cook-out for two

Francine and I meet online.  She’s cute, and nice.  She works for a funeral home.  She has lots of business-related jokes, all of which are a variation on the business-is-dead idea.  I get it.  I laugh at each one.  I make my eyes twinkle.  Our interest survives our remote coffee meet-up and I suggest a less remote meet-up at my house on Saturday for an old-fashion cookout.

The second I log off, I ask myself what I’m doing.  I’m no grill master.  I don’t pretend to be.  But everyone loves a cookout, and I said did cookout.  That’s not to say I can’t bake a mean souffle or a couple of salmon steaks.  But you don’t lug your oven outside on just the second date.  That’s probably fifth or sixth date stuff.   

A little background.  A few weeks ago, a tree service took down a few gumball trees in my backyard.  I tried to save money by forgoing having the stumps ground up.  Gone are the gumballs, but now I have gumball tree-stumps in the yard, no trees above them, and the place looks like a backdrop for a B movie that might be called “Stumps.”  Not pretty.

So, on Saturday, I set up the grill in the front yard where the trees are still trees and everything is presentable. 

“Whatcha doing?” Tabby, my eight-year-old next-door neighbor asks from the driveway. 

“Setting the stage for my big date tonight.”

“Is she coming here?”  The kid is a little too excited about something that shouldn’t involve her.  “My second-grade class meets online.”

“I guess if I were meeting with twenty big dates at the same time, we would probably do it online.  But just one big date is coming today.”

“How big is she?”  Tabby is as sincere as she can be.

“I’ll take a picture and show you…after she’s gone.”

“Are you going to kiss each other’s mask.”  She giggles at the thought.

I laugh with her, but I have no clue what to expect.  A part of me wonders if the CDC’s guidelines on social distancing can kind of be ignored if I see an opportunity to score.  I just don’t know. 

Come four o’clock, Francine arrives.  The cat wakes up, and the nosy underage neighbor is still waiting around, even after I have told her parents I’m throwing a Covid party.  The moment Francine steps out of her car, Toby strides up to her and presses his nose against her bare ankles.  Before Tabby can scream ‘NO’, Francine leans over and pets the welcome wagon on his furry head.

“Nice cat,” she says.  “Yours?” 

Unbelievable.  No one bites anyone.

Francine is exactly what she looks like on my laptop, just bigger.  But—I can tell by the patent disappointment on Tabby’s face—not big enough. 

I tell her the meat patties are patted-out and seasoned.  The fix’ins are fixed and a few cold coffees are chilling.  “As soon as the fire is hot enough, I’ll put the burgers on.”

After a good twenty minutes, Francine asks me how long it takes fire to get fire-like.  “You know, hot.”

It’s a good question.  And after another fifteen minutes, I’m still working on an answer. 

“What’s wrong?” Telly calls from the sidewalk.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

I look at Francine, who is standing back, sort of leaning even further back, with her arms crossed.

“He can’t get it started,” Tabby calls from her yard.  I motion for the kid to go inside her house and mind her business inside with the curtains drawn.  Either the kid doesn’t know how to vanish or she simply doesn’t understand basic semaphore signaling with tongs and spatula.

“The fire doesn’t seem to be getting any hotter,” I call to Telly.  “If I poke it with a stick, I can see a little orange and then it goes out.  Does fire really need prodding?”

Telly pulls up a mask and joins me at the grill.  He asks if I have tried putting lighter fluid on it.  I get the lighter fluid out of the garage and pour some through the grill.  At once, a healthy fire roars to life.  And almost as fast, it settles down to smoking ash.

“Is it supposed to do that?” I ask him.

A young couple from up the street is passing by with their stroller.  When the man senses a man-problem, he takes a time-out from the family and asks me what seems to be the matter.  He says sprinkling a little water on the fire can actually help encourage it.  He looks like he knows what he’s talking about, from the mask up.  After a good dousing, the fire is out. 

Francine crosses her arms a little more resolutely.  She steps further back from the scene, no doubt unwilling to be too closely associated.  Tabby joins her.  She’s never been this close to a big date.

The man who lives across the street is still buttoning his shirt as he hurries barefoot across the yard.  His wife is standing in the door, holding her robe at the neck.  “I couldn’t help but notice,” he calls ahead of himself.  “Say, have you got any kerosene?”

Three neighbors into this group project, a guy carrying a bag of his own charcoal marches up my driveway.  “I heard someone was having a hard time getting something started.”

“See?” my tenacious neighbor says behind me.

The newcomer is smiling, positively charged.  He is accompanied by his young son and two other men who wondered where he was going with a bag of charcoal.

Unbelievable.  The most I can get out of my grill is a wisp of smoke, but like a Bat Signal in the sky, men from all parts of the neighborhood see the sign and respond.  I should be happy for the helping hands, but the greater the turnout, the more self-conscious I am about the grill I can’t manage and the shifting dynamics of my cookout-for-two.

Francine, Tabby and Toby sit on the front steps of my house and watch the turnout of men, like an audition for Who’s Got Fire?  Each of them says (through masks as varied as their wearers) that they know exactly what they’re doing; and then, when what they know goes up in smoke, they insist they just don’t want to tread too hard on another man’s turf. 

At this point, husbands and sons from this and the adjoining neighborhood are crowding my turf.  Some of the womenfolk have gathered to watch from the other (safe) side of the street.  This whole date thing, this cookout, this flameless grill, have become divisive, rending men from their women, keeping at least one from getting anything started with a woman. 

Finally. 

A delivery guy in a brown truck stops at the house and steps up to the proverbial plate.  He squats and peers into the problem.  He flicks some lever on the side, making ash poop right out the bottom of the grill, and then he blows and fans the air above the ashen bricks until something happens that has not happened since some nut shook gasoline on the grill.  There is a flame.  We hold our breaths while the delivery guy blows, flicking the lever on the side, thumping the belly of the grill.  And the fire holds.  The flames leap about, looking for something to cook.  

About the time I bring out the meat, Francine says she has to leave.  “Nice cat,” she says again before she closes her door on our future together and drives away. 

“Love is like that,” Telly says like the old sage who sticks around after everyone else has left so that he can provide uninterrupted commentary.

“Yeah,” Tabby says, aspiring to be her own commentary.

“That wasn’t love,” I say.  “We weren’t anywhere near love.  You saw how far back from the grill she was standing.”

Telly is unruffled.  “Let it go.  There are other women out there.  Besides, now that your grill is lit…”  He arches his crazy eyebrows.

“You mean now that I know to schedule a cook-out at the same time as I plan to receive a package?” 

“No’oh.  What I mean is…you have a plate of uncooked hamburgers, it’s dinner time, and your grill is lit.”  Again, his brows do that crazy lift with untold meaning.

“I’m hungry,” Tabby says with more direct commentary.  

I smile, the last to get it.  “It looks like my dinner-for-two has just became dinner-for-three.”

Someone meows.

“Or four.”

Build a fire, and they will come. Flounder in smoke, and they will flock.