Chapter 1027:
With all the stuff going on with her father, the lady advised it was time for her to meet pops and it didn’t sound like a suggestion. Something I hoped would happen never rather than later, but she insisted, and I had apparently run out of good excuses. It’s not that I don’t want to see him, I just don’t want the lady to be exposed to him and the same crass stuff he spewed all over the Brazilian. I called him up and said we would be stopping over sometime Saturday and to prepare for guests, adding “pull it together this time”. Merging this little trip and date night was going to take some good timing, but I was not going to miss out on the plans I had made for our date. Plans that required we be dressed up and at a specific place at a specific time over an hour away from the retirement community pops lives at.
We arrived at pop’s place as scheduled, and I was pleased to find he let the staff in to clean it up a little. I introduced the lady, and she was immediately greeted with “Aren’t you a looker. The last one he brought here was too, but she had a big *** and talked too much.” I just ignored his quip and checked to make sure the place was being taken care of and he had adequate food, clean clothes, bedding, etc. He made note of my activities and told the lady that he provided for me when I was a kid, so I didn’t die and now I help provide for him as an old man, so he doesn’t die. Which was a slight exaggeration on both counts. From there the conversation was surprisingly benign for him going over basic introductions and covering his general hatred for the Democrats, how the employees who deliver his groceries were “as ******* dumb as Michael Dukakis” and how he was chasing after yet another new retiree in the complex. As Pops and the lady continued to visit in the living room I rooted around, replaced a light bulb, tightened a few screws, and completed a few other tasks on pop’s chore list. All the things the retirement community staff should be doing but he won’t always let them in to do.
When I returned, the lady was in full bloom happily telling pops about her daughter, her business, and that “he better get used to her being around”. Pops said “Oh, you two in it for the long haul?” to which she responded, “Forever and a day”. He looked at me without saying anything and held the gaze for several seconds. Then he looked back at her and said, “Does that mean you two are in love” and she replied, “Madly in love”. He looked back at me and said, “Well boy, is that true? Do you love this woman?” I gave him the same stare in return and said, “Of course I do, she just told you that”. He let out a snort and a chuckle and said “I wanna hear it from you Mr. never gonna fall in love and never gonna settle down.” The lady was still bright eyed through all of this and seemed just as excited to hear my response as pops was. "Yes, I love her. I love everything about her. She even makes all of this ******** worth it." Pops jumped in with “What ******** are we talking ‘bout?” I answered, “******** like her wanting to come meet my cantankerous old man when we were supposed to be on a date”. “You brought that Caribbean chick here and I know you didn’t love her” he said. “Sure I did” I replied, “I just didn’t love her in the same way.” He tossed back a “Mm Hmm” then “Yeah you loved her 20 minutes at a time” then laughed at his own comment. I responded by saying “I don’t ******* care if you believe me or not, I do love this woman - she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me”. There may have been a touch of hostility in my voice as the lady squeezed my leg like she was telling me to calm down. “My boy the soldier… the contract killer… had a lady come along and tame his dark heart?” He slapped his knee and smiled big before saying “Well I’ll be damned; I think you are in love. I better go buy a lottery ticket.” The lady chimed in with “I don’t need one, I already won the lottery when your son came into my life”. Pops just nodded and said, “uh huh” as he looked at us before adding a piece of advice “Just remember, if one of you gives up on the other, even for just a moment, it’ll either fall apart or you’ll be stuck in a ****** relationship forever”. The lady got up, walked over to pops, put her hand on his shoulder and said “Thank you, but you don’t have to worry about that. I am never going to give up on him and I am never going to let him give up on me!” He just smiled, gave me a taunting look. Then the lady sort of smacked him on the shoulder and said, “I’m not going to give up on your either, even you act like an *** sometimes”. He quickly said, “Oh boy! This one’s kinda feisty, I can see why you like her”. The lady then walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water before returning a moment later.
