by David Jester
‘They look so tasty,’ Ally said. I noticed she was picking up a habit of lying.
I ate them with feigned gusto and was glad when my plate was clean, the contents diminished to an inky, oily pool.
‘Lovely,’ I told Ally afterwards.
She was thrilled that she had chosen well. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ she said.
She hadn’t ordered the stuffed mushroom. It didn’t feel right for her to make a pushy recommendation, wait for me order and then order something entirely different for herself, but I didn’t say anything; it was our first date, I could let that one slide.
‘You did,’ I said with a smile, taking note never to listen to her again.
The main course was an amalgamation of vegetables chopped and boiled into a pate and served on another section of the amazon rainforest. I picked at it with my fork, hoping to weed out the bugs before I dove in.
‘So, how long have you been a vegetarian?’ I asked.
‘I’m not,’ she said simply.
I looked at her in horror.
She noted my reaction and laughed softly. ‘I know, I’m sorry, But it’s nice right? You like it?’
I decided not to dignify that with a response.
She smiled and took a sip of wine, peeking at me above the rim as the red liquid swished around below her nose. ‘I used to come here with my husband,’ she told me softly, looking down at her plate in silent contemplation.
I had been inspecting a soppy piece of greenery, wondering if I was supposed to eat it or if it was decorative. I dropped it back onto my plate.
‘Husband?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she looked back up at me, a forced smile breaking out. ‘Not anymore, we broke up a while back.’
‘Oh,’ I softened. ‘That’s okay; I don’t want to go down that road again.’
‘Again?’
‘Never mind.’ I picked the greenery back up and decided to risk it. It went into my mouth and then popped out again, it tasted like a dead dandelion. ‘What happened with you two?’ I wondered, trying to talk the taste of deceased weeds out of my mouth.
Ally had retreated from her confident stance, slipping into reticence and bashfulness. I watched her with intrigue, wondering what was going on inside her head.
She took a long drink of wine. ‘He was a bastard, that’s all. Best not to talk about it.’
I didn’t really want to hear about it, not if it was going to admonish the confident side of her that I admired, but I sensed she wanted to talk about it regardless of what she had said.
‘Are you sure? I don’t mind if you--’
‘He was a dick,’ she blurted out, suddenly showing me a third side of her personality, a bitter and resentful side. ‘He cheated on me you know,’ she pointed a fork at me as she spoke; a smudge of avocado dripped off the prong and fell onto the tablecloth. ‘Three times!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not sure how else to react and genuinely feeling apologetic under her accusing glare.
‘I finished with him and he had the nerve to stalk me! Can you believe it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘He was a pitiful man. A lying, cheating--’ she shook her head. ‘--A bastard,’ she reiterated, letting the word fall out of her mouth like a clump of bad tasting bile.
‘I see.’ I looked as thoughtful as I could. ‘I’m sorry.’
She laughed a little and shook the anger out. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said, repositioning herself on the seat as Hyde departed and Dr Jekyll returned. ‘I was getting started then, every time I think about him or talk about--’ she shivered. ‘Let’s just leave it.’
We did, and I was thankful for it. Ally turned back into the cool confident sophisticate she had initially appeared to be. After the main course we talked about the Speed Dating event, she told me she had met a sleazy guy who reminded her of her husband, she said he tried to talk his way into her pants and would have probably gotten there if not for her experience with scum-of-the-earth like him. I kept quiet, I knew she was talking about Matthew; it seemed wise to pretend I didn’t know him.
After a light, green-free dessert, I paid up and we left the restaurant. Outside Ally told me she had a wonderful time, beaming proudly as she said it. She kissed me softly and compassionately on the cheek, said a pleasant goodbye and then walked off down the street.
She left me standing there, perhaps presuming I would walk straight ahead into a taxi, or veer off in the other direction. She didn’t realise I lived in the same direction and I didn’t want to tell her, we had already done the goodnight dance and it had gone well, in a life of awkward embarrassment it was good to have one occasion that I didn’t mess up.
Instead I pretended to tie up my shoe in case she looked back. I waited around a minute for her to get a good distance away, and then I followed.
I put head down as my mind pondered the night and the three sides of Ally I had encountered. Matthew had told me to be careful of divorced women, especially those above forty. “If they’ve been married for a long time,” he’d said once, “they’ve had all the life and enjoyment sucked out of them, and once the divorce comes in, that all gets replaced with bitterness. They’ll act nice and polite, but only because they know how to fake it. Shag them and then try to leave them in the morning and they’ll slice open your scrotum with their high heels.”
Matthew’s advice usually came from experience; I could only assume the same applied to those words of wisdom. His balls had taken a lot of abuse.
I walked with a twisted smile on my face thinking about Matthew and his tendencies towards the sadomasochists of the world, that smile was still there when Ally called my name.
I looked up to see her standing just a few feet ahead of me, a look of worrisome curiosity on her face. She was leaning against a wall that marked the perimeter to a nearby garden; in her hand she held a high-heel shoe. She had clearly stopped to pick stones or gum from the sole, but a lump stuck in my throat when I saw the malevolent footwear.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked with raised eyebrows.
