Truth Telling

He was out of milk again. Well, so what, right? Grown men don't drink milk, do they? They consume more sophisticated beverages, and no, he didn't mean beer, especially since he was not fond of beer (as in actively disliked beer dating to the night that in a fit of bravado, he chug-a....well, never mind.)

Truth was he liked milk. And tea. Herbal tea. And occasionally a cup of warm, not hot, water, just before bed, an indulgence he mentioned to no one. He would prefer warm, nearly hot milk, but milk seemed unsuitable for a guy his age. Who wanted to open a man's refrigerator door and find milk...organic milk...but milk?

So the untouched IPAs with a lone Guinness were on the refrigerator door, a bottle of white wine (aged from being there so long), in a marble wine cooler front and center, on the shelf, and four cans of Sanpellegrino lined up behind it. 

In case anybody ever looked.

Well, nobody had. 

Yet.

A woman had been to his place once, exactly once, and when he offered her something to drink, she declined, prettily, he remembered, daintily so not to offend him--he who had curated the contents of his refrigerator so carefully.

"No, I don't care for anything," she'd said in a tone that sounded as if she didn't care for him either.

But why did she smile when he invited her up; why did she perch on the edge of her chair like a nervous dove, perfectly arranged and present, just where he pictured her after he stepped on her left foot while in line at the Quick Stop?

"Ouch!" she had said.

"Oh!" he had said, "I am so sorry. Clumsy me."

She nodded. "Okay," she said, or "It's okay," or something like that. After he apologized a third time, she had actually followed him upstairs (making his choice of renting an efficiency over a corner grocery a brilliant choice.)

"So," he said.

"The bandaid," she said. "You said..." She had slipped off her sandal and extended her leg in his general direction, her toe already swollen and showing a faint smear of blood.

"Oh! Right!" he'd said and moved so quickly towards the bathroom that his head hit the door jamb. "The bandaid."

By the time he was back, with the first aid kit finally ferreted out from under the stack of toilet paper he kept in reserve, she was gone.

Just a faint smear of blood on the paper towel she'd left on the sofa.

Oh, well, he'd tried and now, at least, he could tell his mother that he had had somebody up to his apartment, a woman. He could be suitably vague--he was practiced at that, but at least he had an answer when she called to ask if he'd met anyone.

"Yes," he could say, "Yes, I did. A pretty woman."

The truth.