An Implicit Promise

IT WAS FRIDAY—Jazz night—and the band was playing ‘Four on Six’. The wait-staff wore all black and carried shiny drinks. Twelve oyster shells sat upside down on ice, and Charlie sat debating over a second glass of beer. He liked good cask ale, but he loved having his wits about him; and good cask ale, he knew, can really wilt a man’s wit.

His date, Hope, would have been happy to know the level of his contemplation. She sat opposite him, wore subtle lipstick, and was no amature when it came to dating. Some of her previous dates, nervous and trying to settle down, had gone suds up. So she learned to keep a one drink per date limit. Her rule was simple: over the limit, no invite up for a nightcap. Most of her other rules were more obvious, manners for example. Some were table and chair; some were bedroom related, which is precisely where Charlie was hoping they’d end up.

“Another beverage, sir,” asked their waiter, standing at the edge of the table, looking like Jeeves or Alfred Hitchcock.

“I’ll pass for now,” Charlie said to the waiter, “thank you.” He looked across to his date.

“Miss,” the waiter said, “another beverage for you?”

“Oh I shouldn’t,” Hope said.

“Coffee or cordial then?” Jeeves asked, looking to both of them. His hands tucked behind his back. The buttons on his shirt caught moody light.

“No, no, I’ll be up all night,” they said. Their response sang in unison and they shared surprised looks with cocked eyebrows. It’s good to have things in common on first dates.

“Just the check is fine,” Charlie said.

Jeeves shimmered off. Red and blue stage lights buddied up on the bandstand and the trio eased into the solo section.

“I say don’t vote at all,” Charlie said with a smile that could get James Dean’s Porsche back on the road. “It only encourages them, those charming bastards. Those bloated plutocratic kingpins! Can’t lead a monkey to a banana raffle!”

“Don’t vote,” she said, “you can’t be serious.”

He wasn’t serious. He didn’t give a good goddamn about politics. But he had held on the beer and was in the mood for a wit-spat. He wanted to see if she was game.

“I’m gravely serious,” he said. “Disbelief in magic leads to belief in government. And money!” He was quoting a wrtier and wondered if she would notice. She didn’t. “Politics are for boring no-lives,” he said. “Don’t have a passion for changing life; have a passion for living it!” He was onto something, as was the guitarist: Lydian mode. “Change is the remainder, Hope, the candle-ends of living. Burn brightly!” His forearms were lying flat on the table and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“I’ll try, Charlie. You’re a funny man, you know.” She smiled a knowing smile.

“Thank you,” he said.

Hope used a few different date vetting techniques. The ‘funny-man’ line was one of them. Any date she called a ‘funny man’ who afterwards quoted ‘Goodfellas’ was plumb done—her hands would turn over and back like a clocked out croupier. She found that men love to quote cinema.

“I can’t think of a more unpassioned bond,” she’d once said to her friend Wendy on the topic of man-peeves. Amanda later started a women’s group called Spinster’s Esteem for Life Force: SELF.

Hope’s curly nut-brown hair frizzed in the warm, jazzy air. She wore a peasant’s blouse that showed off her elegant collarbone and framed her perky coconuts perfectly. Her legs were crossed properly and comely, and her seersucker shorts likely  had belonged to an old boyfriend. She wore no socks and one of her shoes was off and on the floor below the table. Her toes twiddled along with the piano solo. Charlie loved a woman with good dexterity.

“So what do you believe in, Hope?” Charlie asked.

“I believe in birth, sex, and death,” she answered softly. The bassist was taking his solo. “Although sex leads to birth, and death might turn out to be something like being born … at any rate, I was born twenty-seven years ago. Someday I will die…” She stopped herself.

Jeeves whispered up to the table with the check and a thank you. Charlie took the check insisting on gentlemanly duties. Hope obliged and thought about what she had just said. I believe in birth, sex, and death. I was born twenty-seven years ago. Someday I will die…Tonight, I think I’ll have sex.

And indeed they did.

The solo ended and the head came back around with fluttering guitar notes and a bass that would have Art Blakey swooning. Piano chords comped and the crowd remembered they were listening to a song. Everyone looked to the bandstand for the final few bars, even Jeeves and his moody buttons. But Charlie and Hope had already vamoosed for their nightcap.

Hope’s apartment impressed everyone. Charlie was no exception. A Brazilian Walnut wood-floor stretched across the living room and Japanese art feuded on the walls. An old tube stereo silently hummed beside her record player. Intricately brush stroked ceramics filled with fresh lavender sat on modern end tables. Charlie picked one of the ceramics up and put it to his nose.

“Careful, Charlie,” she said.

“You know my mother used to make the most delicious lavender shortbread cookies and crème brulée.” He sat down on the couch, took another reminiscent whiff, and placed the ceramic down gently.

Hope relieved and sat next to him. A Hall and Oates album circled around under the needle and after a couple glasses of chilled Sake and few more snappy musings on the merits of magic, Hope tickled Charlie with her tongue like a calligraphy sensei strokes upon rice paper. Charlie returned the favor, noting that Sake and pussy mist is a delicious pairing. They veneered each other in sweat and cum to a degree that makes the Dead Sea taste and smell like distilled glacial melt-waters.

In the morning their feet anchored together at the bottom of the bed, pillows surrounding their nude bodies. Hope was dreaming about doing pull-ups when she awoke to find herself squeezing Charlie’s stiffening masculinity.

“That’s an inviting alarm clock,” Charlie said.

Hope giggled and kissed his chest, working her way south below the sheets and past his bellybutton. All during the morning licking; all during breakfast, Charlie delighted over Hope’s talented tongue and thought about the Jazz spot and his decision to hold on the cask ale and about how they were all related.

After she finished him she dressed herself in a black t-shirt and argyle socks and started in the kitchen. Upon cracking an egg for her signature eggs with tomatoes and sugar, a silent, mushroom spiced burp released up into her mouth. It reminded her of Charlie and she liked it.

“Excuse me,” she said. But Charlie heard neither the burb nor the apology. He was singing ‘Maneater’ and soaping up in the shower. She insisted he shower before breakfast.

Over eggs, grapefruit juice, gooseberries in simple syrup, and lavender honey on toast, Hope watched Charlie carefully handle his fork and knife. And although his napkin was not on his lap she hoped she had finally found a good man.

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