KELLE SCHILLACI CLARKE
First Date
He arrives with six yellow tulips in a small vase, which she places inside her apartment. She wears a pinstriped A-line dress, which he compliments. He wears jeans, with an actual belt. He opens the passenger door of his Prius, she mutters a polite thank you. He mentions the car’s great gas mileage. She hasn’t been in a car in months. They drive to a romantic spot on the water that just re-opened. One-quarter capacity.
She orders a dirty martini, he orders a G&T. She points out a sea lion on the deck and starts barking at it—Arr-Arr-Arr—offering up her best sea lion impression. He stops her with a sharp glance, but the couple seated six feet away silent-claps their approval, using fluttery jazz hands.
He orders the Mediterranean Mussels, she gets the Seafood Salad, hold the scallops, sub Caesar dressing, easy on the artichoke hearts. They share a half dozen Kumamoto oysters, which she slathers in mignonette and slurps down noisily.
“Have you been here?” he asks, slowly recalling how small talk works. “I mean, before?”
She shakes her head and slides a Sweet’n-Low packet beneath one of the three oyster shells she’s placed upside down on the black tablecloth, starts moving them around in circles. She can’t seem to keep her hands still. They’re all a-flutter.
“Where’s the sweetener?” she asks, palms up, like a blackjack dealer. The busboy sweeps by, stacks the oyster shells on packed ice, scrapes breadcrumbs into his palm and swiftly disappears.
“I’d have picked the middle one,” he says.
“Wrong.”
He watches a boat glide across the glass-water bay, the sun hitting peak golden hour, the snow-capped Olympics majestic in the distance, all of it: perfection. He wants to take a picture, but she is dipping her finger into the melted wax pooled by the candle’s wick, plunging one finger then the next, until all are capped with wax.
“Don’t do that,” he says to her. She holds them up like claws, lets out a roar, peels and rolls the cooled wax into a ball, then starts again.
“I can get this same bottle delivered by Amazon Fresh for a third the price,” he whispers to her, pointing at the wine list as the server arrives with entrees. “We’ll take the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay.”
He’s trying too hard, she thinks. She’s not even noticing, he thinks.
“Yes, sir,” says the server.
“Arrr, Arrr,” she barks at the sea lion, once the server disappears.
“You make a lot of noise, you know that?” he says.
“You eat like a kindergartner,” she says, pointing to her own upper lip, indicating there are crumbs on his. He leaves them there.
“You have the manners of a neanderthal,” he says.
“You have the intelligence of an amoeba.”
“Impossible. IQ is a human-centric measurement,” he says.
“Check, please!” she says, raising her hand. There’s no one there to notice. They’re gravely understaffed. He can’t tell if she’s joking. She thinks she might like him.
The sea lion slides lazily into the water, an oozy glob of tar.
“Did you know it’s possible that single cell organisms can feel pain?” he says.
He uses a tiny fork to pluck a plump mussel from its shell, sends it swimming in garlic, slides it into his mouth. She barks again, her arm getting sore.
“Can you please put your hand down. We’re not in school. And stop barking,” he says. “Try a mussel.”
“You’re bossy,” she says, “And sea lions don’t eat mussels. Arr, Arr. ”
“Yes, they do,” he says, “And you’re not a sea lion.”
“No, they don’t,” she says, her fingers dipped in wax. He blows out the candle.
“Yes, they do.” He reaches for his phone to look it up.
“No phones at the dinner table,” she says.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Her plate, with all its modifications, sits untouched.
“I’m not pleased with my choice,” she says. She points at the table next to them, one of only four in the entire restaurant. A woman cracks savagely into a comically large crab leg using bare hands, then rips the meat out with her teeth—like a bear stripping salmon, an orca tearing her sea lion to shreds—with pure, unbridled joy. “I want what she’s got.”
The man across from the crab-woman dips his finger into her clarified butter, licks it, then dunks his whole hand in.
“I’m happy with what we have,” her date says, using his plastic bib to dab his chin. She slides her chair closer—but not too close—to the other table. The crab-woman notices, tears a piece of crab, hands it to butter-man, who rolls it in butter and tosses it in the air.
She catches it in her mouth, warm butter running down her chin. Arr! Arr! she barks. Jazz-hands applause.
“Please,” begs her date, “Come back to the table.” It’s too soon, she wants to tell him. It’s all too soon.
“You need to try this,” she says instead, motioning toward the couple for more. He ducks as chunks of meat fly by, butter falling like rain. She squeals as crab-woman throws more crab, chucks a heel of bread that whizzes past her ear. Butter-man hurls a salt shaker, a tiny fork, sends the contents of his wife’s purse exploding in the air like fireworks: lipstick, wallet, sanitizer, masks.
The server returns with the dessert cart, only it’s actually a piano, and he begins to play a fast-paced polka.
“What’s going on here?” her date yells from beneath the table. “Have you all forgotten how to behave in a casually upscale restaurant?”
The butter-man unthreads his belt. The busboy throws a plate through the glass aquarium, sending fish flopping out on the carpet, bouncing to the polka beat. The server picks up the tempo. In comes the maître d’ with a dancing bear, and the whole fucking place goes bananas.
Kelle Schillaci Clarke is a Seattle-based fiction and creative nonfiction writer with deep L.A. roots. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Superstition Review, Pidgeonholes, Lunate, Cotton Xenomorph, Bending Genres, and (mac)ro(mic). She can be found on Twitter @kelle224.