Me and Samantha are really
hitting it off, and I can’t believe my luck. Since Arlene
dumped me less than a year ago, I’ve been digging myself
into a hole and bitching about getting dirty. Now, for
the first time in a long while, I’m looking up and seeing
daylight in the face of a dark-haired beauty with incredible
deep eyes.
I tell her this and she says, “Don’t
give up your day job. You’d make a lousy poet.”
At first, I don’t know what
to say. Arlene was always serious. I remember showing her
my video collection of old Monty Python clips, especially
my favorite one, “Man with Tape Recorder Up His Nose.” That’s
the one where a man comes out on a stage, sticks a finger
up his nose and music comes out. It cracks me up every
time I even think about it, but all Arlene could say was, “I
don’t get it. It’s silly and pointless.”
“Of course, it’s silly and
pointless,” I said. “That’s the point.”
“I still don’t get it,” she
said.
So I watch Samantha laughing
at my pathetic attempt at honesty and I decide this isn’t
a good time to tell her I’m not really a private detective,
like I told her. I just said that to explain why I was
hanging around outside her building.
What happened was I drove
by her apartment house one night and accidentally caught
a glimpse of her naked. Since then, I’ve been obsessed,
spending more time than I care to admit parked outside
her apartment, hoping to get another look. But earlier
today, her ex was bothering her and I scared him off. So
she sees me as a hero.
And she agreed to have coffee
with me.
I change the subject. “Do
you like Monty Python?”
She stands up, right there
in this coffee shop with the waitress and a half-dozen
customers looking at us, sticks out her right leg and shakes
it while twitching her head like a bird on speed and waving
spastically with her left arm. She takes about two steps
like that and turns around. We both shout, “The Ministry
of Silly Walks!” And we spend like the next hour talking
about our favorite Python skits.
We even get serious and talk
about how neither of us believes in any one religion, but
in some kind of spirit that wants us to do right in spite
of ourselves. This leads us somehow to politics and how
we think the present administration is all messed up. She
takes my hand, kind of makes her bottom lip disappear and
looks at me with the darkest, deepest eyes I’ve ever seen.
“I’m responsible,” she says. “I
voted for Ralph Nader the first time.”
“So it was you!” I shout.
And we laugh some more.
All the time I’m thinking,
what should be my next move? I’m wishing I shaved in the
last few days or at least used deodorant this morning.
I’m worried about coming on too strong. After all, I’m
not exactly every woman’s dream. I’m a little over six
feet and weigh one-forty after a heavy bowl of pasta. My
hair is kind of dirty brown and it doesn’t exactly stay
in place. A former girlfriend said I look sort of like
a mop with an Adam’s apple and a dick. I want to ask her
out on a real date, but I’m afraid.
While I’m torturing myself,
she says, “So, when are you going to invite me to your
place to watch “Monty Python and the Holy Grail?”
I almost swallow my tongue.
I’m trying to act cool because this is the most beautiful
woman I’ve ever seen, even if her nose is a little crooked
and her top front teeth kind of overlap. “Um, well...” and
I start stuttering like an idiot.
That’s when she gets this
look on her face, where her eyes are so big they look like
they’re going to pop out. “You’re the one who rang my doorbell
about a week ago, aren’t you? You buzzed me and then you
started stuttering.”
I try to deny it by looking
innocent and not saying anything.
“You woke me up. When I looked
out the window, you’re the guy I saw running to his car
and driving away, aren’t you?”
“No, well, yeah...you see,
I uh, was testing the security of your building so I rang
a few buzzers and nobody let me in, so I left. Your building
passed its security inspection, by the way.”
“You’re full of shit.”
I don’t know what to say.
If I tell her the truth, I figure she’ll freak out. If
I tell her I found out her name and ran a computer check
of her, she’d think I’m some kind of stalker, which, of
course, I am. But in a good way. I mean, all I want to
do is get to know her and get her to know me. I can’t think
of a good story, so I take a chance. “Yeah, that was me.” I
kind of mumble and hang my head. “I just wanted to hear
your voice.”
