Tea Party #17 ~ Fiction
Paz De La Calzada - All That Glitters Isn't Gold larger version
The Date | Shannon Gibney
They met at a party. He was standing in a mud puddle-shaped circle with his friends, tasting the punch and surveying the crowd. She had just stepped up onto the landing when, looking sideways, she saw him staring at her. Her first thought was, Who is he staring at? But before her mind had time to assess and answer the question, her stomach growled its own response, shutting out the question altogether, and she had to walk into the other room in order to quiet it. You know who he’s looking at, her stomach told her, and she did.
She went in search of punch, which she thought would quiet her stomach, but it just kept on shouting, He’s going to find you. He’s going to find you. You’re going to find him. She spooned the frothy red drink into a plastic cup, and when it was full, she was astounded to see that her hand was shaking—something that had never happened to her before. She was a writer, a vocation that required the calmest of fingers, the most delicate balance between hand, wrist and mind. She took plenty of time each morning, carefully stretching out each of these body parts, so that there would be nothing blocking the free flow of words onto her computer screen.
She watched, perplexed, as her hand shook not just up and down, but also outwards, away from her. It pulled her arm, then her torso and then her legs, until she was standing in front of her friend, who was talking to him. Her friend had a queer laugh that rattled the windows, and the windows were rattling over the noise of the music that night. The clatter was so loud, in fact, that she could barely hear what he was saying.
He held out his hand. “Hi,” he said. “I’m me.” A lone curl fell down the middle of his forehead, and she was surprised to find that she wanted to touch it.
“Hello,” she said awkwardly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“He works at the meat-packing plant on Riverside,” her friend said, gesturing toward him.
“How nice,” she said, although she couldn’t imagine how it would be nice to package pig guts and chicken livers.
“My dad got me the job,” he said. “It runs in the family.”
She nodded, noticing with alarm that her renegade
hand was reaching for him—for his cheek, to be exact.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, without warning.
You’re going to find him, said her stomach.
Her friend was smiling the widest smile she had ever seen on him. She wondered what he was up to.
The renegade hand would not stop, and soon the flesh of her palm rubbed against his coffee-colored cheek. Even though they were two different shades of brown, she saw, looking at the two skins together, that one bled into the other.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing toward her hand with her chin. “I don’t mean to be touching you.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, gently taking her hand from his cheek, and holding it in his own, between them.