relative positions of others could not shake her.

  There were times I hoped I would grow up to be like Cassie.

  “And last but not least,” Louise went on, “physical attractiveness.”

  “Hoo-rah!” Scott said.

  “Oh, stop it,” Louise scolded. “You’re not nearly the animal you think.”

  “Ha. What do you know?”

  “You’re a ‘nice guy,’” I said, feeling wicked. “You’re the type that women like to have as a friend.”

  “Kee-rist! Thanks a lot! Could you be a little more insulting?”

  I gave a toothy grin.

  “When’s the last time you had a checkup? Maybe it’s time for some dental X rays.”

  “Don’t be mean.” Memories of hard cardboard edges poking my gums filled my mind, and the heavy weight of the lead apron on my chest. The smell of alcohol, the taste of the latex-gloved fingers against the edge of my tongue…

  “The thing about the physical attractiveness,” Louise said, “is that we go for someone as attractive as we think we can get without risking rejection.”

  “That must be why handsome men are so terrifying,” I said.

  “I scare you that much?” Scott asked.

  I snorted.

  “Come on, Scott, you’re the same way,” Louise said. “I’ve been with you when you’ve refused to approach a woman because you thought she was too beautiful for you.”

  That was interesting. I never thought of Scott thinking himself not good enough for anyone. Who wouldn’t want a good-looking guy who was a reliable provider? What did he have to be uncertain about?

  “You know,” I said, “you see rich, ugly men with beautiful women, but you never see a rich, ugly woman with a handsome man. Never. The closest you get is a famous, rich older woman with a young guy, but even then she’s got to still be looking pretty good.”

  We looked at Scott.

  “What? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Guilt by association,” I said.

  “I thought I was a ‘nice guy.’”

  “So you’d date a woman less attractive than yourself?”

  “That’s not a fair question.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I answer honestly, I’ll sound like a pig.”

  “What’s unfair about that?”

  “You already know the answer. Everyone knows, you don’t need a scientific study to prove it. Guys are visual. We want someone good-looking, if we can get her.”

  “And even if you can’t,” I said, beginning to get steamed by the injustice of it. I hated caring about my appearance as much as I did, I wanted to believe it didn’t matter, that it was inner beauty that counted, but every time I almost started to convince myself of that, something came along to say I was wrong.

  “I saw an interview on TV,” I said, “with some guy who said his only intimate relationships were with prostitutes, because the women that he found attractive in daily life did not find him attractive in return. So he’d rather pay for it, and have it fake, than get to know a real woman he could maybe build a life with.”

  “For God’s sake, Hannah. Now you’re comparing me to a guy who sleeps with hookers? All I said was that I’d prefer someone attractive. So would you. So would anyone. Listen to Louise, she’s the one who read the study!”

  “I’m putting that in my profile,” Cassie said. “‘Must have no history of dating prostitutes.’ Do you think that will put anyone off?”

  The tension broke, and I relaxed back against the futon. Scott nudged my knee with his foot, and I slapped it lightly away, looking at him from the corner of my eye and not quite able to keep from smiling.

  “If it does,” Louise said, “it’s just as well. Think of the diseases! Bleh!”

  Five

  Mourning Clothes

  My mobile phone rang as I slowly cruised the residential street of tract mansions looking for Kristina DeFrang’s house. She was a new client, referred by Joanne of the muffins and too much clothing.

  I pulled to the curb and stopped before answering, having promised myself when purchasing the thing that I would not annoy the rest of humanity by driving and talking at the same time. I’d come near to breaking the promise a hundred times, and who would know? But I didn’t want to be one of those cell phone users. I wanted to be one of the good ones, who when in public huddled in a corner and whispered a brief conversation, then hung up quickly.

  Perhaps that was another criteria to put in the personal ad, besides no history of dating prostitutes: does not use mobile phone while browsing at Barnes & Noble or standing in line at Starbucks. Cassie would qualify that with: prefers independent businesses to chains, and does not know the difference between a Grande and a Tall.

  I, on the other hand, thought Starbucks and Barnes & Noble were both good places to look for guys. Some guys apparently thought the same thing about bookstores: I’d once been followed aisle to aisle by a lummox carrying a copy of Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul.

  “Hello, this is Hannah.”

  “Hannah! Are you on the phone?”

  It took a daughter to translate Mother-speak correctly. “Hi, Mom. I’m on the cell phone, in my car.”

  “You aren’t driving, are you? Should I call back?”

