Sex Obligatory, Love Optional
Lee Scarlet
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Lee Scarlet
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
Addendum to Phoebe’s Manual of Practical Sex
A Rational Woman at Sea in a Fog
Forward
The title of this anthology is accurate. In each of these stories, women engage in sex for some practical reason, unrelated to romance. The unknown is whether they will find love or not. And with whom? I give no guarantee that they’ll find love at all. And, if they do, I do not guarantee that they’ll love the man that they are bedding.
In “A Tale of Two Love Affairs”, a mother is so concerned with her shy son’s love life that she strikes a sinful bargain with a pretty girl’s father.
In “Here’s Looking at You”, a wife suspects that her husband is a voyeur, secretly spying on her, and must find a way to live with his perversion.
In “Addendum to Phoebe’s Manual of Practical Sex”, a man decides to exact revenge on his ex-wife by exploiting her desire to reconcile with him.
In “The Lab Bunny Experiment”, a lab full of computer scientists are amazed when a woman offers them her sexual favors, no strings attached.
In “A Rational Woman at Sea in a Fog”, a lawyer finds herself attracted to a wealthy, young client but is unable to keep him from going to prison.
These stories are anti-romances because they turn the traditional romance on its head. In the standard romance, the heroine spends an inordinate amount of time falling in love with the right man. Only then, will she welcome him into her bed. Traditionally, love is the prerequisite; sex is the consequence. In these stories, sex is the prerequisite; love may or may not be the consequence.
Though these stories are fantasies, people in the real world have sex without love more often than we realize. That’s not always bad. But life is better if it is seasoned with a generous helping of love, so I hope that you find enough romance in these pages to satisfy.
Lee Scarlet
September 2011
A Tale of Two Love Affairs
Stella took a deep breath and poured herself a generous glass of white wine. She had done her duty, talked to most of the people at the party, and now had a moment to herself.
Roland was off in the other room, probably still getting his ear talked off by that guy who owned a sailboat. She thought about going in there and throwing him a lifeline but she didn’t bother. Her husband was a big boy. He could take care of himself.
Stella was more concerned about Alan. Their son never did well at parties. In fact, he never did well with people at all. Especially girls. He was twenty-one and she was sure that he had never had a girlfriend. Never even had a date. Stella doubted that he had ever kissed a girl.
It’s hard for a young man to get a kiss from a young lady when he’s too shy to talk to her.
When Alan had been in high school, Stella had told herself that he was still young; he had plenty of time to sow his wild oats; he would come out of his shell when he matured a little more.
When he continued to avoid girls in college, Stella had a harder time convincing herself that her son would soon blossom. He’d stayed in his room and studied hard, earned the highest grade point average in his graduating class, and had been selected as class valedictorian. She was proud of that accomplishment, but would rather have seen him go out and party on Saturday nights. He could have asked a girl to a movie at least once in four years.
If a boy couldn’t pick up a single girl from the estrogen-laden smorgasbord offered at any college campus, what hope did he have out in the real world?
For a time, Stella wondered if her son was gay. Then, when he was in his second year at university, she found the girlie magazines that he kept hidden under his mattress. Not an ounce of beefcake in the pile. After that, she began noting how avidly he looked at girls in short skirts and tank tops walking down hot summer streets. He stared at them with such desperate desire that it almost broke her heart.
He wanted a girl, no question. But clearly he had no idea how to get one.
Stella loved her son as much as any mother could but that didn’t stop her from seeing him objectively. He was average looking, not handsome but no uglier than most other boys, especially after the post-pubescent acne that had raged over his teenage face had finally given up the fight and the residual damage faded to barely noticeable scars.
His faults were more subtle than simple homeliness.
He was too skinny to be athletic, but he was heavy on his feet for lack of muscle tone. His awkwardness made him gauche without the saving grace of disarming innocence. A decent exercise program would fix that.
A more difficult problem was that he was too shy to look anyone in the face. He habitually kept his eyes averted. That gave him the air of someone who always had something more interesting to do somewhere else.
His voice was soft and that made him easily ignored. No matter how clever his remarks, they were wasted if they were not heard. Worse, he spoke in a soporific monotone that scuttled any emotional impact that his words might have conveyed.
Any girl who took the effort to look at him would see that his strengths outweighed his deficits. He was smart, ambitious, and worked like the devil himself. And he could write like an angel. Google had hired him right out of college as a junior technical writer but he wouldn’t have to stay in that cubicle for long. Once his managers had a chance to appreciate his talents, they would find more profitable ways to exploit him.
He would never be fast-tracked, but, given time, he would go far in corporate America.
If he had the right woman in his corner – someone who could make him care about what people thought about him – he would go farther, faster.
As she drained her wineglass, she decided that the time had come for her to stop waiting for nature to take its course and grab the helm with both hands. She loved her son dearly and would do anything to steer him on the right course.
Anything.
She refilled her glass, took another heavy sip of her chardonnay, and drifted toward the family room where the younger people, including Alan, had congregated. Standing a few steps outside the open doorway, she watched him covertly. He was sitting in the circle like the other young people but, somehow, even when surrounded by exuberant youth, managed to be alone.
Nobody was consciously trying to exclude him. The banter simply slipped past him because he made no attempt to respond. The smiles and laughter rolled off him without leaving a trace.
When he did smile, he was never synchronized with the others. When someone made a subtle joke, his quick mind caught it before anyone else and his smile came too early; or when someone made a simple jibe, he failed to find humor and he smiled only when he heard the others’ laughter, too late to be anything but an observer.
