“The night of Cassidy & Arthur’s dinner ‘date’ & its aftermath, and the story ends.”
Click Here for Part One & Part Two.

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x

“Arthur? Is that you?“

Cassidy was confused to see him. She hopped on twenty minutes in to his bus ride, knapsack in-tow, to see him sitting near the front of the bus on one of the benches parallel to the aisle, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. She recognized his stubble. There wasn’t a spot next to him, so she hovered, still sporting her knapsack, holding on to the grip bar with clammy palms.

“Hm?“

She reached for his hood and flipped it off his head. He had some very noticeable scratches at the base of his nose and along his eyebrow line, but it was him, “What are you doing taking the bus?”

“Oh hi.”

“What are you doing taking the bus?”

“I couldn’t get my car started.”

“Oh.”

“…What are you doing taking the bus?”

“Somebody said they were driving later.”

“Oh. You couldn’t get a ride?”

“I didn’t think I needed one.”

“Oh. I had figured I’d just drive us wherever from the restaurant and then take us back to your car.”

“Never mind. I’m over it.”

“…We’re still going out after though, right?”

“How am I getting home?”

“…The bus?“

“Heh, you’re funny.” He wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy. It kind of threw me for a loop, too. You’re on my route, though, so I guess we can just come back the same way together, when we’re done.”

“Sure.” They puttered silently for a minute as the bus rolled along, “How much longer does it take?”

“Only, like, ten more minutes.”

“That close, huh?”

“Yeah, it just rips by when you’re driving yourself. You don’t get all the little detours.”

“Actually, I usually have to take the long way around on the highway. If I could take the one-way roads like a bus, I’d never be late for a shift.” She snorted. Arthur grimaced.

The bus went over a bump, and Cassidy lost her balance and stepped backward, smooshing her knapsack against the face of someone sitting on the chair behind her, “Get off of me!”

Cassidy looked behind her, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” She took her bag off and put it on the floor next to her. She started to think of another one of those absurd porn videos she’d seen in those brief, intimate exposures online, where it looked like the Japanese schoolgirl was getting raped on a public bus full of salarymen. But those would-be idiots had better watch out this time! She had pepper spray ready! She just had to kneel down, reach into her knapsack after she took it off, and fish for it – in the meantime, her ass would be sticking out. She’d be a sitting duck.

Arthur started to stand, “Did you want to sit down?”

“…No. No, thanks, I’m fine. It’s not much longer anyway.” He could have offered earlier, “So what happened to your face?”

“What about my face?”

“Your face! You have scratches all under here.” She motioned around her nose with her finger. Arthur flipped his hood back up.

“I just cut myself a few times while I was shaving. It’s no big deal.” They didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. Both justified the silence by being comfortable enough with one another to share the moments when neither had to speak. Or something.

xi

Arthur & Cassidy’s work shift that evening wasn’t anything to write about, other than the late realization that he probably should have brought a change of clothes for himself. None of the kitchen boys commented on the myopic, messy work he did to the hairs on his face, and certainly not his balls, as he sweat through all his clothes and rounded out the night cleaning the fryers in damp underwear. He was using hot water & soap now, and he finished just before ten PM.

The balmy weather had continued into the night, and when Cassidy opened the front door at eight fifty-nine PM just before locking up to look at the sky, she could see stars, and it must have been over fifteen degrees because she wasn’t shivering. She finished her section, and when her area was clean she stepped into the bathroom, clumsily changing in one of the stalls with her lengthy arms, only realizing halfway through that maybe she should have just changed in the office with the door closed instead.

Arthur was already in his sweatshirt, leaning against the counter waiting for her. She was wearing a black, big & tall skater dress covered in a floral pattern of red roses. The hemline bobbed just above her knees where her thigh-high black socks ended, and her knapsack was at her rear. She knew she looked good. She felt good. And she was actually going out now to show it off. She wanted to dance in place, on the area rug in the lobby of the restaurant in her Michael Kors flats – the same way she danced two-years-earlier after hanging up the phone with Tyler in ankle socks, slipping across her mother’s freshly-mopped kitchen floor because she finally had a date for Prom – but she managed to keep her swirl of emotions largely in the bottle.

Arthur gawked at Cassidy long enough. She pulled her knapsack around, opened it, pulled out her phone, and set herself up to take a picture of him, “Aww, you’re moving!“

“Are you taking a picture of me?”

