Dating Without Novocaine (10 page)

I blinked at him. He was attention-deficit and hyper-active. I hadn't known anyone with that particular problem, and didn't know what it might mean to any future relationship.

“Don't worry, I take medication for it, it's under control. It just leaves me with a lot of energy. I have to be doing things.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The pizza came and we ate about half of it, me drinking root beer and Pete the real stuff. I wondered what effect that would have on his medication. I went to the bathroom, and when I returned to the table the leftovers had been wrapped in foil and the bill paid.

“Can you leave the tip? I used the last of my cash.”

“Sure.” I put a couple dollars on the table, wondering why he hadn't put the whole thing on a credit or debit card. Maybe he liked paying cash. Whatever.

Between his age, the ADHD and his comments about moving to another city, I knew he'd about reached his quota of red flags, but none of those things seemed big enough to warrant giving up on him just yet.

Or maybe I was just unwilling to give up those shoulders. Women weren't supposed to be so affected by a beautiful body—we were supposed to have our eyes on a guy's earning potential—but damn, he was one gorgeous piece of flesh. Since I'd never had my hands on such a specimen before, I thought I could be excused the lapse in practicality.

“You want to pick up a movie or something?” he asked as we headed back to the car.

“I'm not sure…” I said, thinking of the pile of alterations waiting for me at home. Butler & Sons had had a sale on men's pants, and I had about forty pairs waiting to be hemmed.

“Aw, sure you do,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “I've got to work tomorrow, this will be my only chance to see you for almost a week.”

He sounded so eager—so enamored—I couldn't say no. We headed off to the video store, rented
Meet the Parents,
then he directed me back to his apartment, which was in a newish complex in Southeast Portland.

Kids yelled and ran in the winding drive and parking areas between wood-sided buildings, balls and bikes appearing in front of my car like scenes from a driving test.

“Lots of families live here?” I asked.

“Huh? Yeah. Well, lots of single mothers. It all looks okay, but I tell you, some funny stuff goes on. Doesn't matter how clean a place looks, there's dirt if you know where to find it.”

The kids looked pretty innocent to me. “Like what?”

“Drug dealing. Domestic violence. God, I hate those dirt bags who beat their wives. I tell you, when I see that, I get
this
close—” here he held up his thumb and index finger, a centimeter apart “—
this
close to pounding the guy into the ground. Of all the low things to do, beating a woman. Or a kid. They should give us a license to shoot the scum, and do society a favor.”

I parked where he pointed, and we climbed the outside stairs to his door on the third floor.

It was good to despise wife beaters and child abusers, and I supposed I should have had my heart thumping at
his display of manly protective instincts, but somehow his vehemence had left me less admiring rather than more. Maybe his opinions seemed too simple, his targets too easy, and perhaps too calculated to win female approval.

Or maybe he really did feel that strongly. And maybe it was all that pent-up energy that came off him, that made me uncomfortable.

“Fluffy-Ass!” he cried, opening the door.

I gaped. Whose ass was fluffy? Not mine, thank you very much!

He bent, then turned around with a giant gray flop-eared rabbit in his arms. Any faint alarms about his vehemence or the gun on his ankle were washed clean away. The guy had a bunny.

Who couldn't adore a gorgeous guy with a bunny?

“This is Frank, the Fluffy-Ass Rabbit,” Pete said, and handed him to me.

I sagged under the weight of Frank, who was at least ten pounds heavier than any rabbit had a right to be. His rear claws dug into my belly, his front claws scraping at my forearm until we found a mutually satisfying position. I followed Pete into his apartment, thinking that bunnies were far more cuddly to look at than to hold.

“How long have you had him?” I asked.

“Watch your step!”

I side-stepped, looking down and seeing a scattering of round rabbit droppings.

“Frank, you bad-ass rabbit,” Pete said, going into the kitchen and returning with a paper towel, with which he picked up the pellets. “He's house-trained, but I swear
he does this to spite me. He belonged to my ex, but she moved in with a friend with a Rottweiler. Frank would have been Dog Chow in a week.”

“Does your ex, ah…have visitation?”

He looked up from where he was kneeling, towel full of bunny poop. “Janet? Yeah, she comes by sometimes, but I try not to be here when she does. She still has a thing for me.”

