Page 7 of Logan
5
Jane
“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s really rather beautiful.” The short, bald accountant Charlotte has set me up with fiddles with his glasses and looks at me sheepishly. “Honestly, the only reason taxidermy gets a bad rep is because the animals are dead. But it’s not like I could stuff them and put them on my mantelpiece if they were still alive. Plenty of everyday things use dead animals… makeup… candy… perfume… not to mention food.” He cuts a slice off his steak and shovels it into his mouth as if to validate his point. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as a cougar when it’s still alive. But stuffed… put in an artistic pose that portrays its majesty, its power… it really stirs my heart… it’s like a beautiful painting, or a song that makes the hair on the back of your neck stick up.”
“That sounds… nice?”
I push my plate of pasta a couple of inches further away from me. All this talk of dead animals has ruined my appetite.
Making a polite excuse to escape to the restroom, I frantically text my sister.
Me: What the hell, Charlotte? This guy’s going to take me home, stuff me, and turn me into an ornament.
Charlotte: At least he’s going to stuff you.
Me: Not funny.
Charlotte: It’s a little bit funny…
Me: Is not.
Charlotte: He’s really a nice guy once you get to know him.
Me: Is that before or after he shoves his arm up a dead raccoon's butthole?
Charlotte: Oh, God… is he talking about taxidermy again?
Me: Again! He hasn’t stopped talking about it. I haven’t even been able to finish my meal!
I throw my phone back in my bag and make my way back to our table. Mentally cursing myself for letting Charlotte set me up on a date.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. I don’t know where she finds them. But it’s like she purposefully goes out of her way to set me up with the weirdest people in the States.
I briefly entertain the idea that maybe she’s still mad with me and this is all some kind of elaborate revenge for calling her a stinky, pooface, shoe-ruining slut. But Charlotte’s about the least passive-aggressive person I know. If she wanted revenge she’d do it out in the open, face to face.
“There you are,” Arthur, the dead animal stuffer grins at me as I pull back my chair and sit down. “I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman has sneaked out on me midway through a date.”
“That’s hard to believe,” I say, cursing myself for not thinking of that while I was in the washroom. “But I am afraid I’m going to have to cut things short.”
His jaw hangs open a little as he slowly rests his fork back on his plate. He looks like I’ve just told him his mother was found crushed by one of those big blocks of ice that sometimes fall from airplanes and kill people.
“It’s my sister,” I continue, trying my best to soften the blow while venting my anger on my not-so-beloved sibling, “lady troubles.”
“Oh,” he says, unable to hide the disappointment from his face. “Can’t it wait until we’ve finished here?” He points at the almost full bowl of spaghetti in front of me. “You’ve hardly touched your main.”
“I know,” I say, “and it really is a shame… I was having such a good time… but it’s kind of an emergency… she’s got a yeast infection, you see... and apparently it’s really bad… she needs me to go to the drug store and get her some ointment… apparently it’s stinking the whole house up.”
I inwardly smile at this little bit of revenge. I figure if Charlotte made me spend all that time on my hair, just to come out on this crummy date with a dead animal loving lunatic, the least she can do is endure a few funny looks when she gets in for work on Monday.
Not wanting to argue the point any further, Arthur waves down our waitress and pays the bill.
He walks me to my car. Still waffling on about how we should really do it again sometime, and how maybe I can come around and see his work. That he’s thinking about entering some competitions and how it would really drive his nemesis crazy if he turned up with a beautiful woman on his arm.
“Anyway,” he smiles, “I had a really nice time tonight. I don’t know about you, but I really feel like there’s something between us… a spark... your sister’s always told me how amazing you are, and I can see she wasn’t exaggerating.”
He closes his eyes and puckers his lips. Time slows down. I watch his mouth approach my face as if I’m in a car crash and it’s the last few seconds of my life.
My feet are frozen to the ground. I don’t know what to do.
