M or F? (9 page)

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. “But what about us?” I had to offer some kind of alternate hangage. “Do you want to have brunch tomorrow?”

“Ooooh, brunch,” Marcus said sarcastically. “I just love sloppy seconds. Besides, brunch is so eighties, and you know I'm into anything retro.”

“Okay, I'm telling him that I can't make it.” I started to type.

“Don't you dare!” Marcus shouted. “Frannie Falconer, you will go on that date, and you will wear something low-cut, and you will dish up all of the details while we watch
Sholay
tomorrow night. Type it in.”

So that's what I did.

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A few things flashed through me at that moment—a thrill that it was a real “date,” as in the Scoops-crew-approved two-person date formula and everything . . . and a little, tiny, microscopic pang of jealousy that Jeffrey thought that Marcus was cool and funny. Does he think
I'm
cool and funny? I wondered.

I hit the keyboard.

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“Okay,” I told Marcus. “It's on.”

“Good,” he replied. His voice was a weird combination of satisfied and hurt, and I really felt bad for ditching on our plans at the last minute. But wasn't that what he had told me to do?

Anyhoo, so Marcus and I firmed up our brunch plans, and then I hung up and started to get ready. And then I started to get nervous about the Jeffrey date. And
then
I started feeling like a jerk about the whole Marcus thing, like if I was a better friend, I would have insisted that we keep our plans. And
then
I started to think that maybe Lilac Breeze was making me look kind of yellow, and I was just about to tissue it off when Laura walked into my room.

“Pink or blue?” she asked. She was wearing low-riding black pants and a formfitting pink cashmere sweater and holding up a baby blue one that was exactly the same as the one she had on in every respect except for the color.

I wanted to say,
What difference does it make?
But I'm a nice person, so I actually said, “I think the pink really goes well with your skin tone.”

“Really?” Laura asked, giving me a huge smile. I don't usually hand out compliments on her Banana Republic wardrobe, but I was in a good mood. “You're pretty dressed up,” she said, eyeing my skirt. “What's the deal? Cute guy at the video store?”

“Actually, I have a date.” I tried to sound nonchalant while still putting enough emphasis on the word
date
so that Laura would know it was important.

“Really?” Laura squealed. “With who?”

I fought the grin, but the grin won. “Jeffrey Osborne.”

Laura waggled her eyebrows. “Ooh—I remember him.” Laura had been a senior at my high school last year.
“Cute!”
She shoved aside a mountain of reject clothes and flopped down on my bed. “What are you guys doing?”

“I don't know yet,” I said truthfully. “What are you up to?”

“Well . . . Steve is taking me for a moonlight picnic at Simms's Peak.” Laura smiled dreamily. “You can see stars and all the city lights from there. Then we're going for chocolate fondue at the Melting Pot. They have a really cozy back room, with a fireplace and everything.” She tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder and leaned back on her elbows, blue eyes shining.

“Wow,” I said, feeling unbelievably lame. Suddenly, my date didn't even sound like a date at all. This is how most of my interactions with Laura go. Even when she's being sweet, she manages to make me crazy.

I heard a car stop in front of our house. Laura and I both rushed toward the window—but she got there first. “Yours,” she said.

At that moment, I was all nerves. I had this weird urge to ask Laura to go out on my date for me—I was sure she'd do a much better job than I would. “Tell me that I look okay,” I begged.

“You look great,” Laura said.

She sounded sincere, so I decided to believe her. “Thanks.” I gave her one last nervous smile and darted out the door. “'Bye, Dad!” I shouted as I thudded down the stairs. “Be back before eleven-thirty you can reach me on the cellie I won't do drugs or get into any trouble see you later!”

“Have fun!” Dad called from the living room as I busted out the front door, successfully avoiding the whole awkward parent-date interaction heinousness. This is already going brilliantly, I congratulated myself silently. Just brilliantly.

“Hey!” I said as I headed down the front walk toward Jeffrey. He was walking toward our house, and my heart did this thuddy little freak-out when I saw him. He was wearing a soft slate blue flannel shirt over brown corduroys, and Timberlands. He looked clean and rugged at the same time, and it basically took all of my energy not to either (a) jump on him or (b) run back inside the house in terror.