“Oh.” She must be one of those sticky octopus girls he was talking about. I wondered if he was telling me as a warning not to be the same, or if he was bragging that no woman could live without him.

“She's got to just let it go, you know? It's not good for her. She leaves me notes on my windshield, drops off gifts at the Bureau. It's embarrassing.”

“The other guys give you a hard time?”

“They have no respect for privacy. Some chick leaves flowers for you, you can bet they'll read the card and give you shit for a week.”

“They sound charming.”

“They're good guys, it's just their way to blow off steam.”

He went to go throw the paper towel away. When Frank struggled I set him down, then brushed at the bits of hair clinging to my clothes, and rubbed at the scratches on my arms.

“Want anything to drink?” Pete asked from the kitchen.

“Ice water would be nice,” I said, and took the opportunity to look around.

The room was cleaner than I'd expected, the carpet fairly new and beige, the walls white, miniblinds on the
windows. He had some sort of multipurpose weight-lifting machine taking up a third of the space, but the rest looked reasonable for a guy his age. Futon couch—of course—television, a mediocre sound system and, surprisingly, a large bookcase with books in it.

I'd thought he'd been exaggerating about the reading. I went closer to browse the titles, and as I did, realized there was something funny about the spines of the books. They weren't spines at all.

They were boxes.

I pulled one out. It was a book on tape. I looked at all the rest. There were a few real books on the shelves, but most were tapes.

“Hey, Pete,” I said as he came out of the kitchen and handed me the glass of ice water. “I thought you said you liked to read. These are all tapes.”

“Same thing, isn't it? It's all the same words.”

I frowned. It didn't seem the same to me, somehow, although I couldn't say precisely why not.

“It's the ADHD,” he said. “It's hard to sit still and read a book in print, but I can listen to a tape while I'm working out or driving.”

“Oh.” It still seemed like cheating to me. It was great he listened to books, he probably knew more of the classics than I did, from the look of his shelves, yet somehow I felt he was cheating, saying he loved to read. Seemed he should be claiming a great love of being told stories, instead.

Well, at least he liked stories, and not just tech magazines or sports television.

We put the tape in, turned down the lights and settled
down to watch the movie. Frank hopped his way out of the room, disappearing through a half-open door.

Five minutes into the movie Pete leaned against me. Ten minutes, and his arm was around me. At fifteen minutes he turned toward me.

“Can I kiss you?”

I thought about it for a moment. What was a kiss? It couldn't hurt. “Okay.”

He went to work on my mouth, and with my mind half on
Meet the Parents
and half on his body, I let my hands roam over his shoulders and his back.

Pete sucked at my neck and licked my ear. I listened to the movie, and wondered why this wasn't more exciting. With that gorgeous body, touching and being touched should have had me moaning on the floor.

Shouldn't it?

He squeezed my breasts, then sent a hand roaming up my shirt. He pulled a cup of my bra down, and pulled at my nipple. To no effect.

He rolled us over so that he was lying beneath me, me straddling his hips, and started using both hands on my breasts. I let him continue, wondering when I was going to start getting excited.

In the background Ben Stiller started talking about his life on the farm, and I smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He pushed up my shirt and, leaning forward, took the tip of a breast in his mouth, lightly chomping on it. I looked down at his head and spotted a couple premature gray hairs. Ben Stiller was describing milking a cat. I loved this part.

He leaned back again and, putting his hands on my hips, started to grind me against him. “I want to be inside you,” he said.

I grinned, listening to the dialogue.

“Want to move into the bedroom?”

My attention swung back to where it should have been. “I hardly know you,” I said.

“God, you feel so good.”

I shifted, rubbing my crotch against him. He closed his eyes and made a fake-sounding moan. I hadn't done it to please him; I was trying to tell if he had an erection. I couldn't feel anything I could be sure of, except his jeans zipper.

Was there a reason I was getting gyped out of erections on dates? Was this another example of synchronicity? And I hadn't been able to use the vibrator, either. Maybe that meant something.

“I think we should get to know each other better first, don't you?” I said as I debated taking him up on his bedroom offer, anyway. I'd never had a one-night stand before, and wondered if it would be worth trying, given the proper latex and chemical precautions.

