Second First Impressions: A Novel

“All we need is a stunning photo and we’re ready to go live on your dating profile,” Melanie tells me. “Here, put this on. And this, this, this.” She tosses random cosmetics at my head from across the office. “This, this, this.”

I lower my arms when it’s safe. “You’re forgetting. We don’t do this in work hours.” I get up from my chair to collect the makeup, but I’m so stiff I have to stay bent over. “Oh, my back.” My computer glasses swing on their chain and whack me in the face.

“You old granny,” Mel says with affection. “If you’re not careful I’ll load a pic of your bum, bent over just like that. You’d get plenty of messages from weirdos.”

“I will kill”— I get down to ground level and pick up a lipstick— “you”— a blush— “Melanie Sasaki.” Highlighter. Eyelash curler. She even threw a makeup brush. I straighten up with difficulty. “I swear, I feel it in my joints when a storm is coming through.”

“You are aging rapidly by the day. By week six I’ll be dyeing your white hair back to brown. I’ve got to get you out of here before I go.” She takes a long swig of the massive bottle of pale green juice on her desk. I already know from her earlier swigs that it tastes like celery had diarrhea. It’s Wednesday and day three of Mel’s cleanse. I’m desperate for her resolve to break. But even as she complains and overshares, I’ve been laughing.

I once thought I wouldn’t last in the same room with her until lunchtime without screaming, but now time’s passing too quickly. “Your end date is a month away now. So soon.”

“The temp agency is already sending me through new roles to look at. They think I’ll say yes to anything. I usually do, but I’m tired. I hope we think of my dream job before then.”

I ask the following, even though I know what the answer will be. “Would you consider working for the Parlonis?”

She gives me a Look. “Wow, you really despise me, huh. Do you know what they made Teddy do yesterday at lunchtime? They got McDonald’s and he had to plate it up like a five-star restaurant.” She searches in her phone. “Look at this nonsense.”

He’s cut the Big Macs into tiny wedges. They’re laid down sideways beside a Jenga-style stack of fries, a nugget, and an artistic squiggle of Sweet and Sour Sauce. I can’t exactly tell Mel that I have already seen this photo, while Teddy was lying on my couch with his head on a cushion. A cushion that was on my lap.

Since my false-alarm meltdown last Friday, Teddy has stopped trying to keep himself out of my cottage. There’s been no threshold-lingering; instead, he’s been soaking up my hospitality and I mean that literally. He’s been soaking in my bathtub, singing “Wonderwall” through the unlocked door. Melanie would have a nosebleed if she knew. I really don’t know how it’s happened, so I wouldn’t be able to explain it.

He hasn’t made me feel like shit for my meltdown, and he’s come with me on each nightly security round. He washes the dishes and he knows every single subplot and backstory of Heaven Sent. It feels like Teddy’s been sent to me. I know that thinking like that won’t help.

I steer us back to work.

“As one of your last projects, I was hoping for your help planning the Christmas party. I was thinking of doing a vintage prom theme this year. Imagine all the ladies in pretty dresses.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Melanie enthuses. “Parties are kind of my thing. I love organizing. I love inviting people, I love seeing them have a good time. I live for that.” Out comes her notebook and she begins scribbling. “Food. Decorations. Playlist. Invites. Food. What I’m going to wear. Oh my God, I can do my hair in a beehive. Eyeliner. Food.”

She pretends to chew her next mouthful of juice before swallowing.

In my Midona Project dedicated notebook, on the page titled POSSIBLE CAREERS FOR MEL I write Event Planner. “Let’s start with invitations. I usually give four weeks’ notice of the date, so they need to go out this week. Do you have any design skills?”

“I have been temping for ten thousand years. I have every skill.” The thought dims her light. Melanie looks around. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, and it may be the juice talking, but I’ll be sad to move on from here. I’m tired of new people, new desks. It’d be nice to rest awhile.”

“You’re not scared of old people anymore?”

She blows out a breath. “I was at first. I found your photo album and the funeral programs in your drawer. I’m scared of that aspect of being here. But if we just keep everyone happy and busy, I think everything will be okay. And besides, you’re here.”

