Indispensable for Gossip
Our living room was lit by a few candles and the eerie television, but neither Ell or I were paying the attention to the romantic atmosphere that it deserved. Instead, we were talking about the disastrous art gallery opening.
"He just followed you around after that?" Ella asked, picking at the hem of her pajama pants.
"I wouldn't talk to him," I said, shrugging. "He gave up after a while."
"Did he ask for your number?" Ella asked, leaning toward me and almost splashing her tea.
"I don't remember it anyway," I replied, biting my lip. Ella just stared. It sucked that after so many years of being together almost constantly she knew me so well. "I wanted him to ask for it," I mumbled, rubbing my neck and sipping my own tea.
"Ahh," Ella said, smiling. "So a guy finally interests Lane Tavish and she lets him get away because she's too shy. Awwww." Her smile evolved into a beam.
"I wasn't being shy," I retorted, snorting. "I was... Playing hard to get."
"A little too hard," Ella said. "What's his name?"
"He told me his name was Jay Moore," I said, shifting in the couch.
"Did you tell him your name?" she asked, taking the tone she so often used with her students.
"He knew it," I said, furrowing my eyebrows. "When we left, he said, "I'll be seeing you, Laney.""
Ella blinked. I blinked back.
"That's..."
"Yeah, paired with stalking me through the exhibit, it's a little strange."
"You looked cute together, though," Ella replied, setting her mug on the table and leaning back in the sofa. "Brown hair, brown eyes, both kind of arrogant looking... Although you were taller than him in those heels."
"We were not cute. And I almost fell on him once because of those heels, which was not very elegant," I muttered, watching my friend closely.
"Why haven't I found that?" she asked, not paying attention to me. Her dreaminess used to annoy me.
"Because you're looking for it. Once you decide you don't need a guy, he'll run right into you," I said, repeating my habitual response to her almost weekly question.
"Lane, things don't work in real life like they do in books," Ella grumbled, continuing our usual argument. "There's not foreshadowing you can catch in real life or anything, okay?"
"If you say so," I replied, picking up our mugs and walking to the kitchen. "Just you waiit," I sang, loudly enough for her to hear.
She laughed a little. I didn't know why she looked so hard for a guy, but there were parts of Ella I wouldn't figure out. We were just best friends and flatmates, not any more or less.
You free tonight? -J
It took me a few minutes longer than I like to admit to figure out who the text was from. But since I had all of my friends cataloged under silly names, it was very confusing that this text would be talking to me so familiarly.
Plus it was before noon and I was unemployed. I was barely awake.
Seeing as I never gave you my number, no.
Give me one good chance and I'll leave you alone as long as you want. –J
Uh, like that would happen.
Ell, Jay has my number... Your fingerprints. All over this. Quit matchmaking.
Why, I would never!
I didn't bother replying. To either of them.
"He's texted you every day for the past week?" Lizzie asked, spending her break at my table with Neal and me.
"Yeah," I grumbled, scanning the newspaper more than reading it.
"Are you sure he's not gay?" Neal asked, propping his head on one hand and staring into the distance. I whacked him upside the head.
"I mean, she doesn't exactly look like a guy, Neal," Lizzie said, ruffling Neal's perfectly ruffled hair. "I think you'll have to look elsewhere."
"Damn," he said easily, removing his head from his palm and hunching over in his seat to take a few inches off of his frame. "Why haven't you shagged him yet?"
I scoffed. "Ella's trying to set me up with him..."
"Just because Ella has your best interests at heart, doesn't mean-"
"Neal, it's hopeless. You know Lane. Someone tells her to do something, she won't do it. Especially if she's afraid of it," Lizzie cut in.
I knew what they were doing. I saw the glances. But it worked.
What time should I be ready?
I sighed and looked up from my phone to see my two friends high fiving. "This is going to severely cut into my pattern finding time," I pointed out, turning one side of my mouth down as I glanced at the black marks of the newspaper.
"Oh, gee. The world will just fall to pieces," Lizzie said before retying her apron, sending Neal a look, and walking back up to the counter.
"Wasn't that her break?" I asked. "It was really short."
"She didn't need a break to convince you to go on a date with that boy," Neal replied, sipping his tea. "She's a professional."
5:30 pm. Dress nicely! –J
He knocked on the door five minutes early. I was still running around grabbing things to shove into Ella's purse and I really needed to brush my hair, so I was more than a little stressed. I took a deep breath and flattened my hair with my hands.
"Hi," I said, flinging the door open. "I'm not used to people being on time, let alone early, could you hold on a minute while I run upstairs?"
