“At least a babbling brook,” said Jeff.
“Hey! I’m your sister! That’s supposed to count for something. Blood is thicker than bribery…or…whatever. Anyway, I just wanted to check up on you. You okay here?”
“Yeah, I think so. It’s a job, but it beats loading heavy things onto trucks.”
“I don’t think you’d get that job,” said Jeff.
“No?” I flexed my tiny bicep and laughed. “You sure?”
“I’ve got a conference call. I’ve gotta run.” She kissed me on the cheek. “And don’t forget—you have a date tonight.”
“Me?” I asked.
“No! Jeff! Allen, remember? Bistro Saju?”
“There’s no way you can get me out of this?”
“No! You’ll like him. He has lovely eyes. Be there. Seven o’clock.”
And she ran off.
“Is this one of those blind dates you mistook me for? She really does that?”
“She really does.”
“Bummer.”
“Shoot me now.” He went.
I sat for a second, before the words of Oscar Wilde popped once again into my head. I didn’t waste another second before I was googling Bistro Saju.
You know for a day that didn’t start out all that much fun, it had begun to offer so many possibilities!
Chapter 19
Another Try at a Blind Date
Jeffrey
“And how will that affect you, do you think?” I asked. Behind this polite, even charming inquiry, brow slightly furrowed in concern, lurked nothing but the greatest indifference.
This is hell, I thought. Pure unmitigated hell.
Allen, my companion for the evening (thank you so very much, Rebecca), was gesturing with a forkful of meatless Cobb salad, while telling me of the extraordinarily distressing political maneuverings within the marble halls of his little boutique firm.
They must have all of twelve employees, counting the receptionist. How much of a putsch could they really work up?
He was clearly distraught about the situation—some serious fallout would ensue, Allen assured me. I also thought it very strange he’d be telling these stories all over town. And the poor slob apparently trusted me. I know, go figure.
Since I didn’t really know who any of these people were whose names he tossed around as though I should be deeply familiar with all of them, it was hard for me to care. Really really fucking hard.
“That’s just it!” said my dinner companion, who had apparently misunderstood and thought the expression was whining and dining. “Who knows?”
I could see why Rebecca had recommended this guy because of his eyes. They were nice. A perfectly nice color brown, a nice shape, with nice longish lashes. Decidedly his best feature. Unfortunately the rest of him didn’t quite measure up. He’d obviously been skipping the gym since about…always. He wasn’t completely bald, but he would be soon enough—probably by the end of the week.
And he didn’t make up for any of these physical shortfalls with a sparkling personality.
Bottom line was—pure unmitigated hell.
At least the food was good. I nearly always ordered the same thing here—rabbit braised in white wine and mustard.
So I sat there looking at this guy, doing my best to look like I was listening, and asking myself how it could be that my closest friend saw me as someone who would date this? Was it that she didn’t know me very well after all? Or was she trying to tell me in a not-terribly-subtle way, that this was all I deserved and it was high time for me to lower my standards?
Well screw that.
And why had I agreed to this place? Rabbit or no rabbit, it was way too close to the office. Anybody could walk right in and see me sitting with this dud. My stock would tumble overnight.
“It must be exciting for you at least,” I tried. “To be in the middle of it.”
“Exciting?! Oh—my—gawd! It’s terrible!” If he gestures any more wildly with that fork, I thought, he’s going to be slinging hard-boiled egg at me. “The tension between the two sides of the office is awful. I hate every minute of it.”
“Oh. But isn’t this also a great opportunity for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Play one side against the other—and then, when the war’s over, push yourself through to the top of the heap. That sort of thing. Did you ever read Machiavelli’s The Prince?”
“I could never do that!”
“I know, there’s a lot of incredibly boring bits, but—”
“No! I mean—I could never—?”
“Use the situation to your advantage?”
“No! I mean, yes, I could never!” I should really take that fork away from him before he hurts someone.
“No, I guess you couldn’t.” Obviously Allen and I approached conflicts and crises differently. I mean, what was the point of other people’s troubles if you couldn’t take advantage of them?
“How’s your…?” he waved his fork vaguely in the direction of my plate, too squeamish to name the dead animal in question.
“Delicious. Sure you don’t want to try a bite?”
“I’m sorry—I told you—vegetarian.”
“Don’t apologize. I love vegetarians,” I smiled. “I’m eating one right now.”
It was about then that my eyes lost their interest in staring at Allen’s comb-over and wandered across to the bar, where, seated with his back to us, was a guy. Smallish. With a mess of curly hair. Red curly hair. There were a dozen or so antique mirrors hung artistically above the bar, and my eyes moved up to those mirrors. In one of them—a pair of mocking eyes.
Thought I’d die.
I didn’t want anyone to see me out with this geek, but absolutely the last person I wanted to see me out with this geek was Theo McPherson. I had put up with his taunting since I’d met him, and this was going to be catnip for him. I would hear about this for the rest of all eternity, or at least until I finally snapped his little neck in my bare hands.