“They’re having a good time,” a masculine voice said near her ear.
Stella turned to see a man smiling at her. What was his name? Peter something. The host had introduced him when he’d first arrived. Him and his wife and their daughter Candace. She remembered Candace because she had been so pretty. Not beautiful like a model but cute as a button. A pixie in a short plaid skirt and soft red sweater. A lively contrast to her son’s wooden aspect.
When they had been introduced, Stella had seen her capture her son’s heart with a carefree laugh and casual wave. He’d barely been able to force a soft, “Hello,” from his lips before she’d skipped off to find the heart of the party somewhere else.
“Your daughter seems to enjoy herself,” Stella replied. “I envy someone who is so at ease in a crowd.”
“She does like people,” Peter said.
“Is she in school?”
“She was studying history at the university but she dropped out last spring. She was smart enough to do the work but didn’t find the academic life as interesting as she’d hoped. Now she’s working for a year while she decides what to do next. Once she’s had a chance to think about it, I think she’s going to settle on nursing. It’s a practical profession and she has a caring nature. I think she’d be a great pediatric nurse.”
Stella looked back into the room where the young people were laughing and flirting. Candace was at the center of the action – the pretty maypole around which the others danced. “I can see that,” Stella replied. “She relates well to people.”
“You have a daughter in there, too?” Peter asked.
“A son. Alan. He’s sitting two over from Candace. In the blue shirt.”
“Oh, right. I remember.”
She could tell that he was lying. It had been over two hours since he’d been introduced to Alan. Undoubtedly he had forgotten her son as soon as he’d heard the name. Alan never made a first impression on anyone. Not a good impression or a bad impression – no impression at all.
Alan was looking wistfully at Candace but, when she turned in his direction, her glance passed through him as though he were made of the purest crystal.
“I guess Candace has a lot of boyfriends,” Stella said.
“She has a lot of dates. I don’t think that she’s ever had a real boyfriend,” Peter replied. “She’s not ready to settle down with a boy any more than she could settle down with her studies.”
“Maybe she hasn’t found the right boy yet.”
Peter laughed. “There’s no maybe about it. She found a lot of the wrong boys but not a single right one. The only saving grace is that she figures out that they’re the wrong boys soon enough and dumps them before she gets hurt. She’s smart that way.”
Stella smiled. “We all had to kiss a few toads before we found our princes. Or princesses.”
“Yeah,” Peter replied but his tone sounded unconvinced. “We do find our princess, don’t we?”
Stella could hear a bitter tone in his voice that unhappy men reserved for discussing their wives with other women. “Come, now,” she said. “Your wife... I’m sorry, I forgot her name–”
“Jane.”
“Right. Jane. She’s lovely. She looks at you like a princess looking at her Prince Charming.”
Peter laughed. “Oh, yeah. She’s a princess, all right. And it’s not just the way she looks. She’s a princess to her core.” He looked at the drink in his hand.
Stella couldn’t tell what it was. Something clear. Gin or vodka, maybe. Might even be white rum.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a bit more to drink than I should have and I’ll bore you do tears if I get started telling you about the princess.” He paused, then said, “Jane’s not so bad. She’s a good mother and she loves me as much as she can in her own way. And she’s a terrific designated driver. Let’s just leave it at that. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? That’ll be more interesting for both of us.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Stella paused to assess the man, then screwed up her courage and said, “I think I need a little air. Would you be a gentleman and escort me outside for a few minutes?”
Peter looked interested. “Sure. You smoke?”
“No.” Stella said, and then laughed at the memory that bloomed in her mind. Once when she was a teenager, she’d been on a date and they’d seen another girl smoking in a doorway and her date had said, If she smokes, she fucks. That was her last date with that boy but she remembered what he said every time she saw a woman smoking. If she smokes, she fucks. Of course, that boy had been too young to know that the negative was also true. If she doesn’t smoke she still fucks. Every woman, smoking or not, fucks someone sometime. But not every woman fucks every man. She, for example, would never fuck a man who says, If she smokes, she fucks.
“Do you smoke?” she asked him in return, then thought, If he smokes, he fucks. She laughed again.
“No,” Peter said, unsure what Stella was laughing about.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s go outside and breathe some good clean air.”
It was not cold enough to merit getting their coats but was cold enough to become uncomfortable after a certain length of time. Stella didn’t intend to be out here for that long.
When she was certain that they were out of earshot of the other guests, Stella got right down to business. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh?” Peter looked interested.
His expression encouraged her. This might be easier than she feared. “Let me be absolutely clear about a couple of things. First. I don’t want to break up your marriage. Or my own marriage for that matter. Remember that.”
“Okay.” Now he looked more than interested. He looked hopeful. It was almost pathetic.
“You can reject my proposition if you want. I won’t be offended or hold a grudge or anything like that.”
“Of course not,” he agreed. It sounded like she was getting close to proposing something wicked.
She took a deep breath. “I think that you can do a service for me. In exchange I’m sure that there’s some service that you’ll want me to do for you.”
“Okay.”
She paused again. Despite the glasses of wine that she had drunk to free her inhibitions, she was suddenly shy about actually saying the words to a strange man.
As the pause stretched, it appeared that she was going to chicken out and withdraw whatever proposition she had in mind without ever saying it. He hastened to reassure her. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can propose anything you want. I’ll agree or not. It’s that simple. If I don’t agree, I’ll just pretend that I never heard it. It’ll be no problem.”
“You can’t ever tell anybody,” she said. “Agree or not. You’ll never tell. Nobody, never.”