Then to my complete surprise he asked if we would bring the girl with us the next time, we came to visit saying “she’s the closest thing to a grandkid I’m ever gonna get”. Then he droned on about how everyone in this place talks incessantly about their grandchildren, shoving their pictures in his face, having them come for dinner, etc. Pops even said if she came to visit, he would “tone down his ornery old man shtick”. Again, I cannot understate how much this surprised me. I didn’t even expect him to want to meet the lady let alone her daughter. Of course, the lady immediately showed him some pictures of the girl and said we would be back soon, “all three of us”. Then the two of them made plans to get together around Thanksgiving for a meal. After some more general conversation and helping him log into some streaming entertainment accounts that he somehow logged himself out of, I told him we had to get going as we had date night plans. He got up and walked us to the door before receiving a big hug and kiss on the cheek from the lady who said it was very nice to meet him and she looks forward to coming back next month. I said goodbye and he gave me the standard head nod as I opened and held the door for the lady to walk through. Once I was outside and he began to shut the door I could hear him say to me “She is a looker".
And with that out of the way, we were enroute to date night fun! Remember the jazz club we went to after the zoo on our first official date? That’s where we were heading too once again, the tickets were in my pocket and the venue featured a band I was certain that the lady was going to love. We had a solid 60-minute drive ahead of us, a drive that was filled with conversation. The lady didn’t think pops was as bad as I described him and that she really liked it when said I loved her in front of him, somehow made it feel even more real to her. She anticipated that the same way I was filling a void in her daughter’s life, maybe pops would fill another. I responded with my thoughts on the matter, but she told me “When you are upset or negative you sound a lot like him”. I did not love that comment, or maybe did not love that it might be accurate. Either way it resulted in me changing the subject. We covered a variety of topics from the potential house coming up for sale, to her trip next week to deal with her father’s stuff, to the fast-approaching holiday season. In what felt like a very short amount of time, but was over an hour, we arrived at the club just a few minutes early. Good conversation makes time go by quickly.
I parked the car to avoid the Valet parker, and we walked to the club. Arriving early resulted in our being closer to the door than we usually are while standing in line, and we were inside and seated quickly. With a reserved mezzanine table and an incredible view of the stage we watched as the crew prepared for the popular band who was covering The Talking Heads and a few other similar groups from that era. Our waitress presented our course options and the wine pairings chosen by the club’s sommelier. The lady decided to throw me for a loop and announced that she didn’t feel like choosing and would simply just have whatever I selected. Wonderful. I decided that we would start with a smoked venison carpaccio, dandelion pesto, confit baby heirloom tomatoes, pickled dragon fruit, chili crisp and a glass of Graham Beck, Brut Rosé. Our main entrée would be a crispy skin branzino, corn soubise, Thai caviar, Bok choy-sorrel-radish succotash and Lumen ’21 Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay. And for the record confit rabbit’s leg was one of the options I didn’t select because I knew the lady would prefer the fish, even if I really wanted to watch her consume the leg of a rabbit. Our third course would be caramel apple cheesecake with vanilla mascarpone and sauternes caramel, served with a glass of Château ‘18 Lions de Suduiraut. Of course, this meal was going to be presented slowly but surely through the course of the band’s first set of the night. As the waitress walked away the lady said, “Thank goodness, I was afraid you were going to select the grilled octopus just to teach me a lesson.” Then she told me she was happy drinking only the 3 glasses of wine and some water on this fine evening as she had no plans on becoming inebriated or even close to it.
The night unfolded as expected. Delicious food, good wine, great music and wonderful company. Watching the lady thoroughly enjoy the experience somehow improves each individual aspect of the date for me. Once the table was cleared, we scooted our chairs together to watch more of the performance while holding each other, my arm draped around her and sharing the occasional look and kiss. At one point she set my hand on the table and slowly traced out the letters “I – L – O – V – E – Y – O – U” on the back of it before resting her head on my chest. While it wasn’t late, I knew it was time to go. We gathered our things and returned to the car. As we entered the road from the parking area, she turned on the radio, held my hand and said, “Thank you for the wonderful date, now take me home and take me to bed”.