If You Never Hear From Him, That Just Means He Didn’t Call
From Summer's Love, Winter's Discontent: A Fiction Anthology
Lonesome Traveller Publishing
Our first real date was at The Rusty Scupper, a chain seafood restaurant that I’m not sure even exists any more. I hadn’t been there before and haven’t been there since. It seemed elegant at the time, but then I was only twenty-one and not the most sophisticated person in the world. Now that I know more I can laugh at myself for thinking The Rusty Scupper was a really nice restaurant. I think Alan took me there because it had a big bar and it was the kind of anonymous place where we would probably not run into anyone we knew. He was, technically, still married. I was, technically, still his student.
We had a couple of drinks and I slipped my foot out of my shoe and place it in Alan’s lap. I had seen that in a movie. It seemed like the thing to do. I might not have been terribly sophisticated about restaurants but I knew for sure that Alan was only taking me out for dinner so that he could take me to bed without feeling too weird about it. I didn’t much care one way or the other. As far as I was concerned we were dating, whether we ate dinner or just screwed. We had taken the leap, finally, after dancing around it for a couple of years. I was about ten days shy of graduation. He had recently moved into an apartment on campus. Seemed like as good a time as any.
Alan was startled to find my foot in his lap. He looked around the restaurant to see if anyone could see us, or if anyone even cared. No one did. At places like The Rusty Scupper everyone has his own agenda; that’s the whole idea of the place, the reason Alan had taken me there to begin with.
I liked playing the femme fatale. I thought Alan expected it of me. I was nearly thirty years his junior and although no beauty, young and still relatively fresh. I hadn’t become jaded about sex yet, hadn’t had too many awful experiences. And I really did adore Alan, had since the first moment I saw him: the thick black/grey hair he wore a shade too long, the deep brown eyes with the deeper pouches under them, his square jaw and trim, small body. He looked like a movie start would look if you saw him close up: beautiful but flawed.
I wiggled my toes around in his crotch and Alan laughed. “That’s enough, young lady!” he said, and removed my foot, daintily, carefully. He was on his third drink and I could see his eyes getting heavy and the skin around his mouth going a little slack. I had also easily felt his arousal at the presence of my foot. But I agreed that that was enough. For now. I wouldn’t push it. He had better get some food into him or the night would not end as planned.
I had shrimp scampi, Alan had swordfish. Everything was supposed to be fresh, fresh from the ocean, which was believable, as the university was in a port city. But the food didn’t taste any better than the Shoney’s I had grown up with; it was just prettier and the service was better. We had a couple glasses of wine. I was impatient. Our conversation was fine but I only really wanted to get him in bed. I wondered why he felt that he had had to buy me dinner. Even twenty five years ago, it really wasn’t necessary.
His apartment was small and barely furnished. He just shrugged. He had taken little, he said, wanting to leave most of it for his wife and six children. Four of his children had been adopted from other countries. He and his wife were good people who did good works. She was a nurse. Alan was one of the university chaplains, as well as a professor of religion. He taught the Bible, among other courses. I took his Bible course my freshman year as it seemed like a good thing to study in an academic setting, free from the loaded atmosphere of church or synagogue. But just watching Alan talk had been a religious experience. I took another class from him my junior year, then another my senior. When he saw me show up to register for that class, he had looked at me over the top of his half glasses and said “Do you think this is wise?”
I said, “I dunno, do you?”
He had the grace to laugh. “Fine, Miss Cline,” he said. “I expect you’re a big enough girl to make up your mind about what classes you want to take.”
“Mmmmm,” I nodded. “And other things.”
Now that I am married to a professor, I wonder if girls say stuff like that to my husband. If he wants them to. If he laughs.
