by Poppy Dunne
“Yes.” Chelsea pokes at a polka-dotted nightmare at thirty percent off. “I’m supposed to plant beetroot in a small pot of dirt and leave it by my window, where the sun’s strongest. Then I don’t eat anything until I start to hallucinate. Then, I dig up some of the root and eat it, and put some of the dirt in my drinking water.”
“That sounds…completely awful.” I start pulling options off the rack: a strapless black cocktail dress, a lacy white number, a yellow one with a poofy skirt that will probably make me look like a 1950s housewife, but why not? Chelsea plucks options for me as well, like the polka dotted nightmare, a zebra print wrap dress, and what might just be a really long shirt that’s not meant to be a dress at all. Chelsea has fascinating taste, but I’m not going to hurt her feelings. I’ll have to squeeze into the zebra to make her feel better. After all, she’s taking off her lunch—er, her potted beetroot hour to help me. That’s love.
“Eating dirty beetroot is completely awful, but it’s the natural way to a more healthful life,” she says. A sales lady comes over, eyeing our vastly different selections with a well-practiced smile.
“Ladies. Can I open a couple of changing rooms for you?”
“Just the one,” I say. “I’m the shopper. Unless you want to try something, Chels?”
“Hmmm.” She narrows her eyes. “I suppose I don’t need to do any shopping. And if I change my mind, I don’t mind seeing you naked. We can share.”
Well, there you go, folks. My parents expressed a lot of surprise when I came back from college and introduced them to my new best friend, Chelsea Adderson, the most out-there person in the entirety of Vassar. And if you know Vassar, that’s really saying something. And yes, you might be wondering how a type-A old-fashioned highly-strung sort of gal like me ended up friends with a woman with semi-dreadlocked hair and vegan diets and a career in publishing. The short answer is: because Chelsea grew a very potent kind of weed back in college. The long answer: opposites attract. She’s the crunchy yin to my basic bitch yang.
“So that’s one room, one possibility of seeing me without clothes, and thank you very much,” I say to the increasingly bewildered salesgirl. She takes our very different selections and walks them back to the changing area while Chelsea and I investigate the shoe side of things. Pumps, kitten heels, stilettos—what is a woman to do in a time like this? Besides max out her credit card by purchasing all of them?
“You must like this man a lot,” Chelsea muses as I try to decide between a black pump and a leather sandal. “I’ve never seen you impulsively select a new outfit like this. If you decide to have a bikini wax tomorrow morning, I’ll know you mean business.”
Say it a little louder, Chels. I don’t think the two seventy-year-old women sitting opposite heard you clearly enough.
“You can’t say that so loudly!” I say, though I have to keep myself from laughing.
“Why? The industry of removing unwanted body hair is increasing at the same rate that natural pubic hair growth is decreasing.” She nods sagely, almost to herself. “There’s a correlation there. Yes, there is.”
I mouth how sorry I am to the old women as they get up and walk away, huffing to one another. Rolling my eyes, I put the shoes down and head for the changing areas. Can’t decide on footwear until I know what dress I’m getting. If I’m getting a dress at all. If Jack Carraway even warrants that kind of planning from me.
Which I think he does, but I’m trying to be indifferent about that. Trying and failing.
“To answer your sort of question, I suppose I do like this guy. I mean, not enough to start getting carried away,” I hasten to add. Not enough to have already had wild, raucous sex while a wee bit intoxicated. Ha. Imagine living in a world where I hadn’t done something that remarkably against my own rules. What a topsy-turvy situation that would be.
“Are you going to try the zebra first?” Chelsea asks when we get to my room. Her eyes get that little girl excited look. She’s doing her level best to help. My gut twinges, but I smile and nod.
“Sure thing. Let’s see how it fits.” I take the frothy, gauzy, striped thing and lock myself in the changing room. As I shimmy out of my skirt and blouse, I silently curse whatever demon installed industrial type lighting in changing rooms. Honestly, any woman who faces such unforgiving mirrors in such unflattering lighting and walks out unscathed is either superhuman or that lady who plays Wonder Woman.
