No matter where I looked, there were no more posters advertising Carver, the pervert petter. I was tired of looking for them when I went to work a week later. I hadn’t seen Shannon since that night, though she texted often. I tried to call her a time or two, but I always got a text back that said it wasn’t a good time. She was preparing for something and I’d just have to wait.

My boss at the music store, Turner, called to me as I came in. “You got a letter,” he said, handing me an envelope.

I took it. It looked like a wedding invitation as it was printed on pink hand-pressed paper. I couldn’t think of who I knew who was still sending out physical wedding invitations when I looked at the return address. It was Shannon’s.

“Who’s getting married?” Turner asked me from the other side of the counter.

“If this is a wedding invitation, I’ll eat it,” I said sourly as I broke the red wax seal on the back. Flipping it open, I read the contents.

“What is it?”

“It’s an invitation.”

“To what? An opera troupe party?” Turner asked.

“No. It’s an invitation for a dinner date from a woman I have been seeing,” I explained.

“Anyone I know?” he asked, bending to look inside.

“No.”

“Is she that hottie you were making out with against the wall?” he sniggered.

I didn’t groan or whine. The guy who did that was a skin I had shed recently. Instead of rebuffing the jab, I just looked at him. No contempt. Not even a desire to defend myself. Not even the urge to tell him how amazing it had felt to kiss her. I didn’t even stoop to say, “You wouldn’t understand.” I folded the invitation up and slid it into my pocket. “I’ll get to work putting out the new sheet music, shall I?”

Turner didn’t apologize or ask me to tell him more about Shannon. He just let it go. I had never known him to do that. Working in a music store didn’t have many pleasures, teasing me was probably the most fun he had at work. Though I did hear him sit down at one of the pianos and play before his lunch break. His longing was palpable through the music.

The moment I realized he was jealous was a strange one. The thing was, the makeout session against a filthy brick wall was on the other side of the spectrum from a dainty pink dinner invitation. No one got it all from one woman. Shannon was attempting it anyway. As if the purpose of life was to experience the highest high love could give. That was how Shannon organized herself. But who was a gift like that for?

An odd sensation rippled through me as I sang the alphabet song to help with the filing and I saw Shannon through Turner’s eyes.

***

As soon as I walked through the door to Shannon’s apartment, I knew what was going on.

“You’re using me,” I said, making my expression deadpan as I looked her over.

The dress she was wearing probably wasn’t the most expensive one she owned. It was the one that made her look the most beautiful. It was part of the whole experience she was creating. The dress was mauve and black. Mauve satin and black ribbon, her clothes hugging and pinching her in all the right places. Her makeup was so artfully done, she almost didn’t look human.

“What am I trying to do?” she asked giddily, a touch of deep crimson on each of her cheeks.

“You got your perfect date outside. This is your perfect date at home. You’ve been setting the stage for days? Maybe the whole week we haven’t seen each other?”

She leaned toward me with stars in her eyes. “Maybe my whole life.”

I thought she was going to kiss me, but instead, she licked the tip of my nose and led me deeper into the apartment.

The place was tiny. It was like she’d rented two parking spaces and built an apartment around them. The walls were covered with mirrors and other reflective art to try to conceal how little space there was. And pink. Pink everywhere.

She popped around the corner into the kitchen, while I was left to look over her decorations. One area caught my eye specifically. It was a collection of books on a floating shelf. They were beautifully bound and I paused to read the titles: Lose Weight like the Loser You Are. I did a double-take. Someone had bothered to print that in hard copy and with such a unique binding? Parts to Steal and Sell out of your Friend’s Car without Him Noticing. That book was bound in black, but no less beautiful. Ninety-Nine Ways to Please Your Lover with Orange Peels was placed beside Things You Can Melt in the Dryer.

“Shannon, where did you get your books?” I asked, picking up her copy of The Quitters Guide to Staying out of Jail.

“What? You mean you never read A Pyromaniac's Path to Perfection? Pity. It’s an excellent read.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I have never seen any of these books. No one has ever seen any of these books. Did you manufacture them yourself?”

She scoffed. “I most certainly did not. I enjoy independent writers, and they enjoy me. But I don’t loan out my books. I’ll never be able to replace them. If you want to read any of them, you have to come here and read them on my sofa.” She served me a goblet with a pink bubbling soda inside. “Can you drink this without gagging?”

I turned the cup and examined the bubbles. “Is there something in it I won’t like?”

“It’s only a problem if you don’t like pink.”

“Is this a test? Will I shy away from a pink drink because I’m too much of a man to drink pink bubbles?”

She leaned in and whispered, “I have had objections in the past.”

“Don’t taunt me,” I said, before taking a gulp.

She smiled. “What a relief!”

“Are you forgetting that I performed for a ballet on our first date?”

Her laugh was musical. “You’ll have to forgive me for jumping you through the usual hoops.”

“They’re pre-prepared?”

