Losing Charity

Losing Charity - 2

He's gorgeous, my date. This guy who asked me out.

Peter.

We met last week.

Six days ago.

At a party.

A party I wasn't invited to.

Not exactly. I was with catering. My latest part-time gig.

It was one of those fancy Wall Street parties where they rent out a whole club for the night and fill it with ice sculptures, champagne fountains, and a Niagara Falls of melted chocolate. Roasted organic this and braised brandy-infused that and loads of lobster and mounds of shrimp and red meat served rare.

Acrobats painted with glow-in-the-dark liquid latex dangling from the ceiling.

Freaky jugglers. Clowns on stilts.

Honest-to-white-boots go-go dancers. In cages.

(So wrong. So retro. Not in a good way.)

Live band. Twelve open bars. Maybe thirteen.

You'd think these parties don't happen still after the Big Financial Crisis a few years back. You'd be wrong.

Wretched excess. Werewolves of Wall Street.

Aren't we supposed to be so over that? Buttoned down now?

But truth? They never stopped.

Outrage. I know. So one-percent, right?

But so good for me, because:

A) Rent is due. Rent is high. I need the pay from a night as a catering wench stuffed into a faux tux top and too-short skirt while carrying silver trays of parsnip pesto bruschetta whatever.

B) I scored a date, an actual date, with an actual non-homeless, non-jobless, non-dropout actual man with an actual jaw line and dimples and ... dreamy.

So dreamy.

Full of dreamy.

When I saw him, across the room, I thought, He's so dreamy.

I thought that. Those exact words. In my head. Swear it.

And the next thing I know — literally, swear it, the next event in my universe — he's walking straight toward me.

Knifing through the crowd, people getting out of his way without realizing that's what they're doing, and then he's standing right in front of me.

Just. Like. That.

He introduces himself. "Hi. I'm Peter."

"Blah-bleh-bloop-blah," I stammer.

Or maybe my name.

All while hoping I don't drop the way-too-big-and-heavy platter of steamed spiced something on top of something else wrapped in organic some other thing that I'm trying to balance.

And he asks me out.

There. Then.

On. The. Spot.

No cheesy line.

No lame "Come here often?"

No weak "Hey, you want to meet for coffee some time?"

Literally, then, there, asks me on a date.

Has known me fifteen seconds. Twenty tops.

Does that ever happen?

These days? Any days?

That never happens.

Never.

I feel like a chick in a rom-com. I do.

Men do not know how to ask a girl out.

Not in this town. Not anymore. Not ever.

A guy who does? A guy who just puts it out there?

Charmed. Utterly.

What can I say but yes?

"Fantastic," he says, as I drown in his blue, blue eyes. "I look forward to it, Charity. I'll see you soon."

Only after he walks away do I realize he didn't ask for my number.

Or even my last name.

He vanishes into the crowd.

I am crestfallen. Hopes dash.

It seems all a cruel joke.

But he calls the next day, tells me when he'll pick me up.

"How did you know my-" is all the question I get out.

"Google," he says with a boyish laugh.

I don't even think that's weird a little bit, not even a little.

I don't even think about how it doesn't even make sense.

I think it's gorgeous. Charming.

He's gorgeous. He's charming.

And we're at Barbat. So ... rich too.

Trifecta. Perfect. Perfecta.

I know I'll screw this up.

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Losing Charity © Dan McGirt 2019. All rights reserved.

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