First up is zebra, and yes, it is a total nightmare. I have very, er, ample resources in the chest department, and anything like a pattern tends to make them visually balloon to twice their usual size. You might be thinking ‘oh come on, every man loves more of a good thing,’ but in this case, it makes a woman start to look ‘robust’ in the way someone’s great aunt Cathy is robust. Which is a serious turn off.
“Well?” Chelsea sounds anxiously expectant, so I need to show her. Thankfully, my two buxom buddies are overflowing, stretching the material too taut. The disappointment in her eyes is real, though. “I’m sure there’s a bigger size,” she says, eager again. Oh dear God, no.
“Just, ah, let me try on some of the others first,” I say, still giving her my best ‘I love you despite this dress’ smile. So that’s what we do. I try on the little black strapless number (too pinched in the back), the lacy white getup (crushes the boobs), and the one that looks like a circus tent made out of organic fibers, another Chelsea contribution (just…no.)
In the middle of trying on dress after dress and eyeing the price tags and wondering why I’m even doing any of this, I get a text from Amy.
‘When is it okay to have sex?’
Oh for heaven’s sake. Do as I say, Amy, not as I do. With one arm sticking out of a peach pink outfit, I rapidly text back.
‘Wait until date 5 at least. Otherwise you’ll be too fast.’
There. Sent. And besides, I know for a fact that Jack Carraway and I are not meant to be anything serious, so why should I worry? Why should I care about what he thinks of me? Why should I spend umpteen hundred dollars on a dress that I might only wear once? There is no answer, I say, and no logic in this world.
There. See, Amy? Don’t become a lunatic like me. Sure enough, soon after I send the text, I get another:
‘But what if he thinks I’m not interested?’
All right, when I get home I need to schedule some sexual tension workshops in for Amy. Nothing too extreme, just a little helpful coaching to remind her of ways to keep a man’s interest without getting horizontal too fast. Keep your knees closed, but flash a bit of thigh. Light touching on his arm is a way to keep him aroused without making him think you want to go all the way. You know, the little things that make or break a successful date.
Also, kissing. Good kissing is very important, just so long as you don’t start jamming your tongue down his throat and making him think that sex is definitely on.
“You’ve got so many rules,” Chelsea says, now sitting cross-legged on the dressing room floor and shooting off these texts to Amy for me. I’m a little tied up in something—namely, one of those halter-necked dresses with several little bow ties on the side. It’s a nightmare to put myself into.
“When you’re on the hunt for something lasting, you need ground rules. Remember? Our Jane Austen classes back in college?”
“I always thought that Austen’s social strata was confined by oppressive and omnipresent forms of surveillance and dominance.” Chelsea scrolls through my emails now, looking for clients to respond to. I swear to God, am I the only 21st century woman who doesn’t have a new, post-modern take on Mr. Darcy? “However, I do appreciate that the Regency fashion was the single instance in the nineteenth century when women didn’t have to wear corsets, but men did.”
“Wait. Did they?” The idea of Mr. Darcy lacing himself into a corset is…oddly arousing. Though if said corsets were anything like this freaking dress, I’m glad we got rid of them all. Finally freeing myself from the taffeta vise, I look at the piles of gaudy colored car
nage around me, place my hands on my hips, and sigh. Maybe I should just give it up, save my credit card a work out, and go with something simple for tomorrow night. After all, I don’t want Jack to think I made too much of an effort. That’s not sexy at all.
Or maybe it’s too sexy, and that’s what I’m afraid of.
“Let me give it one more try. Then we need to go get my beetroot.” Chelsea tosses my phone back to me and rushes out of the room before I can go ‘wait, please, I don’t want anything lined with tree bark and/or locally sourced wool.’
