Free Paint Me True by E.M. Tippetts

know how this was supposed to work. If I’d been out with another Mormon, we’d go miniature golfing or something and end things with a handshake or maybe a hug. “So you’re not from Oxford?”
    “Not originally, no. I’m from Reading. You know where that is?”
    I shook my head.
    “South of London. Not much else I can say about it really. I wouldn’t recommend going there to sightsee. Where in the States are you from?”
    “Utah.”
    “Oh... oh . So you don’t drink because you’re one of those... is Mormon the right word?”
    “Yeah, that works.”
    “Or is that a slur?”
    “No. It’s not.”
    “But you’re Christian?”
    “Yeah. It’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We believe the Bible and all that.” Plus some extra scriptures, I added in my mind. But again, I knew this wasn’t a topic to linger on during a first date.
    “What’s Utah like?”
    “Very pretty. Lots of mountains. Good skiing, but I kind of misspoke. I grew up in Utah. These days I live in Oregon. That’s in the upper-”
    “Northwest, just north of California. Yeah, that’s the state that’s got the same landmass as all of Great Britain.”
    “Really?”
    “Without the sixty million people all packed in.”
    “Really? The island is that small?”
    “You mean your state is that big, don’t you?”
    “Sure...”
    He laughed. “Don’t pick on countries smaller than yours, all right?”
    “Sorry.” This time I purposely lowered my gaze in a flirty way. “So when did you move out here?”
    “For my job. Four years ago? How long you been a painter?”
    “Ten years-ish?”
    “Can I ask how old you are?”
    “Thirty.”
    He didn’t bat an eye. “Oh, right, well I’m twenty-seven. You’ve been working for a while, then.”
    “I guess. I kind of scrape by doing prints and commissions. It’s not an easy way to make money, but it’s flexible. I can come over here to look after my aunt on a moment’s notice.”
    “How long are you here for?”
    “My return flight’s scheduled for a couple of weeks from now, but I really don’t know. It’s whenever Nora says she doesn’t need me.”
    “How is she?”
    “She’s fine. Just her usual, stubborn self.”
    “That she is. Definitely a memorable case.”
    “I’m sorry if she made your life difficult.”
    He shook his head dismissively. “No, not really. The NHS staff treat people like sacks of potatoes sometimes, just toss them about and pay no attention to what they need. It was silly of them to send her to us, but I’ve seen odder cases. We had one little girl sent to us because the GP thought she had an eye tumor based on a photograph that someone took of her. I could look in the girl’s eye and see there was nothing. Bloke didn’t even know how to use an ophthalmoscope. Or we had a man once who had an upset stomach and the A&E told him he might have a tumor. No other symptoms, just nausea.”
    “Sounds weird.”
    “Yeah, it was.” He shrugged.
    I wadded up my sandwich bag.
    “So, right, tell me about how your aunt met her fella.”
    “He walked through the porter’s lodge when she was there and she fell for him and... well, that’s pretty much all I know about what happened here. Later she saw him and he took her to Carfax Chippy.”
    “And she liked that?”
    “Well, I mean, she ran into him and he flirted with her and talked her out of going to supper at her boarding house. She was totally infatuated.”
    “So if he’d taken her down a dark alley without a chippy at the end?”
    “Don’t say that.”
    “Sorry. Unromantic, I know. But I did work in an A&E for a while-”
    “What is that? A&E?”
    “I guess Americans call it the ER. Sorry to be morbid. I’ve just seen some spontaneous infatuations end badly.”
    “That is morbid.”
    “Eh, comes with the job.”
    “So, no, he fed her fish and chips.”
    “Well all right then. She was into that?”
    “Sure. I mean, she’d only just seen him in the porter’s lodge.