Jade

by Jef Coburn

Table of Contents

Chapter 3: Show and Tell

The next day, I was on the elevator and, just as the doors were about to close, Carly jumped in.

“How’s it goin’?” she asked.

“Okay. How ’bout you?”

“No complaints.”

There was a pause, which was unusual for our conversations. When you’re used to conversing on an elevator as we were, you tend to pace things accordingly.

“That was a pretty cool place the other night, huh?” she finally said somewhat awkwardly. “I liked the ambience.”

“Yeah, me too.” I felt like I could probably still avoid mentioning my date without feeling like I was lying to Carly.

“The woman in the booth, Jade, was really neat, too.”

I felt like I could no longer avoid mentioning my date without feeling like I was lying to Carly. “Yeah, she’s great. Actually, I have a date with her tonight.”

Carly looked at me as if she weren’t sure she had heard me correctly. Then she said, “Good for you, Mr. Smooth Operator. Where are you going?”

“Dinner at the Den and then a movie.”

“What movie?”

“Not sure yet. Why?”

“Gotta pick the right one.”

“I thought we’d pick together.”

“No, you pick. A woman likes a man who’s decisive and has a plan.”

“Oh, really,” I said, feigning fascination. “Good to know.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You know, you could stand to be a little more... assertive. Just sayin’.”

The door opened, and she stepped out of it, but she held it open, turning with a smile. “Have fun. I expect a full report.”

“I’ll have it on your desk in the morning,” I said, returning her smile.

I felt weird about telling her, but I knew I would have felt weirder about not telling her. I knew that was irrational. I knew I was overthinking things with Carly. Was I, though? Yes, I was 90% sure I was overthinking it. No, more like 83%, but still, definitely overthinking.

First chance I got, I checked out the movie options. They all had showings at 9 o’clock, so I would have to pare down by other criteria.

The first option was Miranda’s Rule, an action movie about a cop named Miranda. The ad said, “He was ready to bend all the rules... except one.” I gathered I was supposed to be curious about what rule that was. I was not. Pass.

The next one was a buddy comedy called The Brode, which was apparently short for “bro code.” Pass.

Then there was a gal-pal flick called I Told You So. There were two women and one guy in the picture, so whatever she told her friend must’ve had something to do with him. Pass.

The fourth choice was animated. Pass.

Finally, there was She’s Not Perfect, a movie about a guy who falls for the woman who is plotting to burgle his estate. I thought, This might be a bit corny, but it might also be romantic. I liked a good heist film and, somehow, I thought Jade might too.

How could I know that already? It must’ve been because she was such a thinker. I could always see the gears turning behind her mischievous grin. She would enjoy guessing how the woman in the movie was going to pull off the robbery, and I liked the idea of the male lead’s having no idea what he was getting into. It seemed like a good way to show my freedom from gender stereotypes. Also, it was not a cartoon.

I showed up at the Den exactly on time. I may or may not have sat in my car a few minutes to avoid being early. I could tell Jade had done some extra work on her hair, and I was flattered. I thought she might be wearing lipstick as well, though I couldn’t say what the shade was. She smiled as she spoke, but it wasn’t her usual, natural smile. She was actually nervous! I couldn’t believe it. I had figured I’d be the nervous one, but she was clearly a bit uneasy.

“You’ve done something different with your hair,” I observed. “It’s lovely!”

“You noticed,” she said. “Well done.” That was how it was with Jade. If you played the game, she’d call you on it, but she’d do it in a way that showed she genuinely appreciated the effort. That seemed like the best possible compromise to me.

She seemed to relax a little, which made me happy. We ordered. We ate. We talked. As time went on, however, she seemed a bit preoccupied. At one point, I caught her looking at her watch.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll make sure we’re in time for the previews.” She smiled and took a drink of water. “Did you know,” I continued, “that they call previews ‘trailers’ because they used to play them after the movie instead of before?”

“I’d heard that,” she said. “I wonder why they changed it.”

“Probably because people don’t show up on time for the start of the movie, and this way they don’t actually miss part of the movie.”

“But don’t the same people just show up even later now?” she asked.

“That’s what I say!” I concurred.

About ten minutes before we had agreed to leave, I went to the men’s room. While I was up, I went ahead and paid the tab. I didn’t think Jade would try to go Dutch, especially since I’d made it clear this was a proper date, but why risk it? When I got back to the table, I put the tip out and sat down. Jade was uneasy again.

“Neil, we’ve had a good time talking these past few nights, right?”

“It’s some of the best conversation I’ve ever had.”

“And we can enjoy the movie, and if that’s as far as it goes, we can enjoy it for what it is, right?”

I had no idea what to say to that. Had she changed her mind but been too kind to back out? Had I said or done something that changed her opinion of me? Was she trying to brace me for the “Let’s Be Friends” speech? I dug down for the right words.

“Okay, Jade, let’s just enjoy the evening without putting any pressure on ourselves or each other. I’m just happy to be around you. No big expectations, okay?”

She nodded gratefully. We finished up our dinner and got up to leave. I gestured for her to go first, but she waved it off as she took one last drink of water, so I led the way.

The streetlights led us toward the door, past the orange table where the couple had kissed, past the yellow table, into the red zone of the hostess, and finally into the real world. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down the street, giving my eyes a chance to adjust. Then I heard Jade’s voice behind me, a little closer than I expected it.

“Neil,” her voice said to my back in a somber tone, “look at me.”

I stopped and turned around, assuming she was about to say something important. I was utterly unprepared for what I saw.

