The F-Word

“Yes. I’m right about what, you know, what just happened. You, kissing me.” She blushes. “So we can do our best to pull this off.”

“To pull this off?”

“To fool everybody this weekend.”

“To fool…” I catch myself just in time. Did that pathetic excuse for a kiss turn me into a parrot? I inhale. Exhale. Smile. At least, I hope what’s on my face is a smile. “Oh. Yes. Exactly. There’ll have to be some contact between us. Holding hands. Me putting my arm around you.”

“Kissing,” she says, and she does that little tip-of-her-tongue thing again, and what the fuck is with my dick? It’s doing its best to force its way through my zipper.

“Kissing,” I say, pretty much the way the guy who does the nightly weather would say showers.

She nods. “Okay. But next time…Next time, I’d appreciate it if you could warn me. Just so I’m prepared.”

“No problem.”

We stare at each other. Then I hear myself tell her that since I didn’t know what she wanted for dinner, I picked up a bunch of different things.

Silence. A long silence. Then she says what a good idea, or something like that, and together we finish emptying the bags and opening the containers until the counter looks like an international buffet. Lasagna. Pizza. A big green salad. Kung Pao chicken. Pad Thai. And, as an afterthought, a huge order of cheese-drenched nachos.

We both reach for the nachos. We smile and start munching.

“Good,” she says.

I nod in agreement. “Always.”

And neither of us mentions what happened just a few minutes ago.

* * *

Her cat puts in a cautious appearance. It’s a Siamese with slightly crossed eyes. Having it stare at me is kind of disconcerting because that off-kilter gaze is unblinking.

“Her name is Priscilla,” Bailey says.

“Nice name.” I squat down. “Come say hello, Priscilla.”

The cat doesn’t move. Or rather she does, but it’s only to sit on her haunches and wrap her long chocolate tail around her feet.

“She’s shy.”

“Yeah.” I stand up. “I can see that.”

We talk cats for a few minutes. Then we tuck into pretty much everything on the counter.

Turns out she loves Thai and Chinese and Italian. Tex-Mex she isn’t sure about, but this is Tex-Mex from a place I know in the East Village and she says it might just turn her into a convert.

“So,” I say, “I’ve learned something about you already. You’re not a picky eater.”

“No. Not at all.”

That’s gonna turn out to be an overstatement, but I won’t find it out until our next meal together. For now, we’re doing fine.

We clean up after dinner, arguing over who gets to keep the leftovers. I offer the winning argument: that my dog will pig out on anything I bring home and he’s got to watch his boyish figure.

She laughs. She has a nice laugh. Open, easy, not in the least bit phony or self-conscious. I never thought about it before, but most women seem to be cautious about how they laugh. Not Bailey.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll keep it all. There’s enough here for dinner straight through the rest of the week.”

“No,” I say quickly. Her eyebrows rise. “I mean, we’ll be having dinner together the entire week. What’s left of it, anyway. Have to get to know each other, remember?”