“Of course not.”
Actually, she had already assumed that there would be some gossip, but she’d handle that when the time came. She didn’t know if her husband would have to find out everything that she was doing, but if he did, she’d work it out with him. They were blessed with a deeper understanding of each other than most couples.
She screwed up her courage to the breaking point and said, “Here it is. I want your daughter to start dating my son, Alan. Alan’s real shy. He’s never had a girlfriend, not even a date, so she’s going to have to take the initiative. If she asks him to take her out, then he’ll do it. He’ll be too shy to refuse. But she’s going to have to ask him directly. He won’t take a hint. He’s a nice guy. And he’s really focused on his career and being successful. He’s a great catch. Candace’ll like him once she gets to know him. And if she doesn’t like him, then she can drop him. Gently, I hope. When she drops him, he won’t be weird or stalk her or anything like that. I can guarantee it. I just want him to have a real date. That’s all. Just have at least one normal date with a girl.”
“Is he gay? Are you saying that you think my daughter can make him straight?”
“No. No, it’s nothing like that. Not at all. He’s interested in girls, he’s just too shy to do anything about it. That’s all.”
“Then what is it? You want me to ask my daughter to screw your son?” Peter looked offended.
“No. I mean, she can if she wants. If she likes him enough. That would be okay. But that’s between her and Alan. It’s not part of the deal between you and me. I’m just asking for her to date him a little. Just go to dinner and a movie. See a concert. Whatever she’d like to do with him. She can tell him where she wants him to take her and he will. Or she can tell you and you can tell me and I’ll make sure that he does it. All I want is for him to take her out and they both have a good time. That’s all. I’m hoping that they’ll go out a few times so that she can get to know him. See what a good guy he is. But if she only wants to go out with him once, that’s better than nothing. All I’m asking is for you to get her to go on one date with him.”
She paused and waited so see what he would say.
His reaction was predictable.
“My daughter goes out with who she wants. I can’t tell her who to date.”
“You said that you wanted her to find a better man. That’s my Alan. He was at the top of his college class. He was class valedictorian. He works hard and he’s ambitious. He was hired as a technical writer for Google as soon as he graduated and he’s already got his first promotion. He gets a good salary. He’s got a lot of potential.”
“I’m sure that he’s a great guy but, like I said, I can’t tell Candace who she can date.”
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You’re going to pay me?” he looked puzzled.
“Not money.” Stella took a step closer, reached out and stroked Peter’s arm lightly. “I have a different deal in mind. As long as your Candace is dating my Alan, I’ll have sex with you. That’s my offer. Your daughter doesn’t have to have sex with my son, but I will have sex with you. I’m not as young or pretty as some other women, but I’m attractive enough and I’m good in bed. Enthusiastic. Having sex with me won’t be a big, emotional deal, just good physical fun. I’m not going to be a home wrecker. I’ll just be a great piece of ass on the side.” She slid her hand down his arm and pulled his hand around to press it against her soft buttock.
He looked at her in shock and she grinned up at him like a child raiding a cookie jar. “I’m going to give you a great time. Convince Candace to start dating Alan and neither one of you is ever going to be sorry. I promise.”
Peter felt more than a stirring in his pants. He felt painfully constricted down there. He knew that if he looked, he’d see his fly tented by the rigid pole in his shorts.
He hadn’t felt like this since Candace was born. Two decades was a long time to wait for decent sex. Making love to Princess Jane was only one step up from jerking himself off. Not even one step up. Most of the time he had more fun getting himself off than he had when he was making love to her. Jane didn’t know the meaning of the word, fun. Not in any context and definitely not between the sheets.
Stella released his hand and he pulled it away from her rear, hoping that no one had happened to glance out the window and had seen what had happened.
What if Jane had seen? What if he had an affair with this woman and Jane found out? There’d be hell to pay. But what the hell? He felt like he was already living in hell. In the devil’s icy, frigid dis.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk to Candace tomorrow and see what she thinks about your son. What was his name?”
“Alan,” Stella replied.
“Right. Alan. I’m going to have to remember that.”
Stella pulled a pen and piece of paper from a pocket and wrote on it. “This is my email. Tell me what’s happening. Even if nothing is happening, send an email and let me know.”
He read the paper. “This email. AASBD? Is that a school board email address?”
“That’s right. I teach seventh and eighth grade English. I have a spare last period so I get off work at two this semester.” She grinned. “I have plenty of free time in the afternoons.”
Peter felt himself get harder than he had been in years. Teenager hard. So hard that he feared that something might break from the strain. Too hard to go back in to the party.
“I’d better get back and listen to a man talk about a boat,” Stella said. “Send me an email and I’ll tell you how Candace can get in touch with Alan.”
As she turned away, she let her hand brush across Peter’s swollen crotch. He almost creamed himself right there on the Anderson’s front porch. Her touch might have been accidental but nothing would ever convince him of that.
It was a half hour before he had subsided enough to appear in civilized company again. It was chilly on the front porch and, by the time he could return, he was shivering despite the heat below his belt.
The party had seemed like fun before hearing Stella’s proposal. Now it dragged on and on. Peter wanted to talk to Candace about this Alan lad but had to spend the next two hours making small talk with friends of friends.
It was a huge relief when he could finally drag his wife and daughter away from their conversations and bid their hosts goodnight.
Jane, sober as a judge, drove.
He took the opportunity to ask Candace if she had had a good time.
“Sure. It was a great party.”
“Did you meet anyone new?” he asked.
“Of course. I knew Derrick and Allison and a couple of others but most of the people were new.”
