“So like, what’s your deal, anyway?”

“My deal?”

“Sure, your deal. Like, what’s your thing? Everyone’s got a thing, right? You must. Mine’s my music. I like, totally live for it, man. Like, it’s more important than air. Fucking righteous, right?”

“Sure, I guess. I guess I see what you’re saying.”

Clara, unfailingly polite in all circumstances, most certainly did not see. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the importance of having a passion, because she did. Clara made that a goal for every day she lived, to do so with passion about the things she chose to take on. That being said, the idea that music was more important that air? That was a little bit tough to swallow. Maybe she would have been able to get behind it if this guy had been, say, a concert pianist or a bona fide opera singer or something else along those lines. It would still have sounded a little bit extreme, but she would have gotten it. The thing was, unless this guy was hiding something major from her, and he didn’t strike her as the kind of guy to keep much of anything to himself, Greg wasn’t some kind of closet Pavarotti. He was just one of those seemingly endless New York City twenty-something guys, who fancied himself the next Kurt Cobain, but had no real job. And just to add the extra little cherry on the top of the Sunday, he appeared to be able to talk about himself without end. Seriously, she was pretty sure he’d been talking about himself nonstop for the last forty-five minutes. It was a wonder he hadn’t passed out cold from lack of breath. One the one hand it made things easier, she supposed she had to give him that. A lot of the time first dates, especially first dates set up by somebody else, were a constant battle of being as charming as possible while still making sure that she didn’t talk so much that she came off as arrogant or full of herself. With this Greg, on the other hand, it didn’t seem to matter if she said a single word. He seemed so happy talking about himself that she completely forgot that he’d actually asked her a question.

“So like, do you, or what?”

“Do I?”

“Right. Do you?”

“I’m sorry, I must be tired. I’m not sure what you’re asking me. Do I what?”

“Do you have a thing? A this-is-more-important-than-fucking-air thing? Like me and my music.”

“Oh! Oh, right. I’m sorry about that.”

“You sure do apologize a lot, you know? Somebody must have done a number on you something good.”

“A number?”

“Sure. Like the higher ups in the establishment. The parental units. They make us feel like we’re always right on the edge of fucking up, you know? They make us feel like we’re always wrong or something. Then we wind up apologizing for every fucking thing, the way you’re doing. That’s what I mean by a number.”

“Oh, I see. Then no, I guess I’d have to disagree with you there. I don’t think I would say anyone ever did a number on me. I had a completely normal upbringing. One of those boring suburban childhood kinds of things. Not a whole lot to complain about. I guess I’ve always just thought it was important to be polite. People like to be treated well, I think. At least in my experience they do.”

“Aw man, that’s a bunch of bullshit though!”

“Um, it is?”

“Sure, it is!”

“But why?”

“Because, man! That’s what they want us to think! You know who ‘they’ are, right?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“The man, that’s who! The fucking man, Clarice!”

“It’s Clara, actually.”

But Greg wasn’t listening to her anymore, and if she was being honest, he hadn’t been interested in listening to a word she might have said, not from the very beginning. He wasn’t listening now because he was off on a tangent of epic proportion. Clara had absolutely no interest in listening to a tirade on the evils of the establishment, especially coming from a guy who had told her straight away that he “didn’t believe in day jobs.” She was still too polite to do anything but nod along and make herself appear interested, however, and so she sat through all fifteen minutes of his rambling, aggressive speech, a speech that was quickly getting loud enough that Clara wouldn’t have been surprised if the bartender came over and told him to cool it. Which wouldn’t have actually bothered her a bit. Hell, she wouldn’t have cared if they got thrown out of the place. It would be an easy way for her to make her excuses and finally go home, and it wasn’t as if this was a place she planned on returning. She had agreed to meet Greg at his “usual watering hole” because she was accommodating, but she didn’t really see herself coming back to the sawdust-covered punk-alt bar where the bathroom stalls had no doors and there were hypodermic needles laying casually on the hallway floor. Honestly, getting kicked out might be the best thing that could happen to her, something she would never have believed she’d think.

While Greg continued to go off about the evils of banks and the president and any other person or establishment that might have had something more than what he had, Clara looked around her discreetly. The first place her eyes wandered was to the bar, hoping to see an unhappy look about Greg’s steadily increasing volume, but she met nothing but disappointment there.  Not only did said bartender not look bothered, he didn’t even look like he noticed. He was too busy talking a mile a minute in his own disgruntled sounding conversation while smoking one awful smelling cigarette after another. From the jumpy, jittery look of him, this guy had almost certainly partaken in his own extracurricular drug activity, something on the opposite side of the spectrum from the stuff that came in the needles.  With that little bit of hope squashed, her eyes travelled around to the rest of the patrons in the place. When she looked at them and then glanced down at herself, it was all she could do not to laugh right out loud. At the moment, she was almost exclusively responsible for all of the color in the room. Everyone around her was wearing muted tones, mostly black, while she had on a bright blue dress that made her blonde hair and blue eyes shine. She had a look vaguely reminiscent of a girl from the forties, and here she was, surrounded by a bunch of angry punk rockers and grunge band wannabes.

