Mischka and Merlot

Even after a couple of months of inane online chit-chat, Bill was surprised when she agreed to meet him. Her pics were of a modest and studious-looking young woman for the most part, although she definitely had the fashion sense to wear clothes that did justice to her figure. Asian girls, though, were relatively rare, almost as bad as redheads, at least where he lived. It had always been a wistful dream of his, to bed one or the other; Bill was too much of a realist to even fantasize about both.

He had let her pick the restaurant, and she chose the most expensive of the many trendy, casual-yet-snooty offerings in one of the new neighborhoods that were being developed off the main artery’s exit ramp. The sort of place that pushed their flatbread appetizers and their signature cocktails, just classy enough that he felt like if he didn’t wear a tie, he’d be underdressed. Christ, he hated ties. He spent all week in a tie.

Well, that was why she said yes, wasn’t it? He was successful. Very successful. Sometimes he wondered if that was the only reason he ever got a date, that all he ever was to them was an abstract fulfillment of the American dream. Then he would look at himself, at his fourteen-hour a day work life and his home life with a cactus and a cat because he wasn’t at home enough for a garden or a dog, and think that the ladies had a very good point.

He arrived first, which was unnerving, especially because the waiter was oddly insistent upon getting Bill seated and getting a drink in his hand. He handed Bill a drinks menu and then stood there waiting with visible impatience, tapping with his pen on his right ear.

“I’ll just have a glass of wine,” said Bill. He usually drank beer but felt that somehow that would create a bad impression, whether he ordered a craft brew or a Bud.

“Certainly, sir,” said the waiter agreeably, and the restless tapping stopped. “The wine list is on the other side.” He reached for the sheet in Bill’s hands and started to turn it over for him.

“I’ll have a Merlot,” Bill said, and named the first label that came to mind. The waiter nodded cheerfully and thankfully disappeared, only to reappear with a glass like a long-stemmed rose, less than half full of red wine, so quickly Bill wondered if he had them simply lined up, already poured, behind the screen at his station.

Still, now he had a moment to compose himself at least, and Bill took a deep breath and tried to empty his mind. His fingers found the delicate stem of his wine glass and curled around it, like he was holding a Number 2 pencil. They slid down the length of the stem, and then returned to the top. He raised his glass to his lips, and that was the moment She entered the room.

Gone was the demure young professional of online dating, and yet he would have known her anywhere. Her hair, now out of its sensible ponytail, hung in a coil, a single curl, halfway down her back. Her lips were reddened, her eyes outlined in black. A white sheath dress, not low-cut but tempered with lace, glided over all those curves her daytime pics had hinted at and made them sing. The sip of Merlot Bill had intended to take turned into a gulp when her eyes – immediately- met his across the room.

She walked over slowly, letting each hip fall in such a way that Bill noticed his server noticing, and thought to himself, well, that’s five percent off your tip, my good man. He just barely remembered to stand up in greeting, at the last second, and she smiled dazzlingly and held out her hand in a way that made him unsure if he was supposed to shake it or kiss it. Instead, he simply clasped it in both his own – a gesture he felt he must have read in a book somewhere – and said, too loudly, “Well, hello, Lisa! It’s nice to meet you, at last.”

She sat, a feline gesture that pulled away her hand, and said firmly, “Well, that remains to be seen, now doesn’t it? I suppose we get to find out.” This last, however, was not said with any enthusiasm or sense of adventure, but rather in the same sort of tones one would express a willingness to, say, meet one’s future stepchild. Bill felt he’d lost the game already.

Lisa waved blandly at the waiter with a finely boned hand that surely, were this in another time, would have held a cigarette holder made of onyx, and drawled, “The usual, Blake. And I’ll have the Merlot.”

The waiter – Blake, apparently – snapped to attention and said “Certainly! And for you, sir?’ in a tone of slavish eagerness that definitely wasn’t there before. “The same,” said Bill, “Another, please.”

Lisa’s right eyebrow now joined her upraised left, and she made an exaggerated moue, pouting her lips. “A brave man,” she said mockingly, “you don’t even know what you’re getting to eat, now. Suppose I have an insatiable craving for blood sausage, or liver and onions?”

“I guess you must know what’s good here, if you come here often enough to have a “usual”, and know the staff,” Bill countered, “And I think in our conversations I have at least learned that you are a lady of intelligence and taste.”

That was pretty good, Bill thought to himself. He wasn’t really good with fancy words and useless at flirting, but that, he felt was a worthy rebuttal. Lisa appeared unmoved despite the fact that she smiled in response.

