Staring at his phone, Jess' eyes twitched as he flipped the phone up and down, waiting for a ring, a bling, any sound, really. His hands went down to his left pant pocket, and took out a pack of cigarettes, Stankonian Cigs. He bit the end of a single stick, and let it dangle on his mouth while he returned the pack back to his pocket. The man seemed tired, his eyes barely open as he found his lighter on his breast pocket and tried to light the cigarette. Each unsuccessful spark sent his thumb into an angrier push, and he closed his eyes as the fire refuses to stay.
"You know smoking is bad for you, right?"
Jess smiled, and looked behind him to see a girl with the wavy hair, her blue eyes staring at him with a silly play on a seductive stare, and a smirk on her lips.
"I don't suppose that you have a working lighter on you," Jess replied.
Rory walked over to the bench and sat next to Jess. She pulled up her right hand, and snapped her fingers to spark a flame right on top of her thumb. She took the flame to Jess' cigarette, and blew it away after it started smoking.
"Thanks." Jess put his lighter back to his breast pocket. "What's up? Why are you late?"
Rory looked over at him with a sideways glance, and frowned. "Oh, I'm such a guuurl," Rory started saying in a Valley Girl-accent. "I, like, couldn't find anything to weeeeaarr. It's, like, hard to find an outfit that's, like, so feeeetch."
"Fetch? Really? You're trying to make 'fetch' happen?"
Rory smiled and returned to her normal speech as she replied, "Look, I don't know the vernacular, OK? I'm not sure if the word people use is 'fetch' or 'fleek'. "
"Suuuuure," Jess replied, as he puffed his cigarette and blew out a storm-shaped smoke.
Rory coughed. "So, Smokin' Joe, where are you taking me?"
"Taking you anywhere? Why, don't think I can seduce you while we're sitting down on this bench?" He smiled a goofy smile as he took another puff from his cigarette.
"Unless you have some pasta here, or at least some Chinese take-outs, this will be a very short date," Rory said, her lips in a smirk, while leaning back on the bench.
"Wait," Jess said, looking through his pockets until he found a stick of gum wrapped in tin-foil. "I have some gum. I think it's Juicy Fruit."
Rory rolled her eyes. "Early end, it is," as Rory stood up in mock protest.
Jess grabbed her by the arms and sat her back to the bench. "Hey, hey, hey, I'm just kidding. We have a date with food; calm down."
"Good. So, are we going to hit a burger joint or something? I'm really itching for some Big Macs."
Jess looked at her with confusion. "What?"
"Well, I know you don't have much cash, so I'm not really expecting anything fancy. Maybe a KFC buffet. Really, I'm not choosy."
Jess stared with the eyes of Dan Aykroyd.
"Holy shit, this place looks so fancy! There's mood lighting, waiters, and a band with actual instruments playing. ACTUAL INSTRUMENTS! How in the hell can a cashier afford a place like this?" Rory said, gushing as she feels underdressed in her conservative but flimsy summer dress and a brown pashmina that looks like it came from the closet of a drag queen. They were seated on their table, with the multiple spoons and forks for the people who order a multiple-course meal, and napkins held together with bracelets.
Jess' eyes grew 3 sizes for a moment, and then he laughed with the ferocity of Adam Sandler pretending to be an opera singer. The other tables looked as he, unselfconsciously, pounded the floor with his fists.
Rory saw the people and turned to Jess to calm him down. "Yo, Jess, chill a bit."
"You think I'm a cashier? Really?"
"Well, we did meet while you were manning the cashier of a bookstore. Excuse me if I assumed that you're a cashier."
"I own the store, Rory," Jess said while he smirked and winked.
"Aren't you a little young to be a business owner?"
"…No."
"Oh. Well, how did you get a bookstore that big? The rent there must be enormous."
"The rent? Oh, right, the rent." Jess took the empty glass and started drinking air until he realized that there's no water in it, and put it down. "Yeah, I won that place on a poker game."
"You won it in a poker game?"
