Smart vs. Pretty (5 page)

C
hick’s aura was purple. Whenever Amanda stood near him, she saw indigo flashes in her eyes. He made her feel small and helpless, intensely female. He smiled easily, sweetly, and naturally. When she placed the crown on his head, she felt his breath on her forehead. She couldn’t stop staring at him, hoping he’d hit on her, sending him the telepathic message that she wouldn’t say no. She took him for a risk taker, an adventurer, a selfless lover. And mountain climbers had such amazing thighs.

Amanda waited patiently for Chick to make his move. That was her style since college. She had a long list of one-night stands (along with awkward mornings after) to show for her juvenile rushings into bed. Since then, Amanda discovered she had more second and third dates by slowing down the seduction, luring men inch by inch into her soft, gooey center. The longer she waited, the deeper the men sank into her like quicksand. It wasn’t a manipulation, nor was seduction a game to her. It was an art. She was determined to stick to her usual pace, no matter how tempting it would have been to go up to Chick and whisper nasty nothings in his ear.

Besides which, the wait could be exquisitely tense. Amanda could taste her anticipation as she posed with Chick, Frank, and Clarissa for the
Brooklyn Courier,
the local paper. Chick did some solo poses drinking RTB coffee, displaying their logo on his (Amanda imagined hairless) chest. When the photographer finished, it was after 11:00
P.M
. The crowd had thinned and everyone decided it was time to close up. Clarissa wanted to go out and celebrate. Frank wanted to stay in and count the money. Amanda hoped Chick would invite her to a private party in his pants.

She decided it wouldn’t violate her code if she made herself visible to him. So Amanda walked across the coffee bar to where Chick was talking with Matt, the new hire. She observed them from a comfortable distance of ten feet. “Don’t you get it, man?” Matt asked Chick. “If you don’t hop on the hamster wheel and run in tiny circles like the rest of this fucking country, they’re going to have to shoot you or lock you up for being different. That’s what they do to artists in America. I like to make public art. Graffiti. I could get thrown in jail for that.”

Chick said, “Because you’re defacing someone else’s property.” Amanda loved his voice; it was neither brutishly deep nor distractingly throaty. His words floated into her ears.

“And why is it their property?” Matt asked Chick. “Because they made a lot of money on the backs of the black man and then signed a piece of paper saying, ‘This is mine’? That makes an entire building someone’s personal property?”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” he said. Chick looked over the top of Matt’s head and noticed Amanda.

Matt grabbed his arm. “That’s bullshit, man. You’ve been to the mountaintop. I don’t believe you go along with this ownership crap.”

While she had his eye, Amanda raised a mug of coffee to her lips and gave him the vampish-innocent-takes-a-sip look. Then she shot him look number two: lower mug and offer the reluctant-yet-hopeful fluttering of the eyelids with an almost imperceptible brow furrow. Only to advance to look number three: the flicker of indecision (glance upward) followed by full-frontal eye contact. Hold for one, two, three, four. Then smile with just lips and look quickly to the left, as if she’d embarrassed herself with the very brazenness of her thoughts. A pretty blush punctuated the point, if she could manage it.

Chick responded predictably and ditched Matt. She kept up the full-frontal eye contact until he stood inches from her mug. To his back, Matt flipped Chick the bird.

She said, “Congratulations. You’ll make an excellent Mr. Coffee. You have to remember to come often.”

He said, “Go out with me. Tonight.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I guess it’s too late for dinner.”

It wasn’t
that
late. She said, “I could eat. Are you hungry? And, more important, are you paying?”

He laughed and took her hand, which she thought was trampling slightly on their delicate flirtation. But she forgave him. She had a forgiving nature. “Heights Cafe?” he asked. The bar/restaurant was a block away. It was called
cafe
(they’d forgotten the accent on the
e
), but their coffee was mediocre at best.

“I need to freshen up,” Amanda said. “I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.” She didn’t intend to be there in less than an hour. She had too much to do: change clothes, reapply makeup, fluff hair, dab fragrance, and accessorize. Amanda knew that the pursuit of physical beauty chipped away at ideals of the soul. But a girl had to do what a girl had to do. Pretty could only help. She’d incorporated this belief into her system long before she’d ever tapped into her cosmic sensitivity. Since toddlerhood, Amanda knew the power of pretty. If she smiled and cocked her head just so, she always got more cookies from Daddy.

