Dating Without Novocaine

by Lisa Cach

  “Hey, don’t let them get to you,” Pete said, leading me toward the doors, and showing a perception I’d assumed he lacked. “They’re good guys, but they need to grow up.”

  “You know that I’m older than you, don’t you?” I asked, feeling insecure and uncertain about all of this.

  “I guessed. What are you, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

  “Almost thirty. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  Only a year older than Cassie’s fresh catch. Now I couldn’t hassle her anymore. I knew I should listen to my own advice and drop the acquaintance right now, only he was sooo cute. And seemed so interested.

  “What is it with younger guys, going out with older women?” I asked as we wound our way through the parking lot toward my car.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve got your shit together. Girls my age, they’re so needy, they cling to you like an octopus, you can never get them off. Older women, you’re more independent.”

  I wondered if that meant he thought we needed less attention. “I’d think you’d want those younger bodies,” I said. “No cellulite, no droop.”

  “The bodies are good, but they don’t know what to do with them. Older chicks, they know how to work it.”

  “I always thought it would be fun to play Mrs. Robinson, just once,” I said, somewhat lacking in enthusiasm. “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  We found my car and got in, and he fiddled with the radio, switching stations and messing with the speaker settings as I drove out of the lot. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “How about pizza? There’s a place on Broadway I like.”

  “Sure.” Pizza didn’t seem like date food—nothing you ate with your hands and risked getting stuck in your teeth was date food, not to mention the garlic—but I suppose pizza is what one should expect from a twenty-five-year-old.

  We talked about music and movies on the drive, and books once we were at the restaurant and waiting for our food.

  “I love to read,” Pete said.

  “Real books? Not just magazines?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m reading The Grapes of Wrath right now.”

  I was impressed. Maybe there was more to him than the body and the aftershave. Not that there had to be—I was still enjoying letting my eyes slip from his face to his shoulders, the same way a guy had a hard time keeping his gaze off a woman’s breasts. He was wearing a blue chambray button-down shirt over a white T-shirt, and the cotton looked more than warm and soft enough to touch. My hands would just barely span the thickness of those shoulders.

  Ohhh…

  “Are you from around here?” he asked, breaking into my lustful musings.

  “Roseburg. I’ve lived in Oregon all my life.”

  “I’m from Ohio. I like it out here, especially the mountains. But I’m thinking of moving up to Seattle, or maybe down to San Francisco.”

  “You are? Why?” I asked, faintly alarmed. I didn’t want to think of this lovely piece of manhood leaving anytime soon.

  “There’s just not enough happening here. In my work, I mean. Not enough excitement. That’s why I became a cop to begin with. I’ve got ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and I thought it would provide the right type of stimulation.”

  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…h
ave 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.

  Seventeen

  Pink Panties

  “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 beneath 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 d
own 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 going 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.”