Steve Martin - The Pleasure of My Company

She was facing away from me; the sign was behind her and stuck into the flower bed, which was really more of a fern bed. She was wearing a tight beige-and-white paisley skirt, and a short sleeve brown blouse that was bursting from within because of her cannonball breasts. Her hair was combed back over her head and held in place by a black velour hair clamp, which fit like headphones. Her feet were plugged into two open-toed patent leather heels and were reflected in the chrome of her Mercedes’ bumper. I couldn’t imagine any man to whom this package would not appeal.

As I approached her, I felt a twinge where it matters. And if my theory is correct, that sexual attraction is usually mutual-an evolutionary necessity, otherwise nobody would be doing it with anybody-then Elizabeth must have been feeling something, too. That is, if she ever looked over at me. I came to the sign, leaned over, and pretended to read the description of the apartment, which was reduced to such extreme abbreviations as to be indecipherable. What’s a rfna? I had to do mental somersaults to align the fact that while I was reading Elizabeth ’s name, her actual person was by now two steps behind me.

I stepped backward as if to get a better view of the sign and, I swear this was an accident, bumped right into Elizabeth, glute to glute. She turned her head and said airily, “I’m sorry,” even though it was I who had bumped into her. “Oh, excuse me ,” I said, taking all the blame.

“Are you the realtor?” I asked.

“Yes I am,” she said and she browsed inside her purse without ever losing eye contact with me.

“How many apartments are there for rent in the entire complex of apartments?” I said, using too many words.

“Just three. Would you like a card?”

Oh yes, I wanted a card. I took it, palming it like an ace of spades, knowing it was a memento that I would pin up on my bulletin board. In fact, this would be the first item on the board that could even come close to being called a bulletin. “That’s you,” I said, indicating with a gesture that the name on the card and the name on the sign were one and the same.

“Are you looking for an apartment?” she asked.

I said something exquisite: “I’m always looking to upgrade.” I muttered this casually as I sauntered off. The wrong way, I might add. The next opposing scooped-out driveways were so far out of my way that I didn’t get home for twenty-five minutes, and while I walked I kept looking back over my shoulder at my apartment, which had begun to recede into a pinpoint.

Once home I reflected on the encounter, and two moments in particular stood out. One was Elizabeth ’s response to my inquiry about the number of apartments for rent. “Just three.” It was the “just” I admired. “Just a few left.”

“Only three and they’re going fast” was the implication. Elizabeth was obviously a clever sales-woman. I figured that three were a lot of empty apartments for this building, and that the pressure was on from the owners to get them rented fast. I’ll bet they knew what they had in Elizabeth: the very, very best.

The second moment-contact between me and Elizabeth-was harder to relive because it had occurred out of my sight, actually behind my back. So I had to picture the unseen. Our-pardon my language-butts had backed right into each other like two marshmallows coming together in a sudden splat. Boing. If I had intended this sort of physical encounter I would be a different kind of person. The kind I am actually not. I would never do such a thing intentionally, like a subway creep. But I had literally impressed myself upon Elizabeth, and at our next meeting we would be further along than I ever could have imagined, now that she and I had had intimate contact. My hip had touched hers and hers had touched mine. That’s probably more than a lot of men have done who have known her a lot longer.

My third contact with Elizabeth, which occurred one week later, was a total failure, with an explanation. I was coincidentally on the street when Elizabeth pulled up and got out of her car. Nothing could have seemed more casual, more unplanned, than my presence in front of the Rose Crest. She unfolded herself from the Mercedes, all legs and stockings, and gave me a jaunty wave. I think she was even about to speak to me. The problem was, I was taping my long shot for the Crime Show, in which I was supposedly being interrogated by two cops on the street.

So when Elizabeth waved, I was approached by two “policemen” who seriously overacted in their efforts to make me look guilty by snarling and poking at me. Luckily it was a long shot, so their hambone performances couldn’t be seen on camera. No Emmy for them. I thought I was pretty good. We were given no dialogue to say, but we had been asked to spout gibberish while a narrator talked over us. They weren’t recording us, they just wanted our mouths to be moving to make it look like we were talking. One “policeman” was saying, “I’m talking, I’m talking, I’m moving my mouth, it looks like I’m talking.” And then the other one would say, “Now I’m talking, I’m moving my mouth like I’m talking.” Then they would say to me, “Now you talk, just move your mouth.” So I would say, “I’m talking, I’m talking, I’m talking back to you,” and so on. I couldn’t wave to Elizabeth, even though she’d waved at me, as it would have spoiled the scene. I must have looked strange, because even though it was eighty-five-degree weather, I was wearing the blue parka with the bloodstain to look even more suspicious for the camera. This couldn’t have made Elizabeth too comfortable, particularly if she’d had any inclination toward viewing me as her next husband.

I am always amazed by what lies buried in the mind until one day for no particular reason it rises up and makes itself known. That night in bed, a vision of Elizabeth ’s face entered my consciousness, and I saw clearly that she had gray-green eyes. It was a small fact I hadn’t realized I knew.

On Sunday I decided to distract myself by going down to the Rite Aid and taking a look at Zandy. This was no ordinary girl watching. Zandy works at the pharmacy, behind an elevated counter. She’s visible only from the neck up as she sails from one end to the other. If I visit the pay phone/Coke machine alcove, I can get an employee’s view of Zandy’s pharmacy-white outfit against her pharmacy-white skin. She’s a natural California girl, except her face has never been touched by makeup or sun, only by the fluorescent rays of the ceiling lights. Her hair is almost unkempt, with so many dangling swoops and curls that I long for a tiny surfboard so I can go swishing amid the tresses. I have no designs on Zandy because the rejection would be overwhelming for me. Plus, she’s a genuine blonde, and I prefer Elizabeth ’s dyed look.

The Rite Aid is splendidly antiseptic. I’ll bet the floors are hosed down every night with isopropyl alcohol. The Rite Aid is the axle around which my squeaky world turns, and I find myself there two or three days a week seeking out the rare household item such as cheesecloth. Like every other drugstore on earth, it is filled with quack products that remind me of nineteenth-century ads for hair restorers and innervating elixirs. These days there is a solid percentage of products in the stores which actually work, but they’re on display next to liquid-filled shoe inserts that claim to prevent varicose veins.

I pretended to stop for a Coke ’n’ phone-even though my phone card was on empty-and saw Zandy gliding behind the counter, as though she were on skates. I moved to the end of the displays, pretending to read the instructions for the Coke machine, and good news, the wonderful minds at the Rite Aid had decided to move the Tepperton’s Apple Pie Most Average American essay contest placard next to the Coke machine, where I could tear off an entry form and, for the next few minutes, write another five hundred words while Zandy, delicious as a meringue, went about her work in full view. I did not really want to write another five hundred words or even two hundred words, but it was easy enough considering the trade-off. There were several dull pencils in a box on the display, so dull that when I wrote with them the wood scraped against the paper, but I buckled down and began my second patriotic essay in two weeks, after a lifetime of none.