Chapter Oliver #4
It seems silly to me, but Delilah insists that when it comes to a double date, she and Jules are incapable of dressing themselves alone.
Delilah says it’s a girl thing; I wouldn’t understand.
To that end, Jules has come to Delilah’s house with a suitcase full of enough clothes to last her for a month, although she is only staying overnight.
I’ve been exiled to the living room, where I wait with Frump.
Upstairs, there is a symphony of squeals and shrieks.
I’m not certain if they are doing each other’s makeup, as Delilah has said, or if they are murdering each other.
The doorbell rings, and Delilah calls down from her bathroom. “Can you get that?”
Chris is standing on the threshold, holding a bouquet of flowers.
“Oh,” I say, reaching for them. “Thank you. I’m so sorry….I didn’t get you anything….”
Chris rips them back out of my hand. “I didn’t get you anything,” he says. “These are for Jules.”
I lead him into the living room. “Delilah says they’re almost ready,” I tell him. “Of course, she said that about an hour ago.”
Chris claps me on the back. “Thanks for doing this, man. I didn’t expect to have as good a friend as you once I moved here.” At that, Frump leaps off the couch, his teeth bared, and is about to sink his fangs into Chris’s calf. “What the—”
I grab his collar. “No!” I yell. “Bad dog!” Frump whimpers as I drag him away from Chris, scoop him into my arms, and put him on a chair as far away from us as possible. I lean down on the pretense of patting him. “He’s just an acquaintance,” I whisper. And then, more loudly, “Stay.”
Frump snorts.
“Are you quite all right?” I ask Chris.
“This is why I have cats,” he says.
Suddenly there is a flurry of noise as Delilah and Jules descend. Jules is still wearing her trademark combat boots, but she’s sporting a simple black dress that is surprisingly devoid of studs, skeletons, and safety pins.
However, it’s Delilah I can’t stop staring at.
She is wearing a filmy white dress that seems to breathe over her curves.
The low neckline reveals a constellation of freckles on her collarbone.
Her hair is twisted into an intricate braid, and a few tendrils escape at the nape of her neck.
I can’t help but think how perfectly a tiara would settle atop her head.
“You look great,” Chris tells Jules.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says.
“I, um, brought you these….” He hands her the bouquet.
“Ohhh…thanks for the corpses of murdered plants.”
Delilah clears her throat. “Jules!”
She rolls her eyes. “I mean, wow, they’re so pretty.” Then Jules looks at me. “Edgar. You’re drooling.”
I tear my gaze away from Delilah as the girls start walking toward the front door. Chris puts his hand on my arm. “She hates me.”
I consider this. “No,” I say. “That’s just Jules.”
Delilah has picked a restaurant for dinner that seems as if it has been ripped from the pages of a storybook.
Tables nestle in a copse of trees, which are illuminated by strands of twinkling lights.
Small stone fire pits dot the premises, and servants in starched white linen aprons stand at attention as we pass by.
When we reach our table, I pull out a chair for Delilah. “My lady,” I murmur, and she beams up at me.
Chris, halfway into his seat, jumps up and tugs at Jules’s seat when she is already half inside it. She glares at him. “You don’t think I’m capable of getting into a chair by myself?”
“N-no,” Chris stammers. “You look very capable.” He buries his face behind his menu.
“What kind of place is this, Delilah?” Jules asks, reading the selections. “Candied celery and lemon-verbena foam and sorbet quennels. Is that actually a word?”
“Shut up,” Delilah says. “This is the only fancy place with vegetarian options.”
“You’re a vegetarian?” Chris asks.
Jules straightens her spine. “I don’t support the slaughter of helpless animals for man’s desire for barbecued flesh…so yes, I am.”
“Barbecued flesh?” I repeat.
“She means steak and hamburger,” Delilah says. “She’s just being dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” Jules repeats. “Where do you think your meat comes from?”
I blink. “The refrigerator?” At the castle, our meals just…appeared. And here, Jessamyn goes to a special store and comes back with ingredients.
“Cows,” Jules says. “Meat comes from cows.”
My eyes widen. “What?” I gasp. I turn and speak in a whisper to Delilah. “I knew all of our cows by name in the kingdom. You let me eat our pets?”
“What kind of bubble is Cape Cod?” Chris says. He turns to Jules. “Well, you know what they say about vegetarians. They’re just vegans who couldn’t cut it.” He smiles. “I’ve been one since I was twelve.”
“Really?” Jules says, arching a brow. “You’re a vegan?”
Chris leans back in his chair. “There’s all kinds of things about me you would never expect.”