Melanie takes a phone call from a resident. When she hangs up, I agree with her. “It’s our job to make their lives as lovely as we can.” I check my in-box. There’s one from Dorothea at PDC marked “Request.” Before I can even read to the bottom of the email, Melanie says, “I sent it to her.”

“Thank you.”

PDC sent a surveyor here yesterday. I walked around the site with him, trying to work out the purpose of his visit. I tried my best to demonstrate the virtues of our lake and hillside. He finally told me: Unless you’re a qualified surveyor, too, I think you’ve helped me enough.

Red with embarrassment, I slunk back to find a message from Rose Prescott on my desk. She made me dig out an asbestos assessment report from 1994 because she obviously hates me. Melanie picked the cobwebs out of my hair after I emerged from the file storage abyss.

It was worth it to hear the grudging approval in Rose’s voice when I called her back.

I will give Melanie some good feedback now. “You’ve been doing a really great job. I couldn’t have gotten through these last few weeks without you.” This gives her a rosy glow. “Using your design skills, could you mock up something that looks like a 1950s-era prom invitation?”

“Cute. I can do that. Might team up with the old Tedster on this one, seeing as though he’s ‘so inspired lately.’ ” (She uses quotation fingers.) Now she narrows her eyes. “What’s inspiring him so much, do you think?”

It’s me and the safe white page that is my cottage. It’s because Teddy finally knows exactly what he’s doing every night, and it’s cleared the disorganized restlessness out of him. I have never been this peaceful, Ruthie. But I can’t tell her that.

I shrug in answer to her question. “Great idea about the invitations, let’s get him involved. I really hope you’ll come, even though your contract will be over. We’ll give one to Teddy,” I add on lightly. “He won’t be able to make it, but he’ll know he’s always welcome.”

She rolls her eyes. “He’s finally sorted out his tax situation. Get this: He got a refund. He thought he was going to jail but gets a check instead. Was he kissed by a leprechaun at birth? His account is filling up nicely.” She looks up from her party planning checklist. “Nobody ever made saving for a life dream look so effortless. I hate him.”

Teddy tells me everything, but he didn’t tell me that.

“Me too.” We’re both liars who are going to miss him badly. “He’s absolutely unbelievable.”

“So here’s what we’re going with for your dating profile,” Melanie begins, consulting her screen. We are distracted by a black-clad figure at the door. “Oh, go away please, we’re doing some serious stuff.”

“I will not go away,” Teddy says indignantly, sitting in the visitor chair at my desk. “I’m staying until the food comes. Who’s unbelievable?”

“Food.” Melanie is distracted again. Mel says her juice cleanse is to release toxins from her organs; which organs, she will not say. My observation is that the juice is releasing dizzy spells and bouts of random paranoia. With eyes like a wolf, she asks Teddy, “What did they order?”

“Big salads.”

“Salads,” she echoes in grief.

To make conversation I say to him, “I heard you had a tax windfall.”

“Yes. I didn’t expect my next Good Samaritan to be the taxation department. I was going to tell you.” Except he didn’t, because news of his progress makes a very hidden part of me very sad, and he knows it.

Once upon a time, I sank gratefully into my silent candlelit bathroom like a temple. I thought that my routine was sacred and untouchable, but I know that things have changed for me now. Having him sitting on my couch in the evenings, and Melanie across from me during the day, has spoiled me. I’m beginning to worry for myself.

“So what’s going on here?” Teddy asks Melanie in a tired voice.

“I was just about to read out Ruthie’s dating profile and take her photo. Except of course I wasn’t going to do that during office hours,” she adds, in response to whatever my expression is. “I was going to do that at 5:01 P.M., after Ruthie and I cross-reference the water charges on Providence’s account to the payments we’ve made.”

“Guys, I do not care about what you do in here.” Teddy drapes himself back in his chair and pulls the elastic tie out of his hair. He shakes out the beautiful mess with his hands. “Rose is going to turn it into an alpaca ranch just to mess with me. Just enjoy it while it lasts.”

Stroke, slide, his hands sort through his hair until my fingertips burn on the armrests of my chair. It’s not just me affected by it.

“Quit tormenting me,” Melanie says to Teddy with temper. She gets up, runs to the bathroom, and slams the door behind her. The juice has cleansed her at least four times since 9:00 A.M.