“What about that boy, Alan?”
“Who?” He couldn’t see her face in the dark but he could hear the puzzlement in her voice.
“Alan. He was the boy about your age who was sitting one person away from you on your left.”
“Oh, yeah. The one in the purple shirt. He was cute.”
“No. The one beside him. The one wearing the green shirt.”
“Green shirt? No. I don’t remember anyone wearing a green shirt.”
“I’m pretty sure that he remembers you.”
“Well, I don’t remember him.”
“Sure you do. He was there in the room with all the rest of you.”
“For God’s sake, Peter, give it a rest,” Jane snapped. “She said that she doesn’t remember the boy so that’s good enough. She doesn’t remember him. Maybe you’re remembering wrong. Maybe he wasn’t at the party at all. Just drop it already.”
Peter wanted to defend himself. Wanted to tell her that he knew the boy was there because Stella had pointed him out. But he couldn’t bring himself to mention Stella to Jane. She’d touched his rock-hard dick through his pants. No other woman had touched him so intimately since he had married Jane almost twenty-five years ago. He felt like he was already having a secret affair.
He felt deliciously wicked.
His dick twitched again and he glanced across at his wife. She was staring resolutely at the road ahead, anxious to get home and into bed.
But she didn’t want to go to bed for the same reason that Peter did.
That was a foolish thought. He already knew that if he touched his wife’s shoulder tonight, she would roll away from him; if he tried to kiss her, she would avert her head; if he asked to make love to her, she would say that she was too tired and he was too drunk.
The routines were as familiar to him as a pair of old jeans grown two sizes too small.
If sex wasn’t Jane’s idea, then it didn’t happen. And it was her idea only two or three times a month. He was lucky if he got laid every ten days.
The only relief that his aching balls would get tonight was what he could give himself in the bathroom after she fell asleep.
The shortest and surest route for him to get to sex with a woman would be to convince Candace to ask Alan for a date and pray that Stella would keep her promise.
The phrase, a great piece of ass on the side, blazed around his brain like a lighthouse beacon. The piece of paper with Stella’s email address written on it was the magic key to that great piece of ass. It felt like a sheet of red-hot steel burning in his pocket.
When he undressed, he tucked the email address into the innermost pocket of his wallet. The pocket that zipped closed. The one that he never used.
In the morning, he knocked on Candace’s bedroom door.
He interpreted her sleepy grumble as permission to enter, so he poked his head in and asked her if she was working today.
She said that her shift started at four. She liked the evening shifts because dinner tips were a lot better than the lunch crowd‘s. Even on a Monday.
“How about I take you to lunch, then?”
“Don’t you work?” she said.
“I get a lunch break. I’ll pick you up at eleven-thirty.”
“What about Mom?”
“She’s working. It’ll just be you and me. A little father-daughter time. How about it?”
“Okay.”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“Okay. I heard you. I’ll be ready. Just let me get back to sleep.”
He got little work accomplished that morning. He spent his time trying to figure out how to convince Candace to ask a boy for a date when she couldn’t even remember meeting him.
When lunchtime rolled around, he still didn’t know what he was going to say. He would have to wing it.
The one thing that he did accomplish was to send an email to Stella telling her that he was going to ask Candace to go on a date with Alan. He got a woody while he was typing the message. Hardwood.
She emailed a phone number back to him within a few minutes. She was so quick that he still had his wood on.
When he walked into the house at eleven-twenty-five, Candace was coming down the stairs, still in her nightgown. “You’re early,” she said.
Her smile was so disarming that he said only, “I’ll wait for you to get dressed.”
It was after twelve before she was ready.
“Dim sum?” he asked, knowing that his daughter had an affinity for strange Asian food.
“Sushi,” she countered.
Sushi it was.
Half an hour later, as he picked over a plate of seaweed-wrapped rice stuffed with various species of raw fish and difficult-to-identify vegetables, he began nibbling around the edges of the subject that dominated his thoughts. “I haven’t seen you going out with any boys recently.”
“No, I guess you haven’t,” she replied, the twinkle in her eye telling him that she was deliberately giving him nothing.
He watched her smear a thick green paste onto a piece of sushi, then pop it into her mouth. He did the same and took an experimental bite.
Horseradish. Killer green horseradish. His mouth surged with pain and his scalp tried to crawl right off his skull. Then his sinuses emptied themselves into the back of his throat like emergency fire extinguishers. Ineffective fire extinguishers.
He grabbed a glass of water and downed the entire contents.
“Wasabi,” she said. “Japanese mustard. It’s pretty hot. You might want to be careful with it until you get used to it.”
“Gaahh,” he replied.
“Yeah,” she said. “I went out to a Green Day concert with a guy named Paul a couple of weeks ago but he was pretty much out of it. He thought that Green Day was still cool. That’s what I get for going out with an old guy like him. He must have been almost thirty. He didn’t call back so I guess that’s not going anywhere.”
“Have you ever thought about going out with a different kind of guy,” Peter tried to say, but, coming from his burning throat, it sounded more like, “Gah gu ha aught agut gaging gu...” He emptied Candace’s water glass and tried to speak again but had no more success.
“Have a piece of California roll without the wasabi,” Candace suggested. “The rice will absorb some of the heat.”
He scarfed two pieces of the roll in quick order and finally managed to utter an intelligible sentence. “I was saying that you might think about going out with a different kind of guy.” It hurt to talk and he sounded like he’d had a botched larygectomy but he forced the words out anyway. Getting a chance at a great piece of ass on the side was worth a little pain. “You should sample the variety of life while you’re still young and free.”