“Well,” Jules says, smiling for the first time since the date began. “Good thing we have the whole night.”
To my surprise, Jules and Chris spend the entire meal with their heads bent together, talking about everything from the best science fiction film-to-book adaptation to the institutional oppression of cafeteria food.
Now Chris is yammering on and on about constellations, which he studies with a telescope in his bedroom each night.
“That one’s Casseopeia,” he tells Jules.
He lifts her hand and guides her arm, to point.
“And that’s Canis Major. You can tell because Sirius, the Dog Star, is in it.
” Chris locks eyes with Jules. “It’s the brightest star in the night sky. ”
“Looks like this has been a huge success,” Delilah says quietly to me.
“I must admit, I’m surprised that Jules is his type,” I whisper back. “I’m surprised that Jules is anyone’s type.”
Delilah laughs, and the waiter returns, placing a math worksheet on a small silver platter in front of me. “Thanks,” I say politely, “but I’d much rather have an éclair.”
“That’s the check,” Delilah explains.
Suddenly it all makes sense: Jessamyn pressing crisp bills into my palm before I left on my date, telling me a gentleman is always the one to pay.
Chris pulls out his wallet. “Let’s split it,” he suggests, scanning the paper.
I wait for Chris to put money on the small dish, and match the same amount. Then I stand, pulling out Delilah’s chair and offering her my hand.
Chris is helping Jules put on her jacket. “I know the most amazing vegan cupcake place,” he says. “We could go there for dessert.”
I think about the éclair I didn’t get. “That sounds wonderful!”
“No!” Delilah widens her eyes at me. “We’re leaving.”
“But I like cupcakes….”
She loops her arm through mine. “Then I’ll make you some at home,” Delilah says, and she adds, under her breath, “We’re giving them time alone.” Turning to Chris, she asks, “I’m assuming you can drop Jules off at my house later?”
“You bet,” Chris says.
We walk to the parking lot, and Delilah and I watch them drive off in Chris’s car. “They grow up so fast,” she jokes. Then she grabs my hand. “Come on. Maybe we can talk to Orville before she gets back.”
I let her pull me toward her car. “But you promised me cupcakes….”
When we return to Delilah’s, we almost have the house to ourselves—Mrs. McPhee, who was out when we left, is still out with Dr. Ducharme.
Frump meets us at the door and, after an embarrassing show of charades, makes clear that he needs a moment on the privy of the front lawn.
Afterward we all convene in the kitchen while Delilah rummages through the cabinets for a box of dessert.
She pours powder into a bowl, then cracks two eggs and adds a dollop of oil and some water, insisting that this will materialize into something edible.
While the mixture is baking in the oven, Delilah and I speculate on how Jules and Chris are getting along.
“I did not see that coming,” Delilah muses. “The last guy Jules was interested in had tattoos running from neck to navel and owned a pet falcon. By comparison, Chris seems so…tame.”
“There’s no logic to the laws of attraction,” I say, grinning at Frump. “I mean, this one’s hung up on Seraphima.”
Frump looks over his shoulder at me and growls.
A bell chimes on the oven, and Delilah takes her concoction from its belly. She cuts me a square and hands it to me as I lean against the counter. It may not be a cupcake but I must admit, it smells heavenly.
“Happy?” she asks.
I put the treat down and lift Delilah by her hips so that she is sitting on the counter and I am standing between her legs. Leaning forward, I kiss her until her arms come around me and Frump starts barking. “Very,” I say, smiling.
By now, Frump has gotten the tail of my shirt between his teeth and is trying to drag me backward. Delilah holds up a hand. “Okay, okay. We’ll get a room.” Jumping down from the counter, she tosses Frump a square of cake. “Speaking of which, let’s go get the book.”
That’s all it takes to remind me that I still need to tell Edgar about his mom.
Frump trots into Delilah’s bedroom, jumps up on his hind legs, and tugs the book from its spot on the shelf. He brings it to Delilah, his tail wagging. “Thanks,” she says, surreptitiously wiping the drool from the book’s spine. “Now. Let’s find Orville.”
I crack open the book, but to my surprise, nothing is where it’s supposed to be.
Although we were always in place and ready for the Reader when one came, I seem to have caught the characters unaware.
On page eleven, in the enchanted forest, the fairies are braiding each other’s hair.
On page thirty-one, the trolls haven’t bothered to rebuild their bridge.
The mermaids aren’t even on page twenty-seven, having swum off to sun themselves on Everafter Beach.
I realize that when I was in the book, and everything ran like clockwork, it was because Frump was there barking orders. I glance at him, and he shakes his head and rolls his eyes, as if to say: Amateurs.