Three

I learned very quickly to expect the unexpected from Greg. When I got home from work that night, he had already left a message on my answering machine. Being the optimist that I am, I was sure he was calling to cancel our, well, "date". Instead, he rambled on for two minutes about how he had made a complete idiot of himself at work, and admitted that he only asked me to go Trick-or- Treating because the topic came up. In all actuality, Greg had originally wanted to go to an all night movie scare fest, and I was his lucky Elvira of choice to go with. I was ecstatic about our new plans for the night, even if I was a big coward when it came to horror films. But anything beats scouring Vegas for a size nine cowgirl outfit.

Aside from my complete lack of courage (I couldn't even watch "Chucky" without turning on all the lights in my apartment), I had another dilemma. I was an early to bed, late to rise kind of girl. The latest I had ever stayed up since moving to Vegas was midnight, and that was only because I was trying to catch a mouse that had been living behind my couch, and set it free, back into the wild of the city. The movie fest didn't even start until midnight, so I had to think up something fast. I tried downing cup after cup of caffeinated coffee; I tried taking energy pills; I even considered taking a cold shower, but that was a little to "Crying Game" for my taste. When midnight rolled around, I wasn't any more awake than I had been that morning - I was just jumpier and slightly more spastic. I hoped the twitching in my left eye would stop before Greg came to pick me up.

Luckily, my eye and all the rest of me was back to normal (whatever that is) by the time Greg arrived. I took a note from Bridget Jones, and tried to act like I was busy when he came to the door (also see Cher in "Clueless" and always having something baking in the oven when a man comes over). To be honest, I was ready half an hour before he came, but I couldn't let my excitement show. So I shed my coat and earrings, and decided I would do the old answer-the-door- while-putting-in-your-earrings like my mom used to do. Unfortunately, I lacked the coordination of my graceful mother. As I heard a knock at the door, I went to answer it, one hand extended outward and the other holding the earring to my ear. I opened the door to see Greg and his hair standing there, just finishing with my earring and smiling like I had accomplished something great. Or maybe not so great, because Greg started giving me the strangest look.

"Your ear is bleeding." he said. I lifted my hand to my ear and felt the blood trickling out of the spot where I had poked my earring through. Graceful I was not.

"Damnit." I cursed to myself, speed walking to the kitchen before any blood got on the carpet. Greg came in, closed the door behind him, and followed me into the kitchen. If the whole ear situation hadn't happened, I would have been very self conscious of what he thought about my apartment. It wasn't a very big space, but come on, it was just me living there. I don't live with life size replicas of the Jolly Green Giant like Michael Jackson does.

"No, no, no," Greg entered the kitchen just as I was pressing a dry paper towel to my ear. "You gotta get the towel wet or it'll stick to your skin." I let him take the towel from my hand and run it under the faucet. I watched as the small spot of blood on the towel smeared into a sort of water color painting on a super absorbent canvas. Wow, that Bounty really does work. He rang it out , and I attempted to take it back from him, but he wasn't having any of that.

"It's fine. Just tilt your head a little." he said. I did as I was told, and he lightly pressed the damp cloth against my throbbing ear, the cold water soothing it. I could feel his eyes on me, or on my ear at least, as he stood inches from my body, the back of his hand brushing against my cheek. I tried to think of something, anything, to distract him before he began to find all of my little imperfections.

"I figured a little blood would be good on Halloween," I joked. "It's a good ice breaker."

He laughed and nodded his head in agreement.

"Yeah, well, it did get the conversation going," he said.

"Yeah, I'm sure all the girls love it when you tell them their ears are bleeding."

I saw him smile again out of the corner of my eye, and felt good that I had at least made a small positive contribution to the evening - jokes. We stood there in silence for a little while longer, Greg's hand still holding my makeshift bandage in place. Greg and I both began to realize the complete weirdness of our situation. Two people our age, male and female, who could possibly be attracted to one another, in an almost intimate situation. But there was nothing sexual about it. Still, I felt Greg's body lean into mine. Was it sexual for him?