Candace frowned. She had a pretty frown. “I’ve already dated a lot of different guys. I mean, not a lot of guys. I’m not like that. But I’ve dated enough to have some idea about what’s what.”
“I know. But most of the guys that you’ve told me about have been kind of...” He searched for the right word; he didn’t want to say that she dated assholes. “Kind of the same in some ways. You’ve never dated any guy who’s shy or introverted, for example.”
“You mean a total bore?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean.”
She laughed. “You’re funny, dad.”
“I try,” he said. “But I’m being a little bit serious about this. You might think that men who work hard and can hold a job are boring but there’re some real advantages to going out with a man who doesn’t need you to pick up the check every time. He can be more interested in you than in your wallet.”
“You think that I’ve been dating men who aren’t all that into in me?”
“Haven’t you?”
Candace lowered a piece of spider roll from her mouth and looked thoughtful for a minute. Peter could see her conducting a mental inventory of the guys that she had dated.
Finally she said, “Adam.” You remember Adam, don’t you? He took me to my high school prom.
Peter nodded. “He was a nice guy. Whatever happened to him?”
“Two weeks after the prom, he came out of the closet. He said that he couldn’t tell anyone that he was gay while he was still in high school so he waited until the day after graduation.” Candace laughed. “He told me that he couldn’t go out with me any more. Then he said that it wasn’t me, it was him. Guys always tell that lie when they dump you, but when Adam said it, I had no trouble believing it. The problem really was with him.”
“Is that what put you off nice guys? You’re afraid that they’ll turn out to be gay?”
“No. I’m afraid that they’ll turn out to be boring. Adam was the only nice guy I ever met who wasn’t boring. I guess he was interesting because he was hiding a big secret. Big secrets make guys interesting.”
“Secrets make guys untrustworthy.”
“But interesting.”
Before this conversation could get any further sidetracked. Peter decided to get right to the heart of the matter. “If you’re not dating anyone at the moment, there’s someone that I’d like you to try. That boy, Alan, from the party last night. I’d like you to go on a date with him.”
There was a long pause while Peter waited for his daughter to answer. She stared at him with the strangest expression. Waves of puzzlement, anger, and amusement swept across her features in random order, sometimes co-existing and sometimes fighting for dominance. Finally she settled on amusement.
“Daddy, dearest,” she said, “are you trying to play matchmaker? With me?”
He wanted to be honest and say, No, daughter dearest, I’m trying to pimp you out so that I can get a great piece of ass on the side for myself, but he kept the ugly truth to himself and simply said, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s an experiment. Aren’t you curious to find out what will happen if you go out with a different kind of boy? A kind that you’ve never considered before?”
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then nothing. If you don’t like him, don’t go out with him again. All I ask is that if you drop him, drop him gently.” Peter smiled at his daughter. “He seems fragile.”
She smiled back. “Do you think that I’d want to be responsible for a fragile boy?”
“You’re only going to be responsible for yourself.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll go out with him. When he asks, I’ll say, ‘Yes.’”
Peter paused. It was his turn to show a strange expression. “Well, about that. There’s a slight hitch there.”
“What hitch?” she asked with a frown.
Peter took a deep breath. “He’s shy. He’s not going to call and ask you out.”
“Well,” she said, laughing, “that solves that problem, doesn’t it?”
“I’d like you to call him and ask him to take you out.” Peter pushed a piece of paper with a name and phone number across the table.
She looked at it without touching it. “What’s that?” She could see what it was but she wanted to hear her father say it out loud.
“It’s the boy’s name and phone number.”
“I don’t ask boys for dates. They ask me. I’ve never asked a boy for a date in my life.”
“Then it’ll be a new experience for you.”
“It would be humiliating for me.”
“No, just for him. He should find it humiliating that this is the only way that he can get a date. You’re being an angel of mercy.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Please.”
“Go on a mercy date? Give the poor loser dork a good time for once in his life because he such a pitiful case?”
Peter didn’t know what the right answer to that so he avoided the question and attacked the underlying premise. “Alan’s not a loser. He was his class valedictorian and he’s got a full-time job with Google. He’ll be the most successful young man that you’ve ever dated. His only problem is that he’s shy about women.”
Candace sighed and picked up the paper, dangling it from two fingers like it was contaminated with the plague. She turned it around to peer cautiously at the far side, as though she should be afraid of what might be lurking there.
“You’ll call him, then?” Peter asked.
“I don’t even know him.”
“You met him at the party last night.”
“That’s what you keep saying. I still say that I don’t know him.”
“But you’ll call him?”
“Yes,” Candace said. “I’ll call him.”
She had never seen her father look so happy as he did at that moment. She couldn’t figure out why he would want so badly that she let some dork take her out for dinner.
But, if that was what made him happy, it was the least that she could do for him.
After all, it was just a date. No big commitment or anything.
Later, though, as she was dressing for her evening shift at the Pig’s Tie Pub, she began to wonder if she was supposed to plan the date before she called the boy. Usually, she had only to answer the phone, listen to the boy’s suggestion, and then say yes or no in more or less polite terms, depending on how sincere he sounded. This time, because she was calling the boy to ask him out, she would have to say something if he asked, Where?
Never before had she realized that it took effort to ask someone for a date.
Then she chided herself for worrying about it. She liked the Roxy Shox Club. If this Alan creature didn’t have a suggestion then he could take her dining and dancing at the Roxy Shox. Her call, her choice. That was the way the world worked. If he didn’t like dancing to a techno beat, then he better be ready to suggest an acceptable alternative.
