Prize Of The Beholders

by J. Leland Kupferberg

It was conventional wisdom - at least among those in her social circle - that Karen Everett’s beauty was most tellingly exhibited through her eyes. As family lore would have it, even the maternity ward nurses at St. Vincent General could pick her out from among the multitude of squealing, generically pruned newborns - without even checking the wrist tag. “It was the eyes,” her grandmother would recount - repeatedly - years later. “Who had ever seen such beautiful eyes? The thick lashes, the sky-blue irises. From the beginning, I knew: a beautiful creature had entered this world…and they hadn’t even cleaned the birth juice off you yet.”

At the age of seventeen, her first true boyfriend, the Assistant Treasurer of the Christian Student Fellowship, had initiated her into the realm of physical intimacy with an obsessive appreciation of those doe-eyed corneas. “Such beauteous pearls hath the Good Lord inlaid ‘tween thy temples!” he proclaimed as he awkwardly groped for her tits.

For the first twelve years of her life, she had subscribed to the conventional wisdom. They knew she was beautiful, and told her so. How could she see otherwise? Already by kindergarten, she could perceive that there was something different about her. Why, she would wonder, did creaky old Ms. Barrett address only her eyes as she periodically looked up from the book while reading stories to the class, as if no other child were listening but her? And why did some of her female playmates sometimes just stare, as she talked to them, with a pained look on their faces?

By the fourth grade, she started to notice how the boys in her class would stare at her as she talked to them, with a pained look on their faces. But by then, she knew why. And when some of the more assertive girls started to form cliques around her, providing a social buffer between her and the less assertive masses, she also knew why.

Not only was she the firstborn of the family, the eldest of five children, but she was also the only girl. And while Mommy seemed to remain distant from her, attending to the needs of her rambunctious little boys, she knew that Daddy loved her best. Or rather, as she later reflected back upon it, was it that Daddy loved her differently? This went beyond the fact that he was a television repairman. Daddy loved to build things, and so did his boys. And even when Daddy spent countless hours sharing his love of mechanics with them, roughhousing with them, or beating the hell out of them for beating the hell out of each other, she could always count on that spontaneous wink as she looked on, as the words would lovingly ooze forth from his curled smile: “My dolly.”

While Daddy seldom touched her, or hugged her, or caressed her, as far as she could recall, she did recall countless weekends strolling through a park with him, or browsing through a shopping mall, as he always took care to notice all those who noticed her. “This is my sweetie,” he would proudly proclaim to them. At other times, she would be showcased as his “bunny”, or his “candy cane”, or, in more candid moments with some of his closer male confidants, he would brag, “Look what popped out of these nuts!”

And so while Daddy didn’t garland her intellect with much conversation, he did take care to garland her self-esteem with a beautiful assortment of adjectives. Those were the happiest years of her life.

But then she turned twelve. And as small, perky breasts began to percolate here and there among her classmates, she began to notice small, perky whiteheads percolating around a nose whose unruly growth was starting to play havoc with her delicately balanced features. And yet, no breasts. By thirteen, her friends were proudly displaying their estrogen trophies in tight-fitting jerseys as her nose went multi-cultural: blackheads taking up tenancy alongside whiteheads - and still no breasts.

By fourteen, she was getting a little worried. If the roots of those latent breasts lay buried deep under her rib cage, she reasoned, maybe they could use a little “watering.” So she opted to fertilize her chest cavity with potato chips, brownies, and anything high in polyunsaturated fats - all in an effort to alchemize standard American junk food into two supple orbs of pulse-pounding breast tissue. Forty pounds later, she had succeeded in alchemizing her body into the shape of an avocado - and still no breasts.

On her fifteenth birthday, she contemplated suicide. Standing dejectedly before the mirror in her bathroom, as the running tap of hot water was generating a fog of steam, she took full measure of herself as she held Daddy’s disposable razor blade over her wrist. Here she was, the pride of St. Vincent General, fifteen years later - plump, pimpled, and perplexingly flat. As she patiently waited for the steam to expose a vein on her fleshy wrist, it was Daddy who knocked on the door and asked his “candy cane” what she wanted for her fifteenth. “Tits,” she replied as tears streamed down her corpulent cheeks. “Get me tits.”

So, for $3999, payable in monthly installments, Daddy did get her tits. And for her sixteenth, he topped it off with a nose job and a treadmill. Finally, after a stint on antibiotics, she had reclaimed the awe-inspiring beauty that puberty had ravaged.

