Lightning

He said, “So will you go out with me?” Surprised by her own response, she said, “Yes.” “Dinner and a movie?” “All right.”

“Tonight? Pick you up at six?” “Okay.”

After she hung up she stood for a while, staring at the phone. Finally she said aloud, “Shane, are you nuts?” Then she said, “But he told me my writing* was ‘so beautiful and so real.’ ”

She went into her bedroom and looked at the collection of toads on the nightstand. She said, “He’s inarticulate and silent one time, a babbler the next. He could be a psycho killer, Shane.” Then she said, “Yeah, he could be, but he’s also a great literary critic.”

Because he had suggested dinner and a movie, Laura dressed in a gray skirt, white blouse, and maroon sweater, but he showed up in a dark blue suit, white shirt with French cuffs, blue silk tie with tie chain, silk display handkerchief, and highly polished black wingtips, as if he were going to the season opener at the opera. He carried an umbrella and escorted her from her apartment to his car with one hand under her right arm, with such solemn concern that he seemed convinced that she would dissolve if touched by one drop of rain or shatter into a million pieces if she slipped and fell. Considering the difference in their dress and the considerable difference in their size—at five-five, she was one foot shorter than he was; at a hundred fifteen pounds, she was less than half his weight—she felt almost as if she were going on a date with her father or an older brother. She was not a petite woman, but on his arm and under his umbrella she felt positively tiny.

He was uncommunicative again in the car, but he blamed it on the need to drive with special care in such rotten weather. They went to a small Italian restaurant in Costa Mesa, a place in which Laura had eaten a few good meals in the past. They sat down at their table and were given menus, but even before the waitress could ask if they would like a drink, Daniel said, “This is no good, this is all wrong, let’s find another place.”

Surprised, she said, “But why? This is fine. Their food’s very good here.”

“No, really, this is all wrong. No atmosphere, no style, I don’t want you to think, ummmm,” and now he was babbling as he’d done on the phone, blushing, “ummmm, well, anyway, this is no good, not right for our first date, I want this to be special,” and he got up, “ummmm, I think I know just the place, I’m sorry, Miss”—this to the startled young waitress—”I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you,” and he was pulling back Laura’s chair, helping her up, “I know just the place, you’ll like it, I’ve never eaten there but I’ve heard it’s really good, excellent.” Other customers were staring, so Laura stopped protesting. “It’s close, too, just a couple of blocks from here.”

They returned to his car, drove two blocks, and parked in front of an unpretentious-looking restaurant in a strip shopping center.

By now Laura knew him well enough to realize that his sense of courtliness required her to wait for him to come around and open her car door, but when he opened it she saw he was standing in a ten-inch-deep puddle. “Oh, your shoes!” she said.

“They’ll dry out. Here, you hold the umbrella over yourself, and I’ll lift you across the puddle.”

Nonplussed, she allowed herself to be plucked from the car and carried over the puddle as if she weighed no more than a feather pillow. He put her down on higher pavement and, without the umbrella, he sloshed back to the car to close the door.

The French restaurant had less atmosphere than the Italian place. They were shown to a corner table too near the kitchen, and Daniel’s saturated shoes squished and squeaked all the way across the room.

“You’ll catch pneumonia,” she worried when they were seated and had ordered two Dry Sacks on the rocks.

“Not me. I’ve got a good immune system. Never get sick. One time in Nam, during an action, I was cut off from my unit, spent a week on my own in the jungle, rained every minute, I was shriveled by the time I found my way back to friendly territory, but I never even got the sniffles.”

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