Virginia poured a cup of coffee and buttered an English muffin, brought them to the table, and set them down next to my head, which was resting on my folded arms and throbbing something fierce. “You really don’t remember anything?”
I groaned. The speaking was going to be difficult. “I remember answering a bunch of questions and doing a bunch of shots, but that’s about it.” I didn’t dare shake my head. It would have made me sick.
She stretched her back, hands clasped over her head. I thought she was going to fall over backwards, her back arched so much.
“You a dancer?”
She straightened up. “Twelve years of ballet. Of course, you’d never know it to look at me.”
“I knew it.”
“Yeah, but you saw me stretch. I mean if you just looked at my body.” She cupped her breasts. “These fucking things ruined everything.”
“They look all right to me.”
She rolled her eyes and sat down. Her bottom teeth were a little crooked and her lips were a little thin, but something about their shape was crazy attractive. Her eyes, there in the middle of those super-thick frames, were a light blue/grey sort of color with star-like patterns in the irises. The whites were a little bloodshot.
She sipped her tea, which she’d found as she was looking for the coffee. “You ever seen a ballerina with tits like these? I don’t think so. They’re all skinny and tiny and flat. Dance companies don’t want my body. Fuckers.”
“Well, if they don’t want your body, I’m sure they’d kill for your personality. Very classy.”
“Eat me.” Smiling.
“It is a shame about your chest, though.” And I meant it. I don’t really understand why women aren’t supposed to be built like women anymore. Think about all those Renaissance paintings of women with their bellies and thighs, their hair hanging down over their breasts. Those are women, soft and soothing.
I wasn’t about to go into all that with her, though. “So, what did happen last night?”
She blew steam off the surface of her little Earl Gray ocean. “Oh, nothing really. It was almost two by the time all those assholes stopped asking you about everything. Didn’t they see you on all those shows? Anyway, you were smashed by then. You just sat there smoking, staring at nothing. I told Adam I’d drive you home in your car. Then we came back here and I put you to bed.”
I tried to take a bite of my English muffin, but there was no way. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t do anything stupid.”
“No,” she said. “Nothing stupid.”
There was a quiet, awkward moment, but she figured a way out of it. “You think you can take me back to my car? I have to work in a couple hours.”
“Sure. At the bar?”
“No. I tutor math for extra cash.”
I asked if I had time for a quick shower first. She said there was plenty of time, so I went upstairs and washed the stink of the bar off of my skin, steamed the hangover most of the way out of my head.
I came downstairs to find her in her own clothes (she’d been wearing one of my t-shirts and a pair of my boxers) and drying the mugs. “You didn’t have to do the dishes.”
“Eh. I was bored.”
On the way back to the South Side, I learned that she tutored algebra. She had her Bachelor’s in Higher Mathematics, which she studied when she lived in Florida, “where it’s not so fucking cold all the time.” She lived there with a boy – three years of easy, blissful love – before moving home to Pittsburgh. “Four years and ninety-thousand dollars so guys can stare at my chest while I pour them shots.”
I thanked her for everything and told her I was sure I’d see her soon.
“I hope so,” she said. “Maybe next time you’ll do something stupid.”
I went home and went back to bed.