Back among her peers, Karen once more soaked her rejuvenated ego in the pained expressions of the boys she would pass by in the hallways. Among her female classmates, however, matters weren’t so simple. It was over lunch one day in the cafeteria, as Karen was picking away at a salad, that Kallie Oberlander noticed a flaw. “Your cuticles are too long,” she offered by way of advice and perhaps just a bit of passive aggression. This was a disturbing revelation to Karen. A cuticle? “Yes, your cuticle,” Kallie continued. “That small flap of skin peeking out over the lower rim of your fingernail.”

For the first time in her life, Karen took cognizance of the cuticle, and her heart sank. Could it be, she wondered, that in the vast wilderness of her pubescent years, when she was far beyond the pale of aesthetic maintenance, that she overlooked some fundamental rule of grooming? And what of her cuticles? Did boys really notice them? Did they even care? “It doesn’t matter,” Kallie assured her. “I notice them. We all do.”

We, of course, meaning all the girls. The very same girls who, when Karen once strolled down the hallway in stiletto heels and a cotton mini that showcased her newly svelte figure, snickered. But all the boys liked it, she figured, and isn’t that what counted? “It doesn’t matter,” the girls assured her. “We think it’s tacky.”

With each passing week, it seemed, a new lesson was to be learned. One day, Karen excitedly approached a girlfriend after having experienced her first passionate kiss with her new boyfriend in back of the school. As Karen launched into an ecstatic play-by-play, the girlfriend merely stared, transfixed, at Karen’s lips. “Your lipstick…” the girlfriend asserted.

Karen lightly patted her lips with her fingers. “What’s wrong? Did it smudge?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“It doesn’t go with your skin tone.”

Did her new boyfriend notice it, she wondered?

“It doesn’t matter,” her girlfriend assured her. “I noticed it.”

By eighteen, Karen acquired a new new boyfriend, to accompany her beautifully clipped cuticles and her tonally compatible lipstick. By twenty-two, she was already on to Boyfriend Vol. 8, who, she was sure, was different, more special than the seven previous Volumes. Vol. 8 had everything she desired physically in a man - tall, broad-shouldered, great hair, and white teeth. And while the passion was certainly there - cuddling in bed, caressing in bed, teasing in bed, eating in bed - there was only one small deficiency in their relationship: they had absolutely nothing to say to one another while clothed. She grudgingly realized it was all unworkable when they started to choose restaurants based on whichever menu could spark the most conversation.

One evening, sitting across the table from him, she looked into his downcast eyes as he pored over the menu like a Talmudic scholar. “I’m not happy,” she pouted.

“Maybe you should try the grilled lobster in a creamy basil sauce.”

“We have nothing to say to each other.”

He lowered the menu and took a deep, weary sigh. “Want to go home and get naked?”

“I want to break up.”

“But I love you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

Vol. 8 reached across the table, his hand slightly shaking as he caressed the back of her neck. “Would you like a back rub?”

“No. I want you to talk to me. Say something to me without touching me.”

Vol. 8 sat there rigidly, his lower lip quivering slightly as he struggled to replicate - in dinner attire - the soul connection they always sparked whenever their bodies were locked in a carnal embrace. “You know,” he offered, “there’s a special on garlic mashed tonight.”

By the age of twenty-eight, Karen had accumulated seven more Volumes. On the day she ended it with Vol. 15, she was convinced she’d die a lonely woman - that is, until she met Vol. 16 that evening. Her mostly married friends had figured that she needed a break from dating, and so they dragged her out to the nearest night club where, they hoped, the throbbing sound system would pound the loneliness out of her soul for at least one night.

“But I hate the bar scene,” she protested.

“It doesn’t matter,” they assured her. “You need to let loose once in awhile.”

And so, while Karen’s frumpy, drunken girlfriends grinded away at each other on the dance floor, Karen sat back at the bar and mourned what might-have-been with Vol. 15. All around her, men flitted and gyrated around her air space like moths to a lamppost as her girlfriends took note with pained expressions. But she didn’t seem to notice - that is, until she turned to find a distinguished, middle-aged gentleman sitting at the stool beside her. He looked ruggedly weathered yet noble, seemingly strong and dependable, in the manner of the studs she used to pine for in the cigarette ads. Here was someone who would offer a kind shoulder to lean on, she mused. A guy with no ulterior motives, whose once-youthful libidinous fire was no doubt dampened by the wisdom and bitter-sweet tenderness of life experience. Their eyes met and he smiled, revealing a beautiful set of ivory white teeth.

