The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman Page A

dung and cow manure all over the place, and then she had to wash her hands and I let her use my hose, and then, out of gratitude, she bought a pound of chocolate walnut.”
    â€œAnd how did that lead to your getting married?” I asked.
    Ray said, “Give it a try, Doc. Take a stab at it.”
    I said, “Did you ask her out on a date?”
    â€œEventually. But how did that come about?”
    â€œOver a telephone?”
    â€œCorrect,” said Ray. “But who called who?”
    â€œShe called the phone number on the fudge box?”
    He pantomimed something that seemed to mean switch it, flip it, turn that on its head.
    â€œYou’re close: I asked her to write her phone number on her check when she paid for the fudge.”
    â€œSo you called her up and asked her for a date and she said yes?”
    â€œNope. That would have been way too obvious. What I
planned
to do was offer her a tour of the plant.”
    I said I didn’t know he had a plant. Where was it and how many workers did he employ?
    â€œIt’s not my plant per se. But let me finish. When I introduced myself as the guy at the fudge booth who helped her wipe the shit off her boots, she asked if the check had bounced, and even though I hadn’t thought of that angle, I said yes, unfortunately it had. And where I usually charged a twenty-five-dollar fee for a returned check, I’d waive that if she’d have dinner with me some night.”
    I asked why he lied and why he’d let someone think her check had bounced.
    â€œI hadn’t cashed it yet when I called her, but, believe me, knowing Mary as I do now, it would’ve bounced without any help from me.”
    The waitress, with a ketchup bottle squeezed between her bicep and her rib cage, was approaching with Ray’s meal. His oval platter overflowed with French fries, the version I liked, long and thin and still wearing their skins. I took one without asking permission, prompting him to say, “I hope you realize that tasting food from the plate of a member of the opposite sex without asking is an act of intimacy. Here,” he said, tilting half of the fries onto my place mat, “have as many as you want.”
    I said, “I don’t see how taking a French fry is an act of intimacy.”
    â€œYes, you do! You wouldn’t help yourself to a French fry on a stranger’s plate.”
    â€œMaybe an act of familiarity,” I said. “Or hunger.”
    â€œWhatever.” He held the ketchup bottle at a perfect 90-degree angle over his hamburger and waited patiently for something to flow. “Where was I with Mary and me?” he asked.
    â€œDinner in exchange for a fictional returned-check penalty.”
    â€œRight. So she agrees to have a drink with me the next night, a weekday. I negotiate for the weekend. We settle on Friday and a place in Central Square because she lives on the Red Line.” He replaced the top half of the bun with a twist and checked the sides for oozing. “But wait. The rest is definitely
not
history: She didn’t show. However”—and he grinned broadly—“I not only had her phone number on the check, but her address. So I get in my car and I drive over to Davis Square. No one’s home. I wait outside. She pulls up around eleven, eleven-fifteen. Someone else is driving. But I don’t get too upset because he just drops her off and she doesn’t give him a backward glance. First thing she sees is my Porsche—two cars ago—and I’m waiting on the sidewalk, leaning against it, nice and friendly. I say, ‘Miss Ciccarelli. I think you forgot our appointment.’ ”
    He paused to take a gleeful bite from his burger, as if expecting me to pronounce his mating behavior clever and audacious.
    â€œI would have called the police,” I said.
    â€œExcept, Doc, you don’t understand the world the way I do. Mary knew that a guy who dresses like