“Hey,” Jeffrey said warmly. He looked me up and down, then smiled.

Note to self: Naughty Secretary works. We both turned toward Jeffrey's car, and we reached for the door at the same moment, knocking heads.

Okay, this is the problem with modern culture: chivalry is in a coma. I mean, usually, you think it's dead—hardly anybody lays a cloak across a mud puddle or opens doors or stands up when a woman joins the table anymore. But every now and again it'll give a little death rattle, and someone will go to open the car door for you when you're least expecting it, and you'll end up giving your date an accidental head butt. Very romantic.

“Ooh,” I said, wincing and rubbing my forehead. “Sorry.”

“My fault,” Jeffrey replied, blinking hard—to clear the stars from his eyes, I guess.

Then we both reached for the door again. This time, though, we didn't butt heads—we just kind of let out these nervous giggles; then Jeffrey stepped back and waved toward the door with this “go ahead” gesture, so I ended up opening my own door. Which was weirdly disappointing, in a way.

“So,” Jeffrey said as he slid into the driver's seat. “Where are we headed?”

“Well, I know this great Cuban-Chinese place,” I said, managing to make it sound like I'd just thought of it, when really, I'd racked my brain for almost two hours to come up with a place that had plenty of vegetarian options but where I wouldn't have to eat tempeh again. And the Cuban-Chinese place was cool—for one thing, the food was great, like spicy Chinese food with rice and beans and these awesome fried plantains. For another thing, the waiters were out-of-control surly. I'm talking, they practically threw the food at you, which was always good for a laugh. Plus, it's owned by our neighbor, who is a very nice man and has a super-cute pug named Zero.

Jeffrey grimaced. “Actually . . .” he said slowly, “I'm kind of on a boycott. I'm not eating any Chinese food until Tibet is free.”

I sat there for a moment, trying to process what Jeffrey was talking about. Tibet? I guess this was one of his good causes. . . . Be sympathetic, I told myself, even though I didn't see how boycotting Cuban-Chinese food prepared in America by Mr. Wong who lived three blocks away was going to help anything. Then again, I'm really not up on current events, so . . . “Oh, right,” I said, as though I had momentarily forgotten my own Chinese-food boycott.

“I was thinking we could hit the Polish food festival,” Jeffrey said. “They've got these amazing dumplings. . . .”

I nodded like Polish food was the greatest thing since the creation of exfoliant, even though I didn't really know anything about it, except that it probably didn't involve tempeh. Which made it okay by me. “Sounds good.”

“Great,” Jeffrey said brightly.

“Great,” I repeated.

We sat there, smiling blankly at each other for a moment, and I racked my brain to think of something clever to say. “Polish food,” I started awkwardly. “That reminds me of a story. So this Polish guy and a Catholic priest are in a rowboat—”

Jeffrey's blue eyes were staring at me as though what I had to say was the most incredibly important thing ever, and suddenly I realized that he was the world's worst audience for a Polish joke. I mean, Jeffrey was the sweetest, most earnest person I'd ever met. He was in the International Club. He read poetry. He only ate things that were (a) vegetables and (b) not hurting Tibet. I didn't want to offend him.

“So what happened?” Jeffrey asked.

“Well . . . their ship went down, and they had to live in that lifeboat for forty days before they were rescued,” I improvised. “But before anyone could reach them, the priest fell overboard and was eaten by a shark.” Jeez, where did that come from? I wondered.

“Oh, that's so tragic,” Jeffrey said, his blue eyes clouding.

Way to go, Frannie, I thought. Now you've depressed him. Perfect date material. What would Laura say? I wondered desperately. Something uplifting, I guess. I decided to tack on a happy ending. “Yes, but the Polish guy had been a criminal, and when the priest died, he decided to dedicate his life to doing good works. So it was kind of inspirational.”

“Wow.” Jeffrey shook his head as he started the car. “What an amazing story. There's a lesson in that.”

