Page 78 of The Cabin
Is it another experiment, like the week without him?
Or is it an experiment of another kind, one wherein I test the waters of letting him a step or two closer, a little further in? I want to warn him, in a way:
Beware—it’s dark in here, close to my heart, near my soul. The curtains are drawn, and sheets cover the furniture. Dust inhabits the corners. Ghosts moan in the halls. Are you sure you want me to let you in?
I’m opening the door a crack, letting him peer in—maybe he’ll see the wrecked abandon within me and get scared off. Or maybe I’ll panic and slam the door in his face.
I don’t even know anymore.
I’m going on this date-not-date, but how I’ll react is a mystery to me.Too Right, Too SoonIt was the third or fourth date-like outing before anything felt like more than just friends doing friendly hang-out stuff.
His POV. It’s five thirty, and I’ve been ready for an hour, so I’m reading to pass the time. And maybe, possibly, hoping for some helpful hints as to what the fuck I’m supposed to do, feel, say, or be. Hints as to her.
The first date, we just talked, on the front porch of my house. Second, we went for a walk in the park, several feet between us, almost as if it was the nineteenth century and we were courting. Third date, she had me over to her house and I brought carryout from a local Chinese place and we ate on her back deck and there was no alcohol and we sat on opposite sides of the square, glass table with the hole in the middle for an umbrella she didn’t have. That one felt almost like a date. It was the fourth one that crossed some sort of invisible line. I’d found this place online, a restaurant way out in the country, in the hills, surrounded by forests and two-lane highways. I figured the drive there would be as much the date as the dinner itself.
The place is called The Boat Dock. Cute, quaint, and unique. It has a very much misplaced nautical theme, considering the lake it’s on is barely big enough for Jet Skis and tubing. I wouldn’t call it pretensions of grandeur, exactly, but close. Big thick nautical ropes on the walls in ornate knots, which probably have complicated names and functions. Oars from ship’s boats, the ten-foot-long kind meant to lock into rings on rowboats. Draft charts and maps with incomplete representations of shorelines with antiquated names for familiar places. But it’s cozy, with little booths in shadowy corners, votives on the tables and single-sheet laminated menus with imported fish-and-chips and tender veal and overpriced lamb chops. Low ceilings and big windows overlooking a maze of weathered docks festooned with an excess of largely decorative ropes.
We sat outside, and there were tiki torches that gave off thick smoke smelling of citronella. In the center of the table was a small glass vase with a single bright orange Gerbera daisy.
“Those are my favorite flower,” she said, in a by the way sort of comment.
I tucked that tidbit away—Gerbera daisy. Got it.
There was music playing low in the background, a playlist that seemed to waffle between accordion-heavy French-inspired instrumental melodies and old standby Frank Sinatra tunes. She flipped the menu over several times, and then set it down decisively. She ordered chicken parmesan, and when it came, let it slip that if a restaurant had chicken parmesan, that’s what she got. She’d tried a million times to make it at home, but could never get it to come out right. The breading was never crispy and golden brown enough, and the cheese never went stringy the same way, and the sauce never had the right balance between smooth and chunky. So, chicken parmesan remained a delicacy she could never get anywhere but a restaurant.
Another tidbit.
She hated Frank Sinatra—I learned that, too, on that date. She thought he sounded smarmy, like yeah, I know I’m hot stuff and would you just listen to this voice of mine? I’m crooning, baby. Doesn’t it make you swoon?
So many things to know. It’s hard work getting to know a whole person from scratch. We’re such complicated creatures; we humans, and women are, to me at least, a six-dimensional puzzle with no frame of reference to work from. We’re so much more than the sum of our parts, more than middle names and favorite elementary school teacher and first kiss and which best friend betrayed you in high school and go-to sex position and which foods you hate and love and which musicians you love to hate and which ones make you cry because there are just so many fucking memories attached to that ONE particular song, which always seems to be playing when heavy shit goes down. For me, it’s “Satellite” by DMB. It was playing when I lost my virginity, and was playing when we broke up, and it was playing on the radio when we got in the wreck and my wife died. So now I can’t listen to it. I hear it, and I still love that goddamn song because it’s just so good, but each note sends a hail of emotional javelins slicing into me, a montage of awkward sex and tearful yelling and the moment I knew she was dead when that thick red blood of hers dripped onto the seat belt buckle and her eyes went glassy and empty like the eyes in a stuffed deer head.
