by Camilla Monk
His eyebrows rose. “Me? I’m not entirely certain I’m qualified to choose a restaurant that will meet all of your expectations—”
“No, March. Where would you go? What would you enjoy? Molecular stuff? Italian?” I insisted.
The cutest expression of embarrassment appeared on his usually confident face. “Well, I—”
“What?”
He fumbled in his left pocket, still looking hesitant, and showed me a couple of bright-colored coupons, the kind of overenthusiastic advertisement only Japanese businesses can come up with. “They were distributing these near the hotel. I took some because it sounded like an excellent bargain, but I’m not sure—”
I closed my eyes, trying hard not to laugh. Some tonkatsu joint in the area offered a free dessert with every order of a fried pork sirloin dish, along with all-you-can-eat rice. “Okay! Fried pork it is!” I proclaimed, much more comfortable with the prospect of a ten-dollar dinner than that of some overly posh and expensive restaurant.
March nodded his approval while tucking the coupons back in his inner pocket, and offered me his arm to go down to the hotel’s lobby. As I rested my left hand on his forearm and leaned closer to him, I wondered if he understood that I had asked him to choose our destination because I cared more about knowing him better than I did about my dream romance date thing.
Everybody stared when we entered the tonkatsu joint. I could understand why: we looked like some sort of ridiculously jamesbondish pair in the middle of a tiny restaurant that smelled of fried food, soy sauce, and coffee. Tired salarymen ate directly on the wooden counter, sitting on high stools, downing glass after glass of cheap beer. A young waiter guided us to a small table near a window, and March handed him his two coupons with a regal gesture. I bit my lower lip not to laugh and ordered a can of C.C. Lemon soda for myself and some iced coffee for March.
While we waited for our dishes to arrive, I pulled out a crumpled advertisement for an antiaging cream, on which I had scribbled a list of questions, back at the hotel’s spa. I handed it to March.
“I think you should tell me immediately which questions are unsuitable for a date,” I said, producing one of the hotel’s pens from my coat pocket.
He nodded and started reading. The pen went down, and I cringed as half of my list was crossed off with a steady hand. He then seemed to examine the remaining items until his brow knitted, and he crossed out yet another item. “That is totally inappropriate.”
I leaned forward to look at the list. “What?”
“I’m not discussing when, or to whom, I lost my virginity!”
“It would only be fair! Joy told you about me!”
He snorted. “I’m sure you’ve already heard the answer to this question anyway, and in florid detail, no doubt.”
I blinked. “Kalahari?” My hands flew to my mouth as I remembered her tale. “Wow, you were twenty-four? That’s almost as bad as me!”
He looked offended. “Is this the sort of compliment you usually give to your partners?”
I flushed upon realizing that I had once again failed to make appropriate small talk during a date, and I was grateful for the distraction provided by the waiter arriving with our drinks. March handed me back my list, stern blue eyes observing me over his iced coffee.
I took the paper and went through his changes. Everything related to his family had been crossed off, and I wasn’t allowed to ask how he had become a professional killer either. Some questions he had answered directly on paper, suggesting that this was all I would get and the topic, therefore, needn’t be discussed. Indeed, near the lines where I asked if he too was South African, like Dries, and if his mentor was a Lion as well, a simple “yes” had been scribbled in poor handwriting. That left us with friends, hobbies, cleaning tips, trivia, and . . . I crossed my eyes at the single word he had written at the bottom of my list.
“Who’s Gerald?”
“My orange tree,” he replied, his features relaxing.
“Oh. Why does it have a name?”
Unbeknownst to me, I had just asked one loaded question, and poked at one of the most intriguing aspects of March’s solitary life. A “roommate” of sorts, Gerald had been a Christmas gift from Kalahari, along with a book on plant psychology insisting that treating an orange tree as a full member of the household would dramatically improve its production. March admitted, however, that Gerald’s oranges were small and bitter, and that they weren’t even that round. It was actually so bad that he secretly stashed a bag of store-bought oranges in his kitchen. He mostly blamed this unfortunate predicament on the South African Eastern Cape climate—no doubt in a bid not to hurt Gerald’s feelings.
I tried to comfort March, insisting that he shouldn’t let some passive-aggressive orange tree bring him down like this. What I read between the lines, though, was that he guarded himself from others so well that he was terribly lonely, and confiding in Gerald sounded better than dining alone in silence, or safer than calling Kalahari, since she might—would—repeat every single confession he made.
By the time our fried pork arrived, I had managed to make him talk about Phyllis as well and their encounter in Macau six years earlier, when she had been doing accounting for a casino owner who had apparently died since. The exact terminology March used was “dissolved”; I didn’t press the issue. Anyway, she had more or less become March’s life support since, taking care of all the administrative aspects of his business and forwarding him good ostrich pictures whenever she stumbled on them. Eagerly digging into the juicy, crispy pieces of pork on my plate and the fresh sliced cabbage accompanying them, I tried to extort some more intel from him, this time regarding his little cubicle house facing the ocean in Cape St. Francis.
It didn’t go as planned.
“What about you?” March asked between two mouthfuls of all-you-can-eat rice. “What else do you like, apart from romance books and computers?”