“Life is an illusion, the Internet doubly so,” she countered archly, and if Bill hadn’t been so nervous he might have picked up on the loosely-paraphrased Douglass Adams quote and possibly scored some points, but as it was his hand began toying with the wine glass stem again, so that when the waiter arrived and removed it he found Bill’s fingers still attached for a moment. When the new-filled glass was restored, Bill resumed his fretful stroking.

She was so beautiful, and so very cold. He felt like she hated him. Not even that, hate would be too passionate, too personal. It was more like contempt. It wasn’t what she said, which might even be taken for banter, but how she said it, how she held herself, and the kill-me-please look in her lovely, deep, black, almond-shaped eyes.

He sighed. “Yes, indeed, I agree about the Internet. You, for instance, look very different.”

As soon as he said it, he realized that somehow it was wrong. She flared like a sparkler touched to a flame.

“Sure. Sure! You know what happens when I dress like a woman, put myself out there all dolled up, show some skin? You know what I get? A bunch of dumb guys wanting to know what color my areola is, what my cup size is, and do I swallow. “

She looked around, and seeing that the usually instantaneous service had failed and her drink was still not about to be delivered, reached over and drink Bill’s down with a flourish, then grimaced.

“That’s not the house Merlot. You should trust the sommelier here, he’s very good.”

Not trusting himself to speak for a moment, Bill merely held up two fingers at Blake, who nodded in sympathetic collusion. In an instant, two fresh glasses stood before them, and Bill’s hands curled more tightly around the stem.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, he said carefully,” I know it must be hard for a young woman as attractive as you are, to try to find a decent man out there. I didn’t mean anything by it. I – “

“Oh, su-u-ure you did not! You never mean anything. Small talk small talk, that’s all you are, Bill. I was hoping, maybe if I see you in person, I’d find a straight-shooter, find something real, inside that head of yours, but all you see is no different from them. You know? No different from the rest.”

She shook her head in disgust, and yet again he felt it was an impersonal sentiment, that she wasn’t really holding him, Bill Philips, responsible for his wrongdoing but that she was seeing every man, from single encounters to long affairs, in the seat opposite her enviable form. It was this detachment, even more than her contempt, that flared the slow-burning fire of Bill’s indignation. He began, slowly, to realize the true situation he was in.

“Excuse me. You may think you have some idea of me but that simply is not true. You know, I don’t appreciate being lumped in with whatever guy has the nerve – no, the balls, to talk to you like that when I have spent months trying to show you that I am not to be feared, that I am not a creep, or a pervert, or a douchebag in any way, by the only means I have, which is this bullshit chit-chat that you despise. Well, I hate it too and-"

He had no idea, in his passion, that she had been grinning at him, nor that he had been gesticulating wildly with the wine glass still in his hand, the wine glass he had been fondling for comfort the entire evening. As he punctuated this last sentence with a thrust of his arm, the wine flew from the glass like a bird taking wing….and landed on the bosom, waist, and crotch of her lovely white dress.

For a moment too long, the grin lingered. The look of utter fury that replaced it was actually understandable, and therefore less frightening.

“Blake! Put the bill on my tab,” Lisa almost screamed. She grabbed Bill by the tie and began hauling him towards the door.

Bill, habitually, gentleman to the last, began to try to demarcate: “Jesus, Lisa, I couldn’t let you do that! Anyway, we haven’t even eaten – wait, where are you taking me?”

She had shoved herself and him through the doors to the parking lot outside. Still holding him by the tie, she whipped him around to face her.

“You ruined my dress. Do you know who is this dress?” She did not, apparently, expect an answer, which was good because Bill gave none.

“This is a Badgely Mischka, honey,” Lisa rejoined to the silence, and twisted her neck in a gesture that bespoke almost intolerable burdening. Then, to Bill’s further consternation, she kissed him. Full, luscious and long, curling her tongue around his the way his fingers had caressed the wine glass.

“ A Badgely Mischka, and you ruined it. Do you know how you’re going to pay for this dress?”

“I’m - I’m sorry!” Bill stammered, and when she dragged him over to the passenger side of a black muscle car that should never have been driven by such a tiny woman as she, he had the fleeting but potent impression that she meant to take him to an ATM and have him empty it at gunpoint.

“Get in.” Her order left no room for anything but compliance. She slid in beside him, and with her touch, the engine roared into life. She took his hand, placed it on her wine-drenched thigh, and kissed him again, hard.

“You will come back to my place. You will suck all the wine from my dress, and you will rip it from my body. That is how you will pay for this dress. “

Lisa’s eyes were hooded in shadow as she shifted into reverse, and Bill could only see that she was no longer smiling. Beyond that, he knew nothing of her mood, but suddenly, blissfully, he realized he didn’t have to worry.

“You’ll get your money’s worth,” he countered, and she laughed and peeled out of the lot with a vengeance.