Amanda blew Chick a kiss as he headed outside, all bundled up in his parka. Amanda loved the sight of a man wrapped up like a present. Winter was the handsomest season.

“Where’s he going?” asked Clarissa as the door jingled shut behind him.

“I don’t know,” Amanda said.

“Amanda, we talked about this. The contest isn’t supposed to be your personal dating service.”

Amanda nodded. “I could say the same thing to you, Clarissa. You think I didn’t notice the way you and Walter Robbins were talking?”

Clarissa blinked. “I wasn’t—”

“You were, too.”

“It wasn’t—”

“It was far from innocent,” Amanda said. “He seems to really like you, too. Lots of forward leaning, arms relaxed at his sides, bent knee, sign of familiarity. And, of course, the triangle.”

“The triangle?” Clarissa asked.

“When the path of his eyes makes a triangle on your face. Like this.” Amanda demonstrated by looking at Clarissa’s left eye, then her right eye, then her lips, and back to her left eye. “It’s a triangular loop, you could say. A clear indication of interest, no less meaningful than if he’d licked his lips and drooled.”

Clarissa said, “That’s good to know.” She sneeked a peek across the room, where Walter was talking to a customer. “Let’s keep this a secret, okay? It might hurt Francesca’s feelings if she knew we both hooked up.”

Amanda hated deceiving her sister, but she had a new best friend’s feelings to consider. “Good idea,” Amanda said to Clarissa. “I love having secrets. It’s like we’re on a covert mission together.”

“We’re breaking our own rule,” said Clarissa.

“How wanton,” Amanda said, putting her arm around Clarissa’s shoulders. The red in Amanda’s dress clashed horribly with Clarissa’s lime green jacket. “And when we go on our first double date, maybe we should talk beforehand about what to wear,” she said. The idea made Amanda think of junior high. Secret pacts, color coordination, when friendships were the entire world.

“Maybe we can try on each other’s clothes,” Clarissa said.

“I could never fit into your clothes,” said Amanda.

“Please.”

“You know you’re a pencil,” said Amanda. Now she really felt thirteen. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting Chick for dinner. Call you tomorrow? Maybe we can go shopping or something.”

The two women parted. Clarissa went right over to Walter, and then they left together. Amanda liked Walter. He was a gracious loser. Matt stuck around to clean up. Frank would be hours counting the night’s take of quarters and singles.

Amanda went outside and unlocked the street-side door to the apartment above the store. When their parents died and the sisters took over the business, Frank and Amanda gave up their Manhattan rentals. For Amanda, coming home had been nurturing and comfortable. Frank felt stifled by the closeness of all her mildly discontented memories. Despite Frank’s lingering resentment for their parents’ many failings (dying young among them), the older sister was adamant about staking out their old bedroom for her own (she got rid of their furniture and moved in her stuff). Frank said she wanted the room because it was the biggest in the apartment, and it had an attached bathroom. But Amanda theorized that, because Frank refused to talk about them now, insisting on living in their old room was her subconscious way of keeping Mom and Dad close.

Big closets. That was what Amanda’s childhood bedroom had in abundance, and she’d been happy to reclaim them. She began to prepare for her date. Every girl should have preplanned ready-in-a-flash outfits that take into account three factors: season, situation, and intent. For example, the perfect all-season first-date outfit was black velvet jeans, a cashmere/angora/mohair twin set, Hush Puppies, diamond studs, a charm bracelet, and (for the long-haired) a velvet scrunchy. The current date climate called for a slightly higher-maintenance winter seduction ensemble. Ergo, Amanda wore a red ribbed turtleneck, black knee-length skirt, black tights, vinyl high-heeled ankle boots, silver hoop earrings, and hair down and curly (humidity was permitting).

