The Decent Proposal (7 page)

“Good point,” said Elizabeth.

“By the end of the year we could be out a pretty big chunk of change.”

“I'll call the lawyer about it tomorrow.”

“Cool.”

ELIZABETH TOOK HER
time at the beverage station, fussing over the perfect level of ice, squeezing more lemon wedges into her drink than she could possibly want (considering she was drinking lemonade). But as long as she stayed there, the pause in their conversation couldn't turn awkward. She tried reminding herself that pauses—even awkward ones—were nothing to worry about. In the week that had passed since their coffee together, she had scrutinized the rules of the proposal more rigorously than before, and on Friday morning she'd even called Jonathan Hertzfeld to request clarification on the meaning of a “substantially conversational manner.” Were pauses allowed? Could they be counted toward the two hours? Yes, as long as their “intent to converse” was “sustained and consistent.” She knew she was in danger of violating this intent by standing apart from him now, but she desperately needed the break. While paying, she'd glanced at her watch again and had been horrified to see that it was only 8:17. She'd been sure at least a half hour had passed.

ELIZABETH REJOINED HIM
on the bench. They were still waiting for their number to be called.

“Hey,” said Richard. “Check it out.”

He was holding his cup high in the air, pointing at something on the inside of the bottom lip. She didn't even need to look, and began reciting from memory:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

He stared at her. “I'm guessing that's John 3:16?”

She nodded. “John 3:16” was printed on the bottom of every In-N-Out soda cup. Back in the eighties, one of the owners had
printed the book, chapter, and verse of his favorite Bible passages as a means of tempting customers to consult the Good Book. He'd died years ago, but the biblical references remained. It was another “secret” to add to the mythos of the In-N-Out dining experience. Richard had never thought to look up the verse.

“Did you memorize that because of In-N-Out?” he asked.

“I learned it in CCD, actually.”

“CCD?”

“Catechism. Sort of like Sunday school, but for Catholics.”

Aha
. So she
was
religious. Mike was religious too, so it wasn't like there was anything
wrong
with it, but Richard had a secular Jew's distrust for anything that smacked of fundamentalism, and memorizing Bible verses was right up there.
Was
she Latina, though? Religious fervor was less troubling coming from a minority. (See again: Mike.)

“So what
are
you exactly?”

Tired?
she wanted to say.
Wondering how we're going to get through a year of this?

“I take it you're asking me about my ethnicity?”

He nodded, flushing slightly. On a real date he would have fished for this information more artfully, of course.

“Both my parents are Mexican. From Mexico. But don't worry, I was born here. I'm a U.S. citizen. I can bring in my birth certificate next time if you want.”

He tittered uneasily.

“One-four-three! Number one forty-three!”

Their order was ready. Richard collected the red tray from the counter while Elizabeth secured them a table. Between bites they exchanged vital statistics. He grew up in a suburb outside Boston (“Braintree: the ugliest compound word in the English language”). She went to Yale for undergrad and NYU for law—full ride for both, with a smorgasbord of grants, work-study programs, and student loans she'd managed to pay off in full several
years ago. He went to Amherst, though he failed to mention that both his parents went there, or that the next best school he got into was BU, or that his parents were still paying off a hefty loan he had every intention of paying himself once his credit card debt had been wiped clean. He insisted on naming everyone he knew from both Yale
and
NYU, which was about a dozen people, but she wasn't familiar with any of them. She couldn't think of anyone she knew from Amherst. Whatever it was that connected them, it remained a mystery for now.

By this point it was 8:34.

“So how do you like L.A.?” she asked. “Coming from the East Coast?”

“I love it!” he said, tearing open a salt packet and sprinkling the grains over his fries like seeds across a field.

“Really? I'm surprised,” she said. “I know a lot of East Coasters who hate it out here. It's easier to go the other way around, I think.”

“So you actually liked New Haven?”

