Awkward Occurrences

[Arsène]

AU

It was the moonlit interior of a foreign-made car; a dreary little world interrupted only when a passing car's lights caught the rear view mirror. Sudden chills would come in from the window, which was opened just a crack to let the build-up of cigarette smoke seep out. The radio was turned down low and tuned into an Eighties mix station. The cheerful, sickeningly sweet melody of The Culture Club's Karma Chameleon seemed out of place and macabre. The driver, who leaned back so far his seat almost swallowed him, was tense and chain smoking. Again and again, he flicked lit little sticks out his window, their embers spilling onto the wet pavement. The car was a a stuffy haze of smoke, and the heater continued to pump out warm air at an alarming rate.

"Calm down," thought the man as he rubbed his forehead with one hand and took a long drag with the other. He had never been on a blind date in his life, and the cold sweat the dripped down his back was a dead giveaway. His gray eyes darted towards the dashboard clock; it read eight in dimly lit green letters.

"She's taking a long time." The driver could not comprehend why he had allowed himself to be put in such a situation. His friend, Li, had told him he needed to go out more. His life of a recluse was driving anyone who still cared about him batty. He took one last long, delicious puff from his cigarette before throwing it out. He swore to himself it would be the last one of the evening, as he stared up at the lit apartment on the opposite side of the street. He thought of calling her one more time, but their previous calls had been a brief exchange of 'I'll be right there.'

"Arsène, you can do this." His pale fingers plowed through long, cascading waves of hair. "You can do this."

[La Fantasque]

She was lounging on her bed, the back of her head lazily propped on her forearm as she looked up to a browning pattern of water stains. The plumber said something had clogged during the melt of spring, or unclogged when it was not supposed to, and that had caused a significant leak. Of what he said he would do or what he actually did afterwards, she had no exact recollection save for the smell of a burning hole in her wallet. Yet another debt to reimburse, another month of delay in paying the rent for a shoddy two and a half – another brick to an already wobbling tower of worries.

And now, a blind date set up by her best friend who, despite her best intentions, had a rather loose grasp of what activities relieved stress and what merely added to it. According to Li Chang, a nicely groomed young man coming to pick her up in the night’s cool air with a bouquet of fragrant flowers in hand was supposed to be a good thing. Never mind the fact that he was a complete stranger, that she could dislike him from the very start or worse, that he would feel that way about her. Never mind that she had no dress to wear this evening and that she would have no choice but to freeze in a summer gown. Never mind that they might be going Dutch and that her scarce savings would take another blow.

Never mind that I never asked you. Feeling frazzled, she curled to her side and pressed a button on an old, cut-price CD player, a motion answered by the sentimental croon of Barry Manilow’s Can’t Smile Without You.

“You’re listening to that again? What is it, on loop?” Li called out from the closet by the door. “And you still think you don’t need a date?” she scoffed, her voice muffled as she plunged her head deeper into her modest panoply of dresses. “Hey Elle, I can’t find your evening clothes.”

Ugh. “It’s seven-ten, Li. He called over thirty minutes ago. Just make an outfit out of whatever you can find, already.”

“Geez, I’m here to help you, you know?” the five-foot-two girl sighed as her head and beret peeked out of the wardrobe, giving her the haughty frown of a harried artist. “You don’t rush things like this. First impressions are everything – or do you want me to suggest wearing your waitress uniform?”

“Maybe he’s into that,” Elle said, half-amused but completely unconvinced. “Look, there’s a roll of blue fabric by the shoe boxes. Give me that and a pair scissors, then I’ll make a shawl or a pashmina out of it.” Elle could hear her friend’s delight as she rummaged through old boots and pumps, but all she could do was to heave a sigh and look up, twirling curls of her wheat-gold hair around an index.

On her ceiling, amidst the stains, was a single fizzling light-bulb, and for some reason it reminded her of a sanatorium. At this thought, she watched the anaglyptic wallpapers of her room peel off, each fake flower withering as they fell in clumps on the hardwood, replaced by white padding. It was a perennial fantasy, a darkly humorous sort of daydream where she considered how much more pleasing it would be to live in an insane asylum, rather than through all of this.

“Here,” Li said as she handed her the roll and a pair of big, steel scissors she took from Elle’s work desk. “Oh, I took the liberty of picking out one of your day dresses that would go with the shawl.” She threw it on the mattress, the stark white of the outfit a mediocre contrast to the sober beige of her bed sheets. “While you’re doing this, I can touch up your makeup one last time, just in case…”

“Li, you came three hours early just to do that, and I’m still late.” Elle absently snipped away at the unfurled cloth, blue-grey eyes rolling up wearily. “I think it’ll hold just fine as is.” One last shear and the fabric fell away in her lap in a glossy pool of sapphire blue. “There. Can you get me my purse while I change? It’s in the kitchen pantry.”

