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He Said, She Said

His worst nightmare is that she’s still thinking about that guy from her college days, the one with the long hair who played the guitar, the one he’s sure she must have dated in the most vertical of relations. He wonders if she remembers his songs, if she could play them by tapping on the curvy thigh that he loves. He wonders this while he sits in a wooden chair at a bar watching the female who sits across from him.

Her worst nightmare is that he thinks she is unattractive now, thighs too big for her waist, that he actually finds their waiter more attractive as he places their beer on the table smiling at him. She doesn’t know what he feels at that moment, she is uncomfortable thinking that he might be attracted to him. She wishes she could be inside his brain, gray matter swirling, squishing around. Maybe she would rather not see. Yes, that’s it; She would rather not know when he would leave.

As he takes a deep drink of the beer, and looks over her bare brown shoulder at the waiter, he wishes his hair were like his, thick and wavy. That way she could let her fingers dance on his scalp.

She sees his finger tapping the side of his glass to some inaudible rhythm; the condensation makes his fingers white with cold. Now she wonders why her throat feels like her Barbie doll’s might have two decades ago when she spun her plastic head, round, round, to see how much the plastic would allow (thirty twists). That was the only Barbie she ever owned and begged please please please to have and to hold. I will take good care of her, she said. Headless Barbie didn’t last long, ended up in a red plastic tub with other abandoned toys, a pink My Little Pony, two Smurfs that looked exactly the same, a minesweeper G.I. Joe. Her parents told the doctor that she had a short attention span as he handed over a prescription. She told them the toys were plastic and none looked like her anyway. She didn’t mean to hurt the doll, she told her mommy, and she just wanted to see.

Throat closing, she takes another sip of beer. This place is dark, yes, dark enough, she thinks. Dark enough to hide my brown skin, but maybe he doesn’t notice, or maybe I am his type. Does he go for girls like me, does he think I’m some foreign princess who will dance seven veils and feed him grapes? What are girls like me like? She giggles because that is what she does when she has nothing to say; nothing to say with her throat that is closing, and lips that seal shut, pink skin that holds back words that want to tumble out and ruin everything. She promised to be more positive, she promised her mother. She moves her hair out from behind her ear to cover the pimple she is certain is forming on the crest of her cheek.

There is a place he remembers when he was much younger when he looks into her eyes like dark amber with flecks of gold, ancient leaves caught in molten rock forever. He sips his beer, wondering if he is so far from his youth that he will be denied return passage, that he will never recapture that day of fishing with his friends at the lake, camping with his buddies, talking about tomorrow like it was never going to come, talking about things they were meant to talk about, not opening doors meant to stay locked. Fishing, pulling, coaxing the soft-scaled trout from the river, how things should be. He dreams of returning to that lake, flicking that line back into the water and waiting for a fish to bite, and never would a fish bite, he would be there forever. Maybe she will come fishing sometime, he thinks, maybe she will come.

The waiter returns, still smiling.

He wants a burger with fries, hold the mayo, extra mustard—not to be picky or anything but he hopes it will be medium, really medium, not overcooked like it always is.

She wants a Caesar salad with chicken—and hopes it will be filling enough because she hadn’t eaten much today.

He wishes she would order a burger with him.

She hopes he notices her sparse eating habits and is proud of her shrinking thighs.

They both smile when the waiter disappears and take a sip.

Maybe she could still call that guy, Whatshisname, the one who was too eager like a young Dalmatian waiting for his kibble to drop into the bowl, the one who called her ten times the first day, fifteen the next, the one she needed to walk away from because he might be Notrightinthehead. The one her co-worker Doreen at the publishing house set her up with because she was that type of person—the voyeur sneaking a glance over the bushes, not the one sitting at the table at the café. Whatshisname. She felt pulled together around him, she felt ten steps above his twelve. Maybe she has his number somewhere, that little scrap of napkin, it wasn’t in her phone’s memory anymore. After he broke into her apartment she erased his phone number, a ritual cleansing that left some residue. Whatshisname will answer.