"No lie. It was three years ago, and I was still doing my vagabond thing, going around in cities while trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. At the time, I just recently quit my job as a school janitor, and I was supposed to move out of this city. Around the week that I was going to leave, I got invited to this poker game with this rich addict: big problem with gambling, but funny motherfucker. He heard that I was good, and so we started playing. The buy-in was $200, I believe."
"OK, so what happened?"
"Funny thing about rich idiot addicts is that sometimes, the reason why they're addicted is because they won once, out of luck, and they lost the rest because they have terrible skills in poker. This guy is no different. I was able to win like $50,000 from him with the worst cards because either he believed my bluff and walked away from better cards, or because he just plain sucks at estimating what kind of cards he has."
"So, you took him for all he had?"
"Please, if I did that, I'd be a billionaire. No, what happened is the prick ran out of pocket cash."
"Oh, my."
"Being in a hot streak, I decided to ask for more money if I was going to continue playing with him. He was sweaty and stupid, so he told me about a property he had. Worthless piece of shit, he said, worth less than an Apple Genius store. He was going to sell it for a profit to a bunch of Japanese businessmen who wanted to open a Benihana in the area, but he took out the deed, and signed a paper that said that the contract to the place would be mine if I won the next hand."
Rory sat there, elbows inside the table, leaning forward as she listened to the story.
"I won," Jess said, with a wink. "Full fucking house."
"That explains the store."
"Yeah, I was going to sell it to those Benihana people for about $100,000, but one of my friends, Holtzmann, told me about how hard it is to get a property like that, so I decided to use the $50,000 to buy books and start a bookstore."
"Wow. And you're successful, I assume, being that we're inside a freaking French restaurant run by actual French-speaking human beings?"
"Oh, no, it took me a couple of years before I got out of the red. I'm actually just starting to profit right now, and since I have some rare shit on my shelves, I'm pretty sure I'll either live comfortably in the future or get robbed often. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was both."
"Rare books?"
"I have a lot of autographed hard cover books by artists that do not do those things often."
"Like who?"
"I have an autographed copy of 'Fight Club', from both Palahniuk and Fincher."
"Shut up!"
"I have a copy of 'The Essential Calvin and Hobbes' with the signature of Bill Watterson."
"Holy shit. How?"
"I have my ways. Right now, I'm in the middle of acquiring autographed copies of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' with the autographs of the actors of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I already have Ron's."
"Wicked cool."
"I know, right?"
A Frenchman suddenly appeared in the middle of their table, and spoke.
"Bienvenue, mademoiselle, monsieur, what would you like for dinner today?"
Jess and Rory had a painted look of surprise in their faces, and they opened the menu laying there by the edge of the table, untouched. The Frenchman tapped his left foot.
"Uhm, well, I guess we could get started with some French bread," Jess said, voice laced with nervousness.
"Right, monsieur. Would you like a hot, crisp baguette, or just the regular white bread you aiguillons pleurnichards like?"
"Did you just insult me?"
"Of course not. I would never insult such a good—uhm—customer."
"Sure." Jess rolled his eyes, and returned his focus to the menu. "We'll get the hot bread. What kind of meat do you serve here?"
"Meat? Oh, meat. Well, we serve chicken here: there's the coq au vin, the—"
"Splendid, I'll take that one, with some wine, please." Jess folded up the menu as the waiter looked on, dumbfolded.
"Don't you want to know what that is first?"
"No, I trust you," he said, patting the arm of the waiter, while he looked forward to his companion. "Rory?"
Rory stared at the menu, forehead scrunched up like a muppet. She looked up to the waiter, whose eyes still burrowed down on Jess' head like an angry racist, and looked back to the menu.
"j-j-J'aimerais un ah-bacheofe," she said, in a broken voice, as if she were speaking Japanese to the Emperor.
Jess and the waiter's mouths dropped like a microphone after a set by Richard Pryor. The waiter started stuttering, and he tried to let out the very French question of "Y at-il autre chose que je peux vous obtenir?"
"Votre meilleur marché du vin," she said with a smile.
The waiter nodded, and left. Jess' eyes were still stuck to Rory.
"You know French?"
"Oui."
Jess shook his head. "What the hell did you tell the waiter? I mean, I need to know. I am paying, you know."