I stopped, hesitated. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said innocently, not wanting to reveal the awkwardness of the initial goodbye. ‘I didn’t know you’d gone this way.’
Yes, you did. I said to myself. You watched her; she watched you watch her.
‘I mean, I did,’ I clarified. ‘I just wasn’t really looking.’
That makes no sense.
I tried again: ‘I looked, but, well, I guess I got lost.’
She slipped the shoe back on and took a couple of steps back. ‘We had a good night Kieran,’ I detected a slight tremble in her voice. I stepped forward to reassure her, but that only forced her back a few more steps. ‘Why don’t we leave it at that for tonight?’ she spoke slowly.
I shrugged. ‘Sounds fine.’
She turned and hotfooted it away into the darkness. I waited for a few more minutes and then set off again, keeping an eye on the path ahead of me and walking like a disabled turtle.
When I arrived back home I wasn’t surprised to see that the unnamed, unknown model had left a message for me on my answer machine. The red flashing light clawed at me in the darkness:
‘Kieran, just wanted to see how you were. You feeling any better? Ready for our date yet? I know I said I’d wait for your call, but well, I couldn’t wait!’
The message was followed by a mixture of awkward laughter and repeated throat clearing. It cut off after several cringe worthy seconds.
I didn’t want to let the woman down. I also wanted to redeem myself after screwing up a good date with Ally, a girl who now probably assumed I was stalking her.
I phoned the unnamed girl back that night. She was as hyper and awkward as she had been on the answer machine, but after a few minutes she relaxed. I wasn’t so apprehensive about arranging a date at that point so I agreed to a dinner date the following weekend.
As the week progressed and the date grew near, the apprehension retu
rn with bite. It worried me that I was going on a potentially one-sided blind date. I sought out Matthew’s advice to see if he could help me determine who she was, he didn’t have a clue but he did suggest I meet her and sleep with her.
I waited for her outside the restaurant with a rapid heart. I tried to act casual, to lean back on a lamppost, foot up, eyes down, but I never could pull off cool and casual. I looked like a rapist on the prowl.
I caught the eyes of a couple of beautiful women coming towards me on the street, and I prayed that she was one of them, that they had been there on the SpeedDate, that I had completely forgotten about them and now I was going to have a night to remember with one of them.
When a taxi pulled up a few feet away and she climbed out, I remembered her instantly. She hadn’t slipped my memory at all. I even remembered her name.
‘Hey, Ashley,’ I said, putting on my best smile and walking towards her.
She clambered out of the car with the decorum of a lemming. She paid the driver and then joined me on the pavement.
She wore a long black dress, but not very well. It was loose around the shoulders, the straps slipped off repeatedly. It hung over her figure like an American Football uniform.
Her eyes were as mesmerising as I had remembered, the brightest green I had ever seen, but the rest of her was also as I had remembered.
She was far from attractive, and looked like a man in loose fitting drag. I didn’t want to let her sense my disappointment though, I felt guilty for thinking those thoughts about her, especially since I had agreed to go on the date. I knew I would just have to battle through, get to the end of the night and then calmly and politely brush her off.
In the restaurant I drank my way through a bottle of wine before the main had even arrived. Ashley noted my thirst and didn’t seem to mind, she joined me and we got through another three bottles before dessert. It began as a way to get through the evening, but when the alcohol started flowing I began to enjoy myself.
She was a little boring, tedious and awkward, but I was more than content to stare into her eyes and listen to her recall her life story. By the time the night was out, and I had drank a few bourbons to finish the meal, I had even convinced myself that she was an incredibly beautiful woman, who, now I had gotten to know her, was just the girl I was looking for.
The rest of the night went by in a blur. The walk home, the kiss, the invitation inside, the sex. It all sped by in a drunken haze.
The next morning I woke up in a strange bed, in a strange house. I was naked and clammy, thin bed sheets stuck to my body. Ashley was naked next to me.
My head rang with a relentless ache. My breath was dry and smelled of stale wine and bourbon. My body also ached, partially from dehydration, but also from the deep scratches that Ashley had carved into my back the previous night, some of which had bled onto the cream sheets and were already healing into painful scabs.
The events of the previous night began to flood back. I threw the sheets off my fatigued body and brushed my hands against my face to restore some vigour, removing the sleep that had wedged into my eyelashes and the corners of my eyes.
The first memory to bite my fatigued, tender brain, was her voice: she had insisted on talking about everything, no matter how mundane, in every detail. It gave me a headache just remembering it. I had listened to and ignored more information about her then I could have ever hoped to hear.
Then came the memories of the awkward, sloppy kissing: she had a way of using her tongue long before our lips met, like she was lubricating them in preparation. More than once I had taken a break to surreptitiously wipe my mouth on the back of my hand.
Then the end of the night: after a stumbling walk home, hand in hand, arm in arm, there had been the violent, demanding, strange and aggressive sex. Not only did she scratch my back, claw my buttocks and play my stomach like a bass drum, but at some point she had forced her finger into my anus and then tried to get my to lick the contaminated appendage. Thankfully I hadn’t been that drunk, unfortunately I didn’t remember much more.