Then again, given my present lack of arousal, it seemed doomed to be disappointing.

“Yeah, you're right,” he said, stopping his hip-grinding and opening his eyes. “You're just so damn hot,” he said, looking hopeful.

I dismounted, and snuggled down beside him, full-length, on the futon. I could let my hand play over his chest this way, which was all I really wanted to do at this point, anyway.

He put his arm around me. “I'm working the late
shift, four to midnight, this week, but my next day off, you want to go do something? We can go to the beach maybe, or for a hike.”

“That'd be great.”

“You can get the time off?”

“I'm self-employed, remember?”

He grunted.

The movie played on in the background, and I let my hand explore his slack muscles. His breathing started to change, his body going even more limp. I raised up on one elbow.

He was asleep.

I made a face, and rolled off the couch. He woke up.

“Are you leaving?”

“I've got to get going.”

He dragged himself upright. “You've got to leave me your phone number.”

I dug out a business card and handed it to him. He took it, stood up and shoved it in a pocket, then walked me out to my car and gave me a hug.

“I'll call you,” he said, “we'll go out and do something.”

I nodded as if I believed him, and left.

“I
can never decide,” I said.

“Neither can I,” Louise said, hunkered down beside me in front of the dessert cabinet at Papa Haydn's, the restaurant in NW Portland that was the mothership for dessert lovers.

Cakes and tortes and layered meringues seven-, eight-, nine-inches high sat behind glass, their names either written in chocolate on the edge of the plate or in gold pen on cards tucked into an edge. There were low, dense, chocolatey things, fruit tarts, gelato, even a baked Alaska.

“I have to go look at the menu again,” I said, and we went back to our table to read the details of what we'd been looking at.

It was Friday afternoon, and Louise had called in sick to work this morning, taking a mental health day. Her employer was the only one I knew of that actually let people do that, but I suppose, being a crisis center, they needed their employees to be fully functioning.

And Louise was not functioning. There was a shopping bag of excruciatingly expensive lingerie sitting be
neath our table, waiting to be returned to a boutique down the street. It had turned out that she was not going to have a reason to wear it.

We placed our orders, and settled down to that business of women: talk.

“Last night we went out to dinner again,” Louise said. She had shadows under her eyes. They did not go well with freckles.

“What was this, the third time?”

Her eyes shifted away, and she fiddled with the pot of tea the waitress had brought her. “Fourth time, and we went to see a movie Monday.” She looked at me. “I was afraid to tell you. I thought you'd scold me.”

“Who am I to scold? As if I've done anything wise recently.”

“Pete still hasn't called?”

“No. Not that I expected him to.”

“But still. I mean, he seemed like he liked you, didn't he?”

“I thought so. Apparently only enough to try to sleep with me, though,” I said.

“Men. I just don't understand them.”

“You have a master's in psychology.”

“Lot of good it's done me.”

“So what happened? You went out to dinner last night with Derek and…?”

“And I was getting impatient. I've been thinking about him all the time, I can't concentrate on my work, I'm daydreaming about our future together, about kissing him, wondering what it would be like to have sex with him… But I didn't know what he was thinking, what he was feeling, if anything. I mean, he'd been go
ing out with me, yeah, but he hadn't made any definite moves. He'd say things that I thought meant he was interested, but then nothing would happen.”

“Mixed signals.”

“Exactly.”

The waitress appeared with our desserts: Louise had some sort of eight-layer chocolate cake with a gold-flecked coffee bean stuck atop a swirl of dense chocolate frosting, and I had
panna cotta,
an Italian custard with raspberries and sauce.

“So I decided to try to be subtle,” Louise said, after she'd taken a couple bites and we'd exchanged samples. “We were sitting at the restaurant, waiting for our food, and I told him about these dreams I'd had.”

“Uh-oh. Real dreams?”

“Yeah, uh-oh, real dreams. The first wasn't so bad. I got a flat tire, called him, and he came and changed the tire for me.”

“Your own personal Triple-A.”

“I have Triple-A, too. You'd think if I pay for it, why not use it? But anyway, that dream was all right to talk about. After all, we're counselors, we like to analyze dreams. He thought it meant I felt I could rely on him, and seemed flattered.”

