The Parting Gift

Susan was my goddess. A lithe figure in black, she kept the entire bar at a perfect arm's-length. I had seen her the night before at the Ginger Man, similarly dressed, apathetically smoking a cigarette (boo!) and surveying the crowd from her perch at the back bar. This girl was in it for herself, and that was really sexy. To see her on consecutive nights like this was a coincidence arranged by fate; it was an opportunity that could not be squandered. So I stepped in front of her and told her exactly that. Five minutes later she professed her love to me - for the Charlatans UK. Flow.

The only one I know. She was going to yank me out of this two-year bachelor funk. No more incoherent eight-hour stag affairs. No more two-day hangovers. Finally the college pattern would be snapped, and I would once again be catapulted into the emotional tumult of newfound love.

In fact, I was already thinking about the "first date". After all, I hadn't had one with a girl I was truly intrigued by in almost four years, and had never had one with a woman. Yet oddly, I felt the same vibe coming back toward me. The next weekend was wide open, on account of a bachelor party my friends were attending for a grade school pal. Suddenly, I began to get a little giddy. I would have to play this cool.

We voluntarily returned to our separate friends after an hour, but with the understanding that we would reunite at the end of the night to exchange pertinent information. Two hours and six Ketel-One Sevens later, I failed on the first try to write my name and number legibly on the back of her crumpled ATM receipt. Ebb.

# # # # #

So my self-heralded return to the dating game would come in the form of a date with a girl named Denise. With a trim 5'5 frame, big blues eyes and an attentive gaze, she seemed as good a choice as any. Plus, I had her phone number, which would certainly help. What wouldn't help was that I had gotten it a week and a half earlier at a bar, and had to dig it out of the pocket of a shirt that had already begun to ossify under a growing pile of dirty clothes in my closet.

Regardless, I was sure that she would be interested. After all, this is a girl who stood there entranced as I did little more than slander the Long John Silver's restaurant chain all night (what can I say, it's a gift. Incidentally, I have never eaten at Long John Silver's, basically on account of their serving "fast" seafood and their atrocious advertising campaigns of the late 1980s. I really wanted to fight that Norman Bigfish fucker.) Sure I hadn't called her right away, but I thought the standard bullshit about being busy with work would suffice. So I sat down on our red reclining chair, dialed the cordless phone and prepared to muster my meager charm.

"Hello?"

It was a fucking guy! I mean what the fuck is this? I thought.

"I'm sorry," I replied. "I must have the wrong number."

I hung up and began to wonder. What cruel machinations had I fallen prey to? Had I mistaken her rapt attention for amazement at my utter boorishness? Was she mocking me in front of her friends and mine? I certainly wasn't above such a stunt, but her? I never suspected. Shit, I had talked about "hush puppies" for 20 minutes! It all started to come together. She must have heard me mention that I had gone to Champaign-Urbana for school, and then invented the story about coming from one of those horse shit I-57 exit towns to sucker me into thinking she was a dullard. From there, the fix was in. Well...

Suddenly the phone sprang to life, and it really came together. I remembered her mentioning as part of our blather that night that she was putting up a friend of a friend at her apartment, and that this friend was a guy. He must have answered the phone, and was now probably calling back to clarify that I had in fact reached Denise's house, but that she wasn't home. I decided to play dumb, reiterate that I had dialed incorrectly, and put this half-hearted, half-baked attempt behind me.

"Hello?"

"Mike?"

Shit, it was a female voice. It was her!

"Uh, yes, this is Mike."

"This is Denise. Did you just call here?" (Now what the fuck kind of question is that? I mean, she had obviously used some sort of redial or caller ID mechanism.)

"Yes I did. We met at Bordo's. Do you remember?" (Two could play the Stupid Question Game, and I desperately needed time to figure out how to deal with this situation.)

"Yeah, that was over two weeks ago. Uh, what do you want?"

It had been eleven days, not "over two weeks", but I figured that I was getting what I deserved for my arrogance and insensitivity, and decided to get it over with and take my lumps.

"Yeah, I've been extremely busy at work over the past two weeks, and have finally gotten the chance to dig myself out. So I was just calling to see how you were, and ask if you wanted to get together sometime."

"You're supposed to call in three days. Those are the rules."

"The rules?"

"Yes, haven't you read The Rules? It's a book about dating etiquette." Just what we need: more posturing and play-acting between the sexes.

"No, I am not aware of The Rules. Please enlighten me." (Gag.)

"OK," she said, as if collecting herself to deliver a long and detailed explanation. "If you meet a person on Friday, you're supposed to call on Sunday or Monday. If you meet a person on Saturday, you're supposed to call by Tuesday."

"Oh."

"Yeah, haven't you seen the phone company commercial with the caller ID?"

"No, I don't believe I have." (A lie.)

"Yeah this girl is brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed, and the phone starts ringing. She goes over to her caller ID box and sees a guy's name. Then it [the caption] says that he hadn't called in three days."

"Is that what that's all about?" I asked, pretending that her description had triggered recall. "I figured that they had had a fight or something."

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