"Oh, I told him my order. A bacheofe, which you can see on your menu. I also ordered some of their cheapest wine."
"Really?" Jess said, with the fakest grin pasted to his face as he searched the menu for what his date ordered. His eyes did not pop when he saw the prices. "Well, that's not half-bad." He looked at the wine menu, though, and his eyes went to the other side of the room. "Holy shit, that's their cheapest wine?! Why can't they sell beer like any normal place would?"
"Because they're fan-say, Jess," she replied.
"Really? I didn't notice. What did I order, by the way?"
"Chicken with wine sauce, I think," Rory said, as she looked over the menu.
"Well, at least I'm getting doubly-drunk today."
Jess stopped his ranting for a moment and looked at Rory. Maybe it was the smoky lighting, or the fact that she was directly under a lightbulb, but she looked like a cruel trick, an image of beauty that Jess considers impossible. She wasn't perfect, no, not at all, but Jess stared at her facial features, and they complimented her well. And for some reason, her false modesty coupled with her shyness made a strange combination, like that of a blushing narcissist. It felt truthful to him, that those contradictions would be there, strange as it sounds, so that she can be human.
That's what made her beautiful: she was human.
He coughed. "Uhm, so, I want to know more about you. Do yo-"
"Really? More about me? What are we, on a date?" she said with playful sarcasm. Her grin and eyes shaped itself in a playful, come-hither stare.
"This certainly ain't a peep show," Jess said, a nervous laughter coming out of his throat. "Seriously, I want to know who you are. I mean, we are in a French restaurant. We really only have two options right now."
"Two options? What's that?"
Jess moved closer. "One, we can go to the bathroom and fuck like rabbits with condoms; lower the health rating to a dismal score, get kicked out by the maître d', and all that jazz."
Rory's eyes looked at him as if they were lasers drilling his head. "…And what's the second option?"
"We talk to each other about each other to get to know each other, and open the opportunity for, uhm, love."
Rory looked at Jess. It was something of a bemused look; really, the eyes said, "What the heck did this person just say?" while her face said, "Man, this guy's more of an asshole than I expected."
"Are you playing with me?" she said, with her real mouth.
"No, I really do want to know who you are, as I've said a couple of seconds ago. If I was here to fuck, I would've brought you to a motel I know that serves the best post-sex food. Just, delish. They have these burgers with cheese that taste just like the ones at Heaven's."
Rory bit her lip. "OK, Jess, I don't know what you're playing here, but you won't get me to sleep with you just because you listen to me whine."
"I don't care about sex right now, really."
Rory laughed.
Jess looked confused. "What, is it really hard for you to believe that I would hold off sex just to get to know you better?"
"YES!" Rory said, a little too loudly. The table adjacent to her stared at her with annoyance; she apologized, and returned to Jess. "Isn't your end-game sex? Why would you even lie to me like that?"
"Rory? Ro-Rory, look at my eyes."
"OK," she said, with a smile on her face.
"I don't want to have sex with you tonight."
He did not blink.
She did, however. Repeatedly. "You're serious. Why? Am I unattractive to you?"
"No, no, you're fine. You—you're fine. Actually, more than fine. Like, you could seduce the launch codes of the US from Bill Clinton. You're at least my type, especially with the Garofalo hair and eyes. It's just, well, I want to get to know you. Beyond the fuzz. Beyond the red curtains. Does that make me weird?"
Rory's mouth agape, she nodded her head. "You really like me, don't you?"
"Yeah. I mean, I've had sex before, but I kind of don't want that burden on me yet."
"On you? Are you the one who'll get pregnant if the protection dies?"
"NO, no, I'm not. And I'm not talking about women's rights and the like on the first date. But I do sometimes feel like I need to perform, put up a show, and I don't want to do that. Not with you. So, I just want to be real with you."
…
"Please don't leave."
Jess and Rory sat there for a moment, both of them assessing their thoughts. Jess' head was bowed, as if he felt like a great mistake was made. Rory, however, seemed deep in thought, wondering, wondering, wondering if maybe this guy in front of her might be worth the risk, if maybe he was being serious. She kept the wondering on for a couple of minutes, and then spoke.
