Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Brunch with Audrey

The skin on her face is so smooth, and her eyes so velvet and soft that though she is darker even than my half-sister I look at her think helplessly of Audrey Hepburn. Audrey, or some winsome, movie-star princess like her.

Her smile is Audrey's too. It's enchanting; warm and wide and very, very white. Her smile, and the way it animates her eyes, is what cinched my longing for her. Almost immediately I became obsessed with the ear to ear width of her smile and the perfection of her teeth. Now, surreptitiously, I watch her from across the table, trying not to stare, determined not to telegraph too much too soon. Audrey takes delicate sips of iced water, her long cocoa brown fingers sliding along the condensation beading the glass. She takes another bite of her ham and spinach omelet, laughing a self-conscious little laugh as she chews, trying to maneuver the bits of food in her mouth and still talk intelligibly. She startles and her hand jumps toward her face. When my half-sister does this I want to gag but on Audrey it's just adorable. Adorkable. From now on, in nice restaurants on Sundays, I will order omelets and eat them like Audrey does, winningly and with feminine gestures, even though the smell, really the very thought, of cooked eggs makes me violently ill sometimes.

She laughs again, mispronouncing superfluous. She forks more omelet, chasing chunks of egg and ham around her plate, and swallows. I reach for my water glass and take long, deep swigs, trying not to gulp.

A week or so later Audrey and I went to the Music Box to see The Last Waltz. Afterward we went to a steakhouse, a fancy one on the Near North side, and had dinner. I ordered grilled salmon. Audrey's ribeye was extremely rare.

This was our last date.

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