“I know this sounds terribly corny, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Like, legitimately?”
Henry turned toward the voice. Wow, a girl is talking to me, he thought, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, hopefully?”
She frowned.
“I just mean that, well, if it keeps us talking, then yes, you’ve seen me somewhere before.”
She grinned a little, maybe blushed just the tiniest bit. “Well, OK. Where was it?”
They were in a shitty little bar downtown. Henry frequented it often to unwind after Runs, and Faye occasionally came in when the loneliness of her apartment became too much to bear.
“Maybe…” Henry began, turning fully toward Faye where she sat on a stool next to his at the bar. “I dunno.” He took a shot in the dark: “Milo’s?”
“Don’t know anyone named Milo,” Faye said.
“Oh.”
“Maybe if we tell each other our names, that might jog something,” Faye said, and smiled.
Henry laughed. “Yeah, that might help. I’m Henry.”
“Faye.”
They shook hands, awkwardly.
“Lovely to meet you, Faye.”
“Likewise. Now, let’s see,” she said, taking a sip from her rum and Coke. “Where do you work? Maybe I saw you there.”
Ha. Where do I work.
“Um, you haven’t seen me at work,” he replied. “Pretty certain.”
Warning bells sounded in Faye’s head at this evasion, but she decided to press on. “OK, well, I’m a nurse. Maybe you were recently hospitalized?” She’d intended it as a joke, but Henry didn’t laugh.
“Actually, that coulda been it. I go there more often than… normal people.” He smiled, and did manage a little chuckle that calmed Faye’s nerves a little.
“Street fights?” she said. “You a big badass?” More joking.
“People shoot me a lot.”
He’d talked like this before to interested women. He found that telling the truth disarmed them, since they always thought he was just joking. The relationships never got much further than this because he kept strange hours and didn’t have much of an interest in pursuing a relationship anyway.
“Well, I like people who get shot a lot. Gives me job security.”
Henry laughed loudly at that. They continued chatting for hours, till the barkeep called for last orders.
They walked out together, awkwardly shook hands, then, taken by an impulse neither of them understood, they hugged. They knew it was strange, but they held each other for much longer than two people who’ve just met normally would.
And then it didn’t feel so strange anymore.
Half a year later, Henry was reading over Faye’s shoulder where she sat at her computer in her apartment. Henry had brought her some tea, and as he leaned over her shoulder to set the cup down on a coaster, he glanced at the document, said, “Hey, what’s this? Are you cataloguing my hilariousness?”
“Yep,” she said, kept typing.
Henry looked closer, read a little, then stood up straight again. “Oh, come on. No one else is going to find this shit funny.”
“They did when I posted them on social media.”
“People on social media don’t count. For anything. Ever.”
“Says you.”
“It’s true. I did just say that.”
“Thanks for the tea. Now go away.”
“I’m never going away. You’re stuck with me until that murder-suicide pact I mentioned the other day. I don’t want to live without you, and I’m just going to assume you feel the same way.”
“Look, just let me finish this, OK?”
Henry leaned in closer again, read the following under the heading “Boyfriend Funny du Jour”:
Henry: Check out this video with a deer kicking the shit out of a hunter.
Faye: [watches video] That’s awesome! Too funny.
Henry: I’m going to post it on the Facebooks. Ummm…
Faye: Yeah?
Henry: Uh… do deer have hooves?
Faye: [laughing] Yes. Yes they do.
Henry: What? I just wanted to make sure.
Faye: I am seriously booking a zoo visit.
“Animals are hard,” Henry said. “I’m taking that tea back, meanface.”
“Are girls hard, too?”
“Oh, the one after we ate at Roy Rogers? Classic Kyllo right there.”
Henry: Who was Roy Rogers, anyway?
Faye: An American movie cowboy.
Henry: Oh.
Faye: With his sidekick Dale Evans. Who was a girl.
Henry: Who was a what?
Faye: A girl.
Henry: Oh! I thought you said a robot.
Faye: Yes, that sounds a lot like “girl.”
“You know what’s fun,” Henry said. “Not this, that’s what. How many of these do you have written down, anyway?”
“Pages and pages,” Faye said. “And I’m going to show them to our kids one day, show them that Daddy can’t tell the difference between a lemur and a meerkat. Or a tiger and a lion.” Faye turned in her chair, looked up at Henry pointedly. “A hippopotamus and a pig!”
“The hippos were pink. No fair.”
Faye laughed, turned back to her screen, read the next one out loud:
Henry: Monkeys are better than gorillas.
Faye: That’s because monkeys have tails. Apes don’t have tails. Like gorillas and… orang-utangs… and… are baboons apes?
Henry: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Faye: Why is that funny?
Henry: I thought you said “legumes” instead of “baboons.”
Faye: Yes, legumes are apes.
Henry: Legumes are the apes of the bean world.
“This right here. This is why I love you, Henry.” Faye pushed her chair back, stood up, hugged Henry where he stood pretending to be hurt, his face turned away from her.
“You don’t even have my favorite one in there,” he said, smirking.
“Which one’s that?” she said playfully, slapping his butt.
“The one where I called a ski mask a face cozy.”
“Ha! Forgot about that one. I also loved when you couldn’t remember who Batman’s partner was. You said it was ‘Batman and Robert.’ I thought I was gonna die laughing.”
“Speaking of dying, I think it might be murder-suicide o’clock if you keep this up.”
Faye kissed Henry’s face gently, said, “You are the best of all possible boyfriends.”
“I can think of better,” Henry said. “I can certainly think of better girlfriends.”
“Haha. Hardly. Wait, okay, one more. Honest!”
Henry: Look at the T-Rex on that poster over there.
Faye: It’s a frog.
Henry: Oh man. I just keep walking into these things. Well, at least it’s a lizard.
Faye: No.
Henry: Oh, right. A reptile.
Faye: No.
Henry: What?
Faye: An amphibian.
Henry: Oh. It’s amazing I passed science.
Faye: It’s amazing you haven’t been eaten by an animal.
Henry: Yeah! I'd go "Oh, look at the nice kitty" and it would be, like, a werewolf.
Faye: A werewolf!
Henry: No! I meant, like, a really big wolf. A wolf-wolf.
Faye pulled away, smacked his butt again, said, “We’re adorable. Let’s go eat.”
They went downstairs together, decided they were both too tired to cook, ordered pizza, drank wine, watched some TV, and generally had a night like any other.
Neither of them with the slightest inkling of what was to come.