By dawn the next morning, as they embraced one another in her bed, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief, secure at last that she had found her true, gold-embossed final Volume - Vol. 16. However, by mid-week, when it became shatteringly clear that he was not ever going to return her phone call, Vol. 16 was erased from the log books and promptly re-christened Senseless Fling No. 1.

Five years later, at the height of her beauty and the trough of her loneliness, she found herself struggling to convert Senseless Fling No. 178 into Vol. 19 for no other reason than that she had no more strength for the bar scene. But after three sweaty weeks of sampling the goods, he wasn’t buying. “I don’t know if I’m ready to commit at this stage in my life,” No. 178 explained to her on the eve of his 49th birthday.

“If you won’t commit, then you can’t keep the prize.”

He thoughtfully glared into her eyes, signaling perhaps that he was reconsidering. “I suppose the possession of such a beautiful face might be worth the price of a lifetime. But…”

“But what.”

He took a deep breath. “Beauty fades and” - he took another gulp of air - “even if it didn’t, can a man really live off of eye candy alone? Where are the nutrients? Where is…the soul?”

Five years previously, she might have spat in his face. Instead, she stonily replied, “I have a soul.”

He leaned over and patted her on the cheek in a display of empathy, but more likely a gesture of egoistic contempt. “Of course you do. We all do. But some of us need to amass content into our souls so that we have something to say, something to think, something to feel. That’s what makes us alive.”

She wanted to die. “How?” she asked, staring blankly at the wall ahead of her.

“I don’t know,” he yawned as he glanced at his watch. “Take up reading, I guess. Learn about life. Or something like that.”

Days later, she found herself at a book store, trolling the aisles like a zombie, mindlessly pulling out books - Ornithology Today, The Famine Of Patriarchy, Quantum Gardening - all in an effort to spike some intellectual content into that empty soul of hers. Thus loaded up with an armful of brain food, she stalked around for a vacant plush chair and ultimately plopped down on the floor, leaning her back against an aisle shelf when no seat could be found. For the next twenty minutes, her eyes dumbly wandered in a perpetual loop over the first paragraph of the prefatory notes to Ornithology Today. She barely made it through the acknowledgment section of Quantum Gardening when, in a burst of despair, she whipped the book against the shelf, and, struggling to tear the binding off of The Famine of Patriarchy, screamed, to no one in particular, “I want to diiiiiiieeeee!!”

“No, you don’t.”

She looked up, drying her eyes with the back of her hand as her forearm took care of the nose drippings. Standing before her was a man in a red flannel button-down and scuffed leather sneakers. He was possibly six feet, she estimated, bearing a gut in dire need of ab crunches. With a pug nose, beady eyes, and a double chin that melted into a fleshy neck, he looked strangely serene and content, as if he were just relaxing in his face. Kneeling down, he gently pried the mottled Patriarchy text from her hands. “You don’t want to die,” he assured her. “You’re just crying for help.”

He put out his hand to help her up. “I don’t…”

“As a friend,” he assured her.

His name was Adam. At the age of thirty-four, he was still living with his mother while running the family tool supply business ever since his father died six years previously. As they sat across from one another in a coffee shop, Adam looked hard into Karen’s eyes. “Such a beautiful woman,” he nodded sadly. “A shame you feel this way.”

“I’m not…” she started to say.

He put his finger to his lips to gently silence her. “I’m not here to pick you up, or manipulate you, or play you in any way. That must exhaust you so much.”

He could see that? she wondered. “I feel so alone sometimes,” she offered. “Nobody knows me.”

He closed his eyes, nodding his head once more. “I know, I know.” He cast his eyes down at the table, fiddling with a packet of Sweet ‘N Low. “They look into your eyes and they think that by beholding its contours, its color, its marvel of construction, that they’re beholding you - when, in fact, the real beauty lies behind them.”

Oh shit. She started to shake her leg impatiently.

“No, no,” he started. “I am looking beyond your face. You know what I see? I see all the pain, all the yearning. I see a woman struggling to understand herself. I see a woman open to growth at an age when most people start to numb themselves and call that contentment. That is the true beauty.”