"OK, but I see you doing anything creepy or illegal near me, you're dead meat."
The waiter suddenly appeared, food at hand, slowly putting their meals down to the table, as another waiter, this one in a wrinkled shirt with a little bit of red in the sides, poured the cheap wine into their glasses.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience, but the baguettes are missing. Some artful dodger stealing them, or whatnot," the original waiter said, hands in his back, speaking in an incredibly condescending tone.
"We're fine," Jess said, as his face slowly glowed. "Just don't bill us on it."
The waiter huffed, and left the table.
Jess' eyes returned to Rory's for a moment before he ate. "Well, I don't know about dead meat, but you're the one who keeps dropping references to dead Beat authors in the middle of conversations."
"Haha, you're funny, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes as if you were some kind of exposition writer of some sort," Rory replied.
Jess was full-on smiling at this point. "Man, I don't know whether to think myself lucky to find a girl like you, or wonder if this isn't some sort of perverse game from God to see how much tragedy He can put in anyone's lives."
"The answer is always too much, Jess," Rory replied sarcastically.
"Amen," he said as he winked.
They prayed to their respective gods, and started eating.
"So, tell me about yourself?" Jess said in the middle of chewing.
"Well, I'm a writer. You knew that already. I studied writing at Columbia University, and got a degree in creative writing out of it."
"Uhm, Chloe said you were a political columnist…?"
"I'm not trained to be a columnist or a journalist, but it pays the bills."
"D—do they just give out journalist jobs to people who studied creative writing?"
"I wasn't supposed to be a journalist. I was working at the time to get one of my short stories published, and I went to this newspaper that was looking for a story to publish. When I met with the editor, we had a long talk about politics and conservatives and such, and it was a fun afternoon. Easy-going debate, no hate, and at the end, he said that he'll read my work.
"The day the story was supposed to come out: wasn't me. So I shrugged it off and read the rest of the newspaper. I looked at the editorial page, and guess what I find."
"…I feel like this should be obvious for some reason, but it's not," Jess answered.
"I found an excerpt of my piece, written as an editorial for the paper."
"That's strange," Jess said.
"It was downright weird for me. I had to double-check it with a copy of my paper to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating. Three days later, a check comes by from the mail, with a letter asking for a meeting. So I went, and they offered me a job as an editorial writer."
"Just like that?"
"They said they liked the voice I had in my writing. He said, specifically, that I sounded like Jon Stewart if he wasn't white."
Jess looked at her curiously. "That's kind of racist, don't you think?"
"Hey, they pay me enough money to get called a hipster Stephen Colbert. So, yeah, I'm a columnist."
"Man, this must piss off any friends you have that are journalists," Jess said, laughing while he bit his chicken.
Rory paused from her chewing to think. "Actually, from my many years in college, I don't think I actually have that many friends."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. It's nothing, really. It's just that I have a hard time connecting with people, you know? It's like, near-impossible for me to make a friend."
"Well, you have Chloe, and Dana, if we're stretching the definition."
Rory shrugged and continued to chew. "Well, yeah, that's true, but they were determined. You know, liked me enough to tolerate my bullshit."
"Your bullshit? What's that?" he asked.
"Oh, you'll learn soon enough," she replied.
For a couple of minutes, they ate in silence. Jess finished his meal faster, while Rory seemed to savor the differing flavors of the food. Jess stared at Rory eating, his brows flurried, and his fingers supporting his face as if he was deep in thought. He took his glass of wine, and stared down to the bottom of it for a little while.
"So, you don't do this dating thing much, huh?" Jess asked Rory over the table. He sipped his wine slowly, while Rory's eyes darted to the ceiling, hands covering her mouth.
"Mmnaht match," she replied.
"Really?"
"No, I don't date around, unlike lothario over here," she said, hands gesturing all over to him.
"Well, that's fine by me. I have some terrible experiences in dating."
"Really?" She looked closer to him, her head leveling to his.
"Yeah. Like this one girl I dated, foxy lady, studying to be a surgeon. I take her out, she was fine. Tipped the waiter, quiet at the theater, the whole she-bang. But then we get to her place, and shit got weird."
"How did it get weird?"