Snow fell softly around the man that stood at my door. Jay was dressed to the hundreds in a suit that looked more like silk than real fabric. I suddenly realized I was out of my league, clothing wise at the very least. My outlet bought black dress that only forty minutes ago seemed fancier than necessary was now very drab.
"Hey, no problem, Elaine. I can just wait here," he said as I moved back for him to walk in. I made my face smile back, thinking about throwing off this dress and slipping into another as soon as I cleared my room's doorway. "Your dress is perfect, by the way," he said, stepping a little closer and slipping his hand between my right hand and the hem of my dress that I was shocked to find myself fiddling with.
"Thanks," I said, smiling, but cursing that I couldn't very well change now. "Five minutes, tops," I promised, turning and sprinting up the stairs. In heels, for me, that's an accomplishment.
I brushed my hair and made faces at my mirror before deciding there was no more to be done, snatching my wallet and keys and tossing them on top of the other things in Ella's purse. I walked down the stairs. It was strange that Jay was walking around the hallway just inside my flat like it held the key to life, inspecting the corner of the table by the door that I never managed to avoid as if it was the key to a murder investigation. Makes sense now.
"Ready," I said, spreading a smile wide across my face. He looked up with a similar smile, holding out his right hand for mine.
The restaurant required a level of dress I did not measure up to. I probably couldn't even get a glimpse through the window at the patrons, without a date was dressed a few levels above the norm and wielded glares and cash like a man who brought underdressed women into fancy restaurants regularly. Or maybe I just needed a man that oozed self-confidence.
A skinny girl in a black dress fancier than mine led us to a table in the back corner. Jay pulled out the seat facing the corner for me, but I brushed by him and sat in the other seat. Mostly to bug him. I hoped it would compare with the annoyance he foisted on me the past week.
He smiled nonetheless, a very small smile, and took the seat that placed his back to the room.
All the ladies around us wore dresses that were designer, one of a kind or extraordinarily expensive in other ways I couldn't understand. I assumed this because of the disapproving looks they were giving my own dress. I scowled, to cover my blush, before turning to the restaurant itself.
The walls were all a dark brown or red color, spotted with alternating candles and lights. Each table was small, with two or three seats around it at most and covered with a very slippery cloth-like material. This was the kind of place I would never be able to enter again.
I returned to looking at my date. His smile was larger now, probably due to my open mouth. I shut it and scrunched my face up at him. "Sorry, not really used to the level of decor here," I excused myself, assured that I wouldn't be getting a second date with this mysterious man. Not that I wanted one. What?
"Me either," he replied, flipping open his menu. It was just two pages, the left and right page. I flipped my own open, perplexed. What a crazy place.
"Are you two sure you would like to eat here?" asked a tall man with broad shoulders. I wondered how much his uniform cost.
Jay tilted his head at the waiter. "Pretty sure, yeah," he said, his voice taking on a small town, American accent. "I mean, gee, this is fancy!"
"Jay," I started to question.
He paid no attention to me, instead telling the waiter the most expensive thing on the menu I liked, the steak, and the most expensive thing on the menu, period, which was some kind of French name he seemed to pronounce correctly.
All of which he did in the American accent. The waiter nodded and bowed slightly, pursing his lips, before walking away.
I watched Jay shift slightly in his chair, watching the waiter disappear into the kitchens. "You know he's going to spit in your food, right?" I asked, crossing my legs under the table and sighing.
Jay smirked and leaned his elbows on the small table. "You're not going to ask about the accent?" he asked.
"You obviously want him to think you're not as rich or educated as you are so you're playing on stereotypes. I can't exactly fault you for wanting to show a snooty waiter up," I replied, taking the napkin folded very elegantly and spreading it out across my lap, just to give my eyes something to look at that wasn't the man across from me.
"You think determination is attractive," Jay declared, leaning back in his seat and continuing his observation of me.
"Ella told you that," I said immediately, flicking my eyes from the cream material to the smug man. "Those are the exact words I told her after I broke up with my last boyfriend," I expanded.
He shrugged, saying, "Maybe."
"When did you two get all this time to talk, anyway?" I asked, suspicion growing. "You were following me around the whole time I was at the art-"
"The whole time?" Jay interrupted, glancing at the table next to us disinterestedly.
Had I gone to the bathroom or something? No... "All of the time after you came up to... Oh." I squinted. "You talked to her before you talked to me?"
"I'm sure she'd tell you what happened," Jay said, smiling a kilowatt too brightly. I relaxed my eyes and twitched my lips down on the right side.
He's a jerk, I realized, but the thought was irrelevant before I even thought it. I'd determined that at the art show.
