That First Time
How did they wind up in bed that first time? The date started off with dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant in her neighborhood. They had arranged to meet there. She got there first and waited for him inside. It was on the west side of Broadway, between 114th and 115th Streets or 113th and 114th. The food was inexpensive. The restaurant didn’t serve any wine or beer but you could bring in your own. She stayed at their table and he went to a liquor store a block or two away — she told him where it was — and bought a bottle of red wine and a cheap corkscrew in case the restaurant didn’t have or couldn’t find one. It was a good bottle of wine, better than he ever bought for himself. He wanted to impress her. He knew from their previous date, which was their second — the first was for coffee and a cup of soup each and an egg salad sandwich between them for lunch at a coffee shop — that she knew about wine. She once worked for a week harvesting grapes in the Champagne district in France and got paid with three bottles of very good wine and a bottle of champagne and room and board. He forgets what they ate in the Middle Eastern restaurant. Falafel — that he remembers — as an appetizer, and some dolma, also to start off with, but what about the main dishes? Important? Well, he’d like to get everything in, or as much as he can, but he’ll let it pass. He walked her back to her apartment building. She asked if he’d like to come up. “Sure,” he said, “that would be nice,” or something like it. Did she say “for a nightcap?” No, that was at the end of their second date, after they had dinner at a Greek restaurant in her neighborhood. “I warned you the food might not be the best,” she said, when he walked her back to her building that time. “So we’ll cross it off our list?” he said, or something like it. “Although you did say it got new owners since you last ate there, so it might have improved.” They had Spanish brandy that second time in her apartment and he asked if he could sit next to her on the couch, which was really a daybed. After she said “Any place you feel comfortable,” and after he sat beside her, he made a move to her and she moved her head to his, and they kissed for the first time. They kissed a couple more times that second time and then she said it was getting late, or something like it, or she still had schoolwork to do tonight — he thinks that was it — and he said “I’ll go,” and they went to the front hallway closet. He said he had a great time tonight, “I hope you enjoyed it too,” and she said “I did. Thank you for a nice evening,” and got his coat out of the closet and handed it to him. His muffler was in one of the arm sleeves — where he always put it at someone else’s house, so he wouldn’t forget it — and his gloves and watch cap were in the coat’s pockets. He put the muffler and coat on and said “So I’ll call you,” and she said “Please do,” and he made a move to her — his back was to the front door, hers to the closed closet — and she moved her head toward his and they kissed, the longest and deepest of their four to five kisses that night. “Whew,” she said after. “That one, honestly, took my breath away.” He left the apartment and she shut the door. He thought, as he waited for the elevator, “That was quite a kiss. All of them were. She’s really something.”
But that third night. They had met at a party two weeks before. They were introduced by the woman who gave the party. She took him by the hand, walked him over to her and said “Abigail, I want you to meet Phil. He’s also a writer, but not an academic. Now you two are on your own,” and she left. They talked for a while, about what she wrote and taught, about what he wrote. He said, when she told him she had to leave in a few minutes — a ballet at Lincoln Center she had a ticket for—“Can I call you? May I, I mean?” “If you like,” she said, and gave him her phone number and her last name. The first date was the coffee shop in the West Seventies — between 77th and 78th Streets, to be exact, on the west side of Broadway. The second was the Greek restaurant. She gave him the address for that one and the location — between Amsterdam and Broadway, south side of the street. She got there first, as she did at the coffee shop and Middle Eastern restaurant, although he got to all three places with a few minutes to spare. Falafel, dolma, wine he went out to get—“I didn’t know they didn’t have a liquor license,” she said. “I’ve only had lunch here; stuffed pitas and Turkish coffee.” He said “It’s fine; it’ll take me a minute. But I can’t think of eating dinner without wine.” How’d they pay for the lunch and dinners? She let him pick up the check at the coffee shop. Said something like “It’s so small, I won’t fight it.” They split the check at the Greek restaurant, although he’d wanted to pick that one up too. “I’m on a very generous post-doc for two years,” she said, “so don’t think I can’t afford it.” She said she thought they should leave more of a tip than he put down. “Anything you say,” he said. “One thing I’m not is cheap. And I’ve been a waiter — the last time just a year and a half ago — so I should make twenty percent of the bill, less the tax, standard procedure. Oh, even with the tax. What’s it going to add to the tip, another five to six percent?” In the Middle Eastern restaurant he thinks he said — and he’d like to remember what main dishes they had there, but he’ll give up on that—“This dinner’s definitely on me.” “But you paid for the wine,” she said, “and it seemed like an expensive bottle. I have to contribute something to the check,” and he said “Please. The wine wasn’t so much, and I want to.” “Then the next time it has to be on me.” “Good,” he said, “for that means there’ll be a next time, or I hope it does.” “I didn’t mean it like that, but I guess it came out that way. We’ll see.”