Company Manners
I ran around like a fool. I tidied up my room by shoving everything under the bed. I called Jenna and begged her to come over for dinner. I told her Wilson and Foreman would be there. She likes them both; they make her feel cosmopolitan and worldly.
I shot into the shower. The shampoo felt good as I rubbed it into my scalp. Apple. I like it when things smell fruity.
Now comes the hard part, what do you wear for dinner when you're just lounging around the house? I kind of wish that I had those lounging pajamas, like old thirties movie stars have. Silky and sexy, trimmed in marabou feathers or something. Think Gwen Stefani in her 'It's My Life' video. Actually, I wish I had a life where it would make sense to wear something like that.
I went for my stand-by. Yoga pants, a T-shirt and a sweater. I had a really cute pink angora one, you know, it buttons with one button right under the bust. I looked at my pedicure. Luckily it still looked good from when Jenna spent the night and painted my toes for me.
Now let's get something straight about my crush right now. I know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate. Chase is thirty. Clearly inappropriate. But really, who am I going to date? My biggest fear is that they'll comb the tri-state area looking for a guy my age in roughly the same position to set me up with. Think Doogie Howser. I wish. No. Guy geniuses have a tendency to be nerds with no social skills. A sweeping generalization to be sure; and I'll be happy to eat my words when you introduce me to someone who doesn't fit the description.
A short history of people I've dated and/or kissed. I met David in Hebrew class. He used to try to crack me up when I was reading my haftorah. I'll tell you a secret. I was super busy in school then, and I didn't have a bunch of time to devote to my reading, so we picked the shortest reading possible, so I wouldn't have so much to study. Cheesy, huh?
So we would study and talk. We agreed that I'd be his date at his party and he would be my date at my party. It was great and for one little time in my life, I felt like the other kids socially. But really, what are you doing at thirteen? Kissing and touching stuff. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to touch.
His mom remarried and they moved to Hoboken. We haven't spoken since. Jenna sets me up sometimes, but high school guys are so…juvenile. Either they're total goofs, or they're MUCH too intense. One guy got all wrapped around the axel over Jenna. He used to get high and call her, professing his love and begging her to go out with him. . Her parents made her change her number. Creepy.
Jenna seems to think that Chase would be a good boyfriend for me. I think a fourteen year age difference speaks for itself. Jenna loves Russell Crowe, so I think most of it is an accent thing.
Dad is being a total jerk about Chase. First of all, he's been punishing Chase for months over something that happened at work. Secondly, he likes to turn the heat up under people to see what the reaction will be. I wouldn't put it past him to have planned this dinner party just to see how we'll all react. Dad's an ass on a regular basis.
But it sucks to be me. I see the guy frequently at work and he's so damn cute and friendly. I think it's a cultural thing. I hear Australians are super laid-back and that they flirt with everyone. Luckily I don't see much of him, so I'm not in too much danger. Except that I find myself fantasizing about him. I try to tell myself not to, but what else am I going to think about? Oh well, it's harmless.
I heard the doorbell; it was Jenna, coming early to help me.
"Hey!" She flopped on my bed, "So do you think your folks will let us drink wine tonight?"
"No, Floozy. No wine. So what did you do today?" I turned on the stereo and listened to Mariah wail.
"Soccer in the morning. Then I had to get some material for a project in home ec." She waited for me to say something.
I giggled. Home ec. That's the one thing that sucks. I missed out on that whole 'electives' thing in high school. "Home ec? They still have that? God. What do you do in that class?"
"Mostly we just screw around. Once a week we cook something. Sometimes we talk about budgets. Crap like that." She blew a bubble and then popped it.
"That's a class?" It seemed improbable that thirty kids would spend an hour every day doing something like that and have it be called education.
"Yeah. I also have yearbook and P.E. which is really just soccer practice." She sat up. "Hey, I heard a car door."
"Is that a super-power?" I hadn't heard anything, but I walked over to the window and there was Chase, getting out of his Honda. He hair fluffed in the evening breeze. "Oh, come look at the pretty."
Jenna got up and looked out the window with me. "Very nice. So? Are you going to do something about it?"
"No. And I wish you'd stop. Let's just say that I admire his many fine attributes. The man is thirty. Thirty. There's no way to make that okay." I sighed. More's the pity.
"Thirty? Are you kidding?" She sat back on the bed. "You're right. He's too old. So what's wrong with him? How come he doesn't have a girlfriend?"