“Yeah,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. The lesson is . . . don't try to tell the most PC guy on earth a Polish joke, I thought.

Silence descended over the car as we started toward downtown. I snuck a sideways look at Jeffrey's profile and watched his hand on the gearshift as he drove. Mmmm. Who needs dinner, anyway? I thought. The view is delicious.

I could hear the tires humming as we drove, and after a few minutes, I decided I had to break the silence or I'd go completely insane. “So, uh . . . how did you become interested in Tibet?” I asked, grasping at straws.

“Well, I got into Buddhism a couple of years ago,” Jeffrey said, downshifting sexily. “That was when I became a vegetarian. And that was when I started reading up on the plight of Tibet. You know, China has been doing the most horrible things to the blahbie, blahbie, blah.”

Well, actually, he didn't really say “blahbie, blahbie, blah,” but that was kind of where my brain tuned out his words and started searching for something intelligent to say on the subject. Tibet, Tibet . . . My dad always reads
National Geographic
, I thought. Hadn't there been a cover story on Tibet a while ago? I seemed to remember flipping idly through the article while I was waiting for Laura to get off the phone. . . . There were pictures of mountains and guys in robes. They must have been Buddhist.

Finally, Jeffrey stopped his diatribe about Tibet, and I said in my most earnest voice, “Yeah, I've always wanted to go there. I think I'd love to climb Mount Everest someday.”

For a minute, Jeffrey looked confused; then he laughed. “I think you're thinking of Nepal,” he said gently.

Crap! Nepal!
That
was the article I'd flipped through. “Oh yeah,” I said quickly. “I just meant that I wanted to go to Nepal too. In addition to Tibet. It's all just so fascinating.”

“Yeah, Nepal is interesting because they have all of these issues with the Sherpas,” Jeffrey agreed, launching into some speech about Sherpa rights. Personally, I wasn't sure what a Sherpa was (isn't it some kind of yak?), but I was just glad that Jeffrey was talking about something.

I decided to just sit back and watch his full lips move as he explained the situation with Mount Everest and the Sherpa-yaks. It was like hearing my grandmother speak in Greek—I only understood about every third word. It's funny—I'd always thought of myself as someone who cared about the world and the environment and all of that junk. You know, I'm a maniac about recycling, and I always snip up my six-pack rings so the squirrels won't get caught in them. But I was starting to realize that I had a long way to go if I wanted to learn to speak “Jeffrese.”

Note to self, I thought, read this month's issue of
National Geographic
, and go online to find out more about Tibet.

One thing was becoming very clear: Marcus and I had a lot of research to do if we were going to make this relationship with Jeffrey work out.

 

 

“Well, here we are,” Jeffrey said as we pulled up in front of my house three and a half hours later.

“Yep, here we are,” I agreed.

Silence. Then my stomach gave a queasy lurch.

Why did I have to eat all of that kielbasa? I wondered miserably. It was not sitting well. Actually, it kind of felt like it had come alive in my gut, like that beast in the
Alien
movies.

Polish food: when good sausage goes bad.

I guess it was my own fault. The food festival had been more fun than I'd expected—and the food was great—so I'd kind of let down my guard.

The first thing I saw when we got there were these old people in crazy crinoline outfits, dancing to this bopping polka music. They looked like they were having so much fun that I tried to get Jeffrey to dance with me, but he wouldn't do it. Of course. Guys never do. Marcus once told me that he won't dance because he doesn't want to look like a dork, and I told him that was funny coming from a guy who dressed up as Stanley Kubrick (don't worry, nobody else has heard of him, either—he's a movie director and Marcus's hero) for last year's Halloween party, but he still wouldn't get his booty out there.

So Jeffrey and I ended up wandering around the booths filled with homemade crafts and different foods, and he kept explaining the significance of everything to Polish culture, which was interesting in the way that social studies is interesting. The fact was, the smell of the grilling sausages was driving me crazy. But I thought I'd better not order any. . . . I didn't know what Jeffrey would think. Finally, we stopped at a booth, and Jeffrey ordered a plate of pierogi. I'd never even heard of it.