Free My Own Mr. Darcy by Karey White Page A

glee that he
wanted to spend every lunch with me gradually turned to irritation as I walked
the two blocks back to the bank. Was it really such a hassle to have to ask me
to lunch? Was this all about convenience or desire to see me? And speaking of desire
to see me, did Matt ever want to see me somewhere other than the bank or the
bookstore? Why didn’t he ask me on a real date?
    Just before ten Matt came
into the bank. “I can’t do lunch today or tomorrow,” he said when he reached my
window.
    “Oh, that’s too bad.” I
was glad I had a sandwich in the break room refrigerator. I wanted to know why
he was cancelling but he didn’t offer an explanation. “I guess I’ll see you
Monday?”
    “Actually, I was wondering
what you’re doing after work tonight. There’s a movie I’d like to see at Cinema
21.”
    “That sounds fun.”
    “I don’t know about fun.
It’s a serious movie. But if you’d like to go, I thought we could see it
together.”
    “Sure,” I said hoping my
voice didn’t sound as thrilled as I felt inside. I didn’t care if it was a
documentary on quantum physics. Matt had asked me on a real, after-work-hours
date. I was excited and relieved.
    “If you can come to the
bookstore after work, we’ll just go from there? We can grab a bowl of soup
somewhere on our way.”
    I agreed, hoping he’d take
me to a normal restaurant with real soup like chicken noodle or clam chowder.
    I ended up eating a bowl
of vegetable barley soup. It could have used some beef in there but it was far
and away the best thing I’d eaten so far with Matt.
    The movie was called “Land
of Indecision” and Matt was right. It was serious. There wasn’t a single smile
in the entire movie. For more than two hours, two twenty-something attorneys
talked. They’d been hired by a poor, old man who was dying of cancer. He’d
found oil on his property and wanted to drill it to relieve his family’s
financial burdens when he died. As the case unfolded, they spent many hours at
the office talking, and the local bar talking, and the old man’s living room
talking, and the car talking. The subject they discussed incessantly was how to
fight an environmental group who was fighting his right to drill.
    Two hours and ten minutes
into the movie, the two attorneys had evolved into enlightened men who no
longer felt comfortable helping the old man destroy the beauty of his property
with the blight of drilling equipment. They spent ten minutes telling the
broken-hearted man that the greatest gift he could give his children was his
property, unsullied by the ugliness of development.
    By the time the movie
ended, I was depleted of all enthusiasm about this date and realized I’d have
preferred an evening of scrubbing the public restrooms at the Greyhound station
to sitting through such a pompous film.
    “What would you like?”
Matt asked after the movie. We were ordering at a coffee shop a few doors from
the theater.
    “I’d like some hot cocoa
and one of those pecan sticky buns,” I said.
    “Did you know hot cocoa
has three times as many calories as a cup of coffee?” Matt asked.
    “Did you know it’s more
than three times as delicious?” I asked.
    Matt laughed. It was a
real laugh and I realized it was the first time I’d ever heard it. “You got me
there,” he said. “We’ll take two cups of hot cocoa.”
    “You don’t want a sticky
bun?” I asked.
    “I try to stay away from
too many refined sugars. But maybe I’ll eat a bite of yours.”
    “I suppose I can let you
have a bite.”
    “What did you think of the
movie?” Matt asked when we’d found a table.
    “I don’t think you want to
know?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “I thought it was
pretentious and boring.”
    “Really?” Matt sounded
surprised.
     “Did you like it?” I
asked.
    “It was interesting. What
was pretentious about it?”
    “It seems like the
filmmakers had an agenda and like they think they’re much smarter than the rest
of us. They