He blinks at me like his feelings are hurt. “What’d I do?”

“You’ve been making her feel like her hair is inferior. She wears her ponytail extension every day now. It’s hard on the scalp.” I’m unsettled as I go over his comment. “Alpaca ranch, huh? Have you heard something?”

Teddy continues sorting through his hair with his head tipped back. Up to the ceiling, he replies, “No, but even if I did, I couldn’t tell you. Board members and shares and whatever. Don’t wanna get sued by my own dad, that’d be awkward.” He yawns. There’s those back molars I’ve been missing. “Rose would be first up in the witness box.”

“A surveyor was here.”

He winces. “That’s never a good sign. Stop looking at me with those huge brown eyes. I know what you want from me, and I can’t do it.”

Melanie comes out with her ponytail redone. “Teddy, what conditioner do you use?”

“I rinse it in rainwater with a capful of vodka.”

“Really,” Mel marvels, leaning on her desk with eyes like cartoon spirals. “Does it have to be cold water?”

“Very cold. Like ice.” He drops his hands out of his hair. “You got a Tangle Teezer in your bag, Mel? ’Course you do, you’re a girl. Come brush me.”

“Can I practice a basket braid on you?” (He nods.) She approaches him unsteadily and puts both her hands into his hair, making his eyes droop into slits. My eyes probably are, too. She’s up to her wrists in that gleaming black stuff. I love her, but I want to scream at her.

And he’s watching for my reaction and I’ve got to hold it together.

“It’s got to be a wig. It’s too perfect.” Melanie tugs around on his hairline until he whimpers. “Okay, that does it. Ruthie’s bones told me that it’s going to rain. I’m going to put a bucket under the garage’s downpipe.”

I save her some effort. “He’s kidding about that. Please eat this before you faint.” I pass her a banana. It makes her relinquish his hair and I hiss out the suffocating green steam building in my lungs. His nostrils flare and I swear he scents it. His mouth quirks. I want to stick his head in a bucket of dirty mop water.

“My cleanse,” Melanie says, a lamb bleat. “My toxins.” We watch her violently skin the fruit and chomp it in half. Through her disgusting mouthful, she says something to him like, “Before you ask, no, I won’t tell you what Ruthie’s dating profile will say.”

“I’ll swipe through all the girls in the world until I find her.”

“You would,” she says darkly after a hard swallow.

“Sounds like he already has.” Wow, I really said that. I turn back to my computer and open an email from the maintenance contractor while Teddy just stares at me. “So it looks like they’re sending an electrician next Thursday.” I reply to the email, diarize it, all under his bright-hot hazel eyes.

Mel contributes the following insight: “Banana good.”

“Why are you on the juice?” Teddy asks her.

“I met a guy for a date down at the Thunderdome. He said I was bigger than he expected.” This isn’t what she told me about the juice cleanse. But it’s okay. Teddy has a way about him that draws the truth out.

I’m instantly angry. “Excuse me, he said what?”

“My profile says I’m half Japanese, and he made an assumption.” She smooths her hands down her front. “I should be smaller.”

Teddy’s equally affronted. “You’re planning on changing yourself based on some dude’s imagination? You’re smarter than that, Mel.”

“I just haven’t been having much luck lately,” she says defensively. “I’m sorry, Ruthie, but it’s a jungle out there.”

“He saved you a lot of time, revealing himself as a jerk up front. Don’t change anything about yourself. You can have my yogurt.” The spoon I hold out is snatched by a desperate hand.

Melanie throws the banana skin at the bin and it sticks to the wall above. “Thanks, Mom and Dad, you’re the best.” She goes to the fridge. Silence fills the office, apart from rhythmic scraping, swallowing sounds, and mmm. When she’s back at her desk, she makes a decision. “I’ll read out Ruthie’s profile, but only because I want a decent guy’s perspective.”

That’s troubling for him. “Find someone else then.”

“Twenty-five-year-old cute-as-a-button brunette— ”

I hold up my hand. “Objection.”

“Overruled,” Presiding Judge Theodore Prescott says. “So far very accurate.”