She dialed the number, expecting to leave a message, but a man answered on the first ring. “Alan.”
“Hi, Alan. This is Candace. We met at that party last night? I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Sure.” Pause. “I was sitting almost next to you for most of the evening.”
If you say so, but I’ll have to take your word for that, she thought but said, “Yeah. That was me all right. Anyway, we didn’t get a chance to talk much so I thought that it might be nice to go out to dinner and chat one-on-one a little.”
There was a long pause.
“Alan?” she said. “Are you still there?”
“God, yes. Yes. I’m still here. Sure. Sure.”
There was another pause.
“Sure, you’re still on the phone or sure, you’d like to go out for dinner?” she said.
“Sure both. I’d love to take you out to dinner. You mean like on Saturday?”
“Oh. No. Sorry. I work on Saturday nights. Friday nights, too. My next free evening is tomorrow night. Wednesday. How does that sound?”
“That sounds great. I’ll make a reservation somewhere?” He turned his statement into a question.
“Sure. You want to make it early?”
“Um. Can’t be too early. I work during the day. I don’t get off until five-thirty. Can I pick you up at six-thirty?”
“Okay. You have a car?”
“I will by tomorrow night. Even if I have to go out and buy one tomorrow afternoon.”
She laughed. She wouldn’t have guessed that he could be funny. Maybe he wasn’t going to turn out to be as weird as she had feared. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
He hung up.
Not thirty seconds later, her phone rang. It was Alan again. “I forgot to ask where you live.”
She gave him her address.
“Okay. Great. I’ll be there at six-thirty tomorrow.”
“In a car?”
“In a car for sure.”
He hung up again.
Maybe he was going to be weird after all.
She forgot about her date almost as soon as she hung up the phone. She was out shopping on Wednesday afternoon and saw an adorable dress at American Eagle. It was casual enough to look comfortable so she tried it on. When she saw how good she looked in it, her first thought was that she should wear it on her next date. Too bad that she didn’t have any dates coming up. Then, with a start, she remembered that she did. She glanced at her watch. That boy from the party last Sunday – what was his name? Oh, yeah, Alan – would be coming to pick her up for dinner in less than two hours.
She had to get home and get cleaned up. It was never a good idea to stand a man up on the first date. Some of them tend to get discouraged easily. Even some of the self-centered jerks that she usually dated could be uncertain on a first date. Unfortunately, they tended to hide their uncertainty behind a façade of macho posturing. She hoped that Alan wouldn’t try that dodge.
Alan was on time. In fact, he was weirdly punctual. When the doorbell rang, Candace glanced at the clock on the cable box and it said that it was exactly six-thirty. Not six twenty-nine or six thirty-one but exactly six three zero.
By the time she came out to the living room, her father had already opened the door and was stepping back to admit the young man.
Candace searched his face, expecting to find something familiar in his features. After all, everyone claimed that he had been sitting in the same room, practically next to her, for more than two hours.
She didn’t register the slightest glimmer of recognition. She felt like she was looking at a stranger.
Alan was not particularly good looking. There was nothing seriously wrong with him, just a collection of little flaws – a nose too big, eyes too close together, lips too thin, a slight droop on one side. If you didn’t look at him too closely, he was all right.
Most of the guys that she dated were more handsome than him. She didn’t think of herself as choosing men for their looks, it just worked out that way. She was exceptionally good looking so ordinary looking men were less likely to ask her for a date. They were afraid that she would turn them down and nobody likes that.
She didn’t realize that, even though she tried to be equally friendly to everyone, unconsciously, she did choose men by their looks. She automatically made herself appear more accessible to handsome men. She gave them more eye contact, stood closer to them, smiled more readily when they spoke.
A homely man would have to badly misread her body language to think that she welcomed his attention in any way other than as a casual acquaintance. And, if an ugly one did give her the wrong kind of attention, she would not hesitate to set him straight, gently but firmly.
“You remember Alan,” her father said, gesturing to the young man.
“Of course,” she replied, stepping forward, taking his hand and brushing her lips against his cheek. She always did that at the beginning of a first date because a little light physical contact did wonders to help break the ice. “Let’s go,” she said, leading him back out the door.
She was in a hurry to leave with Alan because there was something a little bit strange about the way her father was looking at the two of them. It was a bit creepy.
It was not until they had almost reached the street that she realized that Alan had not yet spoken to her; had not even looked at her. She hoped that he liked her new dress. Maybe he planned to take her somewhere that was too formal for American Eagle. It wasn’t too late for her to go back and change.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I know this pub that’s pretty good,” he said. “I eat there a lot.”
A pub was good. Her dress would be completely appropriate.
Then he added, “It’s called the Pig’s Tie.”
God no! She spent forty hours a week there; she wasn’t going to spend her evening off there as well. “The Pig’s Tie is a good pub,” she said, “but, if you don’t mind, I’d rather go somewhere else.”
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m just not in the mood for it tonight.”
“Umm. Okay. How about Chili’s?”
“Okay. Let’s go to Chili’s.” Chili’s wasn’t her favorite place by a wide margin – it was too middle-of-the-road – but anything was more acceptable than the Pig’s Tie.
He said little as they drove across town.
She tried to remember serving him at the Pig’s Tie but drew a blank. She wanted to ask him if he recognized her from there, but didn’t want to tell him that she was a waitress. She didn’t think that there was anything wrong with being a waitress and, most of the time, wasn’t shy about telling people what she did for a living. But that conversation always included saying that she was taking a break from college and intended to go back after working for a year or two. Knowing that this guy had been his class valedictorian made her worry that she would sound lame. Like she was making up the going-back-to-college-soon story because she was afraid that she wasn’t as smart or as accomplished as him.
