Another Cookie by Sis Byers

She cracked the cookie that was wrapped in a napkin in her pocket and popped the small chunk in her mouth. She should’ve eaten beforehand but was so nervous she didn’t feel hunger until she got there. This was her second date in ten days. A new guy, a new try. She was saying it all week as though a motto.

Her divorce still felt fairly recent even though it’d been five years now and her ex-husband had a one-year-old daughter with a totally new person, which made him seem like a stranger to her. She made the mistake of looking at their family photos on Facebook. She kept meaning to cancel her account.

She never understood how people move on.

 She understood the concept, and the intention, and was able to act the part of woman moving on. New apartment, new friends, even dabbled in dying her hair, but if prodded she would be the first person to admit that no matter what she did, she always felt the same.

And now trying to date? Ugh. These dates were the cumulation of four friends telling her she had to put herself back out there. Oh, did she? The world just needed her paired up? She couldn’t help but wonder if their insistence was due to the fact that her singledom created an unspoken misbalance among their group. They had all taken a trip over the summer, and she was the only one who hadn’t brought a partner or other half, which made their game night extremely awkward. She insisted to be master of ceremonies, if it would help even out the teams, but she didn’t really have a “master of ceremonies” personality. So, after the first game, she excused herself to make a very important phone call she forgot to make, and no one seemed concerned when she never came back to the table.

The thing about being a woman in your late 40’s and dating is that no one really seems all that interesting anymore. All their stories are about work. Or places they’ve traveled with exes. Or their kids. Their schedules. Their kids’ schedules. And, worst of all, the tolls of taking care of aging parents. The bottom of an adult conversation kept lowering, and she was expected to meet them excitedly in the subbasement of socialization to seem normal.

She even briefly considered dating a Republican just to hear something new. But after quick review of his dating profile considered it not worth her time.

And now she waits for Walter.

She had picked a café a block and a half from her house and was waiting patiently, an oatmeal raisin cookie wrapped in a napkin and shoved in her pocket. She was taking another secret bite as she heard the bell of the café door ding.

DING

A disheveled man rushed in. He did a quick scan of the room, and then rushed over to her table. Sweating. He pulled out the chair and sat down so quickly that the little round café table nearly tipped.

“SORRY!” he said, stabilizing it. “I just hate being late.” 

“Oh, hi, Walter.”

“Shhhhherry?” he said leaning into the handshake.

“Yessshh.”

He stared at her briefly and laughed. “That’s good.” He started to sweat.

“First date in a while, Walter?”

“No, not really, but yeah, sort of.” He had dark green eyes, a cap on his head. “Listen, I don’t want to come off as crazy right away – but, I was chased here by a pack of wild dogs. And need to catch my breath.” He flashed a smile.  

She sipped her cappuccino and looked out the window. She noted the grayness of the day. November afternoons in this part of the Midwest have a darkness about them, as though the light seems about to slip away at any second. Traffic on Broadway was the typical semi-regular four-in-the-afternoon flow. The foot traffic of bundled people going about their way seemed as ordinary as every other day. All that was missing was the pack of wild dogs.

“Well, that’s not good, Walter.”

“I know!” He adjusted his cap. “I’m going to grab a coffee.” He stood up and his legs were shaking. He bounded over to the barista and whispered his order.

A double espresso.

She winced, concerned the caffeine could take an already jacked-up Walter over the edge.

That morning in the shower she let herself imagine what the rest of her life could look like. She could be happy living the life of a single woman, setting the frame rate of her day, her time, her lifestyle. She wondered if she could ever be the kind of person that had a lot of plants.

Walter sat back down.

His eyes were electric. “Sherry, can I ask you something?”

Her heart skipped a beat. She had no idea what could possibly come out of Walter’s mouth. She leaned in. “Please, do.”

“Have you ever been chased by anything?”

She considered his question. She had a vague memory of being a small child and fighting with a neighborhood dog, wearing a bowl on her head as a helmet. And at the age of eight racing against neighborhood bullies to protect a little kid from them. In high school, running from a truck, top lights blazing, chasing her and her friends through a late-night blizzard. They hid in a snowbank until the truck of guys lost interest and drove off. In her 20’s, she felt she was chased by the pressure to start a career, meet someone, start a family, figure out her life. And now, that pathway crashed and burned, she is chased by the judgement of her closest friends and her enduring determination to find some meaning in it all.

She wasn’t sure which of these to lay on Walter.

“Yes, both physically and existentially.”

He looked at her, and his eyes shined. He nodded and looked down at the table with a gentle smile. “I’m relieved to hear you say that.” He took a napkin and dabbed his brow.

She saw the cuff of his pants was torn.

“From the wild dogs?” She pointed at the ripped cuff.

He looked at it and twisted his leg from side to side, admiring the complete shredding of the trouser. “Well, Jesus Christ. It was either the dogs or the fence I jumped to get away from them.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to tell,” she agreed.  