She stares at me. I see her
cock her head to one side and wrinkle her forehead until
her eyebrows almost come together. Then she reaches across
the table, gives me one of those Elaine-Benis-from-Seinfeld
shots to the shoulder, and laughs. “You almost had me.
That guy was shorter than you and creepy looking.”
Before I can speak, she looks
at me with those incredible eyes and says, “So are we going
to your place or not?”
Later that night, we’re in
bed together. We just had sex that was so good, I think
if I died right now, it would take major reconstructive
surgery to wipe the grin off my face.
“Samantha, I have something
to tell you,” I say without thinking. But then I hold back
telling her the truth. Maybe there really is a spirit in
me that wants me to do the right thing, but I don’t know
what the right thing is. She could really be the one. I
want to be honest with her, but how do you tell a woman
you’re in bed with that you’ve been stalking her?
She kisses me
while I’m rearranging the words in my head like I’m playing
some kind of crazy game of Scrabble. “You know me well enough
to call me Sam,” she says and giggles.
She really giggles. And I
think I’m falling in love. I’ve only known her for a few
hours, so it’s dumb to think about love, I know, but I’m
already imagining I’m introducing her to my parents and
my father says to Sam, “So you think you can put up with
him, eh?” And she says, “Yes, sir. For the rest of my life.” And
my mother hugs her and says, “There’s nothing to you. Let
me fix you a sandwich. Ham and cheese, maybe some potato
salad?” And I put my arm around Sam and say, “I love her
just the way she is.” And we all laugh and hug, like we’re
a real family.
I don’t even see my mother
spaced out on her pills or my father sleeping off last
night’s hangover.
“So what do you want to tell
me?” Sam asks as she sits up on one elbow and lets the
covers drop so I see her little round breasts with tiny
pink nipples. I think of the first time I saw them from
my car as I passed her apartment window. I kiss her, then
I give each of her breasts a peck, and I say, “I just wanted
to tell you how much I . . . like you.”
“Well, I like you, too,” she
says and reaches her arm around to grab me by the hip and
pull me towards her. We kiss some more. Then she says, “Now
tell me what you really wanted to say.”
And I tell her how I want
to be honest with her and how I hope one day I can look
her in the eye and say, “I love you.”
She smiles. “Good line. How
many times have you used that one?
“A couple, but this time
I mean it.”
She laughs. “So when are
you going to tell me why you’ve been hanging around my
apartment building and why you rang my bell last week?”
I look at her and feel my
heart pounding like it’s decided to stop backing up the
rest of my body and do a solo. “You know?”
“As soon as I saw that beat
up old Toyota of yours, I knew it was you.”
“And you got
in my car anyway and let me take you to my place and…”
“Fucked your brains out.
Yeah. I figured, how dangerous could you be if you like
Monty Python?”
“But I could have been some
kind of deranged serial killer? You should be more careful,
you know.” Then I realize I’m trying to protect her from
me. I’m wondering if maybe the world slipped off its axis
and nothing is real anymore. I think maybe this is just
another one of my fantasies and I’ll wake up and be Wendell
Millikins again, computer web designer, and all around
dweeb.
But it isn’t
a fantasy. Sam is real. She knows who I am, and she likes
me anyway.
I tell her the truth about
how I saw her that first time and why I was hanging around
her apartment building today. I even tell her how I checked
her out on the computer and found information she sent
to a computer dating service.
“So you’ve been stalking
me?” She rearranges herself on the bed and pulls the covers
back over her breasts.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been parking in front
of my building hoping to get another peek at me nude?”
“Yes.”
“That’s sweet,” she says,
and giggles. “But does this mean you’re not really a detective?”
I nod. When I see the look
of disappointment on her face, I add, “But I could be.”
“And I could be your assistant.
And we could go on stake outs together.”
“Sure. I’ll use my detective
name, Peter Owens, and you can be…”
“Sam Owens,” she says, smiling
and kissing my lips. “We could be a husband and wife detective
team.”
She rests her
head on my chest and starts humming the theme from the old
Monty Python show. We both make farting sounds at the appropriate
places.
# # #