“I was going to.” She put her phone back.

“No no no, go ahead, if you want.”

“Nah.“

“But now I want to know what I looked like.”

“A big gawker.“

“…You look nice.”

“I know.”

“And so modest.”

“Of course.”

“What’s the occasion?”

She twirled for him, “I bought this dress last May and now finally I have a chance to wear it! Isn’t it cute?”

“It must have been at the back of the closet if it wasn’t jeans.”

Nothing he said lessened her grin, “Just for that, you can pay for everything tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Where are we going? Did you want to take the bus downtown? Get some sushi?”

“I figured we’d just do something in the mall here. There isn’t much else around.”

“…You had at least the last six hours to think about what we were doing, and that was your big suggestion?”

“…Or we can take the bus somewhere.”

“…Do you like Vietnamese?”

“I’ve never had it.”

“It’s just down at the other end of the lot. They’re open until midnight. Let’s go there.”

“It’s not like, cats and dogs or anything.”

“What?”

“The meat, in the soup. They don’t serve pet parts, do they?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? It’s soup. It’s like won-ton soup.“

“I’m joking, I’m joking.“

“I hope so. I don’t want cats and dogs for dinner, either.”

“Is it the fuzzy texture?”

“Okay, can we go now? I still have to set the alarm.” Arthur stepped outside. Cassidy was extra-confident in their excursion as, tucked within the crevasse of her bosom, was the pepper spray. Ready for anything. Just like her mother.

xii

There were small patches of snow still on the ground in the parking lot as Arthur & Cassidy started their journey to the other end of the mall. What white stuff remained was mostly clumped into hard-packed ice in the corners of the frequent & raised dividers. In the summer months it was like a labyrinth if you were paying attention, and the world’s worst urban off-road simulator if you weren’t, but anyone brave enough to face it now would have found it easy with each curve outlined in frost. There was spot lighting down the front end of the mall but, other than the street lights by the roads, it looked deserted. Really, it was only ever just the two ends with the restaurants that had cars parked at them, and a big abandoned area in the middle that was never patrolled and was used by some as a free Park & Ride.

The fish-and-chips restaurant was in a separate building on the same lot as the dominant strip mall, which ran the entire length of two blocks but only actually housed half-a-dozen active businesses. On one end, there was a carpet wholesaler that was always ‘going out of business’, run by a guy who was the defendant on a TV judge show once. Next was an empty cafe that used to be bubble tea when the ground-level entrepreneurs got in cheap when COVID first hit. A Return-It depot. An empty storefront. Another empty storefront. An independent dollar store. A place where you could order trophies and custom awards for events, which had a sign on its door telling you to call a number if the door was locked. And, finally, the Pho place on the corner.

There was nary a racoon as the couple started their walk. The sky had started to cloud over in the hour since Cassidy first checked, and she worried it would get worse, but tried to play it cool, as she crossed her bare, goose-pimpled arms together. Arthur fished through the deep front pocket of his sweatshirt for his paraphernalia. He lit an enormous joint and offered it to her, but she declined – she didn’t feel like being loopy, “How old are you, Arthur?”

“I’m…thirty-two.”

“You look older.”

“Thank you?”

“I don’t mean that like it’s a bad thing.”

“The only thing I have to look forward to is aging into the fifty-percent-off fifty-five-plus Thursday dinner at Denny’s. It’s not like I’m your age again and can go rent porn for the first time.”

“Ew! You’ve rented porn? Who would do that?”

“I didn’t do it, but video stores allowed it back then.”

“Not to minors.”

“No, not to minors.”

“Heh, I bet old porn on tape is less disturbing than internet porn now.”

“Yeah, but if you aren’t careful, you’ll get an unmarked tape with some chubby guy licking Rottweiler chode on it.”

“Wow. Anyway… How old do you think I am?”

“Nineteen?”

“I’m actually twenty now, but I’m so flattered you think I look younger!”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Their feet were sliding on the frozen pavement.

“…Do you ever still think about high school?”

“…I do, still. Sometimes.”

“Why?”

“Because it was horrible.”

“Oh, it couldn’t have all been bad.”

“It was all bad.”

“What happened?”

“Lots of bullying and teasing. I don’t need to go into it.”

“That’s very unspecific. Lots of people were bullied in high school and they got over it.”

“Not me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s in my nature, I suppose.”

“So you’re a real-life pessimist.”

