Every part of me is perspiring. My hair is perspiring.
My concentration is shredded.
He says, “Do you have a phone number?”
My mouth is dry. My eyes are too dry to blink. It’s distracting to look at him.
“My phone got smashed.” Breathe. “I lost it.” Breathe. “So no.”
He tilts his head the way Gertie does when she’s trying to figure out where her doggie treat went after she already ate it. “It got smashed and then it got lost? This phone has very bad luck.”
Smartass.
“I lost it, like, ‘Oh no, my phone is smashed!’ I’ve lost the use of my phone. My phone is deceased. No phone. Is that clear enough for you?”
I don’t mention that I smashed it under my foot before tossing it down a garbage chute. And then I stomped on the next one. Or that I bought a new one later, but I’m scared to crack it out of its box. Even though the guy who sold it to me swore up and down that it’s an opposite-of-smartphone, with no GPS whatsoever.
“Clear,” he says.
I have to get out of this guy’s force field.
“Thanks for the ice cream.” Licking bits of chocolate sandwich off my front teeth with my tongue. Backing away. “I have to go to work.”
“Thanks for the water.”
My mouth is cold sugar, but the rest of me is burning. My tee is clinging to my skin like a layer of moist shrink-wrap.
He says, “What do you do?”
I have to go. I know it.
But he sacrificed his shirt. He doesn’t deserve a hot mess bitch. “Aide for an old lady. Very glam. I cook a lot of soup.”
Soup-cooker for a demented person. She doesn’t remember who I am when I get back from peeing. The perfect job. I got it from a tiny want ad posted by her son, who lives in New Mexico. Who’s not responsible enough to hire a legit aide for her.
“Could I walk you?” he asks. Undeterred by the obvious fact that I’m backing away. Slowly, with a beauty queen hand wave, a slight swivel at the wrist. I’m fast, but it would look weird if I shot out of the park like bears were chasing me.
Left him to eat my dust.
And the whole time I’m speed-walking away, I’m forcing myself not to look back over my shoulder. Sliding into Dunkin’ Donuts in the middle of a bunch of girls who don’t even know I’m with them. Cursing the alarm on the back door.
Asking myself how I ended up in the park with a guy, 50 percent afraid he’d catch me and 50 percent disappointed he didn’t.
Why does every impulse of mine have to be dangerous?