It was June 2020, the day of their first physical meeting, their park date. She went for an economy class look, no frills, farm boots, jeans, a blouse, no make-up. She didn’t want to give any indication that she was looking for approval. The appointment was for 9:00 am in the Sportsman’s Warehouse parking lot. She assumed he chose that particular location because it was near their destination. She was wrong about that.
They pulled into their parking spaces at the same time. She assumed this was a coincidence. She was probably wrong about that, too. He parked his blue pickup truck right in front of her where she couldn’t help but watch him step out and walk toward her. The first thing that hit her was how he looked like Ernest Hemingway. If Ernest Hemingway wore t-shirts. He was a big burly White guy.
The only big man she’d ever been with was a bartender in New York City who hit his head on the bedroom ceiling when he climbed into her loft. Mostly she had preferred men nearer her own size. She was 5’2”. Her husband had been short. This Illinois Boy was so tall she had to tip her head back to look up at his face. And he was wide. Even his hands were big. She had seen so many photos of him. But standing face-to-face in the parking lot, he was easily twice as big as she was.
They hugged like distant cousins. Perfunctory. Before the pandemic she had hugged her friends without a conscious thought. Hugging had been instinctive. Now she had gone without a hug since March. Three months. The longest time in her life she had been unhugged. But his hug wasn’t as satisfying as she hoped it would be. It was too quick, left too much space between them, like a church hug.
From the front seat of his truck, he took a grey Oregon Bass Team t-shirt and presented it to her as a gift. Size 3X tall. Big enough for three of her.
“Oh, cool,” she said. Her thoughts were mush.
He wanted to meet her dog and reached into her car for Moon to say hello. She wished Moon had snarled and shown a hint of protectiveness but man and dog were instant bros. That was galling. She felt left out. Also, manipulated. It seemed this man was intentionally imprinting himself on her dog in case she had any doubt about whether they would get along. They were two beasts exchanging scents like her dog was hotter than she was.
The plan had been to drive to Silver Falls State Park and walk together. But it didn’t feel right to just jump in a car with a guy she didn’t know. If he tried to overpower her, there would be no way she could defend herself against all that beef. She once had a bad experience getting in a car with a man. Ambivalence chilled her. The whole scene started to shrivel. Then he offered to buy her breakfast at the diner across the street.
Oh, the diner must be why he chose this strip mall as a place to meet. She was wrong about that, too. A waitress wearing a mask showed them to the empty diningroom where their table was surrounded by a six-foot perimeter of social distance that felt very unsociable. He held her chair when she sat down. The waitress was impressed. Eyebrows rainbowed over her mask and the two women exchanged an extrasensory perception. One blinking holy shit and the other blinking, go for it honey, ride that horse as long as you can hold on.
The last man who held a chair for her in a restaurant was much older than her. They had dated for a year, but he refused to divorce his wife because he was Catholic and had two children. Hypocrisy notwithstanding, old school men had a certain vintage charm. It was nice to be treated like a lady as long as she didn’t have to give up the right to vote.
He ordered eggs benedict, one of her favorites, too. However, in a diner she assumed the hollandaise wouldn’t be up to her standards, so she ordered fried eggs, which couldn’t be faked with something yellow poured out of a carton. Just then she made a mental note to speak to him about his food choices. The persnickety nature of that thought didn’t occur to her. Maybe because she hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since she quit drinking. It had only been a week. The truth was she couldn’t order eggs benedict without a Bloody Mary.
Coffee accelerated the chat. They reviewed the things they knew about each other in rapid succession, exchanging bullet points about their shared history, laying out their common ground. Both grew up in Illinois. They met in a children’s choir in 1968. His first teen girlfriend and her first teen boyfriend were also in the choir. Their hometowns of Park Forest and Mokena, Illinois had been less than an hour apart. Their elementary and high schools had been in the same regional conference for sports and the performing arts.
It was safe, superficial party talk, but also curious to be so old and still find importance in these ancient artifacts. Once the conversation settled into a low key rhythm she stopped feeling like she was posing. Since the advent of social media she hadn’t flexed her face-to-face skills with a man the way she was now. They were listening to each other. Not scanning a digital profile page. There were as many details in his tone of voice as in the words he chose.
She decided to be the driver for the day because Moon was more comfortable in her car than he would be in the pick-up truck. So the man compacted himself into the passenger seat of her compact SUV, and she saw how his size must be a determinant in everything he did. Of course, the same could be said of her. Having a mountain man in the passenger seat made her feel small, a feminine adjacent attribute that fluttered through her.
He went on with his story while she got them on the road for the park, which was almost a half-hour away. That was odd. She tried to think why he had them meet so far from their destination. He seemed like the kind of guy who could read a map. Sportsman’s Warehouse still wasn’t ringing a bell for her. Her mind was on his past. He quit their choir after a year to play football. Her family had been Green Bay Packers fans. His family loved the Chicago Bears. They had both listened to WLS radio and Howard Cosel and Studs Turkel. Chicago was their cultural influence. Lake Michigan was their ocean. They had watched the same television programs and remembered the same big news stories. Theirs was the Baby Boomer algorithm.
After an hour with him, his personality was a balm to her cracked glass. It was easy to talk to him; he was a good listener. Her edginess didn’t trigger him. He seemed to painlessly absorb every screech and growl that came out of her, sanding down her sharpness. Was she being manipulated? He was very cute. But he obviously knew he was cute. She knew from her own inner life that good looks could be a charade. Still, she wasn’t looking for a husband. She just wanted to kiss.
The tension builds, Bil. And I’ve never used or said the word ‘persnickety’ in my life. Kinda Ado Annie from Oklahoma! Wondering if there’s a key stroke that separates ‘a’ from ‘w’ or if i have no clue about the best usage but noticed ‘a half-hour a way’
Love this return to the beginning, Bil
Thanks for the proofreading. My mom occasionally accused me of being persnickety.