“I am not pessimistic.”

“What you just said, about there being nothing good about high school: that’s pessimistic.”

“Okay, okay, so I did some stage stuff.”

“Like, acting?”

“Yeah, I was an actor. Un acteur.” He took a big hoot and started to cough.

“Band was my choice.” Around the side of the mall, on the perpendicular street, was the entrance to the noodle house, and a sign on its awning that looked like the business had gone through new management at least three times over but never bothered to remove the old logo before painting over it with the new one. Whatever the name of it was now, it wasn’t in a different language: it was illegible English, but you could make out ‘PHO’.

“Why are you asking me about high school?” Arthur was still coughing. Cassidy started to answer but, as they hit the front of the noodle house, Arthur had a hawking fit, grabbing Cassidy by the arm and motioning for her to give him a minute. His firm grip took her by surprise.

He stooped over, coughing. Cough, cough, cough. She asked if he was okay, and he motioned for her to give him another minute. He let her arm go and put both hands on his knees as the people now exiting the restaurant could not ignore the sound of human hairballs. At its crescendo, Arthur vomited a big, phlegmy mess onto the sidewalk, in two large clumps separated by a dramatic pause. He took a few more seconds to catch his breath. When he straightened up, his face was blush red and his eyes were bloodshot & watering bad. The cuts under his nose glistened from their shield of snot.

“Phew! That was a good hit! Thanks for waiting.” He cleared his throat and tossed the rest of the joint. Cassidy had turned around so she didn’t have to watch him. Now that he was ready, she held the door open for him.

xiii

Arthur let Cassidy order, and she got two small number ones and an order of salad rolls with peanut sauce to share. The rolls were gone by the time the bowls came, and Arthur followed Cassidy’s lead, coating his in hoisin that had been transplanted by the staff into a plastic ketchup dispenser. He was smart not to mimic her when it came to the red rooster sauce.

“…Did you ever date in high school, Arthur?”

“You didn’t answer me yet.”

“About what?”

“About all the high school questions.”

“What about them?”

“Well, why?”

“Is there a problem? Are you still self-conscious?”

“No. I just think it’s considered uncouth to talk about that stuff when you’re older and you’re supposed to have moved on.”

“Oh, and how long is it supposed to take to move on from something?”

“…No, I didn’t date in high school. Did you?”

“No, not really.”

“But you’ve had ‘situationships’, right?”

“You know what those are?”

“Sounds pretty straightforward to me.”

“Well, you’re right. There were a few guys I liked, but none of them liked me, for obvious reasons.“

“What are those?”

“…Really?“

“…Oh, you don’t want to tell me, is that it?”

“You can assume what they are.”

“…I’m sorry, I thought you were more comfortable talking about that stuff.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“You brought up how I wasn’t comfortable talking about high school shit.”

“Yeah, but you’re almost forty. You should be over it.”

“I’m not almost forty. I just haven’t been out with anyone in a while. I’m just socially feral.”

“Who was the last person you went out with?”

“My ex.”

“Oh? When did you two break up?”

“It’s been a year now, last February.”

“Now I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I ended it. I wasn’t happy.”

“Oh?”

“Now there’s something I don’t want to talk about.”

“That’s fine. Everyone has things they don’t want to talk about.”

“I guess I’m just used to that open dialogue. But I was with my ex for thirteen years, so that’s the sort of thing that grows along with a relationship.”

“Don’t you see all that growth as wasteful now that you aren’t with her?”

“No. I took the stuff I learned with me.”

They were interrupted by the waitress, “Everything okay?”

“We’re fine, thanks.” Arthur was sort of glad for the interruption, because it gave him a reset, “I find it hard to believe boys wouldn’t want to date you. You’re very pretty.”

She blushed, “Thank you, again.”

“You’re welcome, again.”

“…You’re cute, too.”

“Really? Now you’re going to make me blush. You’re such a smooth talker, Cassidy.” She snorted, “That’s probably why you get along so well with everyone at the restaurant.”

“Like who?”

“The guys in the kitchen.”

“Well I don’t like there to be anything weird. I know it’s hard to get along with everyone, but I try.”

“Yeah, but don’t they make you uncomfortable sometimes?”

“…I feel like you’re directing me somewhere. Is there something you want to ask me?”

“No, no, no, I just see you getting along well with those guys and, I know I have a really hard time. I’ve been there longer than a year and I still feel lonely.”

