TWENTY-TWO
I’d see Lauren at the train station from time to time but she pretended like she didn’t know who I was, and I pretended like I didn’t know who she was either.
This went on for a year or so.
Then one day, I saw her in Center City being harassed by a bum, who was following her and yelling, “Give me a sandwich and you think you saved the world? It don’t work like that! You think God sent you to give me two pieces of bread with a slice of cheese and a flimsy circle of bologna and cheap bright-yellow mustard and that’s supposed to make up for ten years of living in a cardboard box? That’s what you want me to believe? God loves me because you gave me a half-assed sandwich? I’m homeless—not crazy!”
The guy had wild eyes and a lion’s mane of gray hair that made his head look like a frozen sun or something.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Lauren said.
“That ain’t good enough,” the bum said. “I gotta few things you can tell your god the next time you pray in your nice warm house with a toilet in it and a whole refrigerator of food that you’d never give to bums like me because it costs too fucking much and so it ain’t bum food. I bet you got a dog that eats better than me.”
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry.”
It was kind of funny seeing Lauren getting verbally beat down by a bum, and I was totally on the bum’s side, but Lauren looked so rattled that I had to intervene. And so I went up to the bum and said, “I was sent to you by the Atheist Society of America. We believe in chaos and no god at all, and want to congratulate you on putting this uppity Christian in her place. As a reward we’d like to give you twenty dollars that you may use to buy a superior sandwich or whatever you’d like. No strings attached.”
The gray lion-haired bum looked at me like I was insane, but he snatched the money out of my hand and walked away.
“He’s just going to buy alcohol or drugs, you know,” Lauren said, which made me sad, because she didn’t know that man at all, let alone whether he had a dependency problem.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m Leonard Peacock,” I said, and stuck out my hand confidently, putting on the Bogie charm.
“I remember who you are,” Lauren said, ignoring my outstretched hand, playing hard-to-get Bacall again. She looked really shook up, so I didn’t take offense. “Why do you think he got so angry at me?”
I didn’t feel like listing all the reasons why she deserved the verbal beatdown from the homeless man—mostly because I knew that wouldn’t help my cause—so I just changed the subject. “You’re welcome.”
“What?”
“You no longer have a bum trailing you, yelling at you.”
“Oh,” she said. “I was fine. God would have protected me.”
“Maybe god sent me to protect you,” I said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Maybe.”
“God says you should have coffee with me right now?”
“You want to have coffee with me? Why?”
“We can talk more about god,” I said, giving her the line she wanted.
“What you said to Jackson and me at my church,” Lauren said. “It was really rude.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” I said just to get her to have coffee with me, because her face was all red from her being harassed, and she looked so femme fatale—so much like she needed saving—that I didn’t even care she had trap written all over her.
“I’m not going to park with you,” she said in this really serious way that depressed me; I only had so much Bogart in me, truth be told, and I was already running low.
“Do people in your church really use the word park as a euphemism for having sex in cars? Do teenagers really have sex in cars? I don’t even drive.”
“If you’re just going to make fun of me for going to church and believing in God, I don’t want to have coffee with you, Mr. Atheist.”
Her calling me Mr. Atheist really deflated me because it felt like a wall—like my personal beliefs were going to keep us from being friends and ultimately kissing. It was like once again someone was labeling me and putting me in a box just as soon I expressed myself. Suddenly, the whole deal didn’t feel like a game anymore.
Consequences, Herr Silverman says. Consequences.
I abandoned my plan. I made a real attempt. “I’m not going to make fun of you, okay? I just want to understand you. Maybe we can have an exchange? Maybe we can talk about our beliefs over coffee without trying to change each other. What do you think?”
“I’m not going to kiss you.”
“You have Jackson to kiss, right?”
“I’ve never kissed Jackson either.”
“I thought he was your boyfriend.”
“I’m saving myself for my husband.”
“Saving yourself?”
“Yep.”
“So you won’t even kiss someone before you get married?”
“Not the way you’re thinking of kissing. A peck on the lips or cheek doesn’t count.”
I must say, her never having been kissed was really attractive to me for some reason. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe I was drawn to Lauren’s innocence. Maybe it reminded me of who I was before all the bad stuff went down.
I said, “You owe me one cup of coffee for getting the homeless man off your back. I know this place around the corner. What do you say?”
“We’ll talk about our religious beliefs. Like an exchange, right?”
“Right.”
And then we walked to this coffee shop that had crazy huge couches that were random geometrical shapes like triangles and rhombuses and circles. It was like being in a day-care room for giant babies.
We got a seat and I ordered a double espresso, because I thought that would sound really sophisticated and cool and was the most Bogart-like thing I could order since I couldn’t order gin or scotch. Lauren ordered a peppermint mocha, which made her seem like a child again, and I also liked that about her,48 so I called the waiter back and said, “I’ll also have a peppermint mocha.”
Lauren looked around the shop and up at the ceiling like she was examining the construction of it, making sure the roof wouldn’t fall on our heads, and then said, “So why are you wearing a suit?”
“I do that sometimes when I take a day off school to do research.”
“What are you researching?”
“Aging and the possibility of adult happiness.”
“Jesus can make you happy.”
I laughed and said, “Do you talk about anything else besides Jesus?”
Lauren smiled and said, “So why have you been ignoring me for a year?”
“I haven’t. You’ve been ignoring me.”
“I have not been ignoring you! I try to catch your eye whenever I see you at the train station, but you walk by so quickly without looking. I’ve actually been quite hurt by your snubs.”
I noted that she was doing the cat-face femme-fatale thing again. She was now back in trap mode. “What about Jackson?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“I bet he doesn’t want you talking to me.”
“He would be happy if we talked about God. He believes we should save everyone too.”
“Then why doesn’t he help you pass out Jesus pamphlets?”
“He used to, but he’s at college now. And he’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
That bit of news got my heart pumping. “Is that why you’re having coffee with me today? Because you no longer have a boyfriend?” I said, hoping for the right answer, but the waiter came back with our peppermint mochas.
Lauren sipped hers and said, “Yum!”
That made me smile. I sipped mine and it tasted just like a melted York Peppermint Pattie.
“Maybe I could take you to dinner sometime, what do you think?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” Lauren said.
“Okay, scratch that,” I said, because her eyebrows got all scrunchy and her eyes got all squinty, and not in the sexy cat-face Bacall way either. “Maybe this right here could be our first date, and then we won’t have to worry about the asking and saying yes part. We could just start now.”
“Well, I only date boys who are Christian.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.” I wasn’t really that daunted at first because it seemed like such a silly thing to me—something we could easily overcome. I didn’t realize how limiting her Christianity actually was.
“Do you want to talk about Jesus?” she asked.
“That’s your favorite topic, huh?”
“Yep.”