Boom. The phone buzzes in my hand, and I see I’ve gotten a text from Jack Carraway himself. My skin heats as I see the note:
‘Driver’s coming at 7:30. Be ready. J’
I bite my lip, glad I’m not wearing any heels so I don’t wobble and tilt over into a sea of fabric. I don’t like that this man has me tearing through the racks of Bloomingdale’s, looking for something to wear that’ll entice him; it’s too much like being in high school all over again. These jittery nerves remind me of high school. Cutting classes to “accidentally” run into my latest crush. Impulsively boarding a Greyhound bus to Pennsylvania to surprise my older, college boyfriend. (The surprise is on you, Dahlia, he’s moved on with a blonde sorority sister, and by the way, you’re grounded for a month.) Everything was reckless. Swirling. Out of control. I swear, if I find a pimple on my forehead tomorrow morning, I’m canceling my classes, falling back into bed, and listening to that one Hoobastank album again and again.
No. No, let’s not go back that far. The early 2000s were a dark time for anyone who wasn’t super in love with emo rock and new metal.
“How about this?” Chelsea barges in without knocking. I’m practicing my ‘it’s so cute but I don’t think it’ll fit’ look when…I see it. See it and fall wildly in love with it.
“Chels,” I breathe, lifting the dress out of her hands. My jaw’s about to hit the floor. “How did you know?”
“I asked myself what the extreme opposite of my own taste might be.” She grins slyly, like the Cheshire Cat of retail. “I’m glad you approve. Now. Beetroot time.”
Whatever she wants, she gets. Because Chelsea just gifted me a showstopper of a dress. Well, Mr. Carraway, let’s see how you like this number.
7
Jack
Damn, Dahlia was right. This Carlyle stationary is exceptionally well made. You don’t think about paper all that often, unless you’re on a second date with an incredibly hot woman. Then you might get to the restaurant precisely five minutes early, so as not to be ‘too desperate’ in her own elegantly written words.
She even dotted some of the ‘i’s with hearts. Drunken little hearts.
I’m hard.
Fuck, as I think myself into submission, I can’t help anticipating seeing her again. There’s no way she can still have this kind of an effect on me. Like she said, this isn’t standard behavior for me. I’m not a man whore, though when I add it up, I do fall into Dahlia’s established man whore equation in terms of sexual partners to age number. Damn, this woman’s got a system for everything, it seems.
Why the thought of her organizing a system should make me want to press her up against a wall and ravish her by the Central Park lake, in view of all the pervy swans and Canadian geese, I have no idea. I like my women fun and footloose and free and all the other alliteration I can allocate to this…whatever. I’ve always liked the blondes who forget their panties, the redheads who go skinny-dipping on a private beach.
Guess it’s never too late to try something new after all.
Old school jazz music plays overhead in the Loeb Central Park boathouse. The sun has finally set after a hot summer day, and moonlight ripples on the black water of the lake. The place is dead quiet, just me and some very attentive waitstaff. The restaurant would obviously be busy on a summer night at any other time, but if you pay people enough you can get them to accommodate just about any desire.
I check my phone. 7:59. Is she running late? Is that all right for the woman to do, but not the man? Is that sort of sexist? Do I much care, so long as she shows up in what I hope is a knockout dress, giving me another advantageous look at her world-class breasts?
Is that sort of sexist? Only if I thought she was nothing but a pair of tits. No, the woman as a whole intrigues me. The breasts are just a perk. A very, very ample perk.
“It’s quiet in here tonight,” Dahlia says. I stand up to greet her, maybe shake hands, all that very collegial, nonchalant stuff that makes modern sex such a head scratcher. When I’m on my feet, I nearly fall back down again. The dress isn’t just a knockout; she’s a knockout.
The lady wore red, and I approve. She seems to have poured herself into the dress, which clings to the curves of her body. As she sits down, tossing her dark hair over a shoulder, I get the impression she did this deliberately. She’s trying to put me off my game.
Well, that was rule number four, wasn’t it? Play hard to get. She wants to see which one of us is going down tonight.
Push the obvious sexual innuendo to one side, and then acknowledge that I’m going to win. I’m competitive like that. But she’s not going to be an easy opponent.
That’s fucking sexy.