“That’s probably because you’re stuffed in the corner, away from everyone.”

“I like the fryer.”

“Bullshit! Bullshit, you like the fryer. That’s crap. You know you could ask Teri and you’ve been there long enough that she’d probably consider moving you all around.”

“Who’s Teri?”

“She’s the owner.”

“You know the owner?”

“…Yeah, I do.”

“That’s nice. Then who would take the fryer?”

“I don’t know, the next kid who applies? They aren’t just looking for servers. It takes lots of different skills to put the kitchen together.”

“I just have to do it.”

“You just have to do it. Yes. You should ask her. I’m sure she’d say yes.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met her. Does she even exist?“

“Well yeah, she’s just busy. She owns lots of different businesses. Why don’t you ask Joshua when she’s supposed to be in next?”

“How are you so confident about it?”

“I’ve seen the sweat stain you get on your back after a shift, dude. I think you’re due to relax a bit.” As they talked, outside it began to rain. It started small, but grew torrential by the time Arthur & Cassidy had finished their dinner and were ready to pay.

xiv

The weather looked gross from inside the lobby, and Cassidy wasn’t all that interested in going out in it, especially with no other clean clothes. Arthur tried to take her hand, but she retracted, “We should start walking to the bus. If we don’t make it, we’ll have to wait an hour for the next one.”

“…Can’t we just call a cab?”

“Won’t that be expensive?”

She snorted half-comfortably, “I did tell you you’d have to pay for everything.”

“Don’t be a brat.”

“I’m not being bratty, I told you that if you were being bratty then I wasn’t going to go dutch, and I meant it. And you were a bigger brat tonight.”

“How was I a brat?” They were talking in front of the fully-manned cashier counter.

“You told me that it’s obvious no one likes me.”

“No I didn’t, I asked you what it was you thought people didn’t like you for.”

“That’s irregardless.”

” ‘Irregardless’ isn’t a word.”

“Whatever Arthur, I don’t have a coat, and the bus stop doesn’t have an awning. I’ll be soaked.”

“I don’t have a coat either. Did you want my sweatshirt?”

“Oh, now you’ll offer it.”

“What’s that?”

“Heh, we seem to both be really hard of hearing tonight.”

“Yeah, it’s all the fucking garbage between our ears. Here, you want the sweatshirt? Take it.” He began peeling it off.

“I don’t want your top, Arthur. Then you’ll be wet & cold.”

“That’s fine,” He handed it to her, “Here, take it, we’ve got to go.”

“I’m not going to have you get sick if you can’t even afford a ten dollar cab ride. You obviously can’t afford to get sick.” She bit, without knowing how he’d react.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Arthur thought he looked stupid standing there with his shirt in his outstretched hand, and Cassidy looking down at him with her hands on her hips. The servers of the noodle house thought the whole thing looked like foreshadowing, “Put the damn shirt on, Cassidy.”

“You know what, if you’re going to be like this, I’m going to call my mom. You can take the stupid bus if you want to.”

“This is not how I wanted the evening to go.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. But I’m not going to stand here and have you treat me this way in front of strangers. I don’t deserve it.” She took her knapsack off and sat down on one of the waiting chairs in the vestibule, opening the bag up to find her phone.

“Listen, Cassidy, I told you I haven’t dated in a while…”

“Date? You thought this was a date? Are you some kind of stalker or something?”

“Whoa, there, whoa…“

“I’m not a horse, Arthur.”

He sat next to her, and lowered his voice, “What do you mean stalker? I thought we were just out for a nice time.”

She was already texting her mom, “I thought so, too, but you’re being creepy and weird, and I want to go home now.”

“So this isn’t a date?”

She made eye contact, “No this isn’t a date! You idiot! I was just happy to go out and spend some time out of the house for once without it being about work! And you seemed like a nice guy, when you were actually talking to me, but turns out you’re just like every other boy in my life.”

“Oh come on, Cassidy. I’m not like other guys…”

“Oh yeah? Tell me I didn’t catch you staring at my chest a bunch already tonight.”

“…I admit nothing.”

“See?”

“Well they’re huge! What do you want, Cassidy? They’re ready to fall out of that thing you have wearing! You’re super fucking hot in it and you have nice big tiddies! Hack ’em off if you don’t like them! Top surgeries aren’t new.” Cassidy stood up to walk away, and Arthur grabbed her arm as firm as he had at the entrance, “Where are you going?”

