Lightning

five-five, she was one foot shorter than he was; at a hundred fifteen pounds, she was less than half his weight—she felt almost as if she were going on a date with her father or an older brother. She was not a petite woman, but on his arm and under his umbrella she felt positively tiny.
    He was uncommunicative again in the car, but he blamed it on the need to drive with special care in such rotten weather. They went to a small Italian restaurant in Costa Mesa, a place in which Laura had eaten a few good meals in the past. They sat down at their table and were given menus, but even before the waitress could ask if they would like a drink, Daniel said, "This is no good, this is all wrong, let's find another place."
    Surprised, she said, "But why? This is fine. Their food's very good here."
    "No, really, this is all wrong. No atmosphere, no style, I don't want you to think, ummmm," and now he was babbling as he'd done on the phone, blushing, "ummmm, well, anyway, this is no good, not right for our first date, I want this to be special," and he got up, "ummmm, I think I know just the place, I'm sorry, Miss"—this to the startled young waitress—"I hope we haven't inconvenienced you," and he was pulling back Laura's chair, helping her up, "I know just the place, you'll like it, I've never eaten there but I've heard it's really good, excellent." Other customers were staring, so Laura stopped protesting. "It's close, too, just a couple of blocks from here."
    They returned to his car, drove two blocks, and parked in front of an unpretentious-looking restaurant in a strip shopping center.
    By now Laura knew him well enough to realize that his sense of courtliness required her to wait for him to come around and open her car door, but when he opened it she saw he was standing in a ten-inch-deep puddle. "Oh, your shoes!" she said.
    "They'll dry out. Here, you hold the umbrella over yourself, and I'll lift you across the puddle."
    Nonplussed, she allowed herself to be plucked from the car and carried over the puddle as if she weighed no more than a feather pillow. He put her down on higher pavement and, without the umbrella, he sloshed back to the car to close the door.
    The French restaurant had less atmosphere than the Italian place. They were shown to a corner table too near the kitchen, and Daniel's saturated shoes squished and squeaked all the way across the room.
    "You'll catch pneumonia," she worried when they were seated and had ordered two Dry Sacks on the rocks.
    "Not me. I've got a good immune system. Never get sick. One time in Nam, during an action, I was cut off from my unit, spent a week on my own in the jungle, rained every minute, I was
shriveled
by the time I found my way back to friendly territory, but I never even got the sniffles."
    As they sipped their drinks and studied the menu and ordered, he was more relaxed than Laura had yet seen him, and he actually proved to be a coherent, pleasant, even amusing conversationalist. But when the appetizers were served—salmon in dill sauce for her, scallops in pastry for him—it swiftly became clear that the food was terrible, even though the prices were twice those at the Italian place that they had left, and course by course, as his embarrassment grew, his ability to sustain his end of the conversation declined drastically. Laura proclaimed everything delicious and choked down every bite, but it was no use; he was not fooled.
    The kitchen staff and the waiter were also slow. By the time Daniel had paid the check and escorted her back to the car—lifting her across the puddle again as if she were a little girl—they were half an hour late for the movie they had intended to see.
    "That's all right," she said, "we can go in late and stay to see the first half hour of the next showing."
    "No, no," he said. "That's a terrible way to see a movie. It'll ruin it for you. I wanted this night to be perfect."
    "Relax," she said. "I'm having fun."
    He looked at her with disbelief, and she smiled, and he smiled, too, but his smile was sick.
    "If you don't want to go to the movie now," she said, "that's all right, too. Wherever you want to go, I'm game."
    He nodded, started the car, and drove out to the street. They had gone a few miles before she realized that he was taking her home.
    All the way from his car to her door, he apologized for what a lousy evening it had been, and she repeatedly assured him that she was not in the least disappointed with a moment of it. At