“And your keys on the soap stand, I assume?” the girl called out loudly, soon after closing the bedroom door.

“Yeah,” she answered simply, pulling her shirt over her head before tossing it on her nightstand. Her sweatpants soon followed. “So, segue. This guy… anything I should know about him?”

“He’s…” Li hesitated, as if weighing which truths to reveal and which to shield her from. “He’s a bit shy, but not in that weird sort of way. Oh, and he was just as reluctant as you are about this, so that’s already one thing you have in common.”

“Yes, we both seem to share the bitter-sweetness of your friendship. Hurray. Hurrah.” Slipping into the white day dress Li had chosen, Elle nervously bit her lower lip. Though she had shielded herself with sarcasm, Elle had been somewhat shaken by that tidbit of information, and instead of being comforted by it, she felt even more pressured by this situation. He might think he should have refused, after tonight. “Alright, I’m done.”

Li, who had been waiting with her back propped against the door, burst into the bedroom with characteristic zeal. “Quite a stylish throw you made there. Fits your outfit perfectly, too. Alright, now, hurry on! He’s waited long enough.”

Elle felt too tired to give the obvious response. “Yeah, alright. Wish me luck, I guess.” Li wrapped her arms around the much taller girl, an awkwardly heart-warming scene to anyone but Elle, who by nature rather disliked touchy-feely displays of affection. After being released, she slipped on a brown pair of high heels found on the floor and hopped her way down the narrow corridor to the entrance, waving lethargically to her friend as she left.

The walk down the stairway had been long and fraught with anxiety. Even when she stepped outside, greeted by the sharp coolness of the night, she felt no relief, only an uncomfortable chill that was barely allayed by her makeshift shawl. She saw a foreign car in the distance, a small and cozy thing that gleamed under the moonlight. It was also half-blocking the driveway to the apartment complex, and there were wisps of smoke drifting out from a window the driver had cracked open. That must be him. Li had told her about his smoking, but from the hotbox looks of his car, the extent of his addiction had been incredibly sugar-coated. Guess I’ll be sitting with my head out like a dog.

Elle knocked thrice on the passenger window. The door hastily popped open, and she had to step back fast to avoid a strike on the kneecap. The smoke was as a smoldering exhale, blown out from the open door as if from the maw of some fantastic, fire-breathing beast. When it diffused, she could see the man more clearly: through the weakened haze, she thought him rather handsome. “Good evening. I’m Elliot Wernecke.” Elle tried her best to smile, but merely managed a twitch at the corner of her lips. She could only hope he had confused that nervous tic for an endearing facial expression. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

[Arsène]

Through the mist, Arsène saw the golden-haired angel. He tried his best to keep it cool, his face growing beat red when he realized he had almost hit her with the door, and further coloring when he realized that awful Culture Club song was still on. His hand flew across the car's interior, turning the radio off with a slam. As the blue glow vanished, so too did some of the man's anxieties.

"I'm...uh, Arsène. Arsène Laurent. Uh, Li has told me so much about you." He was soft spoken and shy, tripping on his words with an elegant flair. "Not that I was that interested!" He blurted.

"Not that I wasn't, because I was!" There was an awkward silence where he praised god the car was dark enough to hide his face a little. "Why don't you come in?"

As she slid inside and closed the door, she smiled softly at him, and he back at her. Their breathing quickly became the most prominent feature of the car, and the uncomfortable wiggles of the human body its only motion. Arsène, dressed finely in a new black suit, fixed his tie as best he could and smiled one more time.

"I was thinking we could go to dinner first, at that new Japanese place downtown. If, uh, that's alright with you. I'm not sure what you like." The silence was deafening now, and as noticeable as the smoky air. "I have some CDs in the glove box, if you want to grab something."

[La Fantasque]

The same way Li had played down how heavy a smoker her friend was, so had she made light of his extreme timidity. At first, Elle was taken aback by his tendency to trip on his own words, but she found reassurance in the fact that he liked her enough to stutter so much. At the very least, it shows he's not a self-absorbed prick full of his highfalutin ways. Still, she knew she herself was far from the perfect picture of a confident and well-composed date, engrossed as she had been by the quite literal thirty seconds of radio-silence that followed their first and rather brief exchange. I actually, really wouldn’t mind Boy George, right now.

She tried to make herself comfortable, breaking that heavy quiet with the crease of her legs against the synthetic fabric of her seat, already slightly moist from the car’s heating. Needless to say, the attempt had been flatly unsuccessful. When he finally tried to break the tension with his plans for the night, Elle felt a measure of relief, which for the moment far outweighed her dislike for raw fish. And maybe by Japanese, he didn’t mean sushi. Fried noodles, I can get on board with.