“Are you gonna get that or what? Your phone’s ringing.”

“Shoot! Sorry about that. Hold on, give me one minute.”

Clara grabbed her purse and headed for the door, where she stepped out of the musky bar and into a New York City evening that was still positively sweltering. It was the kind of hot that made a girl feel like she couldn’t breathe right, like no matter what she did there would never be enough air to combat the oppressive weight of the humidity laden air.

“Hello?”

“Jesus, Clara! Is it really going that badly?”

“Is what going that badly? What are you talking about?”

Elsie, one of Clara’s very favorite people she’d met at work, and probably one of her favorite people period, let out a hearty laugh that made Clara smile right along with her. It was a laugh she’d heard coming out of her friend a lot lately, more in the last seven months than she’d heard in the whole time she’d known her before. As far as Clara was concerned, and she knew her other friend, Finnley, was of the same opinion because the two of them had talked about it on more than one occasion, Elsie was basically a modern-day Disney movie in the making. That whole classic romantic tale of a regular girl being swept off of her feet by the handsome, wealthy prince? Yeah, that was pretty much what Elsie Morrow had going on with Caleb Grant. She had found him to be just about the most annoying, most arrogant waste of space ever to exist at the beginning of their odd work arrangement, but by the time it was all said and done, the two of them had fallen for each other—hard. Ever since then, her world had been a complete whirlwind. Clara still had a hard time believing it was real when she saw pictures of Elsie and her billionaire love on the cover of entertainment magazines while waiting in line for her morning coffee. It was no wonder the two were so highly photographed, though. They were an absolutely beautiful couple, and there was nothing the American public loved more than a real life Cinderella story, especially when it involved the reformation of a previously notoriously good-looking and equally badly behaved playboy bachelor.

“The date, Clara! Good lord, it must be pretty awful if you don’t even know what I’m talking about. What did I tell you about letting Bradley set you up with somebody?”

“Um, nothing?”

“Bullshit, nothing! I told you several somethings, if I recall. Which you know I do.”

“Come on, let’s not talk about the date. I was hoping you were calling to say you were coming back to work! You know, the something I’ve been talking about to you.”

“Nuh uh. No way. I told you, Clara. I’m not coming back there. I love you guys, honestly, I do, but it just didn’t work anymore after the way everything shook down with Caleb. Too many people know who I am now. You have no idea how hard it was doing my job that way. And honestly, the things I’m getting to do with the Grant Corporation are crazy cool. I’m not really supposed to talk about them, but let’s just say I’ve never worked for a place that has the kind of budget these guys do. And they literally never expect me to come into the office, which is one of my favorite parts.”

“Plus, you get to sleep with the boss.”

“Clara!”

“What?” She laughed, feeling herself blush at her uncharacteristic comment despite the fact that there was nobody else around to hear it. “It’s true!”

“It is, but I’m just surprised to hear you say it. There may be hope for you yet, Miss Blake.”

“You think?”

“I know. Now stop stalling. Tell me about the date.”

“Truth?”

“Truth.”

“It’s awful.”

“Ha! I knew it! Not that I want to be the one to say I told you so, but I so freaking did.”

“I know you did,” Clara moaned, stumbling and almost falling over as two very drunk, heavily pierced men came crashing out of the bar’s front door, whistling at her and saying things she would never in a million years have repeated as they made their way down the sidewalk, “but Bradley was just so excited to set me up, you know? I didn’t want to let him down.”

“But you should! When letting Bradley down means avoiding the worst date ever, you should absolutely do it! No questions asked. Anyone who had a problem with it would have been a total asshole.”

“But it’s his girlfriend’s cousin. He promised her he’d find a nice girl for him to go out with, and that’s sort of a compliment, right?”

“What, that Brad thinks you’re a nice girl?”

“I don’t know, it seemed sort of sweet.”

“We all think you’re a nice girl, hands down the sweetest girl I know. Doesn’t mean you should be made to suffer for it.”

“Yeah, well. It’s just the once time. Not the end of the world.”

“We could pretend it is.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Come on, it’s so easy to get out of shit like this! All you have to do is go inside and tell the jackass—”

“His name’s Greg.”