A typical line, she thought to herself, as she took it all in with an ear by now attuned to the sugar-coated flirtations of 178 senseless flings and 18 jaded volumes of boyfriend material.

His eyes still cast down at the table, he now started to play with the pepper shaker. “It might sound like b.s., I know, but that’s what I see. It’s not just the men. It’s the women too. They all look at you and they peg you, and without even knowing it, your soul is chained to an image that they perceive - as if all you are is the physical image you project.”

Her eyes bored into him as his eyes bored down on the pepper shaker. He wasn’t particularly bad-looking, she surmised. He had strong masculine hands, yet there was something disconcertingly soft, almost feminine - not effeminate - about his face and body. Where do you locate the man in him? she wondered. Certainly not in the face, where every feature on it seemed to be in retreat; and that flaccid chin, rather than jutting out in manly defiance, was instead evocative of a flabby man reclining on a lawn chair. The height and the gut might have increased his overall masculine valence, but the effect was spoiled by a cheesy red flannel button-down that, no doubt, was picked out by his widowed mother. Where, then, could the man be located? She thought of No. 178 as she felt a nagging need to be embraced. She closed her eyes and listened.

As if on cue, he looked up from the shaker and stared intently at her. “You don’t necessarily learn life from books, you know. I think” - he scanned her face -“ I think that you never opened yourself up to love, to relate to another human being on a truly deeper level. I think there lies the solution to your troubles.”

Keeping her eyes tightly sealed, she focused on the pleasant tenor of his voice. In it, she could perceive the hidden core of the man, the pillar of wisdom and reliability that lay partly obscured by the ambivalent figure now sitting before her, playing with the pepper shaker. “It’s not just what you are now that intrigues me,” he went on, “it’s what you can become.”

“Tell me what I can become,” she implored him behind her shuttered lids.

His eyes focused on her full lips. “There are some things I can only show you, not tell you,” he replied.

Her eyes popped open and as they met his, he nervously flashed her a crooked smile. She returned the gesture, staring uneasily at his mouth. She took note - he had yellow teeth. As his eyes returned to the pepper shaker, he started to caress it. “Would you like to grab a Slurpee sometime?” he asked.

“Sure,” she lied.

“As friends.”

“Of course.”

“And your number?”

“Give me yours.”

Almost toppling out of his chair, he reached into his back pocket for the wallet. He slipped out a beaten card and lay it on the table in front of her, bookcased between the pepper shaker and the mauled Sweet ‘N Low packet. “This is my business number,” he pointed out to her. “If I’m not around,” he declared as he removed a pen from his flannel shirt pocket, “then you can try my cell number. Or,” he went on as he scrawled the cell number onto the card, “you can also try me at home, as late as you want. It’s my own line.” With all the pertinent data on it, he handed her the card, which she slipped into her purse. “And don’t forget,” he reminded her, “you can always leave a message.”

That night, lying in bed, Karen felt an overwhelming pang of loneliness. Reaching for the portable on her night table, she punched out the numbers, waited for the beep, and left a message for Senseless Fling No. 178. When, two nights later, he still hadn’t returned her call, she started to feel that tell-tale “buzz” at the back of her head - the one that signaled she had no idea what to do with the next minute or two of her life, much less the rest of it. “It’s over,” she declared to herself in a half-hearted attempt at closure. “Fuck him, anyway.”

Two minutes later, she was pacing the room, periodically checking for messages on her portable just in case he might have called when she had checked for messages thirty seconds previously. She was remembering his dimple, the one that reminded her of Tom Selleck and those cigarette ad studs she used to pine for, although No. 178 resembled neither. However, he did have a strong jawline and ivory white teeth, which evoked in her a sense of manly potency. And his greenish hazel eyes always brought back memories of Vol. 14, who, she felt, was the true love of her life until he was posted as a diplomatic intern to Haiti.

She desperately needed a break from her thoughts, but all her frumpy married girlfriends were no doubt deep in slumber by now. The book shop guy! it came to her in an epiphany. And with that, she dashed to her purse in search of the precious digits on that dog-eared business card.

“Hullo?” he answered in a frog croak. It was 4 a.m.

“I’ll take you up on that Slurpee.”

“Is that…you?” he croaked.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” he lied.

“I need to speak with somebody.”

“I’m here.”