Then I realized the flaw in that reasoning. I decided he was a jerk when I was in one of my moods, I should at least give him a chance. Ella was an okay judge of character, and if she thought we were compatible before I even met him, enough to give him my phone number, I should at least let him prove he's a jerk.
During my inner dialogue, Jay returned to watching the couple at the table to my left. It was the only table he could really see, since I took the seat with the view.
"Do you know them?" I asked.
"They're disgusting," he said, his first words overlapping my last.
"That couple in particular?" I asked, following his gaze.
The woman's dress hung off of her frame like a curtain around a skeleton in your high school anatomy class, but I wondered, with her lack of muscle or fat, if any other clothes would look any different. The man across from her matched her clothing in cost, but at least tripled her weight. He seemed taller, with wider shoulders and thick legs. His stomach bulged just a little, but his hair was strange. While the rest of the man screamed business executive, from the bags under his eyes to the expensive watch and the Blackberry he checked every thirty seconds, his hair was tied back in a rattail.
"Your dinners, sir, madam?" the waiter asked in a more monotonous tone than even any of my history professors possessed.
Jay leaned back in his seat. "Thanks, wow, thanks!" he said, slipping back into his accent. "I'm sure it's just the meal the missus and I're lookin' for on our honeymoon." The waiter plopped our meals in front of us. Well that was just not very dignified at all.
I held back the glare so ready to surface. "Gee, hon, I sure hope!" I tried my best at a southern accent, but considering the skeptical look Jay sent me and all the laughter I received from friends through the years in response to my attempts at accents, it wasn't good.
The steak was thinner than my hand and just about as long. And I had skinny hands. Jay's meal of some kind of meat with what looked like truffles around it, but it looked about as filling. A glance around the room showed that most of the meals were that size.
"I hope you'll find it satisfactory," the waiter said, walking away again. I took a sip of the wine for the first time.
"He's a criminal," Jay told me. A glance back toward Jay showed his eyes facing the man with the rattail.
"Is that why you think they're disgusting?" I asked, remembering his comment about the police gala the past week.
He raised his eyebrows and both sides of his mouth into a small, tight smile. "Not exactly."
"Then tell me more," I reply, resisting twisting my hair into a braid. "That would make this a lot more interesting than most of my first dates."
He tapped his fork against his plate. He was done. I took a second bite of my steak, deciding to eat while he talked.
"They're so dull," he said, turning to lean his back on the wall and kick his legs out into the aisle of the restaurant. His black slacks camouflaged with the carpet.
It seemed those were the only words he had on the subject. Where I expected a lengthy diatribe on his thoughts on the matter, what he saw in these people that he hated so much, there was this childlike inability to say anymore.
It was a little hot.
"How'd you know what I liked to eat?" I asked, picking up my fork and knife and cutting through the meat.
Jay's smile showed in my peripheral vision. "A man is allowed his secrets, isn't he?" he asked as he fiddled with his own fork.
"Not when they're creepy," I mumbled. The snicker from across the table alerted me that, once again, I wasn't as quiet as I thought I was.
I finished up my steak, deciding not to start up another line of conversation that would just end in me embarrassing myself in some way.
"You want to go get something real to eat?" Jay asked as the waiter strolled up to our table. The waiter let out some kind of disapproving monosyllabic sound and laid a slip of paper between my plate and Jay's.
"Sure, where?" I asked, pushing back from the table to grab at Ella's purse.
"Burger King?" Jay suggested, taking out his own wallet and slapping down a credit card so the name was face down. That was strange, but our waiter picked up the two slips anyway.
"I would've tried to pay a little," I argued, a little weakly. I didn't doubt half of the total would've put me over my budget for eating out for the month.
"I ordered for you, you can pay at Burger King," he said, but was there something else behind him paying for this? It seemed so practiced, not-
Stop. Guys probably didn't like paying for things any more than I did. Money slipped through fingers like sand. That was probably all I was seeing.
"Thanks," I said, smiling and touching his wrist on impulse. The way his eyes narrowed, flicked to my fingers, my elbow and then my face made me immediately curse my impulsiveness again. "Sorry," I said, withdrawing, wondering if he was one of those 'don't touch' people.
"Don't worry, I was just thinking," he said, pulling on that tight smile and stroking my wrist. I smiled back, wondering what kind of game I was playing and how I got into it.
This didn't feel like any kind of dating I'd done before.
Jay took care of the tip and we left. I wondered as we took the few steps to the street for a cab if the restaurant exploded with whispers as we left, like a high school classroom after the teacher leaves to talk with a student, but decided not to turn back to look in favor of huddling deeper into my recently reclaimed jacket. At least the snow falling outside wasn't sticking.
"Did you tip him well?" I asked as I slid into the seat of the taxi that immediately stopped for Jay. Jay slid in and whispered something to the driver.