She didn’t like him grabbing her. Not one bit. She reached into her cleavage and pulled out the spray can, “Back up, Arthur! I’m serious!” She pointed it at him, ready to use it, but it wasn’t facing the right direction, and she fumbled a moment to turn it the right way.

“What is that? Is that pepper spray? What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” Arthur stood up and grabbed the spray, trying to tug it out of her hands, but Cassidy – in strength, height, and fortitude – had the upper-hand, and ripped it away from him with little effort, pushing him down. She aimed the spray at Arthur’s face and hit the trigger. Hard.

She kept spraying until she had unloaded the entire bottle all over his face, coating him like the ladies in the finales of those disgusting videos, “Eat spray, creep!” Arthur was screaming. It was like a Jonah Hill movie. When the bottle was empty, Cassidy put it back in her cleavage and stormed over to the register, “Do you ladies have an office or a room in the back I can wait in until my mom comes?”

One server ushered Cassidy into the back & out of sight, while the other stared at Arthur from behind the counter & across the room as he lay on the floor, crying from his wound. It was more painful than anything physical he had ever experienced, and possibly even more so than anything intangibly tragic. He still had time to try for the bus, and he made a spectacle of himself doing so, blindly falling all over the place in his haste. Meanwhile, in the back of the noodle house, the server asked Cassidy if she needed them to call the cops. She told them her mother was coming. They forgave the bill for her.

Arthur used his sweatshirt to wipe off his face as he dashed out into the rain. And he missed the bus.

xv

Cassidy was twenty-one. She was on the Principal’s List her Senior year of high school, but she knew she needed to stop bragging about that sooner rather than later.

After the dinner, the events over the coming days played out for her as if per universal allowance. Her mother didn’t say much to her when she came to pick her up at the noodle house, other than ask if everything was okay, and whether they needed to call the police. She was fine. No, she didn’t need to file charges. The lesson itself was enough.

She gave Cassidy a couple of days off the schedule and didn’t say anything as Teri went about the normally busy days of an entrepreneur, but always home in time to cook dinner for her & her daughter. When Cassidy did go back to the restaurant, there was a strange air. No one from the kitchen would acknowledge her, and everyone was very quiet. One of her co-workers on the floor that night told her what had happened over Cassidy’s weekend…

Arthur had a shift the day after their dinner, and when he showed up for work, his face looked like a big, raw, veiny tomato. He told everyone it was an allergic reaction from going for a hike with Cassidy, and he brushed up on some poison ivy. What a dumb lie. Did Arthur not think she would call him out on that? Well, the saving face didn’t last long, because Cassidy’s mom was in the office, talking to Joshua, and as soon as Josh was done Teri called Arthur in and told him to shut the door behind him. Cassidy’s co-worker didn’t hear any of the details, but she did hear Teri raise her voice a few times. Cassidy had a smile when she heard that: what her four-foot-ten-inch blond mother lacked in biological stature she made up for by being a firecracker.

When the meeting was over, Arthur collected his things and made a straight-shot for the door without saying goodbye to anyone, and he didn’t show up for his shift the day after. Cassidy’s co-worker did mention that Teri had a meeting with the kitchen staff, and – when they got close enough to hear – they caught her saying to them that her business was to inspire young women in the workforce, and not to throw them to a pack of misogynistic wolves to fend for themselves. And if anyone had a problem with that, she could also talk to the New Lusecolm Business Association – for which Teri was on council – about blacklisting them from getting hired anywhere local in the future. Cassidy supposed she could have ask her mother for details of what she told Arthur behind the office doors, but she cringed a bit just thinking about it, and decided to go with the flow. No one saw or heard from Arthur again.

It was May, and registration was open for the upcoming fall semester at the local college. Teri wanted Cassidy to follow in her footsteps, and become a strong, capable, and independent female leader. So Cassidy quit the restaurant. But not before finding a different job first.

She liked getting up early now to run on the track while she watched the sun rise. No one walking or running it with her that early in the morning stared at Cassidy’s curves: they seemed as serious about their routine as she was in her’s. She could smell the fresh dew from the grass on the surrounding field. She cut back on smoking marijuana: she still did, but mostly on her days off now, and sometimes even not at all. She found she just didn’t need it when she was already feeling good.

She was still young. She could do whatever she wanted. She’d start with learning to say no.

The End

//wd 10.7.2024

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