I had never seen anyone so excited about a campy horror flick as Greg was that night. We sat front and center at the theatre, my neck cramped from craning my head upwards to look at the screen. The feature of the evening was "Evil Dead", and while I had never seen the film myself, I was pretty sure Greg had. He would lean into my arm every few minutes and explain how great the camera angles were or what was going to happen next. I was actually paying more attention to Greg's proximity to me and the quality of my breath than what was going on in the film, but I tried to look interested for his sake.

When the movie was over and the house lights came on, I had my first opportunity to really take a look at the people in the theatre; the other late night patrons. There were heavyset, long haired guys with Dungeons and Dragons T-shirts. There were some emo kids in the back of the theatre, wearing Elliot Smith T-shirts and thick rimmed glasses. And then there were the guys like Greg, the young, technologically savvy, well dressed pseudo nerds, each with a pretty girl on his arm. But not just the clueless, Paris Hilton kind of girls - the pretty girls who could argue about politics with you and then kick your butt in Trivial Pursuit. College pretty, I guess you could say, as compared to High School pretty. Little Natalie Portmans, minus the fame. I wondered if I could ever be considered one of those girls.

Greg's voice brought me out of my trance.

"What time is it?" he asked, stretching his long arms over his head and yawning.

I checked my watch.

"2:30."

"Wanna get out of here?" he asked.

"Now? But I thought this was a fest," I answered. "Doesn't a fest entail numerous movies?"

"Yeah, but I've had enough of this stuff for one night." he paused, looking slightly concerned. "Unless you want to stay."

"No, let's go." I answered before he had barely finished his sentence. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the movies. But if I had to watch anymore fake gore and screaming, I may have turned into an evil dead myself.

The city was still alive when we stepped out of the dark theatre. The neon casino signs blazed like the sun, and I had to squint to even look up from the ground. If my IQ had been a few points lower at the moment, I would have sworn it was daytime.

Not knowing my way around such a hectic city, I let Greg lead the way. I was surprised when he headed into a fast food joint, the tables still covered in crumbs and the lighting harsh and sterile.

"This place has the best milkshakes in Vegas," he explained. Is this what nerds did? Scary movie followed by a milkshake?

Our time in the restaurant went from minutes to hours, and before I knew what was going on, the sun was peaking it's head over the horizon (or was another casino sign just being turned on?). We had been talking forever, about anything we could conjure up in our strange minds. The conversation went from the movie to my family to his family to the crime lab, and everything in between. I had never felt this natural around someone before, like telling him something was just as easy as telling myself. I was heartbroken when Greg began to stand up to leave, but I couldn't let the experience end without asking a question that had been on my mind all night.

"Greg," I said shyly. "Can I ask you something?"

He sat back down in his chair, his head resting on one of his hands.

"Sure," he said.

"Why did you ask me out? I mean, I'm not saying it was a date or anything, but I was just curious to know why, so I thought I would ask..." He interrupted my rambling, and I will be forever grateful for that. Who knows what I would have said next.

"Why did I ask you out?" he repeated the question, and I nodded my head in response. "Because you're different." Well I already knew that.

"Different?" I asked. Different like special or different like special education?

"Well, here's the thing," he began his explanation. "Everyone in the crime lab is always so uptight and so tense. There's always something going on to stress them out, and I can't deal with that. I'm just naturally an easy going guy. I mean, I try not to let anything get the best of me. You have no idea how hard it is to deal with those people sometimes. Don't get me wrong, their great people, but sometimes, I feel like they're robots more than humans." I nodded in agreement, but his little speech didn't really answer my question.

"What does that have to do with me?" I asked.

"Ok," he turned his head downwards towards the table, but his eyes looked up at me like a sad puppy dog, embarrassed about what he was going to say. "I found a memo that you sent to Grissom. I don't even remember what it was about, but on the bottom, you wrote the Sesame Street song. You know, 'Sunny Days....'". He sang a little of the song, and I could feel myself blushing. I figured no one had seen that, not even Grissom.

"I can't believe you saw that," I said, putting my face in my hands.

"No, no. I liked it. It was like something I would have done." he said. I looked up at him, trying to see if he was joking or serious. "You just seemed so young and unspoiled by all of the gore in the crime lab and the big city stuff. I thought you would be fun to hang out with."

His explanation came out of left field, but I was glad that I had asked the question. Now I could be sure that this wasn't some pity date for the new girl. I made a mental note to write more songs on the bottom of memos. I mean, look at the good results.