"I tipped him 10%, which was quite a lot," Jay said, straightening out his suit.
Strike one, after deciding to be fair to the guy: Rich.
Strike two: Vain.
I just had one more strike to tally and then I could consider his second chance fairly given. I smiled to myself and looked out the window. Not even Ella could argue with that.
"When do you take lunch?" Jay asked. "Actually, what do you do? You didn't answer any of my questions last week and your friend only told me so much."
"I used to work as an HR manager in a software business, but I got a little disgusted with the way things ran there and let my mouth get away from me, so now I'm unemployed," I said, tapping the heel of my flat against the floor of the cab. "But I've got time to paint, which is nice."
"Are you any good?" he asked.
"I don't think so, but I'm not a very impartial person." I almost invited him over to look at some of them before I realized that would either give him the idea I'd like him to come home with me tonight or that I definitely wanted another date. I pretended my lips were glued together.
"Maybe I could see some of them sometime," he said, sounding faintly amused.
"Maybe," I said, trying to sound nice.
"Here's good," Jay told our driver, slipping a few notes into the driver's palm. We stepped out of the taxi and started walking down the street. It was a little cold, but walking around in the cold was one of my quirks. I wondered if Ella told him or he just decided to save a few pounds by walking. Either way, I enjoyed it.
We ambled to the fast food restaurant in silence, although Jay did reach for my hand. I shrugged internally and slipped my fingers between his, squeezing them slightly. It was nice, walking with a man, hand in hand, with snow falling on our shoulders and melting...
Inside, we idled near the condiments and stared at the bright menu. "What're you getting?" I whispered, leaning more closely to him than I would've had he not reached for my hand on the walk over.
"I'll probably just get a burger," he mumbled, squinting his left eye and sliding the left side of his face up.
"I was thinking chicken-"
"If you say salad," he threatened, turning to look at my face.
"I was going to say "nuggets"," I finished, lowering my right eyebrow and stepping away from Jay. "I didn't know lettuce offended you so much."
"I just, I'm sorry?" he said, sounding more uncomfortable than I remember anyone sounding around me in a long time. "The last girl I dated, she just was really interested in looking cute and skinny. It bothered me."
"Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't-" I almost told him I didn't care enough about what he thought of me to look cute or skinny. "Think cute or skinny could ever describe me," I finished, hoping the disconnect wasn't too apparent.
"You're not fat," he dismissed, tugging on my elbow. "Are you ready, with your chicken nuggets?"
I nodded and we ordered. I gave the teenager behind the counter a twenty and we shuffled off to the side to wait for our food.
"This feels so normal," he mused and I wondered if it was the same kind of quiet I use and think no one will hear me.
"Are you more used to sending out your PA to go get you junk food or something?" I asked, crossing my arms and leaning on the counter to my side.
"Kind of," he replied, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and slouching again.
"Well? Come on, tell me about yourself. This is a first date. You're supposed to tell me everything good about yourself and maybe exaggerate a little bit and then I do the same," I replied, nudging him in the stomach with my elbow. He straightened up a little and blew out air, as if I did anything more than tap him.
"Is that what the first date really is? Gee, no wonder I was always confused," he deadpanned, watching the teenaged girl with red hair gather our food.
"Yeah, well, now you know. Go on," I said as he walked up to take the tray from the girl. He led me to one of the high tables where you sat on stools above everyone on the regular chairs.
"Um, I'm the head of a corporation, I guess you could say, but we do a lot of different work," he said with a smile. A snake's smile, but I guess at least he enjoyed his work. "Now, isn't it your turn?"
"I've already told you all that stuff," I dismissed, reaching over for my box of nuggets. I opened it and realized I forgot the ketchup.
I hopped off the stool and was about to ask if Jay wanted anything when I saw a mop of black curls run down the street. Of course, the mop of curls was attached to a tall man, who was followed by a shorter man who was Dr. John Watson...
I steadied myself on the stool and closed my mouth, surreptitiously checking to make sure I hadn't drooled. "Would you like ketchup or a napkin or something?" I asked, clearing my throat. I smiled up at Jay, who wore a very bemused expression.
"No, no worries," he said. I stumbled over to the ketchup and back to the table without any more incidents.
"So, who was that bloke you were about to run after?" Jay asked as I returned to my perch on the stool.
"Er, he's this Internet phenomena," I replied, "You might have heard of him, I guess, Sherlock Holmes?"
Jay cocked his head to the side, looking entirely too much like an actor to make me feel comfortable. "Nope."
So that was how I spent that night. Talking about Sherlock Holmes with the man who would eventually send me running down the streets to Sherlock.