I shrugged, who knows why gorgeous people aren't coupled up. I mean, look at celebrities. They're rich and beautiful; and their personal lives are total train wrecks. "Beats me. Hey, Jenna, so since we're ruling him out, what kind of guy should I be with? Where am I going to meet him? How am I going to meet him? Am I doomed to be alone?" I despaired of ever finding a boyfriend.
"You're too fabulous to be alone forever. It's just not your time right now. You've got to wait until the guys catch up with you. Right now, you're just too…" she made a hand movement that showed a pedestal of sorts, "guys our age can't appreciate you, and you're too young for an older guy." She thought for a moment, "Twenty-two."
"Twenty-two?" Twenty-two what?
"You'll be twenty-two and guys will be falling all over themselves to be with you. They'll have gotten over that awkward stage and they'll be out of school themselves. That's when it'll all start happening for you. You got any gum? Mine's all chewed out."
I opened the desk drawer where I keep my stash. "Twenty-two? I've got to wait that long? But I'll miss all the fun!" I did. I missed everything. Parties. Toilet papering houses. Team sports. All of it. "Now I'm depressed."
Jenna rubbed my fuzzy sweater, "Yeah, that sucks. For what it's worth, when I go away to college, you can come visit me and we can go to parties together."
"Really? Can I? Can we say that I'm your cousin? Can I pretend to be visiting from another school and just lie about everything? That way, it won't seem like I missed so much." She is my best-friend for a reason. Jenna rocks! I hugged her. "You're too good to me."
"Yeah, yeah," she said, stuffing her mouth with cinnamon gum.
"Girls! I need help!" Dad yelled from down the hall.
"Let's go, he just wants to see me squirm with Chase in the room." We got up off the bed and walked towards the front of the house.
"Oooh. I have an idea! Let's tell them I'm setting you up with someone."
"Isn't that kind of juvenile?" I asked as we went into the kitchen for our assignments.
"We are juvenile. But it's true. I found someone for you to date. I doubt seriously that he's true boyfriend material but if you play your cards right you can be his prom date." Right to the heart of the matter. I would have much less to complain about if I could go to prom. That's sort of the hinge to the genius deal. If you move forward with your education, beyond your years, you miss milestones. Middle school dances, football games and prom. Prom is the big one. Most people will talk about their prom dates for their entire lives. Kind of like weddings, only without having to involve your family.
"Shut up! I would kill to go to prom." Dad had handed me a pile of dishes to put on the table. Jenna was in charge of transporting the salad.
"Prom?" He asked as we went into the dining room.
I put the dishes on the table and Jenna played with the salad tongs. Dad had followed us out. "Stop that. You'll mess up the decorations."
She looked into the bowl. "You mean the tomatoes?"
He rolled his eyes. "Explain what you mean by prom."
"Dad. It's theoretical. Prom isn't for another, what, seven months?" I looked to Jenna.
She shrugged, "at least. But there's Homecoming, that's only a couple of weeks away. We could start there and work our way up."
"So let me get this straight. You haven't even met this guy, but you will. And if you like him, you'll manipulate him so that you can go to dances with him?" He leaned against the door post.
"Whoa, you're way ahead of yourself there Slim." I pushed past him to get the trivets.
"Yeah, Dr. House, we're in the preliminary stages of our strategy." Jenna said between chews. She tried to blow a bubble, but it wasn't bubble gum, so it just snapped.
"Strategy? Girls, you're scaring me." He went into the kitchen to poke his lasagna, which was resting on the stove top.
"Dating is war, Dr. House. A girl needs to be prepared. This looks delicious, when are we eating?" She tried to pick at a piece of cheese that clung to the casserole.
He smacked her hand away, "When the other guests get here. Still have that hollow leg?"
Jenna put her gum in the trash. "Very funny. I'm hungry."
"You're always hungry." He handed her a gorgonzola stuffed olive from the relish tray. "Start with this."
She popped it in her mouth, "yum," she said as she chewed.
He walked out of the kitchen with a dark look on his face. He went into the living room where Mom and Chase were talking about something work-related.
"What's his problem?" Jenna asked, picking over other things on the relish tray.
I got the container of artichoke hearts out the fridge and handed her a fork. "The usual. He's having a hard time with my budding sexuality."
