Photo by Luigi Boccardo
Dead on Arrival
Lynn Bey
“Funerals,” Eliza said from behind red-rimmed glasses the size of lily pads. “Always such a feast! Who attends, who doesn’t, the hunger for public grief, which lies won’t spoil the eulogy.”
This, how she began testing her first dates once the main course was served. That evening’s subject the rarity of no bucket list, no feats from spent youth; his favorite day included dragonflies at dusk instead of fireside wine. A start, Eliza had judged, although she’d likely need patience as he actualized into her ideal hour-before-dawn mate, that hour when nothing slithered, flitted, crawled, crept, bit.
“Boarding school from age six,” the man said, pausing to return knife, then fork, to barely touched plate. “Lucky break, given the ways of mater and pater.”
Expectant, Eliza thought, the pause that then followed. An unnecessary tic of habit, his quick lifting and lowering of glasses, fine rimmed, also outsized. Even so, better than: lip licking, snuffling, the sandblasting throat clear.
“Our parents, ourselves,” she said. “A bone without meat.”
The date sipped, then sipped again. “It wouldn’t be fair for funerals to cut in line but not childhoods. It matters, both people trying for what’s fair.”
So he was that sort, first presuming a thing to then treat it as established, antagonizing fact. A fact he had salted with grievance. Worse than: a date’s tsking should she consider aloud the blanquette de veau. As potentially fatal as: the hairs of this date that stretched antennae-like before curling over lips, his blond Viking beard less warrior-conjuring shield than toddler bib.
“Second on my must-haves,” Eliza said, cutlery poised above excellent, mollifying bourguignon: “‘Has progressed from navel-scouring.’ Forget unfair or fair; assess instead what’s on the table, if you’d pull up a chair. A few standards I enjoy: superstitions that could be real, cruelties no one thinks to bury, your most misunderstood hatred. Any you’d bite into? All?” Less deal-breaking than: Which are you, inattentive, a chancer, lazy?
“It’s not hard and fast, what we said in our profiles. Starting with funerals means anything goes.” His mouth pursed in challenge, the antennae trapped unprettily between lips that likely were unpretty too.
“A chancer, then. You expect that because the childhood is yours, its hardships, that I’ll make an exception. Hardships are like roaches: the minute you corner one, dozens more hatch, swarm. There, our evening has turned.”
The man rose, insect-hair wine-damp, trembling. His hurrying hands pat-pat-patted the pockets of his shirt, slacks, blazer, shirt again, slowing until they stopped, empty. His stare a near glower. How plain the brown of his eyes beneath their disquiet! A quick shudder behind her ribs at how, when younger, she’d have read steadiness in such eyes, also loyalty, restraint.
A shoo of her fork dismissed the first of his somewhat-importants–good manners. His exit, that of a scuttling beetle, threatened to sting awake old nightmares, failed.
By the time of coffee, the baba au rhum, Eliza was restored, could enjoy as always the bon mot exchange with maître d’ Paul. “How we spend our evenings,” he began.
“Is how we keep from settling,” she completed.
Outside, the light of late summer shone brash, careless. Strolling home she savored the graveyard’s sights: girl, weeping, head bowed on wreathed urn; pair of midflight angels atop somber plinth; fresh slabs, shy and not yet pitted or greened with lichen. What did it matter, another mismatch? The world, its strangers and the possibilities they contained–all were as real as the wails and wracking sobs of a hollowed-out mourner. Eliza knew she still was eligible, was, in fact, a catch.
Lynn Bey
“Funerals,” Eliza said from behind red-rimmed glasses the size of lily pads. “Always such a feast! Who attends, who doesn’t, the hunger for public grief, which lies won’t spoil the eulogy.”
This, how she began testing her first dates once the main course was served. That evening’s subject the rarity of no bucket list, no feats from spent youth; his favorite day included dragonflies at dusk instead of fireside wine. A start, Eliza had judged, although she’d likely need patience as he actualized into her ideal hour-before-dawn mate, that hour when nothing slithered, flitted, crawled, crept, bit.
“Boarding school from age six,” the man said, pausing to return knife, then fork, to barely touched plate. “Lucky break, given the ways of mater and pater.”
Expectant, Eliza thought, the pause that then followed. An unnecessary tic of habit, his quick lifting and lowering of glasses, fine rimmed, also outsized. Even so, better than: lip licking, snuffling, the sandblasting throat clear.
“Our parents, ourselves,” she said. “A bone without meat.”
The date sipped, then sipped again. “It wouldn’t be fair for funerals to cut in line but not childhoods. It matters, both people trying for what’s fair.”
So he was that sort, first presuming a thing to then treat it as established, antagonizing fact. A fact he had salted with grievance. Worse than: a date’s tsking should she consider aloud the blanquette de veau. As potentially fatal as: the hairs of this date that stretched antennae-like before curling over lips, his blond Viking beard less warrior-conjuring shield than toddler bib.
“Second on my must-haves,” Eliza said, cutlery poised above excellent, mollifying bourguignon: “‘Has progressed from navel-scouring.’ Forget unfair or fair; assess instead what’s on the table, if you’d pull up a chair. A few standards I enjoy: superstitions that could be real, cruelties no one thinks to bury, your most misunderstood hatred. Any you’d bite into? All?” Less deal-breaking than: Which are you, inattentive, a chancer, lazy?
“It’s not hard and fast, what we said in our profiles. Starting with funerals means anything goes.” His mouth pursed in challenge, the antennae trapped unprettily between lips that likely were unpretty too.
“A chancer, then. You expect that because the childhood is yours, its hardships, that I’ll make an exception. Hardships are like roaches: the minute you corner one, dozens more hatch, swarm. There, our evening has turned.”
The man rose, insect-hair wine-damp, trembling. His hurrying hands pat-pat-patted the pockets of his shirt, slacks, blazer, shirt again, slowing until they stopped, empty. His stare a near glower. How plain the brown of his eyes beneath their disquiet! A quick shudder behind her ribs at how, when younger, she’d have read steadiness in such eyes, also loyalty, restraint.
A shoo of her fork dismissed the first of his somewhat-importants–good manners. His exit, that of a scuttling beetle, threatened to sting awake old nightmares, failed.
By the time of coffee, the baba au rhum, Eliza was restored, could enjoy as always the bon mot exchange with maître d’ Paul. “How we spend our evenings,” he began.
“Is how we keep from settling,” she completed.
Outside, the light of late summer shone brash, careless. Strolling home she savored the graveyard’s sights: girl, weeping, head bowed on wreathed urn; pair of midflight angels atop somber plinth; fresh slabs, shy and not yet pitted or greened with lichen. What did it matter, another mismatch? The world, its strangers and the possibilities they contained–all were as real as the wails and wracking sobs of a hollowed-out mourner. Eliza knew she still was eligible, was, in fact, a catch.