Once dressed, she sprayed, slapped, polished, buffed, and adorned; Amanda loved being a girl. She ignored the fact that her skirt wasn’t falling where it was supposed to fall, which meant she’d gained a few pounds. It still looked good. She felt confident when she sat down at the kitchen table for her usual predate I Ching toss. After some breathing—in, out—Amanda threw the coins. A lot of yin, as usual. But the alignment of the coins—from top to bottom: tails, tails, tails, heads, tails, heads—wasn’t very auspicious. The upper trigram represented the earth. The lower trigram was fire. Her interpretations: (1) Her ground, her stability, was at risk of being burned; or (2) The light of knowledge—fire—was buried beneath the earth. The reading was a warning. It was telling her that she didn’t know what she was getting into, and that she might find herself in a dangerous place when it was over. Amanda searched her intuition to see if the warning was for the date itself or for her choice of outfit.

Some
om
ing helped her understand the meaning of the toss. She quickly changed into an all-purpose gray cashmere minidress and was out the door, arriving at the Heights Cafe by midnight.

Chick was waiting at the horseshoe-shaped bar. Pink neon bounced off the mirror behind the bottles—highly flattering lighting. She pulled up a stool beside Chick and leaned over enough to breathe slightly on his neck. She could practically see his nerve endings salute.

“Sorry I’m late. Have you been waiting long?” she said sweetly. His answer would be a true test of his affections. She signaled the bartender for a drink.

“Not long at all,” Chick replied. The bartender, her old friend Paul McCartney (no relation), heard Chick’s response. He shook his head ever so slightly. Amanda nodded ever so slightly. Bartender Paul and Amanda had played this tape before—she’d had dozens of dates at the Heights Cafe. It was the only moderately priced, non-family-friendly restaurant in the neighborhood. The local singles depended on its low lighting, shiny black tabletops, piped-in smoky music, and strong drinks. Paul fixed Amanda a Kir Royale.

Chick asked, “Your usual?”

“You think this is a girly drink, don’t you?” she asked. Amanda’s on-a-date usual was a Kir Royale. Her off-a-date usual was a vodka tonic. On certain kinds of dates, however, she went with scotch, straight up (but not this one—he was a mountain climber, not a Wall Streeter).

Chick said, “I can honestly say that I’ve never given a moment’s thought to the gender of a cocktail.”

Good answer. This could be an ambience night. Amanda said, “So.” She and Chick had spent maybe ten minutes together total. She knew him only from the contest, what he’d written on his entry card, his purple aura, and his generally friendly nature. And he’d said the thing about flicking. That was promising.

Amanda sipped and said, “So.” She made it a policy to let the guy steer the conversation.

“This is awkward,” Chick admitted. “Maybe we should chug a few drinks and relax.”

Getting drunk as a conversational aid? Amanda hadn’t heard that before. But if it was new, she’d try it at least once. Amanda clinked her glass against his and knocked back the Kir Royale in one shot. Chick was obviously impressed. He smiled and held up his hand for her to slap. She high-fived him. She didn’t think anyone saw.

“Now you,” Amanda instructed, pointing at his drink.

He swirled his Greyhound against the walls of his glass and then downed it. Amanda liked how his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, sliding up and down under unmarked skin. She imagined kissing it. Chick really was a fine-looking man. He’d climbed all those mountains. He loved the great outdoors. Amanda was working on a nice little fantasy when he raised his arm again. He said, “One round down.” He nodded at her. He expected her to high-five him again. She furtively reached up and tapped his palm. Paul rolled his eyes from across the bar.

Amanda said, “You know, I’m fascinated by mountain climbers. The danger. The adventure. The physical exertion. Rappelling. It’s so adrenaline-based.”

“I was more like a trekker than a climber,” he said. “I set out to climb Everest, but I never went higher than five thousand feet.”

“The ideal altitude for growing arabica coffee trees.” Amanda threw that in.
What the hell.

He smiled. “Is that a fact?”

“I’ve got a million of them.”

“One at a time will be fine.” He signaled Paul for another round.

The bartender brought the drinks. Amanda smiled and shooed Paul away. He had a tendency to hover. She detected a sudden bulletin from her intuition:
Get some privacy with Chick.
She didn’t want Paul’s smirks and eye rolling to distract her from the emerging warmth she felt in her pelvis. “Let’s get a table,” she said to Chick. Maybe if they were sitting across from each other instead of side by side, Chick wouldn’t do…that hand thing.

Chick said, “A table sounds great, Amanda. In a nice, quiet corner.” His eyes darkened sexily.

“Somewhere we can talk,” she agreed.