When I turned to see who it was who smelled like that, I saw the woman I’ve fantasized about on the rare occasions when I’ve allowed myself to fantasize about ever actually finding a woman to love and understand. She had dark hair that hugged her shoulders, deep brown eyes, and a long slender neck with a pretty little mole just under her jawline.
“Forget it,” she said, and for one horrifying moment I thought she’d caught me looking at her chest. But no, she was talking about the computer. “It’s finito. Kaput. If it was a horse, I probably wouldn’t shoot it, but I’d sure geld him so he couldn’t reproduce and make any more little high-tech pains in the ass.”
“Uh... well, it’s... I m-mean, there’s n-n-nothing... that is...” For some reason people who look like they were real popular and successful in high school are the hardest of all for me to try and talk to. Julia was obviously head cheerleader, homecoming queen, National Honor society member, president of the student government, the whole nine yards.
I was trying to tell her that it was only a minor problem and that as a matter of fact it was already fixed, but as usual the link between my brain and my tongue was faulty. I couldn’t get the words to come out just one at a time, much less arrange them into any order that might be considered entertaining, or even informative.
But I’ll tell you, I was already looking forward to that evening when I’d be at home alone, and then I’d think of something Cary Grant suave or Clark Gable cool that would charm this goddess.
Even if I could have thought of something right then and there, it wouldn’t have done me much good because she was off doing something else anyway and not listening to me. She had a good-sized trophy of a woman swinging a racket that she was setting down here and there on top of different file cabinets and cubicle walls, backing away from it, looking at it, shaking her head and then moving it again.
“Where do you think this looks best?” she asked me. “I want people to notice it, but I don’t want to, you know, stick it in their faces. I won this over the weekend at the country club singles tournament. Pretty, huh?”
She looked at me proudly, expectantly, and I knew I was supposed to say something, but I had no idea what it was. I felt my chest tighten and my knees soften and knew I was about to experience one wicked panic attack.
Just before I gave myself over to it, I remembered something Marty used to say about talking to people. “All you gotta do is just talk about whatever it is they’re interested in, nod and agree with them every once in a while, ask a couple of questions so they know you’re following them, and they’ll think you’re brilliant, I guarantee it.”
“Um, well, I g-g-guess it looks nice over th-there w-w-where you had it... But r-r-right there is nice, too,” I said. “Oh, and c-congratulations. How long have you been single?”
Oh my God! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Geez, Chip, you moron, it’s not a contest to see who’s been unmarried the longest. Any damn fool ought to be able to look at the trophy and see she was talking about tennis. I wanted to smack myself in the head or sink into the carpet. My face was hot and red and huge.
She laughed, of course. (The most delicious — if stinging — music I’ve ever heard.) I mean, who wouldn’t laugh at an idiotic remark like that?
But it was strange. After I stopped burning and shrinking, I noticed this was somehow different from my usual say-something-stupid-and-get-laughed-off-the-face-of-the-earth routine. It was sort of like she wasn’t laughing at me. Like she would have been laughing with me if only I had been laughing. I’ve seen people laugh like this at one of Marty’s lines, and although I could hardly believe that such an incredibly gorgeous and delightful-smelling woman could do such a thing, I could tell she was thinking I was quite clever. That I’d made a joke.
I’d waited a long time — twenty-seven years to be exact — for this moment, and for once I didn’t stammer. Which was surprising because one beer can get me so tongue-tied I can’t brush my teeth, and I was very intoxicated by that laugh.
“Will you go out with me?” I asked her. “On a date?”
She laughed again, and I couldn’t really tell if it was an at or a with laugh. I just hoped she wouldn’t get all mad or anything when she turned me down, like some women do. I’m used to staying home on the weekends, that doesn’t bother me. But I hate to lose a customer. Especially a customer who smells and laughs like that.
“Sure,” she said, and my heart stopped beating. “Where do you want to go?”
All I could do was shrug my shoulders and smile. I couldn’t take a chance on saying something stupid and blowing this thing now.
She’d said yes!
When I was in high school, before I gave up on the idea of ever having a real social life, I used to call up girls and ask them out — or start to ask them out. What I would do, since I knew I couldn’t come up with off-the-cuff bon mots like Marty does, was write down what I wanted to say. And a lot of it was pretty clever stuff if I do say so myself. I really can be sort of charming if you just give me enough time to prepare for it.
It didn’t work, though, because it depended on the girl’s sticking to the script and saying what I had planned for her to say. She never did, and I always had to hang up on her before I got to the reason for the call. I even wrote scripts for the few dates I did have (most of these arranged by Mom) with the same disastrous results.
This time I knew there was no point in even writing a script. But after getting a haircut and a new suit and ordering some flowers and some cologne, I did go to Marty and ask him for advice.
“I really, really like this girl,” I told him. “I can’t believe she said yes, but she did. And I do not want to blow it. What should I do? What should I say? Where should we go?”
Marty asked me her name, and I’m kind of ashamed to say I lied and said it was Ethel. But I just couldn’t take a chance on Marty’s stealing her from me. And he could, too. Without even trying.
“Well, if you’re nervous about talking to her, then take her someplace where you’re not expected to talk, like a movie. But on second thought, a movie first date is pretty trite. Why not take her to a play? And then dinner afterwards. That way you’ll have something to talk about dining dinner. You can talk about the play.”
That made sense. So I bought newspapers and downloaded reviews from the local bulletin boards, researching all the plays that were running in town. I marked off all the sexy ones right away ’cause I didn’t want Julia to get the wrong idea. Besides, that would just defeat my purpose. I still wouldn’t have anything to talk about during dinner because I am definitely not going to talk about sex with a goddess.
Next I ruled out all the really popular and long-running ones. I just knew Julia had to have a real active social life, and I felt sure she had already seen them.
All that was left was an amateur production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. But it had been getting some really great reviews. The newspapers said it was “a treat for all ages.” I wasn’t sure how old Julia was, so I figured this was probably my best bet.
I knew that she had only agreed to go out with me because she had somehow mistaken my social ineptitude for cleverness and wit, and I did not want her to find out the truth, not right away. I scanned Reader’s Digest (I have a friend who lent me the last thirty years of “Laughter, the Best Medicine” on floppy disks) and some joke books I checked out from the library. But I was far from feeling smug. I memorized some of the best stuff, but I was not at all confident that I could work any of it into the conversation.