Episode-4: No Swagger

Alice had refused to drive with Stockbroker324, whose name turned out to be Nick, so she followed him to the restaurant. In the car she blasted Brit pop for no other reason than it made her feel perverse and argumentative. It made her feel like being a dark and difficult smart-ass punk. Which she was, just not on a regular basis. That was one reason she loved Joe so much. He was the physical manifestation of what she wanted her soul to be: dark, brooding, and brash. She might have been the same to him, the picture of his soul, but she doubted it. Joe was infinitely more complicated than Alice and she loved that too, trying to dissect and unravel him, she missed it. And in the car listening to Arctic Monkeys prattle on about sex and vulgar apathy she felt something akin to swagger. She put on red lipstick as she pulled into the restaurant. Nick opened her door for her and as she got out she breathed in his cologne and wrinkled her nose.

“This isn’t where I had intended to go,” Nick said, his face betraying nothing to Alice, “but it’s the only place I could think of without a dress code.” Alice flashed the sardonic smile she love to bestow on Sisko.

“You’ll have to forgive me, my mother set this up. I didn’t really want to come.”

“Well, this should be fun then.” Nick said as Alice walked ahead of him. It was a seafood restaurant, most of the places in Morro Bay were seafood restaurants. Alice entered the restaurant first and gave her name to the hostess. She turned and Nick was sitting in a seat near the door pointing to an empty spot next to him. Alice sat down.

“You know, you’re really pretty. That picture you put up on the site didn’t do you justice.”

“So, you’re a stock broker?” Alice asked, watching a family eating at a table near them. Nick cleared his throat.

“Yep. Do you know anything about preferred stocks?”

“Nope. Do you know anything about polyommatinae?” Nick let out an audible sigh.

“You’re really going to make this hard aren’t you?”

“Why are you being so persistent? You could have just bailed back at the house.”

“Sometimes the things you have to work for turn out to be the best things of your life.”

“I am neither a thing nor a tough nut to crack.” Alice was losing her swagger, the thought of keeping this up all through dinner just made her exhausted.

“Ok, ok, I get it. I can’t possess you. Didn’t mean to make it sound that way. I’m just not a quitter is all and I’m guessing, you have a cute little smile under all that toughness.” he raised his eyebrows. Alice furrowed hers.

“I’m not really a starter.”

“What does that mean?” Nick seemed to like this game.

“It means I don’t want to be here.” Alice ran for the second time that night, Nick calling out an apology after her. Alice knew she was the one who should be sorry, but she couldn’t be coy or flirtatious with a stock broker. With anyone.

It was dark, it was late and she had to work in the morning. Home meant facing her mother. The restaurant meant facing a reality she wasn’t ready for. She picked up her cell phone and called Sisko.

“Let me guess,” Sisko said on the other end, “you hate him?”

“Just tell mom I’m coming home, and if she’s there when I get back I’ll kill her.” Alice hung up the phone. She was half serious. Her father and Sisko would cover it up, they were good at that sort of thing. It’s not like they liked her either.

As Alice sat in her car outside the restaurant a dragonfly landed on her windshield. Anisoptera, she mouthed to herself, but she didn’t know exactly which species. She watched the big-eyed killer. It was dark and she couldn’t make out its color, reddish maybe, but its complexly veined wings shimmered in the streetlamp lighting the parking lot. Her grip loosened on the steering wheel as it just sat there. Alice never killed dragonflies for specimens. They lost their color when they died, a verification, she thought, that they were not as ephemeral as the butterflies she studied and should be left to fly.