I stiffened. Here came the trickiest part. I knew for certain that opening my mouth and talking about myself would precipitate this date into the depths of hell, like all the previous ones. Maybe it was time to experiment with a new strategy. “Well . . . I enjoy shopping, going to the gym, and I love modern art,” I replied smugly.
“Bag of lies. You rarely buy anything when you and Joy go shopping together, you don’t understand modern art, and you spend more time floating around than swimming when you go to the pool,” He commented with a smirk.
I felt my entire body prickle with humiliation. How the hell did he know these things? From screening my e-mails and chat logs as part of the Board’s investigations, maybe? Not only this, but why did he even care about such details? God, I hoped he hadn’t somehow learned that I liked to pick my nose under the shower.
In any case, I was cornered; my head hung low in defeat. “Okay, I like floating in pools, walking aimlessly in big cities, playing video games, reading Wikipedia. I like that homeless guy who’s always in front of Dunkin’ Donuts on Amsterdam Avenue and calls people communists, and I want to go to space.” I took a big gulp of C.C. Lemon.
“To space? On which planet? The moon?”
I slammed my can back on the table. “The moon is not a planet! The moon is a moon!”
I was treated to the deep, warm laugh I liked so much. “My apologies, poor choice of words.”
“It’s okay. Anyway, I’d like to visit Europa,” I muttered.
“Oh. I’ve never heard of this pl—” March stopped mid-sentence as he caught the look of scandal on my face.
I couldn’t take it anymore and, before I could stop myself, started a heated rant about Europa—my favorite moon of Jupiter—its miles-thick ice crust, the liquid water ocean NASA suspected existed underneath, and my own theories regarding what sort of non-carbon-based life forms might be swimming in there. Somehow that led me to the controversial subject of convergent evolution and to lobsters holding the key to biological immortality because their DNA can replicate indefinitely without any loss of genet
ic material therein.
When I reached the part about immortal lobsters, March stared at me for several seconds, and I thought I had ruined yet another date . . . until he asked if it was true that there was ongoing research regarding the application of this “fountain of youth” to human DNA. Turned out that since Gerald had limited conversational skills, March sometimes read articles on Wikipedia too to pass time, and he had stumbled on the one dedicated to lobsters.
Sweet Raptor Jesus. I was having dinner with a man who had not only read about the specificities of lobster DNA replication, but cared enough to wonder if you could make humans immortal by tweaking with their chromosomes in a similar fashion!
When our free desserts arrived, March praised the tonkatsu joint for its remarkable price-to-value ratio, since we were getting not one but two scoops of squid ink ice cream. The taste was revolting, but I ate some nonetheless, to make him happy. He wasn’t picky and didn’t like to waste food, so he finished my ice cream on top of his.
The waiter didn’t have anything to do by the time he arrived at our table. March had wiped the plates with his paper napkin, stacked them on top of each other, placed our cutlery on them, and gathered all the crumbs on the table into a neat little pile. The guy gave us a long sideways glance that we both ignored—March because he was probably used to it, me because I didn’t care. He was my dream date, crumbs or not, and I floated on cloud nine as he caressed my hand and looked into my eyes while we waited for his credit card receipt. I knew this was standard date practice, but it made my entire arm tingle deliciously.
“So, was it a nice date?” March sounded perhaps a little hesitant as we left the small restaurant and made our way back to his car.
“Remarkable! I think we’re pretty good at this,” I said proudly.
The ride back to the hotel was just as blissful, with our fingers moving to graze each other whenever he stopped at a red light. By the time we entered the Ritz’s lobby, I was pretty much flying among pink unicorns.
Call me a libidinous strumpet who surrenders on the first date, but as we stood in the elevator and I watched the floor numbers flash one after another, I started to think that maybe it was going to happen. We would be sleeping in the same room, after all, and I had sexy lingerie . . . Plus that sadistic beautician from the hotel’s spa had seriously cleared the ground down there.
Or maybe I was delusional.
To my great disappointment, once we were alone in the room together, March didn’t make any noticeable attempt at ravishing me, choosing to answer a series of text messages instead while I brushed my teeth. Staring at my reflection in the bathroom’s large mirror, I found myself back to square one, pondering the same, eternal question: Now what?
Maybe I had been a little quick in my projections. The thing was, March had consecutively earned badges for best compliment ever, first toe-curling kiss, and first 100 percent successful date—a grand slam I had taken to entail that classic and non-adventurous intercourse was next on our schedule. Yet now . . . well, nothing was happening, and I had sort of counted on him to take the initiative. Should I go back to the living room and take the matter in my own hands? Did I even have it in me? What if he shared the widespread opinion that sex was illegal before the third date?
Frowning, I mentally reviewed each possible scenario until my brain paused on a particular one that I believed Joy would have approved of, along with most soap opera screenwriters. Taking a calming breath, I exited the bathroom.
March was done with his texting. He had removed the black tuxedo jacket, and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up on his forearms—I had come to notice he didn’t like it when one wasn’t exactly rolled like the other. The ever-present holster was still there, but at this point I gathered he slept with it. I approached him with cautious steps, and a fresh smell I instantly recognized greeted my nostrils. He was doing mints. Mustering my courage, I casually turned my back to him. “Could you help me with my zipper?”