“That sounds like a great plan,” she answered with a more natural smile, deciding against asking for clarifications without quite knowing why. Instead, she fiddled with the handle of the glove box until it unclasped with a startling ruckus. It slapped dryly against her lap, weighed down by a mound of CD cases. Ignoring the sting, she rummaged through the pile, finding a surprisingly low amount of variety considering their numbers. She largely glossed over titles from The Cure, focusing on a more familiar artist. “You really like Bowie, don’t you?” she asked with noted interest, thumbing open the Space Oddity album.

“Yeah.” Elle gave him time to stew over a potentially saving follow-up. “Do, uh… do you?”

“Sure, I liked him in that movie. Oh, and I think Diamond Dogs is really underrated.” Half-wondering if she had managed to appeal to his cultural tastes, she popped the disk into the player. Shortly after the waking blue glow of the display, the car’s interior resonated to haunting strums and military drumming, soon followed by croonings of ‘Ground control to Major Tom’.

They both smiled at that. Arsène, as if put more at ease by the rumbling of the bass, turned the key in the ignition, drowning out the melody with the roar of the engines if only for a moment. Elle took this time to readjust her seat to avoid scraping her knees, and she rolled the window down a few inches lower, hoping to clear out the stale and smoky air at a swifter pace. She felt a pang of guilt then, sensing that he might have taken that as a jab at his smoking. Made uneasy once more, she nervously bit her lower lip as the car unsteadily rolled out in the night, melting into a rushing stream of white and yellow headlights.

For here I am, sitting in a tin can…

[Arsène]

The psychedelic-folk-funk of David Bowie was just what Arsène needed to relax a little. The stifling heat from the cigarettes still smoldered inside his lungs, only being released with the smooth signals of a well-played synth. Though his palms were greased with an ever-present sweat as he drove the car forward, each passing glance at his passenger soothed his uneasy mind.

"She likes Bowie," he thought to himself.

It seemed every time he hit a red light, their eyes would meet for just a brief moment before they would turn away again; a slight blush lighting up their cheeks. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and every conceivable moment he looked her up and down as casually as possible. She lit up the car better than daylight, and was far more flattering to the interior and the driver than the sun could ever be. Slowly, at each passing street sign, he sunk lower and lower into his seat; the realization that she could do so much better than a depressed artist was all that was needed to shatter Arsène's self-esteem.

The drive was quick and uneventful for the most part, as conversations died the moment they were hatched. The man still held out some hope that perhaps the restaurant would paint him out to be a better man than a deranged smoker who kept staring at a young woman he barely knew.

Parking was unnaturally abundant for downtown, and the driver did his best to squeeze into the one space he could find without a meter.

"It's a block away. I-I hope you don't mind a short walk."

It'll get more awkward. Bunny conversation as much as you like, but be sure to ask why he knows downtown/the restaurant so well. Hint: He took his dead wife to the building that was there before the Japanese place.

[La Fantasque]

In a way, Elle was glad to escape the foreign car and its faulty engineering a few minutes sooner than expected, if not guiltily so. She also did not want to admit that, although it started as a sweet and promising sign of mutual attraction, his explorative stares had since begun to outnumber hers, making this short promenade through the night-time, downtown rabble a welcomed break from the ogling. Still, the girl did not think less of the man, understanding all too well what nerves can do to a person, and hoped he would feel more at ease once in a relatively crowded area surrounded with faux feng-shui and decent lighting.

Walking half an arm’s length behind Arsène, Elle pulled her shawl tighter around her body, the thin and almost gauzy fabric doing very little to shield her from the evening’s nipping breezes. For a moment, she considered asking her date for his coat, but felt she would come across as either a manipulative diva or a devious jezebel measuring the extent of his gentlemanly worth. Deep down, however, she still wished he would notice how genuinely cold she was. After an audible clacking of her teeth, he did, but at that point they were already at the grimy screen-door of the gratuitously named Kanda Mikado Express. As they walked in, Elle merely replied to his slew of dejected apologies that it was not so cold out and he needed not make a fuss.

The moment she first smelled the cozy restaurant’s interior, she knew her instinct had been right. “Ah, the steam of rice and the hint of vinegar,” she noted with half-hearted glee. “Love sushi,” she lied.

“I’m really glad to hear it; I wasn’t sure if you liked raw fish,” he answered with genuine relief, the dawn of a confident smile breaking on his lips. While she wanted to chide him for not asking, if he was that worried, she could not bring herself to shatter that beam of assurance. Instead, she only smiled back as he ushered her to her seat, kindly pulling out her chair for her to sit, and then clumsily kneeing it back in. When he had sidled to the other side of the table, she had already pulled out the menu, sub-consciously using it as a partition from her date.

“Uhm, so… how did you learn about this place?” Elle asked as she put the menu down, only now realizing she was being removed. “Everything looks so new here, they must have opened shop recently.”