I shivered at the flashbacks of what I remembered, and winced at the thoughts of what I didn’t. I turned to see Ashley lying next to me; she was snoring silently and making sporadic gurgling sounds. Her left hand was tucked under her cheek, her fingers and the pillowcase moist with drool.
Then I remembered her leg.
She had removed it during sex.
I looked down at her body under the covers and sure enough her silhouetted form was short of a right leg, the imprint under the covers stopped halfway up the thigh. I saw the missing prosthetic limb on the floor, over by the other side of the bed.
I clambered out of the bed. My clothes were on the other side as well, her side. I had stripped off completely; even my socks were discarded in the pile. That was Ashley’s doing, she had insisted I let her strip me completely when we had scrambled onto the bed.
I tiptoed around the bottom of the bed, manoeuvring around the jutting mattress atop the solid wooden bed-stand. My foot creaked on a loose floorboard, I panicked and stood still.
Ashley continued to snore, oblivious. Content, I ambled forwards carelessly. I jammed my toes against the bottom stand of the bed and screamed as the tiny digits parted against the wood construct.
That was enough to wake her.
She looked at me with questioning morning eyes; beautiful green eyes, even more radiant in the first light of the day.
‘Where you going?’ She thrust herself up onto her elbows and glared at me. I expected a morning greeting, maybe some light questioning, but she was already in full accusative mode. This wasn’t the first time someone had run out on her.
‘I’m going home,’ I said honestly, too tired and dehydrated to lie.
I made a move for my clothes, ignoring the throbbing pain in my toe, but she dived out of bed and grabbed them; bringing the bundle to her chest and pulling them back into the bed with her.
I pulled myself back upright, the simple action tiring me out. ‘What you doing?’ I asked breathlessly.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she said defiantly, hugging my clothes like a child with a confiscated toy.
I watched her eyes dip from my face to my naked body. She surveyed it quickly with a lustfully sly grin.
‘Look, last night was a mistake,’ I told her, ignoring the suggestive looks. ‘I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression, but I don’t think this will work out.’
‘The wrong impression?’ she spat. ‘You mean when you fucked me?’
‘Well, yeah.’
She made a loud groaning noise and then she shoved the clothes underneath the blanket. I could see the bulge over her stomach and leg.
I sighed deeply and slumped my tired, aching head to my chest. I could see her clothes on the floor, clumped into a ball near where mine had been. A skimpy G-string and a long dress that would probably fit me better than it did her.
‘Don’t you dare!’ she snapped, seeing my intentions. She swung out of the bed again, leaving my clothes nestled between her leg and stump. She picked up her dress and underwear and pulled them back to the bed with a pendulum swing.
‘What do you want from me?’ I wondered, arms out.
‘Come back to bed,’ she insisted.
‘I told you--’
‘We can make it work. We just need to spend some more time together.’
‘But--’
‘You had a good time last night didn’t you?’ she asked.
‘Well yes, but--’
‘Then come back to bed.’
I stared at her and thought about giving in. She did have the most mesmerising eyes--
I couldn’t give in. I couldn’t let her eyes lure me like the song of a sickly siren.
I saw her leg on the floor, discarded towards the far wall, out of reach of the bed. I waddled over to it and picked it up. ‘I’ll take this then,’ I told her, thrusting it angrily towards her.
She shrugged apathetically.
‘You need it more than I need my clothes,’ I told her, waving it around triumphantly.
‘Nah. I’ll be fine,’ she said, trying some reverse psychology.
‘I’ll leave,’ I said. ‘And I’ll take it with me, then what?’
She smiled. ‘Then you’ll be naked, carrying a prosthetic leg down the street. Are you that desperate to get away from me?’
I thought about that for a moment. I was that desperate. I gave her an ultimatum: ‘Give me my clothes back or I walk out of here, and you never will.’
‘You don’t have the balls.’
In the heat of the moment, feeling temperamental from the hangover and annoyed with the persistent woman in front of me, I felt like I didn’t have any other choice. I stormed out of the bedroom and out of the house, cradling the leg in my right arm.
I heard her call after me, but I ignored her. I was angry, I was tired. I wanted to get home and sleep without the one-legged beast drooling next to me.
I slipped on my shoes which had been left near the front door. The reality of my nakedness hit me when I stepped out into the street. A chill wind saturated the air and brushed across my flesh like a cold seductress.
I stayed at the front door for a while, surveying my surroundings. She lived in a quiet slice of suburbia; semi-detached houses littered the street ahead. A high perimeter hedge obscured the views to the left and the right, stopping the next door neighbours from seeing my dangling humility.
I was going to turn around, I had come to my senses and realised I didn’t want the world to see my bits blowing in the wind, but then I heard Ashley. She had hobbled out of bed and hopped to the bedroom window. She was shouting down at me.
‘You finished with your games yet?’ she called down. ‘I’m bored and horny, come back up here and fuck me.’
I cringed, and shivered. It was difficult and traumatic sleeping with her drunk, there was no way I could manage it sober.
I clambered onwards, waving my arms around in a marching walk. I slowed down at the head of the garden, giving her a clear view of my retreating cheeks as I opened the gate and disappeared into the street.