She knew online dating did work for some people. In fact, a lot of people, otherwise it wouldn’t be the multi-billion-dollar industry it is today.

“Sooo.” She pulled out her typical first date question. “Did you grow up here in Chicago.”

“No. You?”

“Nope.” She did a closed mouth smile and thought of the cookie in her pocket.

“Do you believe in Hell?” Walter picked the next topic of their new-people-trying-to-make-conversation recipe.

She considered this. There were many years of her life where she held the distinct fear of hell. Waves of fear would resonate through her whenever she made a mistake, made a bad choice, or did something mean. She could picture an eternal darkness and her sitting alone on a cold rock floor. She never pictured the fire and heat of biblical drawings. Just the darkness. The endless solitude. The cold flooring.

“I used to.” She took a sip of her cappuccino. “But now, I don’t know. Too many bad things happen all the time for me to believe in it.”

“How do you mean?” He seemed genuinely interested in her stance on Hell.

“I mean, as a kid, I used to think that every time I did something bad my chances of going to hell got higher. Like there was this big scorecard. And that someday it would all be tallied and we’d find out if it added up to eternal damnation.” She leaned in closer to Walter. “And as I’ve lived, I started to realize that I was the only one afraid of that. Because there is so much casual evil every day. If others were as scared as I was, there wouldn’t be. And I just sort of realized that all the people that do things so much worse than I could’ve ever done will likely rest peacefully for the rest of their lives.” She considered for a second longer. “There just wouldn’t be all this horribleness that we see every day if there was a hell. And honestly, I sort of wish there were.” She went to take a sip of her drink and stopped herself. “And in the same vein, because there is no hell, there is also no heaven. You can’t have the possibility of reward without the balance of potential punishment.”

“Would you like to split a scone?” Walter inquired.

She thought of the private cookie in her pocket. “Yeah, sure.”

“I can’t tell if I like scones or hate em.” Walter winked at her and bounded up to the coffee bar.

She wondered what about this date she would tell her friends.

Walter came back with a small white ceramic plate and a scone sitting center on it.

“These are somewhat hard to split, because they crumble to dust with any sort of challenge.” Walter said with authority. “We’ll mostly be consuming crumbs.”

“Like birds.”

“Just like birds, yes, Sherry. That’s very astute.”

She wondered if it was astute. And decided it wasn’t. But went with it.

“Walter, do you believe in hell?”

Walter laughed and enjoyed his crumbs. “Somedays, yes, I do. And then there are other days that I think we’re in it already. But the majority of the time I try not to think about it too much.” 

She took a spoonful of crumbs. They dissolved on her tongue, and the sweet and unsweet flavors mixed to cause a confusion of taste enjoyment. Her mouth went dry.

“This morning,” Walter took a sip of his water, “this morning I was looking out my window, and I saw a child chasing seagulls up and down the beachfront. Not a care in the world. And I thought, I can’t wait to meet Sherry.”

She didn’t see how it all connected, but she was pleased to hear that he had been looking forward to this, to meeting her. She wasn’t the kind of person most people would look forward to meet. Or so she always thought.

“I’ll be honest with you, Walter; I wasn’t looking forward to this. But I am surprised by how much I am enjoying myself with you.” She put a fingerful of crumbs in her mouth. “Not to say I wasn’t looking forward to meeting you – but going on dates – it’s not easy to do.”

“I’m not sure it should be easy, Sherry. We after all are two cosmic beings purposely colliding to see what kind of explosion we make. Will we drift apart never to orbit each other again, or will we create a new kind of energy altogether. Who’s to say. But rarely does easy slip into that equation.”

She felt stars exploding somewhere a million miles away.

They both stopped to watch a woman walk past the window. Bundled for the brisk November air, the woman was unremarkably ordinary and yet pulled their attention. When she vanished from sight, they looked back at each other.

“Can I ask you something, Walter?”

“Please do, Sherry.”

“How did you escape the pack of wild dogs?”

His eyes crackled and he narrowed their scope. He adjusted his chair, and cleared his voice. “I’m afraid to say this, but I think they are still out there. Waiting.”

“I’m just not seeing any through the window, Walter.”

“Oh, I know. But you should’ve seen the look in their eyes. De-ter-min-ation.”

She smiled wryly. At times throughout her life, she sat and stared at herself in the mirror, almost in a trance, waiting for something to make sense. She felt herself stare at Walter.  

Their crumb plate was clean.

She sat back watching him.

“Let me walk you home, Walter.”

He looked surprised. “It’s too risky. I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“I want to.”

She stood up and picked up her mug and their plate and dropped it in a plastic tub near the door. “Are you ready?”

He looked at her and grabbed her hand. She felt an electric shock run through her body and gripped her fingers around his.

She pulled open the front door and together they stepped out onto the sidewalk, the nightfall falling faster than before.

The door closed behind them.

And the dogs began to howl.