  “It’s okay, I’m parked. What’s up?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Nearly to Camas, looking for a client’s house.” Camas was across the river, in Washington state, about half an hour from Portland. “She’s supposed to have a big job for me, something about redecorating her second house.”

  “Dad can’t get the VCR to work.”

  The abrupt change of topic was nothing new, and I tried to not take offense at her apparent lack of interest in my work. And it was only an apparent lack: I knew that she cared how I was and that I was able to make ends meet, but the specifics of that struggle and of my work were beyond her present life.

  Mom and Dad were nearly seventy, having had me late and as a bit of a surprise. Mom was a retired grade school teacher, and Dad had been a carpenter and was now a housing inspector. He talked about retiring, but I doubted he would unless forced to. They lived in the house I had grown up in, in Roseburg, three hours south of Portland. It wasn’t the boonies, but it was pretty close.

  “Put him on,” I said.


  There were scuffling sounds, muted voices, then Dad. “I followed your instruction sheet, but it didn’t work, and now I can’t get the regular TV stations, either. I think the remote’s batteries need to be changed.”

  I stifled a sigh. How could a man who could spot the first faint signs of dry rot and tell the exact remaining life span of a roof be stymied by a couple of black buttons?

  “Get the biggest remote…” I said, and within half a minute I heard the static disappear from the background, and the voice of a newscaster caught mid-drone.

  “Thanks! I think I can remember how to do that,” Dad said, and then Mom was on the phone again.

  “He’s rented some awful gangster movie. He knows I don’t like those.”

  “What is it?”

  “Analyze This.”

  “You might like it. It’s a comedy.”

  “I don’t know how gangsters can be funny.”

  “I gotta go, Mom, or I’ll be late.”

  “Okay. When are you coming down for dinner?”

  “I’ll call from home. I really have to go.”

  “They’ve seen bears in the park, coming out to go through the garbage. The salmon berries are late in coming out this year.”

  “I gotta go, Mom!”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I hung up, feeling the mix of guilt and love and worry that I usually did after talking to my parents. In the back of my mind sat the realization that death or accident or illness was not just a possibility, but an inevitability. What would happen to one, when the other died?

  What would happen to me?

  I picked up the instructions to Ms. DeFrang’s house, looked again at the address, and coasted down the street, trying not to think of the future.

  Six

  Silk vs. Spandex

  “How much are you going to get for doing that job?” Louise asked, raising her voice to be heard over the shouts of juvenile delinquents. We were in the lobby of the Garland Theater, a one-time movie house that had decomposed into a venue for local bands and, twice a month, professional wrestling.

  If you wanted to call it professional.

  “I’ll have to figure it out, but I’m guessing about fifteen hundred. You should have seen her place: it was in one of those big new housing developments where every house has something like four thousand square feet, yet they all have these dinky little bits of yard. You could reach out a window and shake hands with your neighbor.”

  “Who’d want to live in one of those? They all look alike.”

  “Yeah, I know, but this Kristina DeFrang’s house, it was different. You went inside, and you wouldn’t have known the house was brand new. You’d have thought Thomas Jefferson lived there, or King Louis the Something.”

  “Lots of antiques?”

  “Yeah, but not like some people do, where there’s Victorian junk clogging up all the space. This was…different. And it didn’t look like any one particular style. Everything blended.”

  “Could have been in House Beautiful?” Louise asked.

  “I wish I knew how to put together a room like that.”

  And I wouldn’t mind someday being Ms. DeFrang. She was in her late forties, fit in that spalike way wealthy women look fit, but without the usual accompanying manacles of gold and diamonds on wrists and fingers. Her hair was cut in a bob similar to mine, and she wore minimal makeup. Her clothes were simple and obviously expensive, and I knew it would be beneath her dignity to show the name of a designer, or to sport a style that showed a hint of trendiness.

  How she’d ended up in that nouveau neighborhood, I don’t know. She seemed too good for it.

  She was too good for me, too, but she was the type who would consider it a mark of bad breeding if she ever let her awareness of that show.

  I’d felt like a tacky frump following her around her house, my shoes looking like the discount store copies they were, my pantyhose showing the coarseness of knit available only at the grocery store. My blouse I’d made myself, copying one I’d seen at Saks, but with its sleeves that belled at the wrist and the ruffle at the surplice neckline, it felt gauche when confronted with Ms. DeFrang’s timelessness.

  “She wouldn’t be caught dead here,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Ms. DeFrang. But if she had to come here, she’d make it look like she was pleased to be invited.”

  “Then she has more grace than I do. Why did I let you talk me into this? Remind me?”

