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“Are you actually gonna bum one, or are you just here for some eye candy?”
They’ve been doing this for weeks, now. Short conversations inside, followed by several instances of staring at each other from across the bar, because Carol’s afraid and Helen hasn’t wanted to push her. But now Carol is here, in the alley behind the bar, timidly approaching, keeping to the shadows like the full moon’s milky light will burn her if she steps into it.
“Why not both?” says Carol.
Helen smiles, drawing out her Marlboros, flicking open the paper lid, sliding a cigarette further from the others and offering it to Carol, waiting until it’s between her lips to light it. Etiquette matters, after all. More than the pleasing way the lighter’s little flame makes Carol’s face all the handsomer to look at, when it throws her cheekbones and sharp chin into deliberate focus. Helen pulls away to light her own before she can think too long about why her heart is suddenly leaping in her chest, observing Carol in her left peripheral as her smoking companion exhales a short plume and coughs afterward.
“You don’t smoke much, do you?” asks Helen.
“What’s it to you?”
“Just an observation.”
“We all have our indulgences.”
Helen refrains from commenting on Carol’s obvious one. She knows, now, that Carol’s alcohol tolerance is as impressive as it is worrying; Carol drinks whisky like it’s water she’s been denied access to. Or bourbon. Or vodka. Or any fumy drink that Helen’s mother lovingly calls gasoline. She only hums her agreement and resumes leaning against the wall, its coolness seeping through her thicker flannel. Silence soaks between her and Carol, pondering and curiously tense in the way that silences between two people who find each other attractive are. Carol, thinks Helen, taking another long drag, is like cold water, shocking to even consider approaching, let alone dipping your feet in, but Helen feels its pull, feels herself wanting to wade in, and finds herself asking, rather leadingly, “So… why are you here?”
“Needed a break.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” says Carol quietly, around a sigh, “I do.” Her hand lifts upward, bringing the cigarette to her lips again. It’s trembling slightly. Helen waits. “I… wanted to see you.”
“Just see me?” teases Helen, hoping her playful tone will hide her own nervousness.
“Well, I’m talking to you too, aren’t I?”
“Not sure this really counts.”
Carol scoffs. Flicks her eyes at Helen, dark beneath the building’s shadow. “What are you doing?” she asks, voice quiet again.
Helen’s cigarette is nearly down to the nub. She lets it fall from her fingers, joining other cigarette corpses, grinds it out with her boot toe. “I’m waiting,” she says, leaning slightly into Carol’s space, enough for suggestion rather than invasion, “for you to ask me to get a drink with you. Or dinner, if that’s more your thing.” Even in the slight dark, she can see Carol’s cheeks flaming pink—embarrassed to be caught out? Or blushing at the mere thought of asking another woman a question that conveyed a desire to get to know her?
“Fine,” Carol states after a loaded thirty seconds, throwing her own cigarette down. “I came here to ask you for a drink, or dinner, or whatever, but,” and now her words are coming out quicker, laced with a nervousness Helen finds adorably endearing, “I have no idea what you like to drink or what foods you prefer or what things you enjoy, and whether you’d like to do any of that with me.”
And Carol looks away, gaze drifting upward to the moon hanging in its dark, cloudless sky, seeming scandalised to have confessed all this. Helen wonders, not for the first time, who inflicted such damage to make her afraid of expressing such a simple desire. She tamps down the sudden flare of anger, hoping to soothe Carol’s anxiety by making a confession, and a desire, of her own:
“My drink of choice is diet Pepsi. I really like pasta and do my best to ignore all the fear-mongering about carbs. I enjoy golf. And yes, I’d like to do it all with you, if you’re game.”
Carol stares, then, wide-eyed, studying Helen’s face. To Helen’s surprise, she snorts, stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets. “Diet fucking Pepsi?”
“Really?” groans Helen. “That’s all you took away from that?”
“No, no, I absorbed it all. But seriously?”
Helen laughs. Really laughs. Doesn’t miss the brief look of awe that flickers across Carol’s expression. “Come on. It’s not that bad.”
“It’s bad. It’s terrible.”
“What would be less terrible?”
Again, Carol looks away. “You said you like golf.”
“I do.”
“Real golf. Not fucking Putt-Putt.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then… maybe I take you golfing. And maybe drinks. Or dinner. After.”
“Okay,” Helen says, smiling.
“Okay.” Carol’s fumbling in her left jacket pocket. A napkin emerges, unused but hastily folded, and a red felt pen. She steps into the moonlight, scribbling down a horizontal line of numbers. Helen accepts it, heart happily dancing in her chest. “You can call me.”
“I will,” she promises.
Back home, Helen places the napkin on her nightstand, the numbers already beginning to soak into her brain, along with the feeling that Carol Sturka has given her phone number to very few people in her life, and that Helen’s honoured to be one of them.