Bananas mixed with yogurt are a hell of a drug. Melanie is getting some color back in her cheeks. “Just let me say the whole thing. No interrupting. Twenty-five-year-old cute-as-a-button brunette seeks old-fashioned soul mate to set her world on fire. No casual hookups, weirdos, little dicks, broke dudes, or fugs.”

I am aghast. “Melanie. Take that last bit off.”

“I loaned her some of my dating profile,” she says to Teddy with a grin. “It’s too good.”

“Well, it rules me out.” He hauls himself to his feet when he hears a scooter. “I’m sure you’ll debate that in my absence.”

“Broke dude,” we both say in unison to his departing back. “He’s also a weirdo,” Melanie adds. I cut her off with a head-shake before she can ponder the rest.

“I am feeling so much better, but I need some air,” Melanie says when Teddy walks in holding the delivered takeout. “Why don’t I walk these up to the girls. I want to talk to Aggie about careers. Did you know she was a fancy lawyer?” She detangles the bags out of his hand and walks off up the hill.

The light leaves the room. This is traditionally the time that makes me feel like life is over, but it’s just beginning, because he is here. The zesty lemon flecks in his eyes are the only bright things.

This is it. Another moment I’ll look back on one day with either a headshake or a mental high five. I had a gorgeous, single next-door neighbor, a risky one for sure, but I am a champion at guarding my feelings. I have been training for this big, tattooed mistake all my life. If I ask him to just give me the last few weeks he has left, what would he say?

Before I can take this chance, he lifts his phone and says, “Here, I’ll take your dating profile photo. Oh, man,” he says in despair to the screen.

“Show me.”

He holds the screen up. For a dating profile photo, it’s not the best. I’m at a desk with glasses around my neck and yes, brown and cream is not my best palette, but I look like someone who has integrity, clear skin with a flush, a light in her eyes, and a fond softness to her mouth.

“I look like a pretty little dweeb. At least it’s truthful advertising.” My joke doesn’t make him smile. He sinks down lower, staring at the screen, polishing a smudge off the glass with his thumb. His chest rises and falls on a deep breath.

I’m going to take a page out of his book. If I say it light and joking, he won’t know that it’s serious. “I’m worried I won’t remember how to kiss. I haven’t kissed anyone since Adam. My prom night feels like a long time ago now.”

He’s momentarily dumbstruck as he considers the length of my drought. He leans forward, elbows on knees. “Don’t worry for a second. You should see your mouth when you talk. When you smile,” he adds when I do now. “I think you’re a good kisser.”

I wonder if I could possibly convince him to test the theory?

I look across at the time. “Would you like to come over for dinner on Friday night, after I go clothes shopping with Mel?” The mere mention of food has him nodding. He rubs his palms up and down his thighs. I wonder if this is a little underhanded, having a kiss-related motive. I should be up front. “I think I should tell you that I will probably try for a good-night kiss. For purely scientific reasons.”

He’s gaping at my boldness, and laughing, and concerned. “That’s not a good idea. My self-control around you has been pretty impressive. We don’t want me falling back into old patterns.”

I stay brave. “I wouldn’t mind. So knowing this motive, are you still coming to dinner? I can’t exactly invite myself over to your nuclear bunker. It’s really a shame your dad couldn’t fix you up with a cozier abode.”

“He said I could have an empty town house.” He shrugs carelessly. “The Parlonis told me on my second day I could have their spare room. I’ve got some very comfy options. But I’ll stay right where I am.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my neighbor.”

I am utterly charmed and I’m sure he sees it. I stretch my arms over my head.

“Thanks for the profile photo. When Mel gets back, she’s going to push the button. Let the dicks rain down upon me.” I put my face in my hands. “Let me rephrase.”

“Don’t remind me about all those jerks with dicks,” he says in a withering tone. He attaches my photo to a text and a second later his phone chimes in his pocket. “About Friday. I’m gonna be a good boy, so don’t get your hopes up.” I don’t know if it’s the lengthening shadows playing tricks on my eyes, but he seems kind of nervous. Why would he be? It’s just me.

“One of these days I’m going to be a bad girl. Maybe you’ll be around to witness it.” I can’t believe the things I’m brave enough to say to him these days. It kind of suits me. Then I utterly ruin my sexy bad girl aura, but I don’t think he minds. “Now, let’s talk about software packages. What have you found that might suit your studio?”