“Well, it’s tough for the men when I bring them home and make them feed themselves. They don’t exactly know how to do it.”

Then I noticed the table she’d set for us. I didn’t think it was peculiar when the drinks were served in goblets with stems, but it was peculiar when the salad bowls had stems on them too.

The table was laid with a blush-colored lace table cloth and clear champagne-colored tableware. The silverware was tinted gold.

Bells were playing in the background and suddenly I was filled with a sadness I couldn’t ignore.

“Shannon,” I said, grasping her elbow and holding her back. “This is all fine. I know you think you’re putting yourself and your heart on the line because guys like Simon didn’t like this side of you, but this is all fine to me. Whatever you have planned, I’ll like it. Stop trembling.”

She put her hand on mine. “I know. I’m not shivering because I’m nervous about how you are going to feel about all this. I’m excited because most guys practically have heart attacks looking in from the hallway.”

I leaned in and whispered conspiratorially in her ear, “You know what I think this looks like?”

“What?”

“The perfect cover. No one who has ever seen your apartment will ever think that you’re a closet vandal.” I reached into my pocket. “I have a present for you, but I can tell you for nothing, I would have brought something different if I’d had any idea your place looked like this. I would have got you a necklace that looked like a chandelier. Except the you that I know doesn’t wear crystals. She squats in the weeds and writes the word nefelibata in blue spray paint.”

“I bet a few people who passed by looked up the definition on their phones,” she said.

“I did.” I unrolled the wad in my hand. It was a flat shell carved in the shape of a cloud. The iridescent sparkle of mother-of-pearl was little more than a flash in what otherwise was as dull as bone. It had holes drilled into the sides, where delicate brown laces had been attached to make it into a necklace. I pulled it apart between my hands to show her.

Her eyes went wide. “Where did this come from? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I made it, little cloud walker. I googled the meaning of your word, and of course, I realized it wasn’t just any word you were spray painting on the side of a building. It was a word you chose to describe yourself: a person who walks in the clouds, flouts convention, and lives in a world of their own. It suits you quite well. You’re here, and we can all see you, but no one can go on your adventures with you unless you invite them along.”

She was a little breathless as she took the shell from me and the light in her eyes caught fire. She wrapped her hand around the back of my neck and pulled me down to kiss her. She pushed me against the fridge. I was about to flip her over, so she was the one pushed against the fridge when a timer on the oven sounded.

She broke away from me and reached for her oven mitts. She hesitated, as she realized she still held the necklace in her hand and she did not want to put it down. To my surprise, she stuffed her whole hand with the necklace in her palm into the oven mitt and opened the oven door.

“Why don’t you go have a seat at the table?” she commanded in the form of a question, while she brought out the garlic bread.

In the kitchen, I saw that she had prepared a salad and steaks.

I chuckled.

She was going to make me cut steak on a plate that had a stem. It was the sort of plate that was normally used to serve cake, but I was going to have to cut my steak on it. It would surely wobble everywhere. It must be a very successful practical joke for Shannon to do it as part of her routine when she had a man over for dinner.

“When was the last time you made dinner for a date like this?” I asked her, as she fumbled with the knots in the necklace. “You don’t put it on that way,” I told her gently.

“How do you put it on?”

“You have to put the whole thing over your head and then pull the strings tight. They’ll come loose again when you want to take it off. But you don’t need to wear it now. It’ll ruin your hair and it doesn’t match your dress.”

She glared at me. “Do you know how often I’m given presents from men?”

“All the time?”

“Yes! All the time!” she snapped. Then she seemed to realize that admitting to such a thing was a little awkward. She softened. “I don’t usually like them. Often I pawn them for ‘art’ supplies.”

Her air quotes made me smile.

“I don’t even remember the last time a man gave me a present I wanted to keep.”

“Come here. I’ll help you get it on.”

I helped her and we ate dinner. The thing I noticed the most about Shannon’s cooking was that she made food that was the same kind of food as what my mother made, but it did not taste the same. My mother’s cooking was filled with butter and cream. Shannon cooked with spices and oil.

Looking at her across the table, she made jokes and ended up feeding me chocolate mousse across a table so tiny that our kneecaps clanked against each other. The neckline of her dress moved with her, and, more than once, I saw more than she intended me to see.

She licked the spoon and said, “I have a little after-dinner game for us to play.”

“Afterwards,” I said deliberately. “I want to take you to my apartment.”

“Why? We’ve already had dessert.”

“It’s not to feed you,” I said, feeling a little queasy at what I was about to suggest. “I have not done any special cleaning or made any special preparations. I didn’t plan to ask you to come to my place tonight. But I want to show you who I am and what I am normally like. Your apartment is very glitzy and before I saw it, I felt that you and I would fit each other nicely. I may have even been stupid enough to think that your home would look exactly like mine.”

She looked at me with eyes as wide as an owl’s.

“You don’t want to come?” I asked.

She bit the side of her lip. “We can play a game any night,” she said as she stood up.