Shopgirl

second date

BEFORE THURSDAY’S DATE, THERE ARE several formal phone conversations between Ray and Mirabelle, which establish that he will pick her up, that the time will be 8 P.M., and that they will go to a fun local Caribbean spot that Mirabelle knows called Cha Cha Cha. She is concerned about him seeing her apartment, which, at five hundred dollars a month, is only slightly more than the cost of their meal at La Ronde. She is also concerned that he’ll have trouble finding it. The apartment is at the conjunction of a maze of streets in Silverlake, and once found, still requires complicated directions to achieve the door. Down the driveway, second stairway, around the landing…

When Thursday comes, Mirabelle speed cleans the apartment while simultaneously dusting herself with powders and pulling various dresses over her head. She settles on a short pink and yellow plaid skirt and a fuzzy pink sweater, which sadly prohibits any of Ray’s peeking. This outfit, in combination with her cropped hair, makes her look about nineteen. This look is not meant to appeal to something lascivious in Ray but is worn as a hip mode-o-day that will fit right in at Cha Cha Cha.

Then, finally prepared, she sits in her living room and waits. Mirabelle doesn’t have a real sofa, only a low-lying futon cradled in a wood brace, which means that anyone attempting to sit on it is immediately jackknifed at floor level. If a visitor allows an arm to fall to one side, it will land on the gritty hardwood. If he sits with a drink, it has to be put on the floor at cat level. She reminds herself not to ask Ray to sit down.

The phone rings. It is Ray, calling from his car phone, saying he is only a little bit lost. She gives him the proper lefts and rights, and within five minutes, he is knocking at her door. She answers, and both of them scurry in to avoid the harsh glare of the bare hundred-watt porch bulb.

If Mirabelle worried about Ray seeing her apartment, her concern was misplaced. This collegiate atmosphere dislodges a musty erotic memory in him, and he feels a few vague waves of pleasure coursing just below his skin. Mirabelle asks him if he wants anything, knowing that she has nothing to give him except canned clam juice. He declines, but wants to snoop around the apartment, and he pokes his nose into the kitchen, where he sees the college-girl dish rack and the college-girl mismatched drinking glasses and the college-girl cat box. The problem, of course, is that Mirabelle is already four years out of college and has not been able to earn an income at the next level.

She asks him if he wants to sit down, which she immediately regrets, and Ray squats down onto the futon, bending himself into a crouch that for someone over fifty would be considered an advanced yoga position. After the absolute minimum conversation required to make the futon invitation not ridiculous, she suggests they leave. As Ray helps himself up, his body sounds a few audible creaks.

They leave the apartment and walk toward his Mercedes, with all the spontaneity of a prom date. Driving, he stiffly points out the features of the car, including the electric seat warmers, which prompt a few jokes from both of them. At the restaurant, they squirm and talk and wriggle until midway through the entrée, which is a chili-hot fish of some kind prepared to blast the heads off all comers. Things are wooden between them, and would have remained so for the complicated second date, had it not been for an elixir called Bordeaux.

The wine greases things up a bit, and this little relaxation, this gear slippage, makes Ray bold enough to touch her wrist. He says he likes her watch. It isn’t much, but it is a beginning. Mirabelle knows that her watch is of a dullness that could arouse no opinion at all, and even though her own eyes have filled with shallow pools of alcohol, she suspects that this contact is not about her watch but about Ray’s desire to touch her. And she’s right. For as Ray drags the tip of his finger across the back of her hand, he measures the degree of tropical humidity that her skin delivers to his fingertip, and impulses of pleasure leap from neuron to neuron and are delivered to his receptive brain.

He slips his finger and thumb around her wrist. “Now I’m your watch,” he says, boyishly. Mirabelle and Ray, not drunk but hovering, are trying to figure some way out of the conversational mess they have gotten themselves in. Ray really wants to be driving around with his hand on her thigh, but he is stuck here in Cha Cha Cha making small talk. Mirabelle wants them to be strolling down Silverlake Boulevard holding hands, getting to know each other, but she needs a closing line about the watch, or they are just going to languish forever in endless circularity. Then Ray has a brilliant idea. He orders one more glass of wine and suggests they both drink from the same glass. Mirabelle is not a drinker, so Ray downs about two-thirds of it, and right in front of her gets out a pen and calculates his body weight versus the amount drunk minus the food eaten, and announces he is okay to drive. Which leads them to the car.

Which leads them to her porch.

Where he kisses her good night, and presses himself against her, and she feels him thicken against her legs. And neither cares about the harsh porch light. And he says good night. And as he walks away, he thinks that he cannot imagine anything better than their next date.