“When can you come here?”

“Um” - a pause - “how’s two hours?”

“Not sooner?”

“I need to shower. And shave.”

“It’s just to talk.”

“I know, well, uh…please?”

“Ok, hurry.”

Less than two hours later, they were sitting on the curb outside a 7-Eleven, sharing one large-sized Slurpee . The early morning air was thick with his cologne. As she held the cup, he took a long, thoughtful slurp with his spoon straw and looked out upon the slow-moving traffic. “Ever notice how life happens in the small moments?” he mused.

“This is nice.”

“Karen.”

“Yes.”

Ssssslurrrp. “Company is everything.”

She looked him over as she shoveled out a small helping of flavored ice with the spoon end. Wearing a tweed blazer, cotton pants, dress shoes, and, of course, a flannel button-down, he seemed to her a bit over-dressed for a Slurpee run. “I’m not very good company,” she confessed.

“That’s not true.” Ssssslurrrp.

“You’re just here because you like my smile,” she said in a joking tone, yet believed it all the same.

“Actually,” he replied while stirring in an effort to break up the ice, “ I normally stay away from women who look like you.”

“What made me so special?”

“I saw the pain” - sssslurrrrp - “and I knew how to solve it.”

She turned to him, examining his profile. Sitting there, slurping away while highlighted in the light of dawn, he appeared to her as…cute - perhaps more attractive than she could reasonably surmise when first they met. She wanted to rest her head on his shoulder, to close her eyes and fall asleep as he recited the answer to her. “How do you solve it?” she asked.

Holding his face steady in profile, he addressed her by turning - fishlike - a lone eyeball to her. “Can I take you out to dinner?” he asked.

“Tonight?”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be.”

“I’ll call you at six.”

He called her later on that day at 6:53 p.m. “Are we still on?” he asked in a slightly quivering voice.

“Of course,” she replied as she pressed the pause button on her VCR.

At Chez Laurent, as her eyes scanned the menu, Adam looked up from his menu and scanned her features. Dressed in a black satin slip, complete with spaghetti straps, and topped with a scarlet red shrug, she was drawing the furtive glances of the bull-necked Puerto Rican busboy who was clearing the table beside them. “You look gorgeous tonight,” Adam blurted out as he started to caress the pepper shaker.

She smiled politely while silently taking note of his cracked and jagged cuticles – a clear sign of nail-biting. “I really enjoyed your company this morning,” he continued. “It’s just so rare for me these days to feel so…comfortable in someone else’s company. I haven’t had that, really, since my father died.”

“You were close?”

“Oh, very,” he answered as he proceeded to fondle the wine glass. “I remember how we used to…”

As he continued, she attempted to project a façade of rapt attention, maintaining it here and there with a strategically placed “mm hmm”, “oh, really,” and – when she sensed an upbeat change in tone – “wow”. Over Adam’s shoulder, she was eyeing the busboy as he casually cleared out a table for four, the veins in his smooth bull neck pulsating with the force of power cords holding up a grand chandelier. And his forearms – seemingly with each minimal exertion, a new sinew popping out, sharing a rhythm, exchanging chords, with the power cords in that bovine neck. And, she assumed, as he crouched down to retrieve a regurgitated morsel of grilled lobster from one of the seats, that under the creased busboy pants were two large oak legs wired up to the brim with popping sinews – to complete the jazz trio.

“…And my dad always thought, sure, I could do something with the business…”

“Mm hmm. Oh, really. Wow.” Her eyes returned to Adam: He has no neck, she noted to herself. Just a face dumped onto a set of shoulders. And of his fingers that were now nervously rolling torn pieces of napkin into the shapes of bulging spermatozoa: Too chubby.

With slightly trembling fingers, Adam raised the wine glass to his lips. “So tell me – what’s your passion?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, what kind of things interest you the most? For instance, I love to read. And you?”

“Oh. Birds. I like birds.”

He plopped down the glass, spilling a bit over the rim. “Oh yeah. Ornithology. They, uh, trace them back about – can you believe this? – to the dinosaurs.”

“Mm hmm. Oh, really. Wow.”

“And what’s really interesting…”

Over her shoulder, the busboy leaned in with a pitcher of water, refilling her glass. Such amazingly smooth forearms for a man. And as Adam held out his own glass for a refill, she noted of him: Hairy knuckles.

“I know a great place to look at birds.”