"Well, I was trying to make-out with her on the couch. She suddenly stands up—I don't know what I did wrong, so I started sweating a bit—and she moved towards her speakers.
"'Are you a fan of Outkast?' she asked, and I had to shake my head. I mean, now I like Outkast, but then, I was more of a metalhead than a rap fan. Then, she started playing 'Hey Ya!', which is really just an Andre 3000 song with Outkast as the label, and she started stripping."
"That…doesn't sound bad."
"It gets worse. Much, much worse." Jess breathed heavily, and then leaned towards Rory and continued to speak.
"She started talking about how much of a great love song it was, which it most certainly wasn't. And then, while she was sitting on top of my—my dick, if I could be so crude, the song changed to 'Ms. Jackson,' and she said, and I'm not lying here, this actually was said: 'Make me a single mother!'"
"Holy shit." Rory gasped, her hand covering her mouth. Jess stared at her and nodded.
"I ran out of there before anything could happen, and last I heard she was a resident at Cedar Sinai. Apparently, she dated me because I looked like Andre, and that kind of made me wonder what she was thinking of while she tried to fuck me."
The waiter suddenly appeared at the table, pad at hand. "Would you like anything else, monsieur, madame?"
"I—I'm good. You?" he asked, gesturing to Rory.
"Do you have any ice cream?"
"Yes, madame," he replied. "Any particular flavor in mind?"
"Chocolate."
The waiter nodded and left.
"The women you date are weird as fuck."
"I know." They both stopped talking and looked down to their plates for a while. Jess dawdled with his fork while he was thinking about his next move. What else could he do? What else?
"Jess, I know you're kind of—well, an idiot to society, really—but how about you try being honest?"
Eyes in Jess' head opened like worms were coming out of it. He repositioned his head to face Rory, and cleared his throat.
"So…" Jess started, "do you ever feel this awkward with people?"
"All the time," Rory said, breathing a sigh of relief. "I just can't help it sometimes. It's just that, when I'm with people I have to play up myself for their enjoyment, and that's not me."
"Look, I'll tell you the truth," Jess said, leaning forward. "I'm not really good with the talking and the speaking and the socializing thing. The reason I asked you out-and this is not to objectify you, I promise—is because you liked books as much as I do. I kinda hoped that our conversation would just revolve around, like, books and stuff, but I guess if you wanted to hear more about books, you could've visited my shop. So, yeah, relationship bullshit: I'm not good at that. But I really like you, and I'd like to get to know you better, so I'm willing to give that bullshit a little try."
"Wow," Rory said, blushing. "So, uhm, what would you like to know?"
Jess opened his mouth, but before sound could come out, a loud crash echoed across the room from the kitchen. Everything went silent. The curses of a screaming Frenchman was heard and even more crashing and booming around as a teenage robber slammed through the door and ran for the exit. The waiter came and pointed at him.
"Transmorgiphy rattatius!"
A ball of light came out of his index finger, and hit the robber right in the spine. He started convulsing, and he dropped the two loaves of baguettes clutched in both of his hands, as he fell to the floor and started to morph. He slowly turned into a small brown rat, and the waiter took a large bowl and slammed it to the floor, trapping the rat in place.
"Jacques, donnez-moi le magazine!"
Another waiter, much younger than the waiter holding the bowl, took out a copy of Cosmo and gave it to the awaiting waiter. He slid the magazine underneath the bowl in a quick motion, and then started whispering to the rat as he returned to the kitchen.
"Oh, artful dodger, you shall get your wish of soup. I only wonder if you can survive the boiling," the waiter said, before he laughed maniacally, the other waiter closing the door of the kitchen behind him.
Jess and Rory looked at the door, just like everyone else, in awe. And then the band started playing music again, and everyone returned to their conversations.
"Man, do the French have tempers," Jess said, shaking his head while laughing sparingly.
"He did steal bread."
"Yeah, but he got turned into a rat. Even Jean Valjean got a lighter sentence than that."
"Well, that's a little unfair. That's a fictional book."
"Well, sure, it's fictional, but damn if it isn't a good…musical."
Silence.
"So," Jess started to say, "what's your family like?"