He thinks the glass is dirty, slides his fingernail down the side of the half finished glass of beer, and removes some invisible scab of food. Did he pick this place, or did she? He doesn’t like the typical American bar-food, with its deep-fried, diced chunks, parsley-sprigged, and iceberg-shredded deep dishes. Why isn’t she speaking? Is she nervous, tired, or bored? She’s bored, that’s it. She wishes she were at a small club watching some other guy play bad music like it was his job. He can’t ask about that, he can’t ask because she would think he was crazy so he says–Long day?

She smiles as softly as she can but not too wide as to expose what she considers to be fleshy gums. She is surprised that he is concerned with her well being. What a guy, what a gentleman. She puts her hands on her thighs and says –Yeah. You?

He is glad he asks the right question. You never know it’s the right question to ask until you ask it, he thinks. He looks back over his day full of screaming customers, crazy, deranged, aggressive people grabbing, how much does this cost, and where are the eggs? Have they been moved? Four hours of foreign hands touching things, asking things, wanting things, fifteen minutes of a gulp of fresh air outside then four more hours of touch/ask/want until he escapes back into his real life. The life that is outside the store, the one that is only dimly lit by the escaping sunlight, the one all those people all day long don’t consider real. He is a moment in their day; they are eight hours in his. Four hundred and eighty minutes per day, twenty-four hundred minutes per week, and he sleeps for the other three thousand, three hundred and…

–Yeah, fine.

She wishes she had enough money to buy a new pair of pants. She wonders if he is going to ask her to split the bill and almost gives herself the hiccups because she doesn’t have any money with her. Well she has that ten-dollar bill in the corner pocket of her purse next to a crumpled tissue. She doesn’t think it’s fair that she assumes he will pay, she just realizes now that the salad she’s eating is probably more than ten dollars with the beer. She’ll drink it slowly in case.

He’s wearing a retro Toys “R” Us t-shirt, baby blue torso, navy blue sleeves. She remembers a dream she had ten years ago where she was a superhero. In addition to the usual power of flying, she also had the power of super strength. She lifted cars full of families over flooding rivers, hoisted houses slipping off of mud slick cliffs, rescued zoo animals from a flood, reunited puppies with their mothers, and threw a boulder at a Toys “R” Us near a ghetto to open up the entire store to all the neighborhood kids.

When she woke up from that dream ten years ago she was disappointed at the graying white walls that surrounded her on four sides, even more disappointed when she realized she wasn’t alone in bed. When she got her first real job as someone’s paper slave making less than minimum wage with no benefits—she knew that this couldn’t be all that life was cracked up to be. Not hers. Not now. Parents are liars, damn good ones too, she thinks. It’s much better now, the hoops through which we so willingly jump.

The food arrives and they devour their meal in their own way. He takes humongous bites of the four-inch thick burger. He leaves barely enough space between the bites to breathe but he is content, he is hungry and happy there are enough pickles on the burger. She peppers her salad and wonders if it would be weird to ask for Tabasco, she decides it would, arranges a decent amount of cheese and lettuce and chicken on each fork bite, and wishes each bite were covered with something sharp to her taste buds, something that would bite back.

He slides back a bit in his chair, adjusts his posture because he feels taller. His little brother is taller than him, father too. Little brother was real good at sports, on some scholarship somewhere in the Midwest for ball. But he doesn’t like sports. Hates gyms, big cars, and people who chew gum like they wish they were chain-smoking a whole pack of cigarettes but can’t because they promised their girlfriend or boyfriend they would quit with them. He thinks people should quit on their own. He did. But he never liked smoking. Does she smoke? Nah, she’s got nice teeth. Beautiful smile. It would be a shame if she did. He bites his cuticle. Thinking about smoking makes him want to smoke again, he hates himself for this.

The check comes too soon and they both reach to grab it. There must be another couple waiting for the table. They guess it’s crowded; it is Friday night. She wonders what the big deal about Friday night is while he grabs the check away from her and she lets go easily, but lets her hand brush against his. It’s calloused. He works with his hands. Hers used to be calloused when she played the guitar in a band in college that only lasted a few months. As they walk out of the dark wooden restaurant and into the dark concrete world outside he puts his arm carefully around her back, not to seem too imposing. She lets his hand graze her thigh, but just for an instant.

-Olivia Chadha is the author of two comic books written during a stint as a scriptwriter. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from University of Colorado, Boulder and is currently working on her Ph.D. in English at Binghamton University.