She’d talk about her circumstances when he asked but she didn’t want to volunteer that information this early in the date. Instead she was happy to ride to Chili’s in silence.
Once they had settled into their seats, read the menu, and decided on food, there was nothing left but to actually talk to each other.
“I heard that you work for Google,” she said to kick things off.
“Yes. I’m one of their technical writers. I’m documenting the API for a new mobile app. I’m afraid that I can’t tell you much about it because it’s all covered by NDAs.”
That was a dead end. “So you work in the city?” she said, trying to kick the conversation in a new direction.
“Yes, but I report to a group back in Mountain View. Google has some offices here so I can work remotely but I fly back to California every month or so for one meeting or another. Sorry that I can’t explain more about that but there’s those darned NDAs to worry about.”
“Okay.” Another dead end. “So, how did you come to be at the Anderson’s party on Sunday? Do you know Polly?”
“Polly?”
“Polly Anderson? Her parents hosted the party? It was her birthday?”
“Oh. No. I just met her that night. My dad knew Mr. Anderson from a long time ago. They used to work together.”
Oops. This violated Candace’s first rule of dating – no talking about parents. Nothing killed the mood on a date so quickly as parents on the mind. She scrambled to get the conversation back to something fun. “So tell me about your love life.” She smiled angelically at him. “Broken many hearts lately?”
For a moment, he stared at her like she was speaking Vulcan. Then his ears turned bright red and he looked down at the tablecloth. “I don’t have one,” he mumbled.
“You don’t have a broken heart?” she said, deliberately misinterpreting his statement. “You poor fellow. Every man should have a broken heart. It makes him seem deep and tragic.”
He stared at her in shock. Then he began to laugh lightly. “I guess you’re right about that. Look at Rick in Casablanca.”
She laughed with him. “Or the Dude in The Big Lebowski.”
“Or Shrek.”
“So it’s settled. You have to get your heart broken ASAP. I guess if you haven’t had yours broken yet, I’ll have to break it for you.”
“I’d appreciate that. I need all the tragic depth that I can get.”
“I’ll get right to work on it, then.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t take much work at all.”
“You’ll thank me when I’m done.”
“I’m already thanking you.”
She smiled. He’d be the first man who thanked her for breaking his heart. “So you like movies?”
“I watch a lot of movies.”
They talked about movies for the next half hour. He wasn’t exaggerating. Candace thought that she’d seen a lot of movies, but Alan had seen every movie that she had and a lot more.
When the discussion about movies began winding down, she asked about his writing. “Do you like writing technical stuff?” She was curious because his discussion about movies had been surprisingly insightful.
“It’s a living. It’s not my passion.”
“What’s your passion?”
He blushed again, the first time since she had asked about his love life, and said something almost inaudible.
“I beg your pardon? Did you say poetry?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “Poetry,” he said more loudly. “I write poetry.”
“That’s too bad,” she said. “Your poems can’t be any good.”
“Why not?” he said, again staring at her with wide, shocked eyes.
“Because you’ve never had your heart broken. A man can’t write good poetry unless his heart has been ripped right out of his chest and stomped on by a cruel woman.”
He smiled. “I think you are confusing poetry with the lyrics to country western songs. I don’t have to lose my job, my dog doesn’t have to die, and my pickup truck doesn’t have to run over my best friend’s wife in a blizzard. Writing poetry just takes a little work.”
“I won’t believe it until I see it. Prove it. Write me a poem.”
“Right here?”
“Right here. Right now.” She began rooting through her purse. “Here you go. Here’s a pen and a piece of paper.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Here you go.” He bent over the paper and began writing.
She looked at the top of his bent head. His dark, curly hair was his best feature. It helped that it was badly combed. It made him look like a poet.
She sipped her beer and relaxed. As dates went, this one wasn’t so bad. She’d endured far worse in her young life.
“I’ll have it in a minute,” he said. “I just have to make a clean copy.”
He needed it. His working draft was a mad scramble of crossings out and arrows and words written edgewise in the margins. He seemed to have re-written most lines a half dozen times.
Finally he slid the paper across the table. “It’s pretty simple and awfully rough, but I blame you for that,” he said. “I don’t normally write impromptu poetry.”
She read the paper in puzzlement. The poem was not long, seven lines, but the words made no sense to her. They were simple English words, nouns and verbs, but did not convey any coherent idea.
She decided that there was no reason to try bluffing him, so she said, “I don’t get it.”
He smiled. “I’m not surprised. It’s quite technical. But I’d love to explain it to you.”
She looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
He took that as eager assent. He stood and pulled his chair around the table to sit back down beside her. Then he began explaining the structure of the poem, pointing out his clever use of a half-dozen obscure tropes, piled one on top of the other. He was thrilled to point out where he had used a synecdoche to create a paraprosdokian clause. Exalted in a deliberate catachresis. Bragged about a clever dysphemism.
He sounded brilliant, but after a few minutes of listening to him blather on, she stopped him and said, “But what’s it about?”
He looked back at her, stunned. “What’s it about?” he repeated blankly. “It’s about you, of course.”
She grinned in delight. “About me? You wrote a poem about me?”
“I didn’t have any choice. Tonight, you’re the only thing that I can think about. My mind is completely filled with you.”
“How is it about me?”