“Tell Greg the asshole that someone called with an emergency and you’re very sorry, but you’ve got to go. Then you’re out of there, no problem. You can come and meet me and Caleb. We’re going to some sushi place. He’s totally excited about it, but I have a feeling I’ll be bored. Unless you come, that is.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Sure, you can! Come on, it’ll be so much fun!”

“That’s too mean, Elsie. And you know I’m a terrible liar. He’ll totally know I’m lying, and then I’ll feel like a terrible person.”

“Ugh. Why do you have to be so good, Clara?”

“I’m not trying to be.”

“I know. That’s what makes it so sick. Fine, finish your date. But if you manage to get out of it at a decent time and still want to meet up, call me. We really would have fun. And I miss you!”

Clara told Elsie that she missed her too, very much, and then reluctantly hung up the phone. She wouldn’t accept Elsie’s invitation to fake some kind of emergency to get her out of her terrible date, but she would have been lying if she’d said she wasn’t tempted. Instead, she took a deep breath, wrinkling her nose at the distinct scent of urine that hit her like a brick wall, and returned to the bar. She felt sort of rude for having been out on the phone for so long, but it seemed as if Greg hadn’t even noticed. What he had done was order a round of shots, one of which he insisted on her taking despite her weak protests that shots weren’t really her kind of thing.

As it turned out, he didn’t really care what her kind of thing was. He only cared about what he was interested in and what he wanted to do, which in this case was to drink. By the time she was ready to leave the bar, she was more than a little bit wobbly on her feet. Greg had still shown no signs of slowing down and did his best to convince her to stay with him at the bar, but after three hours, even Clara felt that she’d done her duty as far as a date went. She called herself a cab and burst back out into the night, hardly even caring about the smell anymore because she was so grateful to be out of the increasingly loud and testosterone-driven bar.

Unfortunately, Greg decided that would be his moment to act chivalrous and so he insisted on following her and waiting alongside her for her car to arrive. When he turned to face her, putting his rough hands on both of her shoulders and drawing her in closer to him, she cringed and did her best to draw away. The problem was that, despite being a self-professed do nothing, he was also a whole lot stronger than she was. Even with her practically dragging her heels in the dirt, he was able to pull their two bodies together with little-to-no problem whatsoever.

“So this was a good time, baby. What do you say?”

“Sure,” she said uncertainly, wanting desperately to free herself from his grip and not able to figure out exactly how to do so. “Maybe. I’m honestly pretty busy right now. You know, with Elsie gone from—”

This was the most she had actually tried to speak throughout the entire length of the date, and it was still too much for Greg the anti-establishmentarian to handle. Instead of letting her finish her sentence, which was apparently too much for him to take, he rocked forward on unsteady heels and planted the sloppiest kiss she’d ever had to suffer through right on her lips. Or to be more accurate, part of the way on her lips. He was too far gone to make sure that he landed there with one-hundred-percent accuracy and about a third of his slobbery show of affection landed beside the right corner of her mouth, where no man’s tongue had ever been and should never be again.

“Oh! Oh, hold on a minute.”

Clara gasped and put her hands up to his chest in a “warding off” gesture, something he either genuinely or intentionally misunderstood. Instead of stopping what he was doing, Greg tried to pull her into him even tighter, allowing her an unfortunate feel of the erection rapidly rising in his too tight jeans.

“You like that, baby?”

“No! Actually, I don’t think I do. Please let go of me. That’s what I would like.”

For a second, she was really convinced that he wasn’t going to let her go despite her overly blunt words, and she wondered what she would do then. Would any of the people passing by on the street stop and assist her? It was a nice thought, but she had a pretty good feeling it wasn’t going to happen. This was New York City, after all. This guy could probably douse her in gasoline and light her on fire and nobody would stop to try and put her out. They’d just keep on walking, leaving her to burn. She really did need to take one of those self-defense classes if she was going to let herself get into positions like this in the first place. It was something she’d always meant to do, but one of those things that rarely crossed her mind until she was in a position to really, really wish she’d done it. She was sure she would have known what to do if she’d done it though. She was sure she’d know exactly which part of his eye to poke her fingers in or which part of his instep to stomp down on to get him to let go of her and then some. Fortunately for her, the Incredible Hulk this guy was not, and although he was inarguably stronger than her, he was also more than a little bit drunk. One good hard shove got him off of her completely, allowing her to focus on her need to get the taste of his smoke-laden saliva out of her mouth as quickly as humanly possible. While she riffled through her purse looking for the mint that would, in this particular circumstance, feel just like a godsend, Greg began to sputter and shout.

“What the hell? Like, what the hell’s the matter with you?! Are you one of those crazy women? Like those banshee types that lead a guy on, only to act like a psychopath?”

“No! I’m nothing like that!”

