Hooker of Hollandaise

While drunk I gave my number to a man I met online and now he wants to meet up. The town of Stone is a good hour and a half away on a good day, and today the M6 has one of its mysterious occlusions and traffic grinds to a slow crawl for several miles for no reason, and I am going to be late. I start texting my date in the queueing traffic, but we start to move again and I throw the phone back onto the passenger seat.

It is 12.45 when I park in the centre of town. Our date was for 12.30. I see him before he sees me; he is reading a newspaper in the café in the corner of the market square. He looks up and sees me coming in. Pleased, and bashful, he stands and we embrace awkwardly, the table between us. He holds my upper arm a beat too long.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I say. He says it is OK.

‘I haven’t ordered,’ he says. ‘Just a coke.’ He is even younger-looking than his profile picture.

‘Are you really thirty-five?’ I ask. ‘You’ve led a very blameless life if so.’

‘Actually…’ He is bashful again. ‘I was going to tell you. I’m twenty-eight.’

‘You pretend to be older online?’

‘I like older women,’ he says.

‘Just as well,’ I say. He is even younger than the one who told me afterwards, ‘I just shagged my English teacher.’ Young enough to be my son, easily.

‘What’s good here?’ I ask. We tell the waitress we need a little longer. I wonder what she makes of us.

‘The bennies are good,’ he says.

‘Bennies.’

He explains. ‘Eggs Benedict. They have variations.’ I look at the menu.

‘Who was Benedict of the Eggs, anyway?’

‘A guy in Wall Street with a hangover, I think,’ says my date.

‘If only there were some way of finding out,’ I say. He fishes out his phone and reads me Wikipedia versions of the Eggs Benedict origin story. A Manhattan restaurant, a Lemuel Benedict and a Commodore E.C. Benedict all claim provenance.

‘I like Lemuel the best,’ I say. ‘Partly the name, but also the wandering into the Waldorf Hotel in search of a hangover fix. Plus the phrase, “a hooker of hollandaise.”

Our waitress returns and I select chicken salad with couscous and roast vegetables. Again I wonder what she makes of the two of us. My date orders Eggs Hemingway, which substitutes smoked salmon for the canon ham. I also order a large glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

‘I don’t get the Hemingway reference,’ I say. ‘Fresh salmon, maybe.’

‘I don’t know why I ordered it,’ says my young man. ‘I panicked and ordered the most macho thing on the menu.’

‘So,’ I say. ‘Twenty-eight.’ He blushes.

‘I thought you wouldn’t… you had thirty-five as your lower limit.’

‘That’s more not to waste time,’ I say. ‘Thirty-five is quite young enough for…’ I don’t finish the sentence. The café is crowded and I don’t want to scandalise the good people of Stone. James’ actual English teacher may be within earshot for all I know.

‘I love women,’ he says, apropos of nothing. ‘You’re just better than men. Men are such wankers.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ I say. ‘That kind of faux veneration just gives men carte blanche to go on behaving as badly as they like.’

‘Wow… I suppose you’re right.’ He looks at me admiringly.

‘So what happens now?’ I ask.

‘Would you like coffee?’ He fumbles for the menu. ‘Or dessert?’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh,’ he says.

‘But don’t let me stop you.’

‘I don’t want any either, not really. I just don’t want this lunch to be over.’

‘Who says it’s over?’ I say. I can feel the effect of the large glass of wine. ‘I tell you what.’ I gesture to the waitress to bring our bill. ‘You can make me a coffee at your house. How would that be?’

‘At..?’ He is flabbergasted. Two spots of high colour appear on his cheeks. ‘My house?’

‘Well, yes,’ I say. ‘Don’t you want to…?’

I tail off as realisation hits that this was not the intention of the date, which he meant to be the introduction to a gentle courtship. I believe I go as red as him.

The waitress appears with the bill. After a moment’s hesitation she puts it down on my side. She smiles amiably at us both.

‘Did you enjoy your lunch? Take your time with the bill.’ James goes on staring at me, his face aflame. I am treating my moderately successful, slightly nerdy son to lunch.