First Date

He hoped it wasn’t her. He had been waiting in the restaurant for five nervous minutes. Surely she wasn’t his blind date. He saw the restaurants hostess greet her and then turn to gesture in his direction. His spirit sank. The date looked cheerily toward him and his instincts feigned a reciprocal smile to mask his disappointment. Didn’t his friends know him? How could they think that this had a hope of ever working out? Her unwise choice of coat was taken from her, revealing an outfit that sought attention for all the wrong reasons.

She was escorted to the table by their waiter. “Hi,” she bawled, at least five tables away. It seemed as though every other diner paused to look at her.

If only his taxi had crashed. If only he’d been mugged. This was going to be hell. His face ached from the forced smile.

He stood to semi-embrace her and faintly kiss her cheek with the turn of his head. The stench of a just-put-out cigarette overpowered him. The appetite inducing aromas that wafted from the kitchen were eradicated.

“Thank you for joining me. You look lovely.” She looked as bad as she smelled.

The waiter seated her and began to unfold her napkin.

“I haven’t ever done a blind date before. Have you?” she said, at several decibels more than he was comfortable with. The waiter cast his eyes towards him.

“No.” He had nothing further to add. “Would you like a drink at all?”

The waiter laid the napkin across her lap.

“It’s a bit posh in here,” she said to the waiter. “Yes, I will have a drink. I could murder a lager.” She paused to consider this, “But I guess we should have wine.”

He could murder his friends. Had he ever even insinuated a predilection for beer swilling damsels?

“Wine it is.”

The waiter passed him the wine list. He opened it and began to scan the Italian reds. A bottle of Barolo would console him.

“Any preference?” he asked, regretting the question as it left his mouth for her ears.

“Yes. White wine.” She turned to the waiter, “White wine please” she asked uncertainly.

“House white?” the waiter asked.

“Is that fizzy?” she asked.

He wished for something to end the meal abruptly. A power cut. A fire. A plague of locusts.

“It is a Chardonnay,” the waiter informed her.

He hadn’t booked this restaurant to drink the house white. The shirt he’d bought, the shoes he’d polished, the suit rushed to the dry-cleaners. None of them were for a bottle of house wine, Chardonnay at that.

“We’ll take a bottle of the Sancerre, I think,” he told the waiter, whilst casting an eye over her, the phoney smile still attached to his face.

They were left with each other for the first time. They both sat with heads bowed contemplating their menus in thoughtful silence.

“Are we having starters?” she asked.

“If that’s what you’d like,” he replied. “I was thinking of having the squid to start.”

“Yeah. It is all weird food, isn’t it? I’m just going to have a main course and leave some room for pudding.”

This was all going wrong. Was this woman for real? Had his friends primed her to wind him up? He surveyed the restaurant for cowering huddles or hidden cameras.

“We’ll skip the starters then,” he politely conceded. No calamari tonight. He ran his palm back across the back of his neck.

“I’m having the chicken. Do you think they’ll give me chips instead of the other stuff?”

Maybe the chef could coat the seared chicken escalope in breadcrumbs. Perhaps she thought the sun-dried tomato filling would be an acceptable alternative to ketchup. What the hell? He could ask the waiter to nip out and fetch a K-F-bloody-C.

“I don’t think that ordering fries will be an issue,” he reassured her.

The haircut he’d had earlier. The cologne saved for special occasions. The extra effort at the gym. For what? Chicken and chips.

The wine arrived. The label on the bottle was displayed to him. He nodded and the waiter effortlessly opened it. The wondrous pop of the cork was followed by the familiar glug-glug-glug of wine being poured into his glass. He placed his hand at the base of the glass and raised it. He took a whiff, sipped a little and gave a wordless nod to indicate his approval. The waiter poured the two glasses of wine and placed the bottle in an ice bucket. She picked up her glass by the bowl and took a swig that devoured the contents of the glass.

The waiter returned to give them a bread basket and to take their order.