  “Ah, come on. You need new experiences,” I said as we shoved our way into the theater and fought our way to our seats.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’ll have a great story to tell,” I said.

  “If I survive.”

  “There are dads with their kids here. It’s family fun!”

  “They’ll all grow up to be murderers.”

  We sat down, and I tucked between my feet the paper bag with the costume I was going to deliver.

  “So she wants you to copy the entire master suite?” Louise asked, going back to Ms. DeFrang.

  “The entire thing, only in different fabrics that she’s ordering from her decorator. She and her husband have a house on Orcas Island, up in Puget Sound, with the same basic layout as the one in Camas. And she wants me to do the guest bedroom up there, too, that her mother-in-law uses.”

  “So, what is it, dust ruffles and duvets?”

  “And about a dozen decorative pillows, and hangings for the beds. A lot of it is simple stuff, but the pillows are going to be a little tricky. They’ve got contrasting striped borders, piping that I have to make myself, mitred corners. They’re going to be a pain. And I have to order the pillow forms myself, from a wholesaler.”

  “But that’s why you get the big bucks.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m rolling in it.”

  The announcer came out, a late middle-aged man with a belly and light brown hair in a pompadour, his skin craggy and mottled. He started his spiel, trying—vainly, I thought—to add drama to the lineup of local wrestlers.

  “The Logger, straight from the backwoods where they eat owls for dinner,” he said, to a mix of cheers and boos from the crowd. “The Body Bag, and you know why he’s called that—”

  “He sends them home in a bag!” a kid to our right yelled.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Louise said.

  “We’ll just wait until Elroy has his match, then go down to the dressing room.” Elroy was my client, whose new spandex pants I had in the bag between my feet. I’d done costumes for a couple wrestlers down in Eugene when I’d worked at the alterations shop, and they’d passed my name along.

  There was something perverse about it, but I had a bit of a thing for wrestlers. Not these locals sorts so much, but the ones on the WWF had a way of catching my eye. Those greased-up, muscled bodies throwing each other around called to something primal within me.

  Not that I could see myself married to one of them. They were the toys of my imagination, and I was happy to keep them there, where their oiled locks wouldn’t stain my pillows. Although maybe just once…

  A round of cheers went up as the first wrestlers came out, one of them flanked by two women who looked as though they lived under a bar. The wrestlers were no more appealing, their bulk in their barrel chests coated with a layer of fat.

  “My butt has better muscle tone than either of theirs,” Louise said. “Don’t these guys work out?”

  “They always start the evening with the unknowns. The later guys will be a little more interesting.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Some of the young boys in the audience were getting excited by the match, shouting and booing, and there were some drunk college-age guys being obnoxious a few rows down. The rest of the house had a tired feel to it, as if seeing a porky guy in lace-up red boots being thrown onto a wrestling mat wasn’t fine entertainment.

  “I want to see some blood,” Louise said. “Blood!” she
said in a half shout.

  The kid next to us heard her, and took up the cry. “Blood! Blood! Bust him open!”

  The boy’s father leaned around his son and gave us a dirty look. I shrugged helplessly, trying to look innocent. He shook his head and leaned back.

  “He’s not so bad,” Louise said, nodding her head toward the father. “Is he wearing a wedding ring?”

  “You’re beginning to scare me.”

  “I kind of like this. Who here is going to care what I do?” She stood and started shouting toward the ring. “Headlock, baby! Jackhammer! Body slam!”

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, yanking at the hem of her blouse. “Sit down! Louise!”

  “Pile driver! Sit on him! Wooooo-hoo!”

  “Louise! You’re embarrassing me.” I could feel my face going red as people turned to look.

  “Put him in a granny hold!”

  “Louise!”

  “Wooooo-hoo!” she cheered, punching her fist into the air, then finally submitted to my tugging and sat as the match ended and new wrestlers came out. “That was fun.”

  “You were screaming nonsense.”

  “Yeah, so what? No one cares. Maybe they’ll think I’m some kind of expert.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Oh, lighten up.”

  “This isn’t like you.”

  “What can I say? It’s the testosterone in the air. I should get some of my co-workers to come here, for stress relief. God, I get so sick of having to watch every word I say.”

  “You mean on the phones?”

  “You can’t be flippant with suicidal callers or some guy whose wife just left him.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” I said.

  “But you know,” she said, sounding thoughtful, “it’s never the mentally ill I mind talking to. It’s the walking wounded, the so-called normal people who drive me up a wall—especially family members of someone with a mental illness. God, they’re annoying. And even off the phones—lately it seems like everyone who works at the crisis line is involved in their own petty political battles.”