Page 57 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

“Please, call me Jim.”

“Sure, Jim.” Dalisay smiles, feeling more at ease now.

Jim waves them inside and Dalisay immediately begins to take off her shoes in the entryway.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” says Jim. “You can leave them on.”

Dalisay is taken aback. When Jim disappears deeper into the house, Dalisay leans into Evan and whispers, “You don’t take your shoes off in American houses?”

“Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.”

“They’re not bothered by dirt?”

Evan shrugs. “It’s their house. I wouldn’t worry.”

But Dalisay does worry. She would feel awful if she tracked in something from outdoors that could ruin the rugs or scuff up the hardwood floor. Evan takes his shoes off at his place, and she figured his parents would share that practice.

“It bothers me. I’m taking them off,” she whispers, doing so before she and Evan head further into the house.

The Saatchi home is pristine, full of sunlight that bounces off egg-shell-white walls and sleek, monochromatic mid-century modern decor. The living room is furnished in a way that reminds Dalisay of a dentist’s office, all neat and tidy, and she starts to wonder if that’s the Saatchi way. Order and uniformity. The kitchen is new and shiny, sparkling as if it’s never been used before, and Dalisay figures they must clean it a lot to keep it looking that nice. It’s like something out of a magazine.

She hears a woman’s voice coming from the patio. “They have arrived! Hello, hello, helloooo!” Evan’s stepmom appears from the patio, Jim in tow. She’s a tall, thin white woman in her sixties wearing a tailored dress, gold hoop earrings, and a big sun hat.

“Hey, Jenny,” Evan says and hugs her. Dalisay notices that while he smiles, and greets her, his shoulders are stiff. “It’s good to see you again.”

“And you must be Dalisay!” Mrs. Saatchi says and gasps. “Look at you! You are beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Dalisay says, blushing. “It’s really nice to meet you, Mrs. Saatchi.”

“Oh goodness, calling me missus makes me feel old. Please, call me Jenny. Oh my, are you barefoot?”

Dalisay looks down at her painted toes, still bright blue from the pedicure she got with Lola last week.

“She didn’t want to get the floors dirty,” Evan explains.

Jenny goes slightly pale, lips pursed, and she tries to smile, but it looks like she swallowed a fly. “I have a terrible thing about feet, especially on the floor. It’s just that feet are so disgusting, um—Would you mind putting your shoes back on?”

Dalisay’s mouth opens and closes several times, stunned. Her whole face is blazing hot. She looks at Evan, who looks equally stunned. Blinking rapidly, she turns back to Jenny. “Oh, uh, yes. I’m sorry!”

Dalisay hurries back to the front and slides her shoes back on. She can hear conversation happening in the other room, Evan probably explaining, and Dalisay lingers in the entryway for a moment to gather her wits. Jenny practically called her feet disgusting. But she washes her feet every day; they’renot disgusting. And aren’t shoes from outside grosser than bare feet anyway?

Dalisay closes her eyes and takes a breath. Her pounding heart feels like it’s going to leap out of her chest, but she reminds herself it’s not the end of the world. She can do this.

When she comes back to the living room, she can hear Jenny saying to Evan, “I understand that, it’s just that the cleaners already did the floors, and I don’t want to call them back for—” Her face lights up with a smile when she spots Dalisay. “Oh! Thank you, Dalisay! I really appreciate it. I love your shoes! Super cute.”

Evan looks beleaguered, the skin around his eyes tight, but Dalisay just smiles and says, “Thank you!” Jenny beckons them all to the patio where the table is already set.

“I also wanted to thank you for having us over,” Dalisay says, “so I brought some leche flan.” She lifts the cooler slightly.

“Leche flan?” Jenny asks, looking at Evan for clarification.

“Ah, yes,” says Dalisay, “it’s kind of a custard. Eggs, milk, sugar.”

Jenny sits at the opposite side of the table. “Oh, dear, that sounds lovely, but we’re vegan!”

“When did that happen?” Evan asks, surprised.

“We heard some program on NPR a while ago about how important it is—for the environment, et cetera—to go vegan and, well, we were already halfway there with vegetarianism, so we figured might as well go the whole way!”

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