Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

Suddenly, she pulled the car over to the curb. She opened the door and got out, so I got out too, stood on the sidewalk, and waited for her to walk around.

“And I can’t wear contacts,” she said. “They bother my eyes.”

“Really,” I said, borrowing her word.

We entered a liquor store, which greeted us at the door with a blast of hot air and the twangy-voiced noise of a woman singing “Silent Night.”

I followed Vanessa briskly down one aisle that shelved wine both in the gallon and in the box, and then down another aisle in which bottles were displayed in reclining crates.

“I think the restaurant is BYOB,” she said. “How about a chardonnay?” She plucked a bottle out of a crate and showed it to me.

“That’s fine,” I said.

At first, I simply looked at it, but because she continued to hold it out, I took the bottle out of her hand. I understood that I was supposed to pay.

In line before us at the counter was an insufferable, globular animal with a tuft of hair growing out of the back of her thick neck. She was buying lottery tickets, and she apparently had such a precise regimen that the young clerk behind the counter was following her dictate with a bit of anxiety over messing up and setting the woman into a angry frenzy. After the woman bought the lottery tickets, she asked for three packs of slim menthol cigarettes, and when the clerk pulled out a different kind — perhaps ultra thin or menthol green instead of menthol blue — the squat, crotchety animal turned around and gave me a look that expressed her frustration in having to deal with people as stupid as this one. When she and the clerk settled the dilemma of the cigarettes, she asked for her bottle of cognac to be rung up separately from the beer and cigarettes because her boyfriend had only given her a twenty-dollar bill, as if this somehow explained why she needed two receipts.

While my disgust mounted — for I was unfortunately imagining the man who would act as this creature’s boyfriend, wallow in her squalor, and no doubt top her sweaty body — Vanessa had a placid smile on her face as she read the label of a discounted bottle of wine displayed by the counter.

“This looks good,” she said. “BYOB is actually cheaper; you don’t have to pay by the glass.”

“Is that good wine?”

“I’ve never had it.”

“We might as well try it.”

She set the second bottle on the counter, just as the creature moved away and a new song began to play. Hearing “What Child Is This?” and watching the slow, waddling woman, I had a sudden remembrance of Claudia Jones. Yet all I could recall of her were the categorized parts of her body, which were regrettably cached and filed on my confiscated computer. I had so many things to worry about that I knew going out to dinner was a mistake, but I had no idea what else I was supposed to be doing. Right now, I was with Vanessa Somerset, and perhaps now that I was with her, I could efface every moment that preceded her entry into my life. Perhaps I was already beginning to reinvent myself on a warmer, cozier level. This, of course, meant that I needed to kill my past by severing all my connections to the previous drudgery of my life. I could start afresh with just the money in my pocket.

When the clerk rang up my order, and I reached into my pocket to pull out my cash, I noticed that Vanessa was occupied reading the labels on discounted bottles of wine; she didn’t appear curious about my little stash of money nor the total on the register.

Back outside, the first few flakes of snow were falling. Vanessa turned her face upward, as if she could somehow gauge the weather by inspecting the sky.

The Thai restaurant was only another couple of blocks down the road. In the window, purple tubes of light spelled out the name of the place in a winding script. A bench, now coated with ice and frost, was on the sidewalk, where patrons could presumably wait for their tables, in different weather of course. I held the door open for Vanessa.

“It smells good,” she said.

Since it was a weeknight, we had no problem getting prompt service. A little girl, dressed all in black, stood patiently behind us as we hung up our coats, and then she led us to a table next to the wall.

When Vanessa sat down, I wondered if I should have pulled out her chair for her or if that form of courtesy was long dead. Even so, I knew that I ought to let her order first. As Vanessa studied the menu, another little girl came up to the table. She was dressed in the same black attire, and her straight dark hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. Interestingly, all the staff appeared as if they actually were from Thailand or at least of that descent. I suspected that the girls probably weren’t as young as they looked.

Our waitress asked which bottle of wine we would like to open first, and I said that we wanted to try both of them. The girl smiled as if I had said something witty. After she opened the two bottles, she asked Vanessa which one would she like to start off with.

“I’ll have the chardonnay.”

When the girl poured, she twisted her wrist, slowly rolling the bottle, so there wouldn’t be a drip.

“I’ll have the same,” I said, and the girl repeated the operation with me.

Vanessa ordered a seaweed salad with pine nuts and also, from the special menu, pan-seared tilapia. I ordered some type of Mediterranean chicken that came in a brown curry sauce with chunks of avocado and onion. Even though I knew this was ethnic food, I was beginning to doubt — between the seaweed, the chicken, and the curry — if I could point to Thailand on a map.

After declaring the wine delicious and the fish perfect, Vanessa asked where I planned on staying the night.

“A friend’s house, I suppose,” I said, though I had no friend. “Or maybe I’ll see about renting a room.”

“You don’t want to wait too long,” she said. “You might be stranded.”

“I’m not worried,” I said.

She smiled at me. Perhaps she imagined a note of confidence in my voice. Truthfully, however, I hadn’t yet considered where I intended to spend the night. I realized that I might have been stalling, as if deep down I secretly wanted the time to run out, so I would’ve been forced to accept no other option but to go back home in a mood of insincere reluctance.

Throughout the dinner, I learned that in addition to being an only child, Vanessa Somerset was a change-of-life baby. Thus, in her adolescence, she felt isolated and detached from her parents. She always picked shitty boyfriends, ones who were older and controlling. She married at a young age, but not for love, because she was too giddy and immature to know what love was. She just wanted the comfort of a man, as well as the opportunity to allow her ego to flake away and dissolve into the presence of her husband. For the most part, he treated her well, but she began to see that he had less strength than she’d first imagined. He was unmotivated, and he believed that the interval between weekends was merely wasted time and that true life happened on his couch with a couple of stoned drinking buddies. Eventually, she began to recognize that she was shriveling up. There was no horse farm or any other kind of dream for the future. Yet she didn’t bear the man any ill will; in fact, she earnestly loved his family. Her niece, the girl with the corduroy pants, often helped out in the clothing shop. According to Vanessa, the girl remained convinced that her uncle had lost the best thing he ever had going for him, namely Aunt Vanessa.

“Was he controlling too?” I asked.

“In some ways.” A slight smile turned the corner of one side of her mouth.

“He was nice, though?”

“Most of the time.” She was smiling fully now, as if guilty of something. “Here,” she then said, holding out a forkful of fish. “You’ve got to taste this before I eat it all.”