“Mm hmm. Oh, really.” Adam’s hand shook nervously as the busboy poured, and then he firmly placed his hand over Adam’s to steady it, his sinuous knuckles popping with the slight exertion. Beautiful long fingers. Graceful, even.

“I, uh” – nodding to the busboy – “thank you.” And an interesting face.

The busboy retrieved Adam’s spermatozoic art pieces from the table, deposited a fresh napkin down before him, and, with a grunt, moved off with the pitcher.

“Birds, uh, say a lot about you,” he went on while dabbing his double chin with the fresh napkin. One too many, she noted.

“Mm hmm. Oh, really.”

“Yes, they’re symbolic of uh, … transcendence. I mean, you want to transcend your present situation. To spread your wings, as they say, and be free.” He flashed her a tentative grin. Lips are too thin.

“I don’t understand. Why would I want to do that?”

He leaned forward, tearing into his new napkin. “Don’t you see? Because you’re in pain. Because your perception isn’t yours. Your views aren’t yours. Everyone has forced you into a box so you can only see things a certain way – their way. But you can’t win at that game. You’re less threatening to them when they perceive you that way.”

“You mean… stupid?”

“But you’re not! That’s my point.”

“I always” – she placed her hands daintily on her lap and straightened her back – “I always thought of myself as a potential intellectual.”

“You are! You are! And I can show you the way!” he excitedly proclaimed while creating a fresh batch of rolled spermatozoa out of his napkin.

“Okay, so tell me.”

“I can only show you.”

“Listen…” she groaned.

He raised his finger to silence her. “Let me show you now. Right now.”

“Don’t embarrass me.”

“No, no. I just want to move my chair next to you. May I move my chair next to you?”

As if that wasn’t the most popular opening move of every Wanna-Be-Senseless-Fling: “Stay right there.”

“Trust me.” His belly bucked up against the table, spilling a bit of wine over the rim of his glass, as he abruptly arose from his seat. She began to shake her leg nervously as he dragged his chair over to her, depositing himself directly beside her.

“What are you doing?”

A pause. “Bridging space.”

“You can’t sit beside me. This is a table for two. That’s one on each side.”

“I know, but it’s important that I show you something.”

“Then you should have reserved a table for four.”

He placed a steady, firm hand on her shoulder. “Trust me. By the end of the meal, you’ll see the difference.” He looked her hard in the eyes as his other hand firmly gripped the pepper shaker.

Almost three hours later, crowded together at one end of the table, he had baptized her satin slip in spilled oyster sauce, while she had garnished his green dress pants with an overturned café latte. Looking directly into her eyes, he smiled. “Do you see the difference now?” Together, they had discussed her childhood, analyzed her insecurities, plumbed the depths of her personality quirks, and examined her interactions with Volumes One through Six (clearly, Karen’s abridged version of her romantic life).

“I feel” – as she took another stab at removing the oyster sauce stain with a wet nap – “I feel like nobody has understood me more in my lifetime than you have in these last few hours.”

“And you know why?” Adam queried while doing battle with his own stain. “Because we bridged space. Don’t you see? Same restaurant, same ambience. Yet we altered our environment by bridging the space between us. We didn’t let the table determine our night.”

“I enjoyed the talk but” – she stopped – “I feel like the same person.”

Adam gently took the wet nap from her hands. “Give it time. I’ll show you.” Taking ahold of her chin, he drew her in, nibbling his stubbled, thin lips against her moistened lip gloss. He slowly pulled away, looking down as he began to tear away at the wet nap. “Are you free tomorrow night?”

Perhaps it was the light bearing down on him at that particular angle, yet at that moment, she noticed deep furrows creasing his forehead, coarsening what only moments before struck her as a charming, even pleasant, visage. “I’ll call you,” she replied.

“May I call you?”

“Yes.”

“When will you be home?”

“By seven. Call me then.”

She arrived home the next night at close to 2 a.m. There were six messages on her answering machine, five of them from Adam, the last one ending on a mournful note: “Uh … me again. It’s 11:30. I hope you’re okay. I mean, I hope you’re not dead, and you just forgot. But if you did forget, and you’re not dead, then I’d like to hear from you. Or if you just don’t want to return my call, I would appreciate it if you could at least call me back and let me know that you’re not calling me back. Anyway, uh … 853-5678. My own line. Call anytime.” Click.

