Bar & Restaurant Reviews

Of course she's suspicious of why I've asked her to dinner.

We've only technically met twice; she doesn't know I've seen her twice more. We're sitting in Pearl Oyster Bar's expansion — the bit added on after enough people fainted dead away in their fourth straight hour of waiting for a spot at the original restaurant's counter.

I peer over my menu to take in her nose (deceptively large and rather pretty), skin (sandpapery, but fine-grade and thus easily mistaken from a distance as "porcelain"), hair (a shade of red I suspect originated on a shelf at Duane Reade), eyes (small, flat, brown, clever — reminiscent of those on a taxidermied armadillo I saw once at a state fair). She's entirely fuckable, this woman — that was never the issue, though I guess that was always the issue. Definitely unstable, but not in an off-putting way. On the contrary, in a way that guys talk about as being "unhealthy" and "such a turnoff", while secretly wondering what dick-tingling perversions lurk in her purse next to the Lexapro. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, crazy trumps all in bed.

But we're not in bed just yet — at this point, we're sipping at beer, deploying wit and bonding on some generic female level. I'm not sure if she knows I'm going to fuck her yet, because we're still giving each other the practiced highlights of our respective resumes.

We order. I chose Pearl because I know it well, because seafood is sexy and a little wicked, and because I have a vendetta against this place. Clam chowder and lobster roll for me, steamers and lobster roll for her. Pearl's roll is a small culinary milestone, a delectable thing that almost makes you forget you're a block away from an Urban Outfitters. She loses points for inquiring about the presence of mayonnaise in the roll's dressing (there is some, just a touch). But she is deft at de-frocking her steamers, a point that both bothers me and turns me on more than I'd like. And let's be very clear: I don't need this woman to turn me on. This is about settling a score.

I catch her laughing at something I've said and see the booze prompt a blossom of color in her cheek, so I hook my ankle around hers, tugging us a little closer together. I murmur something about how the throatiness of her laugh made me forget what I was saying. An awkward pause ensues; she looks uncertain, then levels her gaze at me. A glimmer of recognition as she sucks the briny broth from her last steamer and pushes the bowl to the side: Finally — I can tell — finally she thinks she's got the evening figured out. And what it's about, she's decided, is her charm. Her madcap, irresistible, haunted-girl charm. And few things send her more than being wanted, and anything is sexy so long as it thinks she's sexy (or utterly ignores her, but that's another story), and so she tugs back. The music changes to something old and wistful. "Oh, I love this song," she says, shifting in her seat. "Really?" I manage to ask with the kind of innocence that I know seems sincere, that doesn't suggest I've done my homework and know exactly why she loves this song.

Conversation quickens from there on in: We savage our lobster rolls, we drink more beer, I pick a shoestring fry out of her not-quite-cleavage, I manage to hold my tongue when she leaves her moist, lobstery bun almost entirely uneaten. I ask her question after question about herself, thereby making her feel fascinating; in return, she asks almost nothing about me. With anyone else, I would be insulted and hurt — here I'm unsurprised and reassured. I don't want her to know a damn thing. I want her soaring on pure ego, feeling indestructible, giving herself over to arousal for a person she perceives as a lust-struck fan, feeling like it really can't hurt, after all, if this woman wants her so badly... and thereby rendering herself utterly vulnerable by evening's end, handing over the keys to her destruction, letting me in to plunder and pillage to my revenge's content and then kick her wan, brittle, Triscuit of a body to the curb in the wee small hours of what in my world passes for morning.

We order pie.

It's blueberry, and it's decadent. There's dessert wine too; I only sip at mine and am grateful to see she does the same to hers — I want her drunk enough to get into bed, but not so far gone that she doesn't remember what happened. I reach a finger beneath the table and run it over her knee, then under, into the warm fold. This part I actually enjoy. She giggles and twirls her spoon in her mouth in a gesture that can only be described as pedophile bait, and that damn near breaks the deal for me altogether. Focus, I tell myself. Focus.

The check comes and goes and then we're out onto Cornelia St. and patrons at Po try not to stare (but you can see them squinting) as I push her roughly against the first plain piece of wall and give her a preview. She gasps, her brow furrowed. She pulls away a little, takes off her glasses and tucks them — as she offers up a lopsided smile — into the pocket of her vintage coat. She has no idea still, and for a moment I feel badly, badly for hiding how much of the evening isn't about her, for knowing how dearly she's going to pay for something that really isn't her fault. And then she puts a hand on my thigh and inches it upwards, and I recognize the gesture, and I don't move her hand away because he didn't, and so I lean in closer and smell her hair because he did, and the night, just then, clicks.

Maudite

August 29, 2005

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