T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

There was no exchange of body fluids on the first date, and that suited both of us just fine. I picked her up at seven, took her to Mee Grop, where she meticulously separated each sliver of meat from her Phat Thai, watched her down four bottles of Singha at three dollars per, and then gently stroked her balsam-smelling hair while she snoozed through The Terminator at the Circle Shopping Center theater. We had a late-night drink at Rigolettos Pizza Bar (and two slices, plain cheese), and I dropped her off. The moment we pulled up in front of her apartment she had the door open. She turned to me with the long, elegant, mournful face of her Puritan ancestors and held out her hand.

Its been fun, she said.

Yes, I said, taking her hand.

She was wearing gloves.

Ill call you, she said.

Good, I said, giving her my richest smile. And Ill call you.

On the second date we got acquainted.

I cant tell you what a strain it was for me the other night, she said, staring down into her chocolate-mocha-fudge sundae. It was early afternoon, we were in Helmuts Olde Tyme Ice Cream Parlor in Mamaroneck, and the sun streamed through the thick frosted windows and lit the place like a convalescent home. The fixtures glowed behind the counter, the brass rail was buffed to a reflective sheen, and everything smelled of disinfectant. We were the only people in the place.

What do you mean? I said, my mouth glutinous with melted marshmallow and caramel.

I mean Thai food, the seats in the movie theater, the ladies room in that place for gods sake

Thai food? I wasnt following her. I recalled the maneuver with the strips of pork and the fastidious dissection of the glass noodles. Youre a vegetarian?

She looked away in exasperation, and then gave me the full, wide-eyed shock of her ice-blue eyes. Have you seen the Health Department statistics on sanitary conditions in ethnic restaurants?

I hadnt.

Her eyebrows leapt up. She was earnest. She was lecturing. These people are refugees. They have well, different standards. They havent even been inoculated. I watched her dig the tiny spoon into the recesses of the dish and part her lips for a neat, foursquare morsel of ice cream and fudge.

The illegals, anyway. And thats half of them. She swallowed with an almost imperceptible movement, a shudder, her throat dipping and rising like a gazelles. I got drunk from fear, she said. Blind panic. I couldnt help thinking Id wind up with hepatitis or dysentery or dengue fever or something.

Dengue fever?

I usually bring a disposable sanitary sheet for public theaters just think of who might have been in that seat before you, and how many times, and what sort of nasty festering little cultures of this and that there must be in all those ancient dribbles of taffy and Coke and extra-butter popcorn but I didnt want you to think I was too extreme or anything on the first date, so I didnt. And then the ladies room You dont think Im overreacting, do you?

As a matter of fact, I did. Of course I did. I liked Thai food and sushi and ginger crab and greasy souvlaki at the corner stand too. There was the look of the mad saint in her eye, the obsessive, the mortifier of the flesh, but I didnt care. She was lovely, wilting, clear-eyed, and pure, as cool and matchless as if shed stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, and I was in love. Besides, I tended a little that way myself. Hypochondria. Anal retentiveness. The ordered environment and alphabetized books. I was a thirty-three-year-old bachelor, I carried some scars and I read the newspapers herpes, AIDS, the Asian clap that foiled every antibiotic in the book. I was willing to take it slow. No, I said, I dont think youre overreacting at all.

I paused to draw in a breath so deep it might have been a sigh. Im sorry, I whispered, giving her a doglike look of contrition. I didnt know.

She reached out then and touched my hand touched it, skin to skin and murmured that it was all right, shed been through worse. If you want to know, she breathed, I like places like this.

I glanced around. The place was still empty, but for Helmut, in a blinding white jumpsuit and toque, studiously polishing the tile walls. I know what you mean, I said.

We dated for a month museums, drives in the country, French and German restaurants, ice-cream emporia, fern bars before we kissed. And when we kissed, after a showing of David and Lisa at a revival house all the way up in Rhinebeck and on a night so cold no run-of-the-mill bacterium or commonplace virus could have survived it, it was the merest brushing of the lips. She was wearing a big-shouldered coat of synthetic fur and a knit hat pulled down over her brow and she hugged my arm as we stepped out of the theater and into the blast of the night. God, she said, did you see him when he screamed You touched me!? Wasnt that priceless? Her eyes were big and she seemed weirdly excited. Sure, I said, yeah, it was great, and then she pulled me close and kissed me. I felt the soft flicker of her lips against mine. I love you, she said, I think.

A month of dating and one dry fluttering kiss. At this point you might begin to wonder about me, but really, I didnt mind. As I say, I was willing to wait I had the patience of Sisyphus and it was enough just to be with her. Why rush things? I thought. This is good, this is charming, like the slow sweet unfolding of the romance in a Frank Capra movie, where sweetness and light always prevail. Sure, she had her idiosyncrasies, but who didnt? Frankly, Id never been comfortable with the three-drinks-dinner-and-bed sort of thing, the girls who come on like theyve been in prison for six years and just got out in time to put on their makeup and jump into the passenger seat of your car. Breda that was her name, Breda Drumhill, and the very sound and syllabification of it made me melt was different.

Finally, two weeks after the trek to Rhinebeck, she invited me to her apartment. Cocktails, she said. Dinner. A quiet evening in front of the tube.

She lived in Croton, on the ground floor of a restored Victorian, half a mile from the Harmon station, where she caught the train each morning for Manhattan and her job as an editor of Anthropology Today. Shed held the job since graduating from Barnard six years earlier (with a double major in Rhetoric and Alien Cultures), and it suited her temperament perfectly. Field anthropologists living among the River Dyak of Borneo or the Kurds of Kurdistan would send her rough and grammatically tortured accounts of their observations and she would whip them into shape for popular consumption. Naturally, filth and exotic disease, as well as outlandish customs and revolting habits, played a leading role in her rewrites. Every other day or so shed call me from work and in a voice that could barely contain its joy give me the details of some new and horrific disease shed discovered.

She met me at the door in a silk kimono that featured a plunging neckline and a pair of dragons with intertwined tails. Her hair was pinned up as if shed just stepped out of the bath and she smelled of Noxzema and pHisoHex. She pecked my cheek, took the bottle of Vouvray I held out in offering, and led me into the front room. Chagas disease, she said, grinning wide to show off her perfect, outsized teeth.

Chagas disease? I echoed, not quite knowing what to do with myself. The room was as spare as a monks cell. Two chairs, a loveseat, and a coffee table, in glass, chrome, and hard black plastic. No plants (God knows what sort of insects might live on them and the