“I frequented the restaurant that was here before – Chez Tartuffe, it was called,” Arsène answered with the smile of an erudite humbly flaunting his culture, as if the familiarity of the locale instilled him with a dear old sentiment of self-confidence. “I used to take someone there a lot,” he went on without much thought.

Elle flinched at that. There was nothing that could make her feel more detached from him than hearing about one of his prior conquests. She cut her eyes from his, and her fingers lifted the menu for a moment, but she decided against giving up at the very last moment. Still, what she had to say next was, in retrospect, not her brightest move.

“It’s not too surprising it was closed down, though, seeing as it was named after a famous conman and hypocrite.”

[Arsène]

Despite Elle's carefully chosen words, Arsène couldn't help but feel the great weight of unease linger about as they sat down to dinner. He drank as much water as he could to avoid conversations whenever he could, almost chugging it at one point. As the candlelight flickered around on the table's surface, he cursed himself for not bringing her to a western restaurant where fresh rolls would provide some distraction from the stranglehold of a conversation he'd be sure to endure. Tuning in just in time to catch Elle's quip, he tried his best to shrug it off with a little flair.

"Perhaps the king condemned the restaurant as well," he smiled we all the authenticity of the conman in question. "And when a market opens up, the Asian businessmen aren't far behind."

He thought it was witty, but he could sense a bit of disdain playing on her eyes. Whether the joke went over her head or she was too obsessed with political correctness worried him little. He almost cried with relief to see a waiter finally come to take their order. Before his date could get a word in, Arsène decided it would be best to order appetizers and drinks for the both of them. Perhaps a good show in this depart might make up for the lackluster transportation and dull drum dinner banter.

"We'll have an order of Tempura between us to start out," he said without even glancing at the menu. As an affluent college student, he knew what to expect when it came to ordering Japanese. "I'll have a can of Sapporo, and the lady will have a Shirley Temple."

In truth, the melancholic found the thought of a woman drinking quite deplorable and favored dry lips above any other.

[La Fantasque]

Though she had found little humor in his retort, Elle knew that it was her fault for making the faux-pas in the first place. As a follow-up, she had thought of laughing with the declaration that she had only just now understood the joke, but the waiter’s arrival had discouraged her. Just as well, she told herself: she was a terrible actress, and it would have been a rather grand failure. At this point, she was just glad to order the broiled scallops she had had her eyes on, ever since opening that menu.

That was before he took it upon himself to order for her. Not once did she understand why such a blatant dismissal of a woman’s wishes and desires was displayed in movies as classy or ‘chic’. And as the cherry on top of the sundae, he had ordered himself a relatively famous Japanese beer, while he ordered her, of all things, a Shirley Temple. A Shirley Temple! A kiddy cocktail!

Elle reined herself, feeling that her temper was rising. It never bode well, and by experience, she was often partly in the wrong herself in such cases. Her outrage might have only been a defense mechanism, a way to sabotage something she had decided from the very start would not work on a baseless intuition. After all, she had no particular dislike for Tempura, except for the high fat content due to the oil. While she did detest the grenadine used in Shirley Temples, she actually enjoyed the ginger ale at times, and no one could possibly hate maraschino cherries. Her only real regret was that while he drank his fancy oriental beer, she would have nothing to lower her own inhibitions.

“So… where do you live?” Elle started tentatively, filling the silence with the first thing she could think of.

“I have an apartment down by Downings, off campus. I uh, go to Montserrat.”

“Oh, that famous art school?” Elle was fairly surprised at that, but she found it a pleasant tidbit of information. The idea that he was an artist made his quirks easier to take, as if such foibles were to be expected from the more creative minds. She chided herself, however, when she realized her next comment would have been ‘you must be rich’.

“What about your hobbies?” she asked right as the waiter came back with a tray bearing a beer can like a tall, silver bullet, next to her plain glass of bubbling red spritz. The fried tempuras were quick to follow, and she had to admit they looked and smelled far from repulsive. “I’m guessing you play an instrument, right?”

“Yes, I do actually: I play the violin and the piano. A bit of guitar on the side, too.”

In any other setting, she would have asked him to play a tune he liked, but there were no such instruments around, and she highly doubted Arsène would have the guts to hijack a piano if there had been one. During the lapse of time she wondered how to follow, she heard the snick of his Sapporo opening, and heard the frothy liquid rattle ice cubes as he poured it into a glass.

Fearing that he would start drinking himself into stupidity with each heavy silence she let linger, Elle forced herself to say something, anything. Her eyes settled on his glass. “I prefer a Leffe.”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, either inattentive or ignorant of the brand.

“Oh, have you never tried a blonde before?” she asked, not realizing how startling her query must have sounded out of context.