(Title taken from "We Are All Accelerated Readers" by Los Campesinos. We were making chocolate-covered Ritz cookies. My brother spilled some peppermint extract on the table, it smelled incredibly strong, and I thought I'd do a character-sketch of a girl who wears some sort of extract instead of perfume. I think Elea is the type of girl who would pose for a Vice photo shoot.)
Her name was Eleanor, but she went by Elea, pronounced “Ella,” and she was very patient with anyone who mis-spelled or mis-pronounced it, which was everyone. Instead of perfume she wore a finger pad’s worth of vanilla extract behind each ear. Her underwear never matched – one day, a red satin bra with green and white polka-dotted panties; the next, a brown sports bra with rainbow striped boy-shorts. All of her shirts had sleeves that were too long and she let them scrunch and slouch at her wrists, looking as soft and comfortable as extra puppy-dog skin.
We met in a coffee shop. I was waiting for my decaf-with-room-for-cream and overheard her gently explaining the spelling of her name. It was a routine I would become very familiar with. When her drink came up, the call was “One medium lemonade for El-ee-uh!” and she sighed, smiled, and took her drink. In her hand was a small cup with a scoop of bright orange sherbet, which she dumped into the lemonade. My coffee was already sitting on the counter, steaming away its heat, while I stood mesmerized by her process. Fingers painted with dull chocolate-colored polish held a straw that stirred the ice and lemonade and sherbet, jangling the ice and plastic and mixing the orange and yellow with smearing swirls like baby dragon flames. She lifted the cup to her lips and drank, following with a catlike sound of pleasure I’d never heard outside the bedroom before.
“I think your coffee is ready.”
“Oh! Yeah.” I grabbed my drink and pointed to the name scribbled in marker under the rim. “Dan. Never have to explain that one. I got lucky, I guess.”
She giggled and took another sip of her drink. “I don’t mind spelling for people. People never really ask others to understand them, which I think is sad. We could all know a little more about someone else.”
“Oh.” I had no response, so I gestured over to the condiment bar. “I, uh, need, some cream.”
She followed me and watched me dilute my coffee into something looking less like a beverage and more like a dusty mud puddle. “Well, since we already know each other’s names, I guess we should introduce ourselves another way. I’m Elea, and I love zombie movies and baby javelinas.” She reached out her hand.
“I’m Dan, and I, uh, love Marvel comics and lemon cake.”
We shook hands. Hers was cold from holding her lemonade. “I think you’re forgetting something,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m Dan,” she prompted me, “and I love Marvel comics, lemon cake, and I’d love to take you out to dinner sometime.”
“Oh! Yes – I’m Dan and I love - I’d love to take you out for dinner,” I repeated.
Elea put a hand, covered halfway by a drooping sleeve, into her purse and pulled out a tiny pencil like the ones used to score mini golf games. She wrote her phone number on my cup, right under my name.
That Saturday we went out for Greek food at a little place by my apartment. Three weeks later I showed up at her place with Dawn of the Dead and an orange-sherbet-lemonade. She answered the door in a robe, untied and hanging open to reveal a black lace bra and turquoise panties with a silver bow. Even the robe had too-long sleeves and only her fingertips peeked out.
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