“Dream number two?”

“Dream number two, and three. This is where the trouble begins. In Dream Two we're standing in line somewhere, and I wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head on his chest.”

“Oh, dear. How did he react?”

“He got a strange little half smile on his lips. I took it as encouragement.”

I grimaced, dreading what was coming.

“Yeah. Dream Three, we were in the shower together, having sex.”

“You told him that?” I asked, aghast.

“Yes. And idiot that I am, then I asked him, ‘How do you feel about that?'”

I forgot about my
panna cotta.
“Oh, Louise, no.”

“Yes.” She mashed frosting with her fork. “Everything got
real
quiet, like we were in this little pocket of silence in the middle of the restaurant, and I could feel my face getting hot, my neck, my chest. I wanted to just slide under the table, find a nice dark place and hide.”

“What'd he say?”

She met my eyes, leaving off the cake killing. “He said—are you ready?—‘Did I miss something? Some sort of cue?'”

“Oh, Louise…”

“Then he says, ‘I'm sorry, I've really got to go to the bathroom.' And he gets up and leaves me at the table.”

“Ah…Christ. How embarrassing.”

“Try humiliating. So there I sat, twiddling my toes, and the food comes and he's still not back, and there's no way I feel like eating now.”

“But he did come back?”

“Yes. I don't know what he was doing in there all that time. Throwing up, maybe. Laughing his ass off. Thinking about bolting. I don't know. But he dealt with it as best as I think any guy could be expected to. He sat back down and took my hand, and said, ‘We're going to talk this out.'”

“I think I'd have preferred to drop it and go home,” I said. “Pretend like it never happened.”

She shrugged. “I give him credit for sticking around.”

“So what did you two decide in the end?”

“There's been no real decision. At least, not on his part.”

“What?”

“He started asking me questions about what I wanted in life, if I wanted children—which of course I don't—asked if I wanted to get married someday, asked what I was looking for in a man.”

“Almost like he was seeing if he could fit the job,” I said.

“At the end of it all, he said he was ‘confused,' and he had to think about all this.”

“‘Confused,' huh?”

“Confused. Anytime a guy says he's confused, I take it to mean he doesn't want to be with you. Maybe he likes you as a casual friend, maybe he likes pouring his heart out to you because you're stupid enough to sit there and listen and sympathize, but he doesn't want you.”

“Why can't they just come out and say that?” I asked.

“If they did, they'd lose their backup girl, the one they know they could have if they asked. I'm not going to sit around for that. I've got
some
self-respect, after all.”

“You think that's really what it is, he just wants to keep you in his back pocket?” I asked.

“Guys do it all the time. Hell, I've done it to guys myself.”

“Why'd he ask you all that stuff about what you wanted?”

“He's jerking me around. He doesn't mean to, but it's what he's doing. He's never going to really want me,” she said, and her voice caught.

“You sound so sure,” I said quietly. It was never good to see a friend hurt.

“I am sure. If I wait around for him to become unconfused, all I'll be doing is torturing myself. The only way I can regain some control, some
power,
dammit, is to make the decision myself. My head knows it's the right thing to do. I just wish my heart followed.” She mashed cake with her fork, and her lower lip trembled. “I wish I could stop hoping for a better ending.”

 

The lingerie boutique was in an old house on NW 23rd, one of the trendy streets lined with shops for over-priced housewares, nightclub clothing, handmade dog biscuits, scented candles, and the odd shop of imports from Indonesia, India, China, or Africa. Mid-size deciduous trees lined the street, strung year-round with white Christmas lights, and between the browsing possibilities and the coffee shops on every block, it was a popular place to meet, people-watch, or just waste time.

We weren't far from where Scott lived, and I was planning to stop by his place later to pick up some pants he needed altered. There were new streetcars running from downtown to this neighborhood, up and running for only half a year, and if Scott had wished, he could have taken one of them to work instead of his bicycle. But I'd seen his legs, and could see why the bike held his favor.

We climbed the wooden stairs to Belinda's Fine European Lingerie, and opened the door to silken, perfumed luxury.

“Can you believe I paid twenty-eight dollars for a pair of underpants?” Louise asked as we went to the counter. “What was I thinking?”