“We won’t be ordering a starter,” he informed the waiter, “I’ll take the trout please,” he deemed this to be his best bet with white wine. “The lady will have the chicken escalope.” The waiter’s pen danced across his pad. “With fries instead of the parsnip mash” he added, apologetically.

“Thank you,” said the waiter, as he headed away from the table.

“I can’t believe I’m on a blind date. Wow!” She filled the next 10 minutes with vacuous drivel. She spoke of her last boyfriend, and what seemed to be every boyfriend that preceded him too. Blah, blah, blah. My Ex this, my Ex that. He didn’t care. He had switched off to her. He maintained eye contact, and nodded in places. He would utter an inquisitive “Really?” every so often. His mind however had ventured away from the table and enviously spied upon the other couples in the restaurant. The beautiful females with luxuriant hair, perfect skin and immaculate dress engaged in fulfilling conversation. That was the kind of woman he yearned for. He did not want to spend any time with a woman like his date, who by now had guzzled the remainder of the wine and munched her way through the bread basket.

Their meals were carted over to the table. The waiter removed the surplus cutlery that waited for the absent starters. The food was gracefully placed before them.

“Thank you,” he said to the waiter.

“I’d like some more wine,” she bellowed, in the tone of a demand rather than as a request.

“Another bottle of the Sancerre?” the waiter asked.

“Yeah” she grunted.

They started their respective meals. The trout turned out to be a bad choice. He had forgotten that he’d have to spend so much time filtering the bones out of the flesh. He tried his best to keep this process on the plate but had to pick a few out of his mouth. In the meantime, she hacked into her food, and washed each mouthful down with a gulp of wine.

Out of nowhere came the tinny sound of pulsing dance music. She reached into her High Street bag and withdrew a flashing pink phone.

He hoped it was an emergency call that meant she would have to leave. A pet dog, run over. A relative taken ill. Her home ransacked by burglars. Anything, he hoped.

“Hi,” she yelled with a mouth full of chicken. She listened to her caller.

“I’m on the blind date tonight.” He really wished she could have spoken at a lower, more discreet volume. “Yeah. It’s going well. He’s really nice. You should see the restaurant were in. Very posh.”

He cringed. He avoided her eyes and stared at his new potatoes. How could she like him? She hadn’t asked him anything about himself. Her certainly didn’t like her and would be glad when the end of the evening came so he could return home. What if she wanted to go back with him? That wasn’t going to happen. He would tell her. He would tell her something along the lines of not wanting to hurt her. That ought to work.

“Well I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know. Bye.” She finished her call.

“That was my mate,” she told him. “My best mate.”

He wasn’t really sure what to say to that. “Okay,” he said through his counterfeit smile. “How is the chicken?” he asked. He saw that the sun-dried tomato filling had been scraped away and discarded.

“Not bad,” she said. “The chips are well nice.”

Despite himself, he thought they looked delicious. Chunky, hand-cut unpeeled potatoes, deep-fried to a dark crisp. His new potatoes looked like a poor choice by comparison. “Well Nice” was not a description he would ever use though.

She continued with her banal dialogue. On this occasion she jabbered on and on about the friend who had called. She spewed the dreary details of incidents that justified the caller’s status of “Best Mate”. He drifted away again, and contemplated if it was fair to buy her meal. What would he say to his friends about tonight?

The alcohol was affecting her now as she started to repeat herself. “But you don’t understand. She really is my best mate in the universe.” He amused himself with the thought of her scouring the galaxies to prove this point.

The waiter cleared the table and presented them both with a dessert menu. She had said she wanted dessert, so he scrutinized the menu for a suitable selection. The quicker the evening drew to its conclusion, the better. Something quick and light like a sorbet ought to do the trick.

“We can order from here,” she said to him. “Or, I have ice cream at home if you’d like to come back with me.”

Her eyes looked into his intently. Her bottom lip rolled back under behind the back of her teeth. She held her remaining fork upright between and twirled it to and fro between her thumb and fingers. He looked away. He felt his face turn red. He summoned the waiter, the dessert menu was still held open in front of him.

“Yes sir,” the waiter said, with his pen at the ready.

“The bill please.”