It was in that moment of horrific, nightmarish embarrassment that I tried something desperate. I dropped my napkin, mumbled an excuse and dove under the table to look for it. Maybe Theo didn’t see me? This was, of course, ludicrous. I couldn’t stay under there forever, and I’d seen this in a movie or somewhere and it was totally stupid. I retrieved my napkin and sat up. Grow up, Bornic. Of course my eyes flashed over to the bar. Maybe he hadn’t seen us, or at least hadn’t seen me dive under the table.
He no longer had his back to us. He was now sitting there, turned around toward the dining room. Laughing. At me.
When he comes to bed tonight, I thought, I will have a piece of piano wire under my pillow, and as soon as he drifts off…
In the middle of this cheerful little homicidal reverie, I realized, with a deep shock of panic, that the object of my plan was no longer sitting at the bar—he was maneuvering between the tables on his way directly toward us. Even Allen paused in his blather as Theo stopped at the side of the table and he smiled—at Allen, then at me, then at Allen.
Fuckaduck.
“Hey guys, I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said, grabbing an empty chair. “How’s it goin’?”
“Good,” I said. My voice seemed to have slid up somewhere in the range of eunuch. A growing dread spread through my entrails.
“Theo,” said Theo, extending his hand to my date, whose name had gone completely out of my head.
“Allen,” said the date, looking at me.
“Have you talked to him…about…?” Theo asked me, cryptically.
“About what?” asked Allen. “Jeffrey?” Allen looked at me for reassurance.
Poor Allen, the only person in the restaurant more scared than I was.
“No, I hadn’t had the chance to mention…not just yet,” I said to Theo, wit
h more than a little misgiving.
“Well,” Theo began, “we were thinking—hoping, really—” He laid his hand on my forearm. Oh-my-stars-you-little-jerk. You’re not.
“Is this going to be weird?” The guy started waving desperately, trying to catch the waiter’s eye. “Rebecca didn’t say anything about anything weird.”
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she?” said Theo. “And really, I hope she doesn’t need to know all the details. But,” and Theo leaned in toward his prey, gently pulling Allen’s waving hand—and fork—down to the table. In that moment I swear to you those pretty blue-green eyes were clearly the eyes of the spawn of Satan. He dropped his voice to the bottom of his range as he said—“Are you down for some—fun—Allen?”
Poor Allen. The deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming nuclear fireball. I had to bite my lips to keep from laughing out loud, watching little Theo play the creep.
When the frightened creature across from me came out of his trance, he looked slowly down at Theo’s hand on his, said—
“Oh—my—gawd!”
—and he leapt from the table like it was on fire.
“Is that a ‘no’?” I asked.
Allen threw his napkin down on top of his salad bowl. Dudgeon. High dudgeon. Extremely high, in point of fact.
“I really thought we had something, you know?” he said, hurt, gesturing between him and me. Thank the lord he’d put that fork down finally. He stalked off.
“I got the check,” I called after him. I turned back to Theo. “I hope you’re happy. You’ve probably made that poor man cry.”
“Wouldn’t be the first.” If Theo was plagued by his conscience, you couldn’t tell. He was contentedly tearing open a roll from the basket on the table. He leaned to the next table (mercifully unoccupied—would it have stopped him if it hadn’t been?) and snagged a fork, skewered a really nice piece of rabbit loin from my plate, and made himself a little impromptu sandwich.
“Are you hungry, Theo? I can get the waiter.”
“No, I’m good, thanks,” he said around his lapin à la moutarde—en sandwich.
“Wine?”
He reached across and took my glass.
“Thanks.”
It was easy enough to get the waiter’s attention, since he was doing nothing but giving us the evil eye anyway.
“Could you please bring us another wine glass—and an extra plate, I guess?” I addressed the question mark to Theo, who shrugged and then nodded, still chewing. Not his fault, I thought. Blame it on Iowa. “And you can take these away,” I gestured to the salad and other relics of the recently departed.
“This is really good,” Theo said and took another bite of his sandwich.
“Glad you like it,” I said. “It occurs to me that I ought to mention—in case it’s an issue—you’re eating rabbit.”
His jaw froze mid-chew. He looked at me for a second in wide-eyed horror, and then started to make gagging noises. Like a cat retching up a hairball. He was going to barf right there. I looked around, saw a wine bucket and went for it. Theo pushed his chair back from the table, spread his knees and stared at the floor with another big round of heaving convulsions, and I shoved the champagne bucket between his feet.
“No no no no no no no no no!” said the waiter swooping down on us, “you can’t do that here!”
Needless to say, the entire dining room was now thinking about nothing but our little table. Half of them were staring at us—in horror; and the other half were looking away—also in horror.
And at that moment, Theo looked up at me and then the waiter, swallowed his mouthful of rabbit—and smiled.
“Sorry. Just kidding.”
I could have hit him with a chair.