She nearly choked on a mouthful, "don't do that!"
"Come on; all dads have issues. I think he suddenly remembered that he had sex with his prom date." I helped myself to an artichoke heart with my fingers.
Her head involuntarily turned towards the door, "no way."
"Way. It was the seventies. Everyone was having sex all over the place. They didn't have to worry about HIV. If a girl was on the pill it was a license to be a slut."
Just then Mom walked in. "This is a LOT more interesting than the MRI suite."
"I would hope so." Jenna said, finally getting that piece of cheese.
"What did you say that freaked him out so badly?" Mom snagged an olive.
"Jenna's setting me up with a guy. We might have mentioned that he could be a potential prom date." I replenished the relish tray and fluffed everything up so that it wouldn't look like wolves had attacked it.
Mom picked up the tray and headed for the dining room. "Is that all? I thought you might have come out to him or something."
"I'm saving that for his birthday." I think I heard her chuckle.
Cameron was the last to arrive, so it was nearly eight before we sat down to eat. Conversation drifted between work-related things and general conversation. Jenna and talked to each other when the rest of them would go off on some tangent about one of their patients. On one hand, that's probably the reason they came over, so I can't complain too much about it, but on the other it's really rude to those of us who are uninvolved.
After we had served ourselves Jenna leaned over, and in one of those voices that's meant to sound like it's private, but it's really meant to be overheard, said, "so don't you want to know about him?"
Truthfully, I was so interested in the whole 'date' idea that I forgot that the activity is attached to a person. "Sure. Tell me about him." I didn't hold out high hopes. Not Klingon would be a good start.
"His name is Blake." She put a mouthful of lasagna in her mouth.
"So his mom wants him to be gay?" I waited for her to finish so she could explain this name to me.
"Don't be like that. He's really nice. Some kind of music prodigy, so you have that in common."
"How do you know him?" The others were talking about vasculitis. How does vasculitis come up at the dinner table?
"He's Kiley's brother." Kiley was one of her teammates.
"So why haven't I ever heard of him before?" If he was such a prize, it seemed ominous that we had never been introduced.
"Truth?" She said, leaning in even closer.
"Good place to start." I leaned in, our heads were nearly touching.
"He just went through a growth spurt." We giggled at the word 'spurt.'
"This makes a difference?" That couldn't be the entire story.
"Imagine this: frizzy hair, bad skin and chest high." She waited for the mental image to materialize.
"Ew!" I recoiled. Wouldn't you?
"Not to worry. Hair cut, dermatologist and growth spurt. He's fresh on the market after being the object of ridicule. There's stigma attached, but you don't care because you don't go to our school." She smiled confidently. "A nice man, a good catch, right?" She quoted from Fiddler on the Roof, our favorite movie. When we were eight.
"I don't know…" sure, I wasn't in the position to be picky, but surely this couldn't be the sum total of my dateability.
"Fret not. I have photos. I'll show you after dinner." She sat back and took a massive bite of lasagna.
"What the hell, it's a date. He might be nice. He might have nice friends." I decided to be philosophical.
"Great attitude." She agreed.
"So who's your date?" I braced myself. Ever since she developed, Jenna could afford to be picky. If she was dating a guy, he maxed out at least five out of seven key indicators.
She grinned. "That's the best part. Kiley's other brother. The one who's already cute."
"Okay. I insist on seeing pictures." It was only fair.
We had mostly finished dinner. If we stayed at the table we would have only been picking at garlic bread and playing football with the olives. We took our plates into the kitchen and stacked them in the dishwasher. I started to organize everything so that we could clean it up quickly.
Back in my room Jenna had opened her bag and fished out her phone. She brought up a couple of fuzzy shots of a guy. Decent-looking enough I suppose. No one would be casting him as the lead in Phantom any time soon. "So? Are we doubling next week?"
"Sure. I haven't been to a movie in forever." I reached behind me for a magazine; I wanted to show her an outfit in there.
"You know what they say…" She turned the stereo on. It was Mariah again. How many times are they going to play that song?
"What?"
"Un clavo saca otro clavo," she intoned in flawless Spanish.
"Something about nails?" My Spanish was rusty. Dad was the language guy around here anyway.
"One nail drives out another." She translated for me.
Just as I was about to respond I heard my dad call down the hall, "Oh Kyra! Chase has something he wants to ask you!"
Jenna and I exchanged looks.