"Huh?" Rory said, stuck in a daze staring at the baguettes left lying on the floor.
"I mean, if I'm getting to know you, I want to know about your family."
"Well, my family is more of a third date conversation, really," Rory said, avoiding Jess' eyes and continually staring at the baguettes. Her hands were playing with the unused silverware.
"Aah, so you've been to a third date," Jess said, smiling.
"Well, yeah. I am human, you know," Rory said, returning her gaze to Jess and flipping her hair to her back.
"Cool, cool. Well, are you done? You wanna split?" Jess looked around quickly, and leaned closer to Rory.
"I don't know," Rory said, her hands on her biceps. "I mean, I haven't gotten my ice cream yet."
"I can buy you that on the road. Theirs is probably overpriced, anyways, like their wine."
"Still, I mean, if we're not having sex tonight, what are we supposed to do?"
"Rory, look at me."
Rory lifted her head and looked at Jess' eyes.
"In all seriousness," Jess said, a small smile forming in his lips, "do you want to see all of my books?"
Rory's heart stopped for a moment. Then she saw a passing waiter, the one with the red stains in his shirt, and took him by the arm.
"Check, please."
"How the hell do you become a fan of Beat poets and not read any James Joyce?" Rory asked as she leaned to the wall facing to the cash register. Outside of the light emanating from the top of the cashier booth, the entire store was largely unlit, and Rory and Jess sat together inside the booth with 3 stacks of books of differing sizes and genres. They were there drinking cheap over-the-counter whiskey out of Styrofoam cups, and for the last 30 minutes, they've been talking about books. Lots of books.
"Well, the first book I saw from Joyce was the weird one after Ulysses, Finnegans Wake. And I swear to God I cannot take shit like that from anyone. I mean, it's probably a masterpiece of writing or something, but it's just too impenetrable for me to understand, and holy shit, is this supposed to be read or jerked off to by literature majors?"
"So, that's it? That's like saying you don't like the Beatles because you started with The White Album instead of Rubber Soul like a normal person."
"Nah, I prefer Revolver. Much more experimental on their sound, and yet not really too far-out that I can't see it as good pop music."
They both laughed a bit, and then drank from their respective cups.
Jess shook his head. "Anyways, I was serious a while back when I told you that I wanted to get to know you more. This seems more like we're shooting the breeze and talking shit about books we like."
Rory shrugged. "Isn't that who we are, essentially? I mean, you seem to talk easier when we talk about books or music or why Lutherans are stupider than Calvinists."
"Damn idiots about Communion, Lutherans are. It's just a piece of bread, damn it!"
"Yeah," Rory said, smiling. "I guess what I'm saying here is that I feel like I would know you better if I got to know you from what you love, what you're comfortable with, and all that jazz."
"But the relationship bullshit," Jess said, woozy for the moment because he forgot to dilute the whiskey with Coke.
"The relationship bullshit can wait. I mean, we're enjoying each other's company, right? And truthfully, if it wasn't for what you said earlier in the date, I'd fuck you right now."
Jess' eyes opened like a frog's. "Really?"
"Yeah, I mean," she said, as she took out a vinyl record from her side, "you have an autographed copy of William Shatner's The Transformed Man. I'm obligated to go to the bedroom and fuck your brains out while William Shatner performs that weird shit he calls music."
"Well, it is music," he said as he took the album from her hands and stood up, "and at least we can listen to it as we read books, although truthfully, I prefer Nimoy's voice to Shatner's."
"At least it's not George Takei."
"At least," he said. The record started playing, and Jess sat down next to Rory, who was, at the moment, quietly reading The Last Temptation of Christ. He looked at her, swigged down the rest of his cup of whiskey, and searched through the stack of books in front of him for something to read. Eventually, he leaned closer to Rory as he started to read Garfield Minus Garfield.
Shatner sang on as both of them read their books while leaning next to each other, Jess' head on Rory's shoulder. And they spent the rest of the night reading different books, listening to Shatner's entire oeuvre (and some Daft Punk and the Beatles), and finishing two bottles of cheap whiskey until they finally passed out on each other's arms just as the sun rose to the sky.