Be Neat

Housekeeping 101
By Bob Liter

His dark eyes glistened with concentration as he washed asparagus spears. One bare arm, rippling with muscles, stretched to retrieve a pan from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. Tight jeans outlined the length of his legs. His chest filled his short-sleeved shirt. Sweat beaded on his brow. He flipped a towel from a wall rack and wiped his tanned face. He folded it carefully and put it back. As he turned toward me I put my hands on the table and pretended to be looking at them.

“May I get you another drink, Jan?” he asked.

“No thanks, not yet.” I displayed my half-filled glass of white wine.
I never imagined, when Roger Taylor invited me to dinner, that he would cook it himself in his Good Housekeeping apartment. My name is Jan Cooper. I’m the receptionist at Finch-Taylor Insurance Agency. Roger is the younger part of Finch-Taylor.

He placed a sauce pan on the stove, melted two tablespoons of butter in it, added a bit of salt, two tablespoons of flour and stirred.

“It’s important to get the ingredients mixed well,” he said, “but I’m sure you know that.”
I nodded. He measured out two cups of milk, poured it into the mixture slowly, stirring all the while. He added a cup of shredded cheddar cheese and stirred until he was satisfied.

“The sauce is the thing,” he said as he layered the asparagus and the sauce in a gleaming baking dish.

“Hope you like asparagus.”

“I love asparagus,” I said with my fingers crossed. I still clung to the idea that a lie didn’t count if you crossed your fingers.

“I saw you in My Fair Lady.”

“Really.That was two months ago?”

I was surprised. The local Theater Guild had staged the play and I had a small part. We see each other every day at work and this was the first he had mentioned it.

“You a member of the guild?”

“No, maybe I should support it. I just heard you were going to be in the play.”

What to say? Should I ask him if he thought I was star material? Did he enjoy it?
Before I could decide he said, “I thought your round face, you cute figure, I thought it was just right for that racing scene. The big floppy hat and the way you paraded around the stage was something I’ll remember.”

“Thank you,” I managed. My round face. Cherubic, my mother called it.

The evening was pleasant enough. We listened to some classy jazz, talked some about work and drank wine. I was nervous about that. Scared I might spill some on the light blue cushioned chair I was sitting in.

After we ate we washed and dried the dishes. He put them away carefully, checked each cupboard before he closed the door.

He drove me home and kissed me at the side of his car when I refused his offer to see me to the door. My building was nice enough, all brick and glass, the hallways were clean, even the elevator was kept neat. I opened the door to my apartment, Number 310, and stumbled over a plastic sack that I should have picked up after I dropped it a couple of days before. I stooped, picked it up, gathered up the newspaper pages on the floor and couch and piled them on the kitchen table beside the breakfast dishes.

The next morning, before I went to work, I picked up the sweater hanging on the kitchen chair, the pair of shoes in the corner and the blouse I planned to wash two days before. I’d do the dirty dishes that night when I got home from work, maybe. The wadded up editor page of the local newspaper was still in the sink where I’d thrown it after reading that the mayor was right when he insisted we didn’t need any more street sweepers. He should drive down my street and see all the leaves.

Three days later, on a Friday after he had been out of the office most of the time, Roger asked me on a picnic. He followed me outside where October skies leaked rain drops on my head.

He must have read my mind. “Supposed to be sunny tomorrow,” he said.

“I haven’t been on a picnic for years,” I said. “I’d love to.”

I spent half a week’s salary on a pair of designer blue jeans, new loafers, and a sweatshirt that advertised the Saint Louis Cardinals. I thought about that on the way home. Why did I buy that sweatshirt? I don’t like baseball. Did he? I had no idea. Just another dumb thing I did. Like the baseball cap I wore to the picnic. It was one my brother left behind.
It did keep the rain out of my eyes. The “sunny tomorrow” prediction turned out to be as wrong as the whole date. We got soaked, the sandwiches were soggy and my feet hurt. We had walked to the edge of a lake, about two blocks from the car, when the sky dropped its load on us.

He drove to my building and pouted when I refused to let him come it. With unwashed breakfast dishes in the sink and clothes from the day before strewn on the living room couch and floor there was no way he was going to get inside.

The next day, or maybe it was two days later, I scrubbed the kitchen floor, emptied the garbage, ran the vacuum on the living room carpet, hung up my clean clothes and put the dirty stuff in a hamper I had to go out and buy, and waited.

He was in and out of the office frequently, nodded at me most of the time when he passed my desk, but didn’t stop and talk like before. And he didn’t ask me out on a date. I was seriously thinking of inviting him to eat with me at a nearby restaurant -- my turn to treat I would say -- but abandoned the idea. I could see no future for me and Mister Clean, even if he was the hunkiest guy I’d ever seen, and I was ready to be domesticated.
A week later he stopped at my desk and said, “Jan, I’m, well that is, you see I enjoyed that night when I cooked supper for you so much, could I do it again?

“Do you know how to make something besides that asparagus thing?” I asked, as if that made any difference.

“Sure, how about vegetable soup?”

I laughed. This guy would be fixing something more fancy than vegetable soup, wouldn’t he?”

I hesitated for just a moment and said, “Yeah, I guess.Why not?”

We closed up the office that night and he escorted me to his black, shiny new BMW. I enjoyed the comfort of the passenger seat so much I didn’t notice he was going away from his apartment to another part of town. He parked behind Excel Arms, a large, tall building with parking space for maybe fifty cars, each space marked with a name.
“Why are we here?” I asked. Was he trying to pull something, like my leg?

“I live here,’ he said. “Got a nice view of Bradley Park.”

Three people, a woman wearing glasses and an upturned nose, a man carrying a briefcase and a teenager with earphones glued to his head, joined us in the elevator. We were the first to get off, on the fourth floor, and I followed him to apartment, Four Zero Nine. The gold letters on the door were spelled out.

“But I thought . . .”

“Oh, you mean the other apartment. That’s my mother’s. She was visiting my sister. Let me use it but made me promise not to make a mess. She’s a clean freak.”

We entered a large living room. He ducked behind a three-cushion couch and came up with a sweatshirt, a pair of smelly socks and one running shoe. He tossed them into the bedroom off to the side and closed the door.

“Come look at the view,” he said.

I followed him into the kitchen and noted several dirty dishes in the sink. We stood beyond a blond kitchen table littered with magazines, his arm around my shoulder. The park stretched out before us. Multicolored leaves carpeted the ground. The surface of a small lake glistened in the twilight. I leaned against him, content to stand there forever.

“I’ll bet you are hungry. I know I am. Can you wait until I get something delivered? Pizza maybe?”

“Pizza? I came here expecting a kitchen demonstration. Like on television. Like last time.”

“Were you impressed? I practiced on that recipe for a week. I don’t know how to cook anything else.”

“Pizza will be fine,” I said.

While we waited for the pizza I talked him into drying while I washed the dirty dishes. Someone

had to teach him not to be a slob.

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