She brushed her teeth, cleansed her pores, and, after watching the soap opera she had taped earlier in the day, she placed the call. “Hullo?” Adam answered in a frog croak. It was 3:23 a.m.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” he lied.

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“Where were you?”

“I was out.” A pause. “I hope I didn’t ruin your night.”

“No, no,” he lied.

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, no,” he lied.

“Anyway, I should be getting some sleep.”

“Listen, uh…that’s okay. We can re-schedule.”

“Call me.”

“When?”

“I’ll be home by seven.”

“Why don’t we make the plans now?”

“Pick me up at my place tomorrow night.”

“You say you’ll be home by seven?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll pick you up at ten.”

She returned home the next night at 11:28, bearing a heavy parcel of groceries, and finding Adam waiting in the lobby of her apartment building. As he looked up at her, a thin smile just barely disguised his dejected frame of mind.

“Sorry about that,” she repented as she offloaded the parcel into his arms.

“Where were you?”

“Out.” She pressed the elevator button. “Come on up.”

Inside her kitchen, while Adam was unpacking her groceries – at her request – she checked for messages on her portable. Her heart stopped at the fourth message: “Hey, baby. It’s 11:30. Just calling to see how you’re doing, if you’re still alive and all that. If you are still alive and not too pissed at me, I’d love to hear from you. You know the number.” Click. The voice was unmistakable – the sound of rolling gravel delivered in a nasal pitch. A voice seasoned to phlegmatic manliness through a two-pack-a-day nicotine habit. And despite all that, still maintaining those pearly whites: it was Number One-Seven-Eight, and – could it be? – he was calling because he missed her.

“Where should I put these?” Adam lightly inquired while holding up a package of extra-absorbent maxi-pads.

“I have to make a call.” She moved off to the next room with the portable, and, with her fingers quivering in nervous expectation, she dialed the number. When his voice message came on after three rings, she waited two more minutes and dialed again – just in case he might have been in the washroom on the first call. When he didn’t pick up on the second try, she tried once more, and after the beep, she left her message: “Hi. It’s me – Karen. It’s 11:38. Just got in. Give me a call. 642-76… well, you know the number, obviously. Take care.” She cradled the portable against her chest. It was now out of her hands.

She returned to the kitchen, zombie-like, clutching the portable in her rigor mortis grip. “It’s too late to go anywhere,” Adam stated as he carefully folded up the grocery bag. “How about a walk?”

“No,” she slurred in reply. “Let’s stay here.”

“Are you okay? You seem distracted.”

“I’m not. It’s just late and I’m tired.”

She plopped down at the kitchen table, the portable resting on her lap. Adam pulled up a chair beside her. “I want to talk to you.”

“I’m listening,” she droned while clearly distracted.

He gently caressed her hand, which in turn was gently caressing the portable. “Karen, I wish to God I came built with a zipper – you know, stretching from my chin to my belly button – so I could just unzip, step out of myself and say, ‘Here I am, sweetheart. See me now.’ Know what I mean?”

“I don’t like to be tested.”

“It’s the way I feel around you. I’m trying to build a connection here, a real flow of discourse with you, but instead I just catch myself wondering, ‘Is my forehead too furrowed? These fingers too chubby? Is there spittle drying at the sides of my mouth?”

“Not that I can see,” she assured him as her eyes prowled the corners of his lips.

He began to caress the antenna of her portable, while she took care of the digits. “I don’t know if it’s a vibe I get from you or maybe I’m nuts. A man shouldn’t be aware of such things. It’s like I’m under some intense spotlight, and if the light hits me at just slightly the wrong angle - bang! – I’m done. Who can function like this?”

“You think I’m a bitch,” she replied while checking her watch.

“Sweetheart, what I’m saying is, I just don’t have the words anymore to tell you what I think. I’m done with telling. Let me show you how I feel, how I see you. Let me show you how we can be together. I want you to see the connection that I see.” As he talked, her eyes were drawn to the dark, prickly hairs that were peeping out of his nostrils. In the harsh light of her kitchen, his skin seemed paler, his chin – flabbier, and his teeth – more yellowed than at any other time she had beheld him.

“Listen, I’m getting tired,” she yawned.

He placed his hand on her cheek. “I’m pressuring you.”

“No, really, I’m tired. Call me tomorrow. Okay?”