“Certainly.”
I struggled to stay cool as his hands made contact with my shoulders. He pulled the zipper slowly, leisurely, and when I felt the black silk part completely and expose the small of my back, I remembered that the slutty pink bra was now visible as well and felt a blistering blush spread on my cheeks and neck.
“Island—” March’s voice dropped an octave, and one of his hands moved to rest on my hip. “You didn’t need any help for this, right?”
“It always works in the movies,” I murmured.
Behind me, I heard a soft chuckle and then nothing but a deafening silence.
March’s lips made contact with my neck.
It was so light at first that I thought I had dreamt it: the ghost of a kiss on the pulse beating under my skin, then, a second, this time closer to my shoulder. Soon enough, he was pressing his body against mine, and his left arm had snuck around my waist, steadying me while he devoured the nape of my neck. When he started nibbling the area under my ear, I thought of how cats bite each other by the scruff to establish dominance on a specific area of the couch. I leaned back into him, my ability to stand apparently affected by the intense zings traveling from my scalp, through my chest, and all the way down to my toes. Was I, by any chance . . . being scruffed?
Possibly, since I heard myself mewl, and a low purr answered my vocalizations, as if we were no longer civilized enough to communicate with words. The hand holding my waist tightened while its sibling roamed across my chest, lingering on my breasts until it traveled lower and bunched the front of my skirt with the clear intent of baring my thighs. Call me old-fashioned, but this particular move scared me a bit, because I didn’t like the idea of getting undressed like that, in the middle of the room, with all the lights on. If things were headed the way I thought they were, March was supposed to undress me slowly in the dark—with a saxophone solo in the background.
I stopped his hand with mine and spun in his arms to face him. I could feel an idiotic, hormone-fueled grin stretch my cheeks, which were probably red by that point. March, on the opposite, still looked cool as a cucumber. That is, if you were able to overlook the fact that there were wrinkles on his shirt and that his pupils had dilated into black pools swallowing the blue in his eyes. His fingers trailed on my cheek in a tender gesture, and he flashed me a stupid smile that mirrored mine, like we were alone on a deserted island and I was a fraisier.
I made up my mind. If I was going to shame my family for at least two generations by sleeping with a man on the first date, I would at least do it right. Stepping away from him, I took his hand and tugged tentatively, steering him toward the bedroom. His brows drew together for a brief instant, and I read uncertainty on his features, but he followed me anyway, his thumb tracing slow circles on my wrist as we entered the bedroom.
I didn’t turn any light on; the faint bluish hue coming from the bay window seemed perfect—dark, but not too dark. I squeezed his hand once to steel my resolve, let go, and plopped myself down on the bed, arms alongside my body, still like a sacrificial lamb.
Five seconds of absolute silence ensued, during which March stared at me and blinked a few times. Then he sat on the bed by my side, the city’s lights outlining a faint smile on his lips. “Island, why are you planking?”
I felt my entire face ignite with blazing shame. “I was . . . I thought we were . . . Aren’t we going to have sex?”
March’s Adam’s apple moved a little, and I heard him swallow. I held my breath as one of his hands crept up my thigh, caressing it absently. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
I nodded, my hands rising to play with the front of his shirt, without daring to undo the first button.
Right.
Definitively not a good idea.
First date, professional killer, no saxophone. All that jazz—or so to speak.
Except March’s fingers disagreed: they hooked in my stocking and started to roll it down slowly. I’m almost positive I heard him swear under his breath, but this is Mr. Cle
an we’re talking about, so it probably never happened. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, and I think I tugged on his shirt a little. An imperceptible pull in the right direction. Which was all he needed, really. His lips crashed on mine, and he abandoned all pretense of being a gentleman.
I tasted mints, saw stars, and as my arms wrapped around his neck—in an effort to kiss him back like Scarlett O’Hara kissed Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind—I decided that every second spent waiting for Mr. Right had been worth it.
God, even that buzzing in his pants’ pocket turned me on.
Wait. What?
He tore his mouth away from mine with an uncharacteristic groan of frustration, and I felt him let go of my other stocking to answer that damn phone. I curled against him and inhaled the faint sandalwood notes clinging to his shirt, my fingers still itching to undo those tantalizing buttons.
March’s breath was short and his tone curt as he greeted his caller. “Good evening. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to call.”
On the other end of the line, whoever had called started a lengthy rant that had the frown on his face deepening by the second.
“Didn’t Phyllis send you the manual? . . . Configure the app? What app? . . . Is this a joke? Do you really think it’s a crucial feature? . . . No . . . No! The manual said your Twitter login should be preceded by an underscore . . . Yes, then the password . . . What do you mean it’s not working? . . . No! Don’t test it! . . . All right, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Stop touching it. Don’t even look at it!”
After he had hung up, I looked up at him with glazed eyes. “Who was that?”
“My little nephew.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You have nephews?”
“Dozens of them; I love children.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, biscuit. I have to—”
“Yes, I heard. You have to go. And you won’t tell me where,” I summarized accusingly.