“You’d think this would be prime dinner hour.” Dahlia checks her reflection in a hand mirror. She looks phenomenal, and she knows it. This is a way to seem bored with the conversation already. I have to earn her interest.
This is why you don’t give your opponent your handy ‘67 rules’ list. It makes it too easy to anticipate every move.
“I bought out the place.” I shrug, smiling when her eyes snap up to me. Attention at last. She didn’t expect I’d be so forthcoming.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I have two point seven billion dollars, and the new Xbox doesn’t release until next month.”
“Still a gamer?” She puts the mirror down and cups her chin in her hand. Ah, she’s affecting boredom again.
“You don’t get into tech without logging some serious time answering the Call of Duty. But I have a standing order to send any new gaming modules on the market to children’s hospitals and foster homes around the country. That, and money to assist in better food programs, school sponsorships, and sports fellowships. It’s nice to give back.”
“A humanitarian.” Dahlia’s clearly searching for another barb to throw at me, but it’s tough when you admit to loving the underprivileged. Any sass to that makes you look like an asshole straight out of Charles Dickens. “Well, I can appreciate that. I do my own bit to help out, actually.”
“Writing lists for foster kids?”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Ha. I help people develop healthy and loving relationships. Those lead to stable families. Stable families raise stable kids.”
“But what about the ones who fall through the cracks? How are they supposed to find their way to a happy ever after?” That’s what it says at the bottom of her list: Happy Ever After, with two exclamation points. Dahlia opens her mouth, ready to say something that’s probably fiery and interesting…then she pauses. I can see her reappraising me, thinking things through. That was rule, what was it, 42? Don’t get into heavy topics of conversation until at least date five. I suppose until then, people are supposed to rank their favorite episodes of Battlestar Gallactica in ascending order.
Which I could do. Lee Adama’s a badass, and I won’t hear otherwise.
“I think we need a couple of cocktails before I answer that question.” She smiles as a waiter comes over to us, and orders another dirty martini. I take an Old Fashioned, then it’s us again. Alone, except for the waitstaff, the night, and that one swan that keeps walking past the window glaring at me. I see you, bird. I see you. You’ll never take me alive. “While we wait for the alcohol, tell me about yourself.”
“I’m more interested in you,” I say. To that, she simply unfolds her linen napkin and places it just so in her lap.
“Well, a lady doesn’t give up all her
secrets on the first date.”
“Oh, come on. You didn’t hold anything back on date zero,” I say. It’s a little out there, I grant you, but it has a purpose. Dahlia’s gaze snaps up, grabs my gaze, and starts hate-fucking the life out of it. Now that’s what I want to see: an authentic response.
“And you’re certainly going balls out to intimidate me by throwing a bunch of money around. Well, it doesn’t work. Naming your exact bank balance? That’s something a confident man doesn’t have to do.”
“Confident? That’s polite. I’d say I was downright cocky, with a smidgen of asshole. Just to keep things fresh, of course.” I grin, and the hot-blooded Long Island passion starts to dim in her eyes. She screws her mouth up to the side; she’s trying not to laugh.
“I really don’t get you.”
“That’s the most honest reaction I’ve gotten tonight.” I wave her piece of paper with the rules and the little heart ‘i’s. She watches it, wincing. “How about we play by my rules for tonight?”
“If they involve sex dungeons or Polish folk dancing, I’m going to say no. That has to wait until date twelve, at least,” she drawls, leaning back in her seat as our drinks arrive. The waiter seems very intrigued by the mention of dungeons. Or folk dancing. One or the other.
“I’ll add that to the list. Tonight, we only go by one rule. My first rule.”
“Which is?” She takes a sip, leaving a red-lipsticked kiss on the rim of her glass. Damn, the sight of that alone makes me want to— “You’re thinking about sex right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And right there, that’s what I want. My first and only rule: total honesty.”
“Okay.” She folds her hands over her breasts and tilts her head to the side. “How many fantasies have you had about me since I walked up to the table?”
“Five. No.” I recalculate. “Four. One of them was about the swan outside. I want to get into a death match with that bastard.”