“Can I see them?”

She pulled them out of the bag, the price tag dangling from the hip. They were pale pink silk, with cream lace insets, and they were beautiful.

“And the bra—we don't need to say how much the bra was.”

I knew there was also a teddy and a nightgown in the bag, still wrapped in tissue. I hadn't asked to see them only because I thought it would be too upsetting for Louise. The high-priced underwear—at least we could talk about the cost of such a tiny scrap of silk, without dwelling on the shattered hopes.

She handed the bag to the clerk behind the counter, along with the receipt. “I can't believe I was so
stupid.
God.” Then she started talking to the clerk, explaining about the return. I drifted away to browse through the merchandise.

I didn't often find my way to the small boutiques outside of the heart of downtown, and I saw what I'd been missing. The prices were, as always, beyond my pocketbook, but a girl could dream, even if she couldn't see herself trying to sew her own bra or merry widow. Not that I couldn't do it; I just couldn't bother.

The negligees were achingly lovely, and unlike the foundation garments they were possible to reproduce, if one could find the same quality of lace. I went through
a rack of gowns with an assessing eye, examining seams and cut.

My dream wedding dress was still in the paper pattern stages. It occurred to me that with a wedding dress one also needed something for the wedding night, a bit of sensuous luxury in flowing pastel.

If you sew it, he will come.

The words whispering in my head seemed more appropriate than ever.

Louise found me. “They made me take store credit,” she said, her mouth in an unhappy twist. “I don't even want to think about wearing underwear, not from here. Why bother wearing any at all, for that matter? Who's ever going to see it?”

“You have a problem with underwear?” I asked.

“Half the time you don't really need it. It's all a scam.”

“I'm not wearing any,” I said. “A bra, but no panties.”

“You're kidding.”

“Am I?” I hadn't had any that were clean this morning, so I'd worn a long tailored skirt. Who was going to know the difference? “You know, there's a place for people like you, Louise. Underwear Anonymous. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.”

She started to smile. “First I'd have to admit I had a problem.”

“Do you need to wear underwear to relax in a social situation? Do you put it on before going out? Do you wear it every day?”

“Yes!” Louise said.

“Has underwear caused you emotional trauma?”

“It's doing so at this very moment,” she said.

“Then you need Underwear Anonymous.”

She giggled, looking a little more like the Louise I knew. There wasn't much that could keep her down for long. She was so much her own person, so content in her own private space, I sometimes wondered if she would ever marry. It was hard to imagine her sharing her space with anyone. I almost wondered if she'd chosen Derek because she knew, deep down, that nothing was going to come of it.

Louise looked around the store, then back at me. “You know, it's too bad they don't make this type of stuff for men. The fanciest they get is silk boxers, and how does that compare in price? Just another bit of male/female inequality showing itself.”

“What do you want? Guys in codpieces?”

“Wouldn't that be something?” she asked as we left the shop and started down the sidewalk. “Wouldn't you love to see guys walking around with those stuck to the front of their pants? I'll bet they'd wear them, too.”

“Nah, what we need is a modern version,” I said. “Something that doesn't look like it came off a portrait of Henry VIII. We need some sort of…weenie wrap.”

“What, like a scarf?”

“More like a sock,” I said, envisioning it. “In bright colors, made of spandex. Or polar fleece, for winter. They could wear them attached to those tight pants runners wear.”

“I don't think they'd like that. Too much flopping around.”

“Well, okay, then it could just be underwear like a teddy, worn only to impress one's date. It could have a
little pouch for the balls, and all tie on with a ribbon. Not many women think a penis is pretty, anyway. Why not spruce it up a bit?”

“I think I'd prefer the bare thing,” Louise said.

“No, this could be great. I could get a stall at Saturday Market and sell them.”

“They'd throw you out.”

“I could advertise in the back of
Cosmo.
”

“That might work,” she admitted. “Be sure to offer them in different sizes, and put a big XXXL tag on the big ones everyone will buy.”

“And an XXS on the ones sold as revenge gifts to ex-lovers,” I said. And in my mind I was thinking that Louise needed a Voodoo Derek doll.

“Hannah, you are a warped individual, you do know that, don't you?”

“You wouldn't have me any other way.”