He began talking about it, trying to explain how he had described her golden hair without using either the word golden or hair; how he had described her perfect lips without using the word lips; and so forth.
As he spoke, his poem began to make sense. It was about her. Each of the seven lines described an aspect of her face – hair, eyes, nose, lips, teeth, cheeks, chin – but each was also a metaphor for a different aspect of her intellect and personality.
“It’s a lovely poem,” she said.
“It’s yours,” he replied.
She wanted to jump out of her chair, drag him back to her bedroom and make love to him for the rest of the night.
Instead, she said, “You told me that you have no love life.” Her tone was accusatory.
He blushed bright red again. “I don’t.”
“You mean that you don’t have a girlfriend right now. But your life has got to be a freeway paved with the broken hearts of former girlfriends.”
“No,” he said softly. “I’ve never had a girlfriend. Never broken anyone’s heart.”
She paused to think. “Are you saying that you’ve never written a poem for any other girl?”
“No other girl ever asked me to. I don’t talk to girls much. I don’t do anything with girls much.”
“Are you telling me that you’re a virgin?”
She didn’t think that it was possible for his ears to grow any redder but they did. They began to glow with hellfire. “Yes,” he mumbled at his empty plate.
She stared at him for a minute. He wasn’t brilliant. He was an idiot. He had the power to melt the panties off a girl with seven lines of poetry and he didn’t realize it.
Well, I’m going to fix that tonight, she thought. Then she thought again. No. Let’s not do this tonight. Let’s take this slowly and make it perfect. As perfect for me as for him. But I will make love to him soon, even if I have to drug him and rape him. She giggled at the thought.
Alan quailed at the sound of that giggle.
In a long life filled with embarrassing moments, having to admit his inexperience to this woman was the capper. He had never felt so inadequate.
He was mystified. Candace’s seemed to like his poem but now she was grilling him about his non-existent sex life. Maybe this was tit-for-tat. Maybe she was embarrassed that she had needed his poem explained to her so now she was determined to embarrass him back.
It was working.
This was the first date in his life – something that he had dreamed about for years – and he wanted nothing more than to get out of here and end it as quickly as possible.
Candace seemed to read his mind and was happy to oblige. “Let’s get out of here,” she said and signaled to the waitress to bring their bill.
She handled waitresses so much better than him, no fumbling, no waiting for half an hour to be noticed, no hesitation about asking for exactly what she wanted. It was like she knew what the waitress was thinking. It was like Jedi mind control.
She made him feel inadequate without even trying.
During the few minutes that the waitress was totaling the check, Candace was reading and re-reading the poem that he had written for her.
Alan was relieved that she was more interested in looking at those few words than in continuing to talk to him. He felt himself fading into the background, becoming part of the furniture. It was a familiar, comfortable feeling.
But it couldn’t last. The waitress brought the check before he was ready. He glanced at it, rounded the total upward, added a hefty tip, and then rounded the total upward to a round number again and chucked that amount of money on the little black tray. The double round up meant that he was over tipping, but that’s what he always did. He lived in fear of being thought a person who tipped inadequately. And the difference between under and over tipping was only a couple of dollars – an insignificant amount to quibble about.
When he rose from his seat, he saw Candace smiling at him. Was it a happy smile? A victorious smile? A pitying smile? Alan was not sufficiently familiar with smiling women to read the nuance in her expression.
Though her smile might mean disdain or contempt, Alan was pleased to see it anyway. It looked like a good smile, not a nasty one.
If he was wrong then he was wrong in the direction that made him feel better, not worse. It would be a good kind of wrong.
His first date was over. He had made no other plan than eating dinner so he drove Candace directly back to her house. It never occurred to him that she might want to go anywhere else.
On the drive back, they were both as quiet as they had been on the drive to the restaurant.
When he parked in front of her house, she did not open her door. Instead, she reached across and turned the key off. The car fell silent but for a light, infrequent ticking as the engine began to cool.
She put her hand on the far side of his head and lightly turned his face to hers. Then she leaned forward and tilted her head up to plant a gentle kiss on his lips.
His first kiss.
Her lips were soft and warm, not pursed, but relaxed against his. They were parted only slightly, just enough to let her gentle breath caress his mouth in the instant before they touched.
She did not withdraw but kept her mouth pressed lightly against his as she softly stroked the side of his head.
In the warm glow of that all-consuming kiss, Alan forgot all his fears about Candace thinking him clumsy and inexperienced, forgot all his feelings of inadequacy, forgot to be shy. His body overruled his mind and responded with the same gentle affection that it was receiving.
He reached out and slid his hands around her upper back, pulled her lightly toward him, felt her breasts press softly against his chest, and parted his lips to taste her sweet breath. It was the taste of life.
On the bench seat of his mother’s car, their torsos and necks were twisted to face each other, their heads tilted so that their mouths could meet at the perfect angle, but they were in no hurry to part again.
Alan would have stayed in that position until his muscles seized and froze in cataleptic rigidity for eternity. He would have been happy forever.
Candace was the one to part from him and pull slowly back a space of inches, still holding his face with her hands, and staring deeply into his eyes.
Alan had never looked so directly into a woman’s eyes from such a near distance. He found them beautiful in the penumbra of the porch lights. The pale blue striations of her irises seemed to draw him into the inky depths of her dilated pupils until his entire world was a lovely, dark, liquid night spangled with shards of reflected lights.
Then, another miracle.
Candace lowered her hand to take his and move it to her breast. She drew his palm and fingers across that soft, fabric-draped mound to the tip and pressed him against it.
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