For half a second his pretty smile and sparkling eyes even worked on the waiter. For just the tiniest instant, you could see the waiter thinking that the little dickhead was kinda cute—before he (the waiter) remembered just how much of a dickhead he (the dickhead) was, and he (the waiter) set the extra wine glass and plate down on the table in front of the dickhead with two hefty thumps of quiet server rage.
“Droll,” he huffed over our heads as he turned and went. “Very droll.”
Theo leaned to me.
“Did he really just say ‘droll’?!” he whispered. “I’ve never heard anyone actually say ‘droll’ before. New York is just a city of wonders, isn’t it?”
Smiling and shaking my head in amazement, I shoveled half of my rabbit onto his new plate.
“Sorry,” he said gulping. “I haven’t eaten. And this is so good.”
“What are you doing here anyway? Stalking me?”
“I don’t know—stalking is sort of a loaded word, don’t you think?”
“So?”
“I came here, hoping to embarrass you in front of your date, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Anything to piss you off, Jeff.”
“Well, you failed.”
“He was sort of awful, wasn’t he?”
“You have no idea.”
“So after a bit, it became more of a rescue operation.”
“Hey,” I said, “I just realized—I suddenly have my evening free.”
“You do, don’t you? We could share a cab back to Rebecca’s. That you would pay for, of course.”
“Of course. Or we could…I don’t know. It’s Friday night. You want to—do something?”
“I have the shelter tomorrow.”
“You have what?”
“I volunteer at an animal shelter.”
“Oh. So…you want to do something?”
“Like what? And hey, I’m going to say it straight out, just to avoid any awkwardness later—I’m a really terrible bowler.”
“I knew that about you somehow.”
“So what do you wanna do?”
“The only thing I can think of—nah, never mind. Everyone on earth has seen the new Star Wars movie except me.”
“You wanna?”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“Is it still playing anywhere?”
Phones were consulted while we shared the rabbit, and dueling Siris agreed on one of those jumbo-plex places on 42nd Street.
“But we gotta motor, little one,” I said as we headed to the door.
He froze in his tracks.
“Don’t ever. Not ever. Okay?”
Little one. Got it.
“Sorry. But don’t dawdle—there’s a cab.”
And we actually made it with time to spare. After I’d picked up the tickets, I turned to Theo.
“I’m going to go pee.”
“You’re on your own.”
“Shut up and go get in line at the concession stand,” I said pulling out my wallet. “Get us some popcorn we can share, and something to drink.”
I gave him my Visa.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Whatever you want.”
“Okay, but I am not sharing a Diet Coke with two straws because that is just too gay.”
“Agreed.”
When I got back, he had just paid up.
“Thank God you’re here. Help me carry.”
A bucket of popcorn, two giant sodas, some Milk-Duds, Snowcaps, Twizzlers, Red Hots, Raisinettes and Jujubes. I had given my credit card to a fifth-grader.
He just grinned at me.
We found seats without much trouble because every other man, woman and child in North America had already seen the movie.
“You know Allen is going to report back to your sister.”
“Yeah, I’d thought of that. I’ll just blame you for everything.”
“Figures. I should be totally peeved with you—but I’m just relieved.”
“And what do you say?”
“Thank you, Theo.”
“’Bout time. Think he’ll blab it all over the legal industry? His big date with the hot young attorney who turned out to be a total pervy sicko?”
“Did you just say I’m young and hot?”
“In Allen’s very limited worldview, possibly.”
“Put the popcorn between us.”
“Oh, yeah. Hey, is it just me or is it freezing in here?”
“Lean on me if you need to.”
“Too gay.”
“Suit yourself.”
But as soon as the movie started, he leaned on me anyway—except for the exciting parts, when he leaned forward. And at the end in the big fight between Rey and the totally hot villain, Theo grabbed my forearm with both hands and squeezed till he left bruises.
But.
To be honest?
It was just fun. Way more fun than Allen anyway.
I mean, Theo was thoroughly irritating, a pebble in the shoe. And the way he looked up at me—like he was always making fun of me—just made me want to deck him. And he was way too little to punch. Excuse me, too short, not too little.
But yeah, he could be kinda fun to be around.
Chapter 20
Life in the Big City
Theo
Jeff got us a cab back to Rebecca’s. He was really good at that—there were advantages to being that tall—but as we got to Columbus Circle, I leaned forward.
“You can just let us out here, please. We’ll walk.” I knew this would make Jeff’s teeth grind—which was only partly my intention.
“Are you serious?” he asked. I really just wanted to walk. Irritating Jeff was a bonus.
“Yeah, it’s a nice night. And warmer than that movie theatre!” I said, already climbing out of the cab. “Look, if you don’t want, I’ll get home on my own. Or. We could even walk through the park,” I suggested.
“We could, but I’d rather keep my wallet today, thank you.” He was paying the driver, so I guessed he was coming along.
“You’re a big, manly guy, Jeff Bornic. Who would mess with you?”
“A big manly guy with a knife. We can walk up Central Park West, you’ll get just as warm.”
And so we did. A fair compromise, I figured.
And the Next Thing You Know . . . Page 12