Dig a Mole and Crawl In

Story Sent in by John:

Linda and I met online and had a first date all set up at a local restaurant. We met on a Friday evening not far from the place, and something was clearly bothering her. One of the first phrases out of her mouth was, "I'm not in a good mood. At all."

I asked her, "Anything I can do to help?"

She said, "Not unless you can make murder legal."

I lacked that power, but the conversation struck me as a negative way to start the date, so I said, "Well, we're going to have a nice dinner, in any event."

"Whatever," she sighed.

I asked, "Do you want to cancel?" I really didn't need drama that night, least of all drama that I didn't think I had caused in the first place.

She replied, "No. Let's go. I just really feel like being a bitch to everyone tonight. Ever just have one of those moods that are brought on by nothing specific?"

I lied, "Yes. Sometimes."

At dinner, she was (what I assumed to be) rare form. She picked up her fork, inspected it from all angles, and said to the server when he arrived, "This fork has dirt on it. Can I have another?"

He was happy to oblige, and he brought her a second fork, which she jumped into inspecting. Sure enough, with the server still at the table to take our drink orders, she said, "This one's dirty, too. Should I just go to a Bed and Bath and buy a new silverware set for me to use?"

The server took her second fork away and replaced it with one that he said had just come out of the washer. She took it from him then dropped it on the table with a clang.

"It's hot!" she said.

The server replied, "It just came out of our dishwasher. I gets hot enough to clean just about anything."

Linda looked at me with a smile and said, "Does that include me? I can't eat with this! It's too hot!"

"It'll cool down," I said, hoping to move the process along.

"Well, it's too hot for me," she said.

I ordered a ginger ale and she ordered a daiquiri. As I expected, when her drink arrived, she rotated the glass around to inspect for aberrations. To distract her, I asked her about her plans for the summer. The ploy worked, and she went into great detail about her forthcoming trip to Chile. She seemed to forget all about her crabbiness, and I was pleased to finally learn a bit more about her, and what I hoped was the real her.

Not too long after we ordered food, three people around our age, a woman and two men, sat at a table nearby. Linda stopped talking and looked at them.

"Do you know them?" I asked her after a minute.

They were having a lively conversation, but Linda stood up and walked over to them. They stopped talking and I watched as she leaned close to the group and stared at one of the guys. He happened to have a mole near his nose.

Linda pointed and asked, "What's that? A mole?"

The guy looked at his friends, cracked a smile, and said, "Do you want to buy it a drink?"

Linda said, "Ugh. No thanks," and returned to our table. The triad watched her return and shot amused and annoyed glances at me. I shrugged, as if to say, "Well, she's just like that. Isn't that silly?"

When she sat back down, she said, "Now I'm in a crappy mood again."

She barely spoke for the rest of dinner, except to point out that her new, now touchable fork, was also dirty. Once we were done, I brought the date to a hasty close, wished her good night, and good luck.