“It's not as bad as everyone says it is. But by senior year I was ready to move to New York.”

“I'm assuming you liked New York?”

“I loved it. I never wanted to leave. Especially not for here.”

“Oh, so you're one of
those
.”

“Who?”

“The L.A. haters.”

They were everywhere, and Richard couldn't disagree with them more. The summer after his freshman year he'd gone to L.A. for the first time, for a two-month Hollywood internship. It was like a riot of color punctuating his monochrome existence, the bloom atop a thorny stem. He was instantly hooked. For the rest of college he dreamed of whiling away the afternoon at business drinks on the beach, guzzling beer as bright yellow as the sand between his toes. He pictured himself reading
scripts poolside in the courtyard of a Beverly Hills hotel. L.A. was everything Massachusetts wasn't, and it was more than the surface attractions of sunny weather and proximity to celebrities that drew him here. For Richard, the fairer city represented an alternative to the workaday lifestyle of almost everybody who graduated from the East Coast's elite institutions: all the lawyers, doctors, i-bankers, and consultants who endured wintry weather halfway through April and wasted their youth toiling away at jobs that didn't excite them. The morning after graduation, he drove cross-country, fleeing like a refugee for a better existence. And after seven years in the promised land, he cherished even those aspects of the city other people hated: the traffic, the lack of a city center, the way some people thought they had to act like douche bags to get ahead in the entertainment business. These were all imperfections he was more than willing to brook. His love for L.A. was unconditional.

“I don't hate L.A.,” said Elizabeth. “I just don't love it. Like New York.”

“So why'd you move back? If you loved it so much out there?”

“They needed someone in my department. I got a really good offer.”

“An offer you couldn't refuse?”

“Exactly.” She smiled.

“Did you have braces when you were younger?”

“No.” Had he forgotten about South Central already? Even if she had desperately needed them, her parents could never have afforded braces.

“Well, you have beautiful teeth. You're lucky.”

“Thank you,” she said, before adding, “You have beautiful eyes.”

He looked up, surprised. He got this compliment all the time, but hadn't expected it from her.

“Thanks!”

She waved her double-double dismissively, shedding a slimy onion chunk or two.

“No, no. You
do
have pretty eyes, I'm sure you're well aware of that—”

He flushed crimson.

“—but it's the Arab response whenever anyone gives you a compliment. My roommate in college was from Yemen, and whenever anyone said anything nice to her she'd tell them they have beautiful eyes. The idea is whatever beauty you see is actually coming from you rather than the thing itself. Like the beauty is in the perception, not the thing.”

She wondered if he'd get it.

“That's really nice,” he said, getting it perfectly, his embarrassment washed away by the pleasure of learning something new.

“It
is
nice, isn't it?” she said. “Best way to throw back a compliment I ever heard. I adopted it for myself, but it sounds weird in English.”

“Huh, yeah, but I'm gonna use it now too. So does your roommate still live in New York?”

They fell into a conversational rhythm, like a tennis rally in which the force of the ball going one way could be used to shoot it back over the net. Elizabeth told him about working at Slate Drubble's New York branch for the first six years out of law school, before being transferred to Los Angeles. Richard told her about his early days at Green Trolley, the production company where he and Keith got their start. She described her college and law school friends to him, all of whom still lived in and around New York, and most of whom were either married or in serious relationships. She hadn't seen a single one of them since moving to L.A. two years earlier. But they'd always have e-mail. He told her about Mike:

“Short for Michaela, which no one
ever
calls her. She's my
best friend hands down. We're basically the same person. I'd say she was my soul mate if there was a way to say that without sounding like a tool.” It was refreshing to be open about Mike. He never would have revealed so much on a real first date. Every girl had seen
When Harry Met Sally
.

“You're sure you're just friends?” Elizabeth asked, shoving a bloody fry—her last—into her mouth.

So predictable
, he thought, while admitting aloud: “We
did
go out in college. But that was different. We're just friends now.”

