Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

When I was in high school, before I gave up on the idea of ever having a real social life, I used to call up girls and ask them out — or start to ask them out. What I would do, since I knew I couldn’t come up with off-the-cuff bon mots like Marty does, was write down what I wanted to say. And a lot of it was pretty clever stuff if I do say so myself. I really can be sort of charming if you just give me enough time to prepare for it.

It didn’t work, though, because it depended on the girl’s sticking to the script and saying what I had planned for her to say. She never did, and I always had to hang up on her before I got to the reason for the call. I even wrote scripts for the few dates I did have (most of these arranged by Mom) with the same disastrous results.

This time I knew there was no point in even writing a script. But after getting a haircut and a new suit and ordering some flowers and some cologne, I did go to Marty and ask him for advice.

“I really, really like this girl,” I told him. “I can’t believe she said yes, but she did. And I do not want to blow it. What should I do? What should I say? Where should we go?”

Marty asked me her name, and I’m kind of ashamed to say I lied and said it was Ethel. But I just couldn’t take a chance on Marty’s stealing her from me. And he could, too. Without even trying.

“Well, if you’re nervous about talking to her, then take her someplace where you’re not expected to talk, like a movie. But on second thought, a movie first date is pretty trite. Why not take her to a play? And then dinner afterwards. That way you’ll have something to talk about dining dinner. You can talk about the play.”

That made sense. So I bought newspapers and downloaded reviews from the local bulletin boards, researching all the plays that were running in town. I marked off all the sexy ones right away ’cause I didn’t want Julia to get the wrong idea. Besides, that would just defeat my purpose. I still wouldn’t have anything to talk about during dinner because I am definitely not going to talk about sex with a goddess.

Next I ruled out all the really popular and long-running ones. I just knew Julia had to have a real active social life, and I felt sure she had already seen them.

All that was left was an amateur production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

But it had been getting some really great reviews. The newspapers said it was “a treat for all ages.” I wasn’t sure how old Julia was, so I figured this was probably my best bet.

I knew that she had only agreed to go out with me because she had somehow mistaken my social ineptitude for cleverness and wit, and I did not want her to find out the truth, not right away. I scanned Reader’s Digest (I have a friend who lent me the last thirty years of “Laughter, the Best Medicine” on floppy disks) and some joke books I checked out from the library. But I was far from feeling smug. I memorized some of the best stuff, but I was not at all confident that I could work any of it into the conversation.

On Wednesday night, sitting at home by myself, or rather pacing around by myself, I got nervous about the play I had chosen. Was it going to be any good? Was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz too juvenile for Julia? I knew she’d seen the movie; was it going to bother her a lot that she knew how it ended? And so on and on till I finally went to the theater by myself, two days before I was supposed to go with Julia.

And the play was good; in fact it was very good. The part where the Wicked Witch of the West gets her just deserts was particularly well done. If I hadn’t known a little about theatrical science, I would almost have believed the old gal was actually melting.

All the way home I thought about the witch and the way Dorothy had liquidated her. And I thought about Julia and how I might already be in love with her even though all I knew about her was that she was beautiful and aromatic and liked verbal cleverness.

Then something that hardly ever happens unless I’m in front of a monitor happened. I had an idea. A great idea. A surefire, foolproof, can’t-miss way to win Julia over.

I hoped.

I couldn’t wait until Friday.

Which is not to say that when Friday got there I wasn’t nervous. I was practically nothing but nerves. My vocal cords might as well have been paralyzed. I said, “Hello, you look n-n-n-nice,” when I picked her up, then nothing — not one word — in the car, and nothing during intermission.

I certainly don’t believe in telepathy, but it wasn’t hard to read what Julia was thinking.

My only hope was the second act, and the impending annihilation of Oz’s hydrophobic sorceress.

And there it came. The witch was setting her broom on fire and holding it out toward poor Scarecrow’s flammable self.

This was it. My one and only chance. This was for all the marbles. If I bombed out now with Julia, my nerves would never allow me to go out on another date even if I could convince somebody to go with me.