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

Dorothy sees her friend in flames, grabs the water bucket, pitches it.

Come on, Chip, you’ve rehearsed this a thousand times in the past forty-eight hours. Remember to watch your timing. Marty says that’s ninety percent of the game. And... go!

“Don’t worry,” I whispered to Julia as we watched the screaming, writhing witch melt into the floor. “It’s just a stage she’s going through.”

For one endless terrible second Julia just stared at me like I was a miraculously cured deaf-mute. Unfortunately, a deaf-mute whose first words were incredibly stupid.

And then she collapsed into high-pitched gales of laughter. I mean she drowned out the actors on stage. People were turning around, staring and ssshhhing her.

Julia went on for — I’m not exaggerating — a good four or five minutes — Dorothy and her friends on stage had to wait to ask the Winkie guards for the witch’s broom until my date’s last rafter-reaching guffaw had subsided. Then she put her hand on my leg, wiped tears out of her eyes, and said, “God, you are so funny.”

For the first time in my life, I was definitely completely in love. I would have done anything to make this woman mine and keep her laughing and looking at me like that.

I didn’t have anything else rehearsed, so I didn’t get off any more bon mots at our post-theater dinner, but it was all right; I didn’t need to. I could coast along on the “stage” one. And making Julia laugh had loosened me up enough to where I could at least talk to her, even if it was only about everyday stuff like the weather and the World Series and the new ninety megahertz Pentium computers.

Didn’t matter, she was convinced that I was funny, so she saw me that way.

I’m pretty sure if I could have summoned up enough nerve to try to kiss her goodnight she probably would have let me. I would have risked it, too, if I had worked out anything clever or witty to say at her door. But I hadn’t, so I decided not to chance it that night but made a note to rehearse the winding-down part better before our next date.

Next Friday I took her to Mr. B’s, a seafood place on the west side of town. I managed to get off a couple of pretty good lines about jumbo shrimp and about schools of sturgeon that were almost as well received in actuality as they were in my living room rehearsals. Julia laughed her lovely lilting laugh, and my heart melted like that witch.

I was afraid to say it even to myself for fear I might jinx it out of existence, but it sure looked as though Julia was falling for me. I could see it in her eyes and hear it in her laugh. This incredible goddess was falling for me, Microsoft would soon release Windows 4.0, and all was right with the world.

It was also kind of a sham because she was falling for this guy who was always clever and charming and getting off these puns and stuff she liked so much. But it wasn’t me. I mean it was me — I made up the jokes and everything, they weren’t from a book — but it wasn’t the spontaneous me.

That night went fairly well, but it was really just a setup for the following Friday when I took her to Eschycclio’s, the new Greek-Italian place everybody was talking about without actually saying the name, since nobody was sure how it should be pronounced.

I had of course done my preliminary reconnaissance, dining there on the previous Monday evening to learn the menu and the decor and anything else I might be able to get off a bon mot about. I stole a menu and ran its entire contents through a program I’d created that I’d hoped would create puns.

I was getting less and less nervous around Julia. I even managed to make small talk in the car on our way to the restaurant. The only thing I was at all concerned about was the fact that Julia was going to have to help me with a straight line to set up my bon mot.

But I felt sure she would. It was a question everybody all over town was asking. When we got to Eschycclio’s all she had to do was ask me, “How do you pronounce the name of this place anyway?” and I would say “I don’t know. It’s a Mister E to me” (you see now, of course, why we had to go to Mr. B’s the week before), and she would laugh that delicious laugh again and I would definitely get a kiss tonight.

But it didn’t happen. The waiter — a different guy from the one who served me Monday — messed me up. Before we had even sat down he said, “Good evening. Welcome to Esschycclio’s.” And he said it real slow like “Ess-chick-leo’s” so there was no way Julia was going to ask me how to pronounce it after that.

Well, I had backups of course. But nothing as good as my first-string stuff. When the waiter said, “Falafel, sir?”, I said “No, a slight headache, but overall I feel pretty good,” and I got off another one about how we weren’t antipasto; we were in fact all for it. But all they got from Julia was a polite giggle.

I was losing her. Not only was I not going to get a kiss tonight. I was never going to get another date with her, either.