The First Date

A short story by Norah Spence

First dates never seemed to go well for her. The men she had chemistry with online always ended up being a little more unconventional, per se, than their profiles let on. Her worst ones yet were as follows: the man who had dozens of film-accurate lightsabers and an abusive relationship with smelling salts who took her to a re-screening of Inglourious Basterds and when the credits rolled said, “I think that was a little harsh”; her ex-manager who left the job with the sole purpose to finally pursue her “without all the allegations and trouble from HR”; and Tommy, a guy with male-patterned baldness whose hair on the back of his head fell out in such a way that it created an uncanny portrait of Pamela Anderson—to which he made jokes like, “Pam’s head’s so good I ain’t never lettin’ her leave!” and then proceeded to discuss the ways in which women are inherently inferior to men (but he could still appreciate what Michelle Obama did for “her people”).

Looking to her right she eyed her newest victim sitting in the passenger’s seat of her dad's old Civic—a woman—whom she met because of the chicken shop on the first floor of her triplex. It was a Sunday and on Sunday’s she treated herself to a couple chicken sandwiches and a handful of edibles to ease her beginning-of-the-week anxiety and pregame her debilitating Monday blues. Like Jesus Christ himself, she would rise from the dead and have her own resurrection memorialized once a week in her online calendar. She claimed this was her weekly cleanse. Typically, she allotted Friday’s for wreaking havoc and Saturday’s as her day of reckoning, leaving Sunday to scrub herself clean of all her sins from the past 48 hours. She never added her Friday and Saturday festivities to her calendar, though—a reminder to be a perverted menace would be futile. She couldn’t skip a day if she tried.

On this particular Sunday, however, she got into an argument with Afnan, the owner of the chicken shop aka her neighbour aka her landlord. When she pre-ordered her pair of sandwiches the morning of, she intended to use a gift card looted from a near-empty wallet outside the shop’s back entrance. She frequented the area when she was in desperate need of chicken money. It was like a haven for lost goods. Wallets, pocketbooks, briefcases, what have you. But instead, she used her personal credit card, maxing it out for the third month in a row. This set her off. Her weekly cleanse went to shit. So, without a second thought, she scrambled downstairs and took out her woes on Afnan.

“Bullshit, man. Just swipe the card this time. Tap doesn’t work with your load-to-pay certificates. You should get ‘em remanufactured. I’m sure it’s costing you a lot of business.”

“Lydia, the card has a dollar and twelve cents on it. That’s the balance. If I refund your credit card ain’t no way in hell you’re paying for two sandwiches, fries, and a fucking milkshake. For Christ’s sake, you couldn’t even buy a gumball for that little these days. You’re gonna buy the chicken regardless. You always do.”

“Afnan, please. I can see the griddle from here. There’s not a single patty on it. Just refund me so I can use whatever scraps are still on the card. My credit maxed out again. I’m screwed. Please.”

“How much you go over this time?”

She paused.

“Forty-one.”

Afnan’s eyelids drooped. He huffed, twisted his torso, grabbed two chicken patties from the fridge behind him and slapped them on the griddle. The oil hissed.

“Whatever you’re trying to take out on me is obviously not my problem. Try budgeting. And move out of the way, you’re holding up the line.”

Despite her constant fight-picking and joint-induced midnight booty calls, Afnan had yet to evict her from the apartment beneath his. This was no fault of his own, for Afnan’s husband, Theodore, had developed a soft spot for Lydia. He attributed this growing compassion for the kid to her cynical sense of humour and gorgeous hair—thick and black and riddled with grown-out layers. But really, he found solace in her loneliness. Theodore never witnessed Lydia with another human being, just the odd chicken shop one night stand (again, not really human nor being) and sometimes his cat, Pearl who, like her father, was quite fond of her. Far too often, Theodore spotted Lydia on her fire escape having a puff and spying on pedestrians below.

“Lydia, honey, speak to me. What’s happening on the streets of 36th and 37th?”

After a coughing fit and a second or two of loogie-hawking, Lydia replied.

“Some lady kicked her husband out of her truck and drove off without him. He was yelling something about her attitude and also about how much peanut butter she eats. A few couples tonguing and walking. The usual suspects,” she puffed on her joint a few times. “Oh, and Granny in the apartment across the street is changing with the blinds open again. Like full frontal nudity. Flabby and wrinkly and shit. Huge boobs, though. They’re pretty nice.”

Being a member of the homosexual persuasion, Theodore was adamant about Lydia’s lesbianism. This was all speculation, of course, since Pearl was the only woman Theo, or Afnan for that matter, had ever seen her interact with.