Jade was green.

There was no green lighting on us anymore. Everything in the street was a normal color. The people passing by weren’t green. I wasn’t green. Even Jade’s clothes weren’t green but, except for her red lipstick, her whole face and every visible bit of her skin were green. It wasn’t forest green or lime green. It wasn’t olive green or avocado green. It was just... green. It wasn’t a tattoo or body paint. It was her skin. And it was green. Green!

Jade looked at me with a fragile expression. “Tell me the truth, Neil,” she said quietly. “You said I looked good in any color. What do you think now?”

I was freaking out on the inside, but I tried to keep it together. I looked at my watch, forcing a smile. “I think we’d better hurry if we’re gonna catch the previews.” I held my arm out for her to link elbows with me. She did so with some hesitation, and I pretended to look for my car even though I remembered exactly where I’d parked.

If you held a gun to my head, I could not give you a decent synopsis of that movie. I stared at the screen and programmed myself to laugh when the audience did. There was something about a safe. The female lead wore black tights and slid down a climbing rope. They kissed at some point. That’s about what I got out of it. Most of the time I was thinking back on things and connecting dots.

Yeah, I definitely had no idea how right I was when I said she was not like most people. In my experience, she’s not like any people. No wonder it fazed her when I told her she looked good in any color. Wait a minute! That’s why she likes sitting in the green lighting! She never wanted me to see her leave.

When she stopped mid-sentence during her kiss story, she said “a girl who didn’t know any better,” but she was about to say “a green girl.” All that stuff about no pressure and enjoying it for what it is even if a movie is as far as it goes; she was giving me a way out. Maybe she was giving herself a way out by not setting her sights too high. For crying out loud, her name is Jade! How am I just now catching that?

At one point I saw out of the corner of my eye that her hand was on the armrest between our seats. I wondered how many evenings like this had ended badly for Jade, and I took her hand, my eyes still glued to the screen. She gave my hand a squeeze. We stayed that way for the longest time. It was like neither of us wanted to be the one who let go.

After the movie, I drove her back to the Den. Sometimes a woman feels better having her own ride home, and I could understand why Jade had felt particularly inclined to hedge her bet.

“So...” I fumbled, “what did you think of the movie?”

Jade laughed. It was a nervous laugh, but it broke the tension a little for both of us. “You know, Neil, for a guy who doesn’t like ignoring the elephant in the room, you’re working mighty hard at it. You never answered my question. You’ve barely even looked at me all night. Please look at me. Talk to me.”

“You’re right,” I confessed. “Let me pull over here and park so I don’t have to watch the road.” I found a space, put the car in park, and turned off the engine.

We were still close enough to the streetlights to see each other. I looked at her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Feel free to ask questions. I’m sure you have several,” she said bitterly. She clearly had memorized this next part as well as I had memorized my story about Rachel and the Kissing Stranger. “Yes, I’ve always been green. No, my parents are not green, and neither was anybody else in our family as far as we know. Yes, they are my biological parents. Yes, doctors have studied me. No, they don’t know what caused it. Yes, it’s possible my children might be green. Oh, and at some point it’ll occur to you to look up the words “green skin disease” and, yes, there is one, and it’s called hypochromic anemia, but I don’t have it. Most importantly, yes, I’m completely normal in every other way. Well, except for being left-handed.”

After an unbearable pause, I said, “Wait. You’re left-handed? I’m sorry, Jade. I don’t think this is gonna work out. The whole lefty thing’s a deal-breaker for me.” She smiled a little, just enough to make it easier for me to resume my admission of guilt. “You’re right,” I said, “I have been avoiding looking at you.”

“It creeps you out,” she said.

“No, it’s not like that.”

“Are you sure? Because it is with most people.”

“Well, maybe I’m not like most people either, Jade.”

She clearly recognized my reference to our earlier conversation, as always. “I really want to believe that.”

I held out my hand. “You do believe it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here right now. Just keep believing it long enough for me to get my bearings, okay?”

She thought about it a moment, but finally, with a deep breath, she took my hand.

“Jade, I didn’t want to look at you because I didn’t want you to think I was staring at you. I thought you might be—”

“Embarrassed? Do you think I should be embarrassed?”

“No!” I insisted. “I was gonna say ‘self-conscious.’”

“Fair enough,” she conceded.

I still saw the hurt in her eyes, and it was more than I could bear. “Okay, yes, you caught me off guard. It’s kind of a lot to process, and I don’t feel like I’m doing the best at it, but I want to.”

After a while, she said, “For what it’s worth, you’re not doing the worst at it, either. Take my word for it.” I wondered how many bad memories she was revisiting as she said that. More than I could imagine, no doubt. A lifetime of them.

“Jade, if I were going to stare at you, it wouldn’t be because you’re green. It would be because you’re beautiful, inside and out.”

She smiled with her real smile again, and I was relieved to see it.

“Listen, this may not be the best time to ask, but there are first impressions and there are first-date impressions, and I don’t feel like tonight was my best stuff, so if you could see your way clear to give me another—“

She put her pointer finger on my lips, shushing me mid-sentence as she knew it would. She leaned closer and asked, “Do you trust me?”

I nodded.

“Close your eyes,” she said, her grin now fully returned. I did so.

“Are you ready?” she asked. Suddenly and joyously aware of where she was going with this, I nodded once again.

“Here it comes,” she whispered.

Then she kissed me.

To be continued...

Copyright © 2021 by Jef Coburn