Follow-Up Phone Call

"Hello," Alice answered the view phone on the second ring. She really did not look at the screen, as she was concentrating on stirring the ingredients in the porcelain bowl cradled between her forearm and waist.

"Good morning. I hope it is not too early," the caller said.

Her head snapped to look at the screen and she nearly dropped the bowl. "Richard!" she gasped in surprise. "No, no. Not too early at all. I was just baking a cake."

She twisted her body so that the bowl came in to the camera range. Suddenly, she realized that she was not wearing any makeup and had only passed a comb through her hair. "Oh, my," she said, "I must look a mess."

"You look fine," Smith chuckled. Then he came right to the point. "Listen, I enjoyed meeting you last night and . . . well, I know this is short notice . . . but are you doing anything tonight?"

"Tonight?" she repeated, looking around the kitchen as if the answer might be laying on a countertop. "No. No," then she giggled nervously, "I am not doing anything most nights."

"So would you like to go out?" he asked. "Say a dinner and a movie?"

"Yes, yes. That would be nice," she nodded her head slowly, still not believing that she was actually getting such a call. He asked her if seven o'clock was a good time. It was. And after getting her address, he said good-bye.

Alice stood there in a daze. She had thought that last night was a 'one off'. A brief interlude. Two ships passing in the night. She certainly did not expect to hear from him again. Definitely not to be asked out on a date. A date. A real live, not with her children's families or friends from her bridge group but a date with a masculine, male, hombre, dude. A date where . . .

Where she didn't know what to wear. Setting the bowl onto the countertop, she hurried to her bedroom, flinging the closet doors open. She forcefully, almost violently, shoved one hangar after one hangar down the rod running the length of the storage area. Selecting one dress, she held it out at arm's length, studying it. She tossed it onto her bed and went back to perusing her choices.

She thought of calling someone to share the news, but didn't know who. Or whom. Her adult children may or may not approve. They might even try to talk her out of it. No point in calling any of her friends and giving them gist for the gossip mill. And her sister-in-law? Forget that. Alice had picked up on the looks of reproach that Lois had given her last night when she first arrived. Finally she knew who she could call.

"Port Administrator's Office," the female face in the view-screen said.

"Hi, Joanie," Alice replied. "Is my brother available?"

As soon as her brother's face appeared in the view-screen, Alice blurted out, "That Spaceman from last night called asking me out on a date, I don't know what to wear, should I paint my nails purple? Of course I should, why else would he be calling? Maybe I should, you know, just do it as soon as he arrives to 'clear the air', but then won't he be bored for the rest of the evening? But if we wait until the end of the date, won't we both be nervous and on edge? And what if someone I know sees me? I'll look like I'm 'robbing the cradle'."

She said all of that in one breath, without any pauses between sentences, and when she finally did stop to breathe, her brother, who had been grinning through the last half of her tirade, said, "And good morning to you, too, Alice."

"George, what am I going to do?" she all but wailed in a panic.

"I don't know," her brother replied, stroking one of his eyebrows with the tips of two fingers. "Get your hair done? Buy a new dress? Make sure you have a tube of lube in your purse? What do women normally do before a date?"

"But George," Alice stuttered, "He's . . . he's . . . so young."

"He's the Commanding Officer of one of only six hyper drive spaceships in the Galaxy," George answered. "Trust me, when it comes to 'life experience', he's three times older than you. Now just relax, have fun on your date, and I'll call Lois to update her on . . ."

"Don't you dare!" Alice shouted, cutting her brother off.

"Bye," her brother laughed and the screen went blank.