“She doesn’t have the social skills to keep up with them. Or any skills, really. Women have x-ray vision for sad, insecure creatures and Lydia’s bones and guts and shit are always on display. She’d need a lot more than a pride flag to bed a woman."

Theo never failed to dissent his husband’s perspective on their downstairs neighbour.

“It’s not just about sex, Afnan. She needs a partner, a friend. These boys she keeps bringing home can’t satisfy her long term. I bet they can’t even satisfy her now. She might think they do but they don’t. I’ve been that girl, I’ve been Lydia.”

“What, Theo, are you some sort of transsexual now? A transvestite? News flash: The Rocky Horror Picture Show is so 1975,” Afnan cooked up a half-assed chuckle with a side of spittle. Theodore rolled his eyes and waved his husband’s hot, sour breath away from his nose. He knew Afnan was self-conscious about his breath and caught his lower jaw hinge open in embarrassment. Theo loved Afnan to death—his rancid breath included—and never wished upset upon him. But on this day he was being remarkably macho and dickish, warranting Theo’s petty reaction.

After getting booted from Afnan’s chicken shop, Lydia retreated back to the restaurant’s rear to scavenge for more loose gift certificates. Rounding the corner of the block in an extra-large striped polo and ill-fitting jean shorts, Lydia looked unmistakably, almost impressively, like Charlie Brown. She stumbled along the city streets, dragging her sneakers through murky puddles and over gum wads stuck to the pavement. With her head hung low, her chin barely clearing her chest, it was a wonder Christmas Time Is Here wasn’t blasting from bodega speakers wherever she wandered.

“Fuck!”

Lydia’s head whipped forward just in time to catch Pearl’s small, calico-coloured coat making a mad dash out of the back alleyway. Then, a series of sneezes. They were high-pitched but scream-like and separated from one another by a second or two each. To Lydia’s dismay, she realized she would have to pass the scream-sneezing monster to get to her destination. With little else on her mind besides scouring around for lost wallets and chicken-change, Lydia shrugged and continued her journey forward. Between her own navy Civic and Afnan’s red Ford monster truck, she found the culprit—a girl about her own age, leaning against Afnan’s truck, sneezing uncontrollably and taking advantage of every spare breath by cursing her brains out.

“Sorry… just gonna squeeze past you there…” Lydia mumbled as she side-stepped by the sneezing creature, dragging her back against her Civic for balance.

“Shit, my bad,” sneeze. “Fuck. I’m sorry.” Sniffle, snort, sneeze. Lydia glanced down at the woman, head in her hands, snot seeping out from between her interlocked fingers. She had long, sleek, black hair, almost tar-like. The girl removed her hands from her face as if she were done blowing her nose into a tissue—minus the tissue. She flicked her wrists into the air, ricocheting her leftover snot onto Lydia’s sedan. Lydia followed the mucus slingshot and watched it splatter with impact. Gross, Lydia thought. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. Her eyebrows were sparse which, in contrast with her hair, was quite striking. Her nose was wide and flat and skewed slightly to the right. Lydia’s eyes clung especially to her cheeks: pudgy, red, freckled and… scratched? Lydia squinted, focusing her vision. There was, indeed, a scratch on her cheek. Not too deep but long, prickled with blood and surrounded by lumpy little hives.

“Are you… having a reaction?” Lydia asked.

“What gave it away?” the girl said, face puffing up as she spoke. Lydia looked around sheepishly. Then, under her breath, the girl muttered,

“fucking Pearl.”

“Pearl? You know Pearl?”

“Ya, she’s an old colleague of mine,” she chuckled, then sneezed. “Listen, my uncle lives in this building here,” she pointed to Lydia’s triplex. “Can you buzz his apartment? It’s 503.”

“You’re related to Theodore? I love Theodore. He’s my neighbour. Such a nice gay man.”

“Yes. But no. Uncle-in-law. Afnan’s my uncle by blood.”

“Fuck,” Lydia muttered. “Fuuuuuuuck.”

“I know,” the girl shook her head slowly. “Just get him. He can get me Benadryl. And drive me to the emergency room.” More sniffles. More snot.

“I could drive you. I have a car,” Lydia stated. The girl looked up and stared into her eyes. Lydia wasn’t exactly sure why she said it. She didn’t even offer her services to family and friends. “Your snot’s marinating on it right now.”

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. She’s seen worse. You should maybe get in before you get full-on anaphylaxis. That would be pretty shitty. I mean, only if you feel comfortable. I’m not gonna kill you or anything. That would get me evicted for sure.”

Lydia offered her hand to the girl, flexing her fingers around in a ‘come-on!’ sort of way. The girl grabbed it with her right hand and used her left to wipe her nose once more. Gross, Lydia thought and smirked.

Next
Next

Dogs and Dolls