He patted her knee, kissed her cheek, and stood up. “It’s my mother’s birthday tomorrow night. I was going to take her to a play, just the two of us. I’d like to take you to meet her, even just as friends, if you’re up to it.”

“That’ll be nice,” she replied as she banged the portable against her knee. “Call me.”

All through the next day, she had called in for messages, hoping to hear from No. 178, yet instead getting messages from Adam. She deleted them. That night, she stayed in, cradling the portable in her lap while going narcoleptic in front of the television. And then…a ring.

“Did you get my messages?” It was Adam.

“I can’t talk now.” She was cursing herself for having been too cheap to have purchased the call waiting feature. And, in her mind, she was cursing Adam for not having the foresight to keep her line free.

“Should I call you later, then?” he asked.

“I’ll call you,” she replied, while at the same time making a mental note to call AT&T the next morning.

By the following night, she still had yet to hear back from No. 178. Lying on the sofa, resting the portable against her cheek, she was struggling to keep herself awake, like a soldier on late-night recon duty. And then…a ring.

“I didn’t hear back from you.” It was Adam.

“Sorry about that.”

“Am I calling you at a bad time?”

“No, no,” she lied. “I can talk now” – as she was now armed with call waiting.

For the next two hours, they discussed her childhood, analyzed her insecurities, plumbed the depths of her personality quirks, and examined her interactions with Volumes One through Six. “I’m really enjoying our conversation tonight,” she purred over the line to him, relishing the pleasant tone of his voice, and practically forgetting the gravelly one she was expecting to hear.

“Karen, I want to take you somewhere special tomorrow. Can you get off work early?”

“What did you have in mind?” she purred.

“It’s a surprise.”

“Okay, pick me up at two in the afternoon. But I have to be in early.” On the other hand, she thought, why cut short a possibly pleasant night for a man who, by now, clearly had no intention of calling her back? Fuck him. “No, we can stay out as late as we want.”

“You sure? I should pick you up at two? Sharp? I won’t have to wait?”

“I promise.”

He arrived the next day at 3:15. “You’re late,” she fumed.

“I just assumed you’d…”

“Well, don’t assume. Next time, be on time.”

They arrived at a municipal park forty minutes later. Adam, carrying a blanket and a case of beer under his arm, escorted her down to a tiny creek. “I wanted you to see the birds,” he explained. He unfurled the blanket, removing from it a glossy coffee table book. “I want you to have this,” he asserted as he passed her the book.

“What is it?”

“A book about birds.” Slightly nervous, he patted the blanket down on a grassy patch, and signaled for her to sit down beside him. She set herself down and, as he struggled with the twist-off cap of his beer bottle, she rifled through the pages of her bird book.

“This is beautiful,” she said, while gently fingering a glossy photograph of a Lady Amherst Pheasant.

“That’s a Lady Amherst Pheasant. They’re from India. If you read the text, it tells you…”

“I just like to look at the pictures.”

For the next three hours, they sat on the blanket, intermittently watching the birds while discussing her childhood and analyzing her insecurities; guzzling beer as they plumbed the depths of her personality quirks; and cuddling as they examined her interactions with Volumes One through Six. “I’m really enjoying our time together,” she mused as she caressed his stubby fingers.

“See what I’m saying?” he said excitedly. “I knew you could feel the energy between us if you gave it a chance.”

“Nobody understands me like you do.”

“I do, I do.”

“You see beyond the eyes. Beyond the pretty face. You see me.”

“I do, I do.”

“I have a soul, don’t I? A beautiful soul.”

“You do, you do.”

She closed her eyes, and listened to his voice. She would have to buy him a less pungent cologne, she resolved, and maybe even new shoes. And, for the first time since she had met him, she was feeling – although enhanced, perhaps, by her beer buzz – butterflies.

They arrived back at her apartment building after 3 a.m. As they stumbled, arm-in-arm, into the lobby, he stopped. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

He looked into her eyes, calm and lovingly. “I don’t think it’s safe that I come up.”

She massaged her forehead. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to spoil the energy. I want this to be different for you – not all drunken and sloppy. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” she burped.

“Karen” – he nuzzled his nose up against her cheek, his nostril hairs slightly tickling her- “I love you.”

She stared back at him. From a distance of three inches, it was not the type of face she had envisioned to spend an eternity with. Perhaps after I sign him up to a fitness club, she reasoned.