Table For Two

She saw him on the far side of the street, heading her way. He was looking up at the names on the shops. He was concentrating so hard to find “The Granite book shop,” that he looked as though he was going to walk right past her. It was no longer Granite’s, she hadn’t realised.

“Dean,” she called. He looked around, saw her, smiled in acknowledgement and immediately started surveying the cars for a gap to cross.

He smiled broadly, as he approached her. She thought his eyes looked nervous.

“You look different?” He furrowed his brow. They kiss.

“It’s my hair.” Donna reached up and touched it.

“Oh yes, of course.” He took a step back to look. His eyes widened.

“Do you like it?” said Donna and she fixed her eyes on his and waited for a reply.

“Do I like it…?” He took hold of her hands. “You’ve just had it…cut?” His voice quavered up half a tone.

“Yes,” she said. His face relaxed. “Do you like it?” He looked at her hands.

“Um…err…yes.” He looked back at her face and smiled, nervously. “Yes of course.” He blushed. His shoulder twitched. “I like it a lot.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. She looks all right, how he remembered her. “It doesn’t seem to be called Granite anymore.” She looks apologetic. Nice smile.

“No, I should have told you.” She shrugs her shoulders. Natural. Calm, like he imagined normal people did. He liked her, again, instantly. Now, if he could only stop looking away every time their eyes meet. Just nerves, he takes big breathes. “I don’t come into the city, much.” He suddenly remembers when the last time it was that he came into the city last. “Except when I met you.” He looks straight to his feet when her eyes meet his. “Of course.” He finds he is holding his hands clasped in front of him. He hadn’t done that since his grammar school days. His cock jumps with a flash of excitement.

Handsome. Polite. Sexy. “I forgot when I gave you the directions, comes from living in one place for too long.” It must be nice to be just a kid. I bet he still lives with his parents.

“But it must feel nice to find a place where you feel like you belong?”

Idealistic, as well. She felt a rush of maternal lust. She wanted to play mother son. The joint she had smoked loosened her inhabitation's. He looks like her sexy nephew, Leo.

She steps back to look him up and down… Nice! He’s looking at me, he’s smiling. Oh…say something, before my cheeks explode, they are so red. “You look nice.”

“Thanks,” he says, as he fiddles with the ring on his little finger.

Silence. Her head spins, as traffic whizzed past on the street, with intermittent gusts of wind at her feet.

Younger men, she thinks and she has to stifle the smile on her face. “Shall we go in?”

Table for two. He’d picked the restaurant, to meet. She picks the round table, so no advantages. Clearly it was his version of classy, chick picking up décor, to be sure. It was mind numbingly expensive. The wallpaper was flock. The lighting was so low, it was almost impossible to see her meal. A quiet hush fell over the darkened room, when all the seating was complete. Just the candles, like it was some bizarre ritual, a sea of candles held up in ceremony to their wealth and whispers. It’s all ours, we intend to keep it, the whispers say. She suddenly feels back in the eighties.

He is so young, what the hell am I doing?

“Oh.” He stands up, almost with a bow, but not quite. His napkin falls from his lap to the ground. “I’ve got the fifty dollars for you.” He pulls his wallet from his back pocket. “Before I forget.” He hands her the money. “You saved my life that day.”

He sure is handsome.

He retrieves his napkin from under his feet.

They look at their menus. He sneaks a look at her, she catches him and smiles. His eyes dart back to his menu. She touches her hair and then looks back at the seafood risotto.

She resists the urge to rub his thigh with her foot.

The waiter takes orders for drinks and reminds Dean that it is no smoking when he goes to light up.

“I should give them up,” Dean says as he slips the packet back into his pocket.

The waiter wipes the table and deposits a bowl of cashews in front of them.

“Nelson Mandela is coming out,” she says. “I went to get tickets. I had only just got here, myself. I was scared that I was going to keep you waiting.”

“Is he a singer?”

“Nelson Mandela?”

“Nelson…” He raises his hands up and smiles the smile of men when they know they’re wrong, but have to maintain the superior position. It’s a kind of a put down from the losing side. Years of patriarchal society. “Who?”

They need to breed that smugness out of them, she thinks. Generation Y. He has beautiful eyes. A hairy chest, all ready. What am I doing here? This is madness.

“African politician,” she says, as she picks at the nuts. “Was in jail for most of his life.”

Dean shrugs in response.

“Your drinks,” says the waiter.

“Today is the anniversary of my parent’s marriage,” she says. “Forty years. I can remember when it was twenty years.” She sips her champagne. “Do you believe in forever?”

She brushes her hand against his. He doesn’t pull away. It’s a good sign.

“Yes, I do.” He smiles nervously. “Forever, that is.” He smiles again. “Aren’t we taught to... all our lives.”

“I want... “ What is she saying? Too late now to stop. “Um... er... to be just like my parents. He slides his hand over hers and squeezes, then pulls it away again.

“Your dinners,” says the waiter.

“Never really thought about it,” Dean says. He shifts in his chair nervously and tucks the napkin into the collar of his shirt, as the waiter puts the oversized white plate down in front of him.

Red meat. Green vegetables.

She couldn’t help but picture him in a party hat. Oversized plate. Huge cutlery. Streamers. Balloons.

“How old are you anyway?” asks Dean.

“Forty,” she says. She wonders if he’ll believe her.

“Wow!” He sits back in his chair. “Really?” His voice rises above the hush. The woman with the big hair and the pale blue suit, buttoned tightly across her bosom scowls. The man with the silver grey hair winces, both turn instinctively towards the outburst.

She blushes and giggles nervously. He likes that.

“How old did you think I was?”

“I thought you were in your late twenties,” he smiles. He checks the other patrons have stopped looking. He leans in close. “You have great tits for a forty year old.”

She blushes, not expecting that. They both sit back in their chairs and smile, gazing at each other.

“And you are twenty?”

He smiles. Blushes. Starts to say something but then doesn’t. Smiles again. Then looks her in the eye. “Eighteen, just turned.”

“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she says and immediately regrets it.

“I know,” he says, with such an intense stare she no longer regretted her last remark.

“Please don’t tell me you are at school, living with your parents?”

“I still live with my parents,” he says. “Most of my friends do.”

“School?”

“No, left last year,” he says. He rubs his foot against her leg. “But I’ve still got my Xavier uniform, if you want to see me in it.” Cheeky grin.

She felt a stab in her stomach. He was coming onto her. He was beautiful, unblemished. She really wanted to lean across the table and kiss him.

“Do you want desert?” Donna asks.

“No.” He rubs his stomach. “I’m training tomorrow.”

It is a low stress day, she decides as she walks up the street alone. It is probably best. She thanks the universe for them, low stress days, not young men. Those days when you swim in the fast lane and don’t get hurt, don’t get trodden on. Those days when your brain tells you that you just don’t have the tolerance for any of that bullshit anymore. The pretence. You just got do what you’ve got to do.

He looks disappointed when she says she is going. She said she was tired, but she just had to get away and think about what it was that she was about to do.

She should have fucked him, he was choice cut. Suddenly, the feeling of tiredness left her. She thought about his smiling face. She positively skipped those last few steps to her car.

She took out her mobile and bought his number up on the screen. She wanted to strip him down like a project.

Come over tonight, late... for your desert, she texts. I won’t tire you out for training, too much, I promise.

Sure, (smiley face) don’t tell mum, he texts in return.