She has that white leather jacket that looks real good but feels like shit. Fake, faux, faux leather, affordable. That's how they get you with that, it looks good. Then you try it on, then you pick it up, feel it, taste it. Then you realize, oh. Oh, now I understand the tag, why the decimal is where the decimal is. That's how they get you, and that's how she got me.
She has legs, sure, I mean she walks around, but somehow I didn't notice how short they were. Because she's got this torso, you see, this elongated midsection with a belly that sticks out just a little. Not a lot. Just a little. High wedge heels that, again, look good, until you look at them longer and longer and you're thinking how can anybody walk in these and then she walks and you can clearly see, oh, they can't. But she wore all black, all black with that fake white leather. So she seemed lean, she looked sharp, she popped in a bag of duds.
She's a friend of a friend of a friend. She was at the bar already, alone, which I found curious. She had some clear drink on ice with citrus wrapped around the edge, no surprise there, five'll get you ten. She'd already had—and I say had, I don't say bought, because a girl like this, she hasn't bought a drink in a while—probably two or three. She's feeling good. My friends and I, my friends' friends, we're all feeling good. What's to not feel good about? We're young enough. We've got jobs that pay us money. And this place, we're real friendly with the staff, so we'll get at least some of this comped.
We're introduced. Her name is Kira, which I have a real fun time saying. After a few drinks that K starts to feel real good in the back of my mouth, I find myself whispering that first syllable over and over just to feel the breath pass my soft palate. Almost a couple times I think she hears me. Maybe she does. If she does she won't say anything about it to me and I thank her for that. She's got turquoise nails I see and I'm thinking thank god they're not red. Because red, white, and black, that's a very sixth grade way of thinking what's cool. I look at her a little longer than one should when meeting for the first time. I hadn't felt her jacket yet.
A few of us break off for darts and somebody buys us a round. I say that I'll grab one later, of course hoping that it won't actually come to that. Kira's hair goes from dark to light, brown to blonde, ombre is what they call it. That only makes me think of Paul Newman, which is a strange thing to be thinking of when you're looking at a girl's hair. We get paired up together. She asks me if I'm any good at darts. I say I go from bad to good to bad again. She laughs. She's the same way. We're starting the game and I motion to her and her first dart doesn't even hit the board. No need to start bad, I tell her, you can skip it and go straight to being good. I get a healthy laugh out of this one. Her second and third darts both hit, marking off two fifteens and a twenty. Laughter really is the best medicine. A couple turns later I hit the first bullseye. We cheer, we high five, and I immediately whip around and bullseye my second. We are overjoyed, we are. And so I go in for my prize, and I kiss her on the cheek. She comments on the fact that it was just the cheek, seems almost impressed, and I tell her I wanted to be a gentleman. She asks if that's what gentlemen do and in one fell swoop I tell her I have no idea what gentlemen do, and plant one on her hard. This is the coolest thing I have ever done or will ever do. I throw my third dart over my head, and apparently my buddies have to stop a guy from attacking me. Our favorite bartender brings us shots of tequila and she licks the salt off my hand. We lose the game, but who the hell cares? My work, on this night, is done.
The cabdriver asks where to, and I just ask her what's her address, I don't check with her first, I don't ask what she wants to do or if it's all right. I just presume. It feels good to presume. And on the way up the stairs she starts undressing, telling me how she hates wearing clothes, about the scars I'll find that tell of her breast reduction. You tend to forget that sometimes girls like presuming, too.
We start fooling around on the couch, and I try making a series of moves. Frankly I'm a little put off that I have to try to make moves at all, I thought this was behind us. But she holds me off and she teases without spoiling the mood. I can see her apartment when I peek out of the corners of my eyes and it looks like her: white walls, white couches, black electronics, photos and things that add dashes of color and that personal touch. Finally, after half an hour and half a bottle of wine, she gets up, leaves the room, and goes down a hall. She doesn't tell me where, she just leaves. But then she doesn't come back. So after a few minutes I realize, oh, maybe I'm supposed to follow her. Women never tell you what's on their mind, they'll just leave you alone in their apartment. So I go to this hall and, like it's scripted, there are five closed doors, which is just what I want to be dealing with at whatever the hell time it is. What's a guy supposed to do? I call out her name. Nothing. So I start opening doors. One is a closet. The next is a bathroom. The next is at least a bedroom, but it's dark and the person in the bed doesn't seem to be waking up. Is she asleep already? The last door at the end of the hall opens and Kira sticks her head out. Hey, ombre! I shout. She shushes me, she doesn't get the reference. Was I just opening doors? Yes, I was. Her roommates were sleeping! Probably not anymore.
However mad I made her it wasn't all that mad, no one was turning back at this point. We stripped each other and fooled around. We made it into the bed. And then, for some reason, for some godforsaken reason that I shall never know, she stops. She doesn't look upset, or annoyed, or tired, she doesn't really look like anything other than naked. And she says, you should go. I ask her, are you kidding me? Yeah, you should go. No, I'm not doing that. Really, you need to go. We're lying there naked next to each other in her bed as she's telling me this. I got nothing else to go on except the time we've had tonight which I thought was pretty damn good. And it's difficult for me to comprehend a timeline where she's gone this cold this fast. But she has. And so I dress, and I see myself out.
I get to the living room, now intimately acquainted with the floor plan. There, camouflaged on some goddamn white couch, is her jacket. So I pick it up, finally feeling it without distraction. It's mealy to the touch. An unnatural softness. Patches and scrapes of faux cool seem to flake off and crumble between my fingers. And I pull, I just start pulling, hoping I tear the thing in half. But I don't. I can't. I set it down exactly as it was and add it to my list of failures and exit the building. It takes me a moment to realize I know exactly where I am, and though I'm not that close to where I live I start walking. There's a diner on the way home that I've been meaning to try. I stop in. Order a big breakfast. Corned beef hash, eggs, pancakes, orange juice, coffee. I even top it all off with a chocolate milkshake, which gets a laugh from my server. The food is pretty good and I leave a large tip. She did a good job, and I'm feeling generous.
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