Today's Reading
While I moved books off the table that would serve as the console, he found the cable jack and electrical outlet. He lifted the TV onto the table, with an elegance that surprised me, and pressed the on button. The weatherman appeared. I gasped.
"God, thanks," I said, handing his shirt back to him. "This is incredible. Never has a stranger given me a television."
"It's not like I'm nothing to you. You make it sound like I came in from off the street."
"You're not nothing," I agreed. "We had a conversation. It was . . . five minutes?"
"Maybe even ten."
"Maybe even ten!"
"It's perfect there," he said, buttoning his shirt.
I tried to make out his tone—sarcastic? The screen was laughably enormous in my tiny apartment.
"Wait," I said, and fished the cookies out of my coat. They were Danish butter cookies, the kind that came in a blue tin, nestled into cupcake papers. "A reward." The cookies were crumbles now. He poured them into his mouth all at once, which I liked.
He didn't say anything for a moment, dissolving the cookies with his saliva. I admired his eyes, which were an intense blue, more like ice than water, so light they were nearly transparent. My own eyes struck me as common, in comparison. They were brown, and moderately cool, as all eyes were. But a certain type of eyes made you think: 'Those can't possibly be real. A human body made those?' Matthew's were in that category. He was beautiful, I'd observed all night, but suddenly it hit me with force, like wind, and I regretted that he would soon be gone.
"Do you want my number?" I blurted, surprising myself.
He said nothing for a second, and it was the longest second of my life. I'd said the wrong thing, I realized, mortified. He'd said he wasn't coming on to me, and now I was coming on to him. He turned away from me and located what he needed: He tore off a corner of an empty cereal box from my recycling bin. He handed it to me, and I wrote my number down.
CHAPTER 2
I woke up at seven, out of habit, still wearing my dress from the party. I fell back asleep. When I woke up again it was late: nine. I ran to the bathroom, splashed my face, and pulled a skirt and stockings on, before realizing it was Saturday and relaxing. I noticed the Sharpie on my leg and tried to rub it off, succeeding only in smearing ink across my calf. I regarded the giant television that now swallowed my living room. My answering machine blinked with a message.
"Hey. I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner tonight? It's the stranger who gave you a TV, by the way."
Matthew proposed a restaurant I'd never been to, because I didn't make enough money to eat there. It was where celebrities went, I'd always imagined. Or CEOs. I knew about it, though, because everybody knew about it.
I called the number he left. He picked up immediately. I repeated the name of the restaurant he'd proposed.
"Seriously?" I asked. "You're paying?"
Under ordinary circumstances I would not have been so forward. I would have suffered quietly through dinner—enjoying yet not enjoying it—and waited to see what happened when the bill arrived.
But these were not ordinary circumstances. I proceeded as though I were in a dream. I was certain I wasn't his type, either. He must have dated astonishingly beautiful women.
"Of course," he said.
His father had canceled on him, he explained, so he had a dinner reservation—made months ago—that would otherwise go to waste. I put my hand over the receiver.
"What the hell," I said aloud. What the hell, as in 'What is happening,' and what the hell, as in 'Who cares, let's see'.
"You didn't finish telling me about millennium architecture," he said.
There was a black cloud-shaped stain on the couch cushion—my mascara. Officially, it was my roommate's couch. I flipped the cushion over.
"It's certainly worth a very expensive meal, this knowledge."
"Pick you up at seven."
It was ten. 'Don't you dare spend the next nine hours thinking about this,' I warned myself. I made myself a series of promises: I would spend a maximum of one hour getting ready. I would not obsess, or overthink, or try on multiple dresses. I would not apply, remove, and reapply my makeup. I would enjoy this improbable free meal and not expect or hope for anything more.
...