“Well then how come you’re acting like such a bitch? You got some other kind of reason for it?”

“I’m not acting like a bitch,” she answered in a small voice, both furious and mortified and trying very hard not to cry. “I don’t think it makes me a bitch. I just don’t want you kissing me. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

“Well then you shouldn’t have acted like you were into me this whole time!”

“Being polite? You’re seriously angry at me for being polite?”

He laughed at her then, a nasty laugh that made the part of her that was angry grow exponentially, and rolled his eyes. When he ran his hands through his greasy, overly long hair, she could see little flakes of dandruff. She could also see that he hadn’t washed it in a disturbingly long time, one of those basic hygiene things a person in his twenties should have learned already.

“Oh, I get it. I get your whole deal now.”

“I honestly don’t have a deal. I just don’t want to kiss you.”

“Sure, you do. You’re one of those prudes. I bet you don’t let a guy touch you for at least a year. Lead him on until he’s got blue balls from hell and laugh about it when you’re hanging out with your friends. Yeah, I know your type. You’re hot, but you’re not worth that kind of trouble. Good luck finding a guy who’s willing to put up with your shit.”

He laughed again, louder this time, and looked around to see if anybody else was seeing what he was dealing with. Clara was suddenly sure that if he’d seen somebody he knew, he would have called him over and brought him up to speed so that the two of them could try and humiliate her as a team. There was nobody, though, nobody who would come and ridicule her with him, and she supposed she could thank God for small favors on that one. Also, when Greg didn’t see any of his buddies, he spat right beside her feet and then turned and went back inside the overly loud, overly crowded bar, making sure to give her one more solid eye roll as he went. After that, she was left standing on her own on a New York City street corner for a good ten minutes before her cab showed up, as more and more of the pseudo rockers and stone-cold goths streamed past her and into Greg’s favorite bar. By the time she got home, she was beyond exhausted, her nerves completely frayed and her head throbbing with what felt like the start of a truly wicked migraine. She flopped back onto her couch, then smiled a little when her cat jumped up from the floor and landed directly on top of her stomach.

“Well, it was a disaster. Just like everyone knew it would be.”

The cat just looked at her with his strange, golden eyes. Bo, a name Elsie thought was ridiculous but that felt perfectly fitting as far as Clara was concerned, was the closest thing Clara had to a roommate, which was something she was usually pretty much okay with. At the moment, however, she was feeling very much alone, and it wasn’t something a cat, even a cat she was very fond of, was going to be able to take care of. She thought about texting Elsie and seeing what she was up to, but she knew that would bring on another bout of insistence that she come out and meet the two lovebirds, and she most definitely was not feeling up for anything like that. There was really only one thing she wanted, only one thing she could think of that would make her feel better, and that was a thing she could never have.

“Of course, it is,” she sighed to herself, smiling forlornly when Bo gave her a little look that told her she should really find somebody more interested to do her complaining to, “that’s how people are, right?”

She was being ridiculous. She knew she was being ridiculous, too; it was just that—in this case—knowing it didn’t seem to do much to keep her from being that way. The thing she really wanted to do was to call her mom and the reason that was a totally ludicrous thing to want was that she didn’t have a mom. Or she might, it was always possible whoever had given birth to her was still out there somewhere, but if she did, she didn’t know the woman from a stranger on the street. She’d never met her, not even once. She had no way of knowing for sure, but something, some kind of gut feeling, told her that she hadn’t even met her as a baby still in the hospital. Instead of going home to a warm, loving home, Clara had been carted off to an orphanage run by exacting, formidable nuns. It would have been wrong to say she hadn’t gotten something good from her time there, especially when she’d wound up in such a healthy place as an adult, but it hadn’t been the kind of home she’d hoped for. It hadn’t been the kind of home any child hoped for, and for more years than she liked to remember, she’d waited for the fabled couple to come and whisk her away every bit as fervently as a typical child might wait for Santa Claus or the  Tooth Fairy. It had never come, though, and to this day, she didn’t have a single piece of family—aside from the one she’d forged for herself. So in short, no, there would be no heart-felt, late-night phone call to a mom who would commiserate with her and tell her that all guys were the wrong guy until you found the right one. There would be nothing but her cat, and it would have to do.

“We’ll manage all right, won’t we, Bo? We’ll just have to, that’s all.”

As if to punctuate the point that he had no intention of sticking around and listening to her all night, Bo stood, his little toes retracting his claws as he did so that she winced with the feel of them digging into her belly, then hopped haughtily to the ground. So then she would have to manage alone. Whether she liked it or not, she would have to manage, and when she woke up in the morning, no longer just a little bit drunk and a little bit depressed from a truly terrible date, everything would feel just fine again.