The Seventeenth First Date

I keep a note on my phone called Dates, which is bleak, but it's useful. Seventeen entries since March. Most of them are one line. "Talked about his ex for forty minutes." "Nice, no spark, split the bill." "Left early, said I had a cat to feed, do not have a cat." Number seventeen is a Tuesday, a pub off Deansgate, and I've already decided it's the last one. If it's bad I'm deleting everything and buying a piano. I've told my flatmate this and she said, "You said that at twelve." He's late by four minutes, which is fine, and he's got a plaster wrapped round his thumb, which he notices me noticing. "Tin of beans," he says. "The lid. I was trying to be quick." "Were you late because of the beans?" "I was late because of the beans." We sit by the window. He asks what I do and I tell him, and he doesn't do the thing men do where they nod and wait for their turn. He asks a follow-up question. Then another. I realise about ten minutes in that I've been talking about drainage regulations, actual drainage regulations, and he's leaning forward. "Sorry," I say. "This is the least sexy topic in Britain." "No, I want to know why the outlet has to be that far from the wall." "It doesn't, really. It's just what people think." "So it's folklore." "It's folklore." We do the normal things after that. Siblings, where we grew up, whether we'd move abroad. He grew up in Stockport and his mum still does a roast every Sunday that he describes as "structurally ambitious." I tell him about my dad's shed, which has a kettle and a sofa in it and which my mum calls his flat. Somewhere in there I notice I haven't checked my phone. The Dates note stays closed. At one point the couple at the next table start arguing quietly, that hissed way people do in public, and we both go silent and pretend to read the specials board. When they leave he says, "Do you think they'll be alright?" and I say, "I think she'll be alright," and he laughs, once, like I've surprised him.

Here's the thing I've learned from sixteen entries in a note on my phone. The ones that felt like auditions were always bad. The ones where I was being scored, or scoring, where there was a clipboard somewhere in the room. This one doesn't have a clipboard. It has a plaster and a tin of beans and a man who wants to understand drainage folklore. Outside, it's raining in the thin Manchester way that doesn't count. He says he'd like to do this again and I say I would too, and neither of us does the awkward hover about a hug. He just squeezes my arm and walks off toward Piccadilly with his hood up. On the tram I open the note. I look at it for a while. Then I write, "Beans," and put the phone away.