Mrs. Fletcher(37)
And yet it felt like a date, which was weird, because Eve didn’t date women. Of course, she wasn’t dating any men either, though that was only for lack of opportunity. If a man had asked her out, she would have happily said yes, unless it was creepy Barry from Gender and Society, who, unfortunately, was the only man expressing any interest at the moment, with the possible exception of Jim Hobie, the chatty bartender, though all he’d done was offer her a free drink, which hardly qualified as a romantic overture, and which, in any case, she’d declined.
But if tonight wasn’t a date—and it definitely wasn’t—then what accounted for the fluttery feeling of anticipation she’d been experiencing ever since she’d marked it on her calendar? And why had she chosen to wear this silky green blouse that went so well with her eyes, and then unbuttoned it one button lower than usual? The answer to these questions, Eve knew, was as simple as it was embarrassing: she’d been watching too much porn, and it had infected her imagination, making her hyper-aware of the sexual possibilities embedded in the most innocent situations. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic.
“I meant to tell you,” said Amanda, who seemed quite clear about the fact that she wasn’t on a date. “The maple syrup guy can’t do the November lecture, so I’m scrambling to find a replacement.”
“Uh-oh.” Eve stretched her mouth into an expression of mock horror. “Sounds like a sticky situation.”
Amanda looked puzzled for a moment, and then made a sound that resembled a chuckle.
“Sorry.” Eve frowned. “Humor’s not my specialty. At least that’s what my ex-husband used to tell me.”
“Nice,” Amanda said. “I’m sure you appreciated his honesty.”
“Absolutely. He was full of constructive criticism.”
“Sounds like my old boyfriend,” Amanda observed. “He was very concerned about my weight. If he caught me with some Ben and Jerry’s, he’d pull the container right out of my hand. He’d say, I don’t want you to regret this.”
“Really?”
“It was all for my own good, you know?”
Eve wanted to say something supportive but not inappropriate about Amanda’s curves—that was one good thing about the Milfateria, it had given her an appreciation of the sexual appeal of all sorts of body types—but they were interrupted by a couple of middle-aged frat boys who wanted to know if the stool next to Amanda’s was free. The guy who asked was jolly and bloated, with thinning blond hair and an alarmingly pink complexion. He made no effort to disguise his interest in the hand grenade tattooed on Amanda’s left breast, only partially obscured by the neckline of her dress.
“All yours,” she told the guy, scooching toward Eve to make room. Their knees bumped together, and Eve felt the subtle electric jolt you sometimes get from accidental contact. Amanda shifted again, undoing the connection.
“Ted—that’s my ex—used to tell me I was a bad storyteller,” Eve continued. “He said it was like a Victorian novel every time I went to the supermarket.”
That didn’t sound too bad to Amanda. “I like Victorian novels. At least I used to. I haven’t read one since college.”
“They can be kind of daunting,” said Eve. “I’ve been meaning to start Middlemarch for the past year or so. Everybody always says how great it is. But it never seems like the right time to crack it open.”
Amanda looked wistful. “There’s so much to read, but all I do is watch Netflix and play Candy Crush. I feel like I’m wasting my life.”
“It’s hard to concentrate after a long day at work. Sometimes you just want to turn your brain off.”
“I guess. But even on the weekends, I’ll read five pages, and then I have to get up and check my phone. It’s not that I want to, it’s that I have to. It’s a physical urge, like the phone is part of my body.”
Eve was a little too old to have that sort of relationship with her phone, but she understood the larger point all too well. It was mortifying to be an adult and not be able to control yourself. She didn’t used to be like that.
“Hey,” she said. “Maybe we could find a retired English professor to talk about Dickens or Jane Austen. We haven’t done anything like that for a while.”
Amanda’s nod was grudging at best. “We could. But I was hoping we could maybe try something different. Get outside the box a little.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. There are a lot of fascinating topics out there. Let’s hear about global warming or immigration or the rise of feminism or the history of the birth control pill. The anti-vaccine movement. I mean, just because you’re old doesn’t mean you can’t handle a new idea, right?”
Eve heard the implicit criticism in these suggestions. Her policy, ever since she’d taken charge at the Senior Center, had been to avoid controversy when booking the lecture series. No religion, no politics, nothing divisive or threatening. The series, as currently conceived, leaned heavily on nostalgia (FDR and the Greatest Generation, the Titanic and the Hindenburg, the Civil War and wagon train pioneers), continuing education (Backyard Wildlife, Know Your Night Sky), and uplifting human interest stories (a mountain climber with a high-tech prosthetic leg, an ex-nun turned cabaret singer), with the occasional author appearance or travelogue sprinkled in.