She's probably still in love with him
, thought Elizabeth, sneaking a peek at her watch. 9:02.
Seriously?
Well, at least they were more than halfway through.
A hundred and three hours and counting . . .

“So what do you do in your spare time?” he asked, finishing off the last of his hamburger.

“I read a lot,” she said. “Fiction mainly. Novels. Anything from Austen to Fitzgerald. And the beach's only a few blocks away. I surf and roller-skate on the weekends.”

Did anyone really roller-skate on the Boardwalk anymore? It struck him as a slightly eccentric thing to do. And what about
friends
? Richard knew plenty of people who professed to be “loners.” The profession itself was a fairly reliable indicator that they were full of crap. But he was beginning to suspect Elizabeth Santiago was the real thing.

“You surf?” he asked, sucking a mixture of ketchup and “spread” (In-N-Out's special sauce) off his fingers.

“What, you've never seen a Latina surf before?”

He snorted. “I guess not.”

“Haven't you seen
Blue Crush
? Michelle Rodriguez was one of the blond girl's best friends, I think.” She slurped the last of her lemonade.

Blue Crush? Jesus.
She was better off pretending she didn't watch movies either. “So what're your favorite books?”

“
Jane Eyre
,
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
,
Howards End
,
To the Lighthouse
, and
Pride and Prejudice
.” She rattled them off without hesitating.

He lifted his eyebrows. “You were ready for that one.”

“I read them every year, no matter what.”

“I don't think I've read any of them, except
Jane Eyre
, and that was in high school.” Ever since college, Richard had pretended there was a choice to be made, books or movies, and he had made his, no turning back, unless he were reading a book that might be turned into a movie, of course.

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. She didn't feign superiority about reading. She did it because she liked it, for the same reason others played poker, or softball.

“How 'bout movies?” he asked. “Other than
Blue Crush
?”

She hesitated. “I guess I like the old sixties musicals the best.
The Sound of Music
.
West Side Story
. Oh, and
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
. That's a fun one.”

Richard was pretty sure
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
was one of his mother's favorite films.
Yikes.

“And you? Movies?” Her eyes flicked almost involuntarily to her watch: 9:04.
God help me.

“
Some Like It Hot
,
Alien
,
The Usual Suspects
,
Driving Miss Daisy
,
Harold and Maude
, and
Chinatown
.”

“Sounds like you were ready for that one too.”

“I guess. You get asked it a lot in Hollywood, though. You see any of those?” he ventured.

“I've seen
Harold and Maude
. None of the others. That one's neat,” she added conciliatorily.

They stared at each other. The rally was over. It could not be resurrected. They suffered through a long and painful silence, at the end of which Elizabeth stood up.

“I'm getting a milk shake,” she announced. “Do you want anything?”

He shook his head.

Elizabeth joined the back of the line. She wasn't proud of herself. There was no question she was violating the intent to converse now. But she couldn't help it; she simply didn't have the knack for banter (hair appointments were always an ordeal for her), and each second she sat across from him in silence felt like fresh evidence of her inadequacy. She imagined for a moment what his conversations must be like with this Mike character, his “soul mate.” How in God's name was she ever going to get any better at this whole dating thing? The worst aspect of tonight was that this was the
easy
session, where they had all the introductory stuff like biographical details to fall back on. How were they going to sustain a conversation the next time? And the time after that? And that? And that? What had she gotten herself into?

Richard watched her advance slowly up the line, which was considerably longer than the one they'd waited in before. Well, she certainly wasn't a food snob. If anything, he wished she were a little snobbier, especially when it came to movies. Had she really called
Harold and Maude
“neat”?
Harold and Maude
was many things—inspired, epic, tragic, subversive, even cheesy—but “neat” was not one of them. What would he have said if she had asked him about
Jane Eyre
, though? Would he have had anything meaningful to articulate? He might have said it was “neat” too.