“Too bad. My mom is always saying how she’d like to get to know you better.”
“I’m your elusive fiancée.”
He brushes aside her hair and nuzzles her neck. “You don’t feel elusive.”
* * *
La La met Clem when she was a junior at the University of Wisconsin, and he was starting out as a chiropractor. His office was in an old Victorian next to the clinic where she worked part time as a veterinary technician. As she left after her shift one day, he was outside the house, a tall man with cropped, curly brown hair and a beard. He dug into the pockets of his overcoat and pants, patted his shirt, then tried the door, rattling the knob without success. He reminded her of a bear that had tried to break into a locked dumpster behind a restaurant back home.
“Problem?” she asked, approaching him. She wasn’t in the habit of talking to strangers, but she was pretty sure she could help.
“Can’t find my keys. Thought I had them. Pretty lame, right?” He raked his fingers through his beard. Then tried his pockets again.
“I might be able to open it, but you’ll have to show me your license.”
“Why’s that?”
“I want to make sure that’s your name on the sign.” La La looked back toward the clinic, concerned she was revealing too much.
“Are you a vet? The clinic seems to get quieter when you go in.”
“I haven’t noticed. And I’m just a vet tech.”
“I don’t know why I said that about the clinic. Crazy.” He pulled out his wallet and flashed his license. Satisfied, she slipped her plastic student ID between the door and the frame, and jiggled it. The door swung open.
Clem raised his eyebrows.
“Party trick,” she said. “You’re welcome. You should think about installing a dead bolt.”
“What’s your name?”
“Louise, but people call me La La.” She was six when she overheard Zev tell someone on the phone the story behind her nickname. “When La La was a baby, she would lie in her crib singing ‘La La La, La La La,’ a fat smile on her face. One afternoon, Elissa complained, ‘Miss La La won’t shut up.’ The name stuck.” La La found it hard to believe she had ever been that happy, and the frivolous name didn’t suit her. She was reluctant to change it, though, because it was one of the few things her mother had given her.
“I’m Clement, but I guess you already know that. Call me Clem.” He dropped his ear to his shoulder, stretching his neck, before putting away his wallet. “Can I take you out to dinner tonight? You saved me. I have a client coming in five minutes.”
La La had never been on a date. Her first two years of college, she hadn’t made a single friend. Her classmates spoke a foreign language of small talk and teasing, bands and books La La had never heard of. What would she talk about on a date? Her father’s work? Her mother’s absence? “I have to study.”
“How about tomorrow night?”
“I don’t think so.”
His fingers combed through his beard again. “I get it. No date. That’s too bad. There’s a new organic steak house we could have gone to.”
La La cringed. “I don’t eat animal flesh,” she said, and then wished she’d used the word “meat” instead. She didn’t want to alienate Clem, who was attractive in a scruffy sort of way. She might enjoy sharing a meal with another person sometime.
He looked down at his Rockports. “This isn’t going very well. Is it?”
La La changed her mind, perhaps because he reminded her of the bear. “We could go to Serendipity.” A dog awash in relief padded away from the veterinary clinic with its owner. “It’s an organic vegetarian place.”
“Great. Pick you up at seven?”
“I’ll meet you there.” If the date went badly, La La didn’t want him to know where she lived.
Back in her dorm room, she realized she had nothing to wear. Her clothes were worn and practical, ragged jeans and scrubs, clogs and sneakers. When she told her roommate, Althea, that she had a date, the girl let her borrow a black velvet dress and stilettos. She even offered to do La La’s makeup.
“This shadow brings out the ocean colors in your eyes,” the art major said, stepping back to admire her work. “The liner,” she explained, as she held up the pencil, “will give your mouth shape.” Looking in the mirror, La La compared her own lips, which were the color of earthworms and only slightly thicker, to her roommate’s red, heart-shaped mouth.
La La’s loose clothes hid her small breasts, but the dress showed them off. She couldn’t walk in the three-inch spikes, so Althea found her a pair of wedge heels. When La La was ready for her date, she glanced in the mirror again and blanched. She looked like Elissa.
“Wow,” Clem said, when La La took off her coat in the restaurant.
She looked down, as if she’d forgotten the effort she’d gone to. “These clothes wouldn’t cut it in the clinic. I’d get blood on the dress when I assisted in surgery and trip over Simon, the cat who runs the place.”
“You look nice in your scrubs, too. You seem happy in them.”
“I’m happy around animals.”
“Just animals?”
“Let’s grab a table,” she said.
Artsy photographs of vegetables—a giant radish, a wet head of romaine, chopped peppers—brightened the walls. Their table wobbled. A waiter took Clem’s order for a bottle of imported beer. La La said she’d have the same. At the salad bar, they filled their plates.
Clem spilled dressing on his shirt and dropped his knife. La La didn’t know what to make of his sudden clumsiness. Searching for something to talk about, she discovered they shared an interest in anatomy.
“A dog has one-third more bones than a human,” La La said, drawing a cartoon skeleton in the condensation on her glass. “Isn’t that surprising? Humans have two hundred six bones, while dogs have approximately three hundred twenty. Just one way dogs are more complicated.”
Using both hands, Clem manipulated his neck, releasing a loud crack. “I wouldn’t want to work on a dog. It’s challenging enough to adjust humans.”
“And most people are clueless about how dogs feel.”
“Most people?”
Revealing her empathic abilities had caused trouble for La La in the past. She’d been fired from her job at a clinic when a veterinarian heard her mention that a drug he prescribed was making a dog paranoid. College classmates demanded to know what she had smoked when she argued the solitary rabbit one of them kept was lonely. To protect herself, she’d learned to refer to how animals feel only in the most general way. “A dog’s pain threshold is very high. Unless you’re used to treating them, it can be hard to read. Their genetic makeup,” she said, changing the subject, “is more complicated, too. Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes to a dog’s thirty-nine. People think humans are number one at everything. It’s ridiculous, because dogs have us beat in so many ways. I’d like to see a person sniff a jacket and track its owner. Or predict that a person is about to have a seizure.” The family at the next table had fallen silent and glanced at the young woman making a speech, but La La wasn’t finished. “Not to mention how loyal dogs are, which is more than I can say for some people.”