Merlot

It’s bad when you show up for a first date only to find that other person already has company. It’s worse when that company looks naggingly familiar.

Still, I was in motion, and I really wanted to meet this woman face to face, so I willed my feet to keep carrying me along.

Her name was Lauren, and we had met on an e-matchmaking site a month ago. To say we had hit it off right away would be putting it mildly. It was like we were both cut from the same bolt of cloth – we liked the same books, the same movies, the same music, the same foods. The site had pegged us as a hundred percent suitable match, and, on paper anyway, it looked like that was certainly the case.

We had emailed back and forth for two weeks, then graduated to phone calls and texts. It had gotten to the point that every time my phone pinged, I would hope that it would be her. More often than not, it was, and we would talk for up to an hour before life called us back to our various responsibilities.

She lived in the downtown area about six or so blocks from me. When we felt the time had come to take the plunge and meet in person, we chose a neutral place, one we both knew but didn’t frequent, a restaurant of good reputation called Blue Wing.

When the appointed day arrived, it was even money which was going to wear out first, my eyes or the clock, so often was I turning my attention to it. I wondered if I should get there early or at the agreed-upon hour. I hadn’t done a lot of dating since moving to this city, and this was the first e-date I had gone on in the flesh.

I was about five minutes ahead of time, but she was already there. I could see her sitting at a table in the center of the room. My first reaction was one of pleasure. She was just as beautiful in person as she had been in her profile photos – wavy auburn hair that fell to her shoulders, a fair complexion and delicate arms and hands. My second reaction was to wonder what a woman like this needed a dating site for.

I told my second reaction to go take a hike and started across the room. That’s when I noticed that she wasn’t alone.

There was a man sitting in a chair at the next table over, only he had scooched his own seat a bit awkwardly close to hers. He leaned in to further close the distance between them, although he didn’t appear to be saying anything.

He was older than she, perhaps by as many as twenty or thirty years. Whereas Blue Wing wasn’t too formal of a place, he was nonetheless decked out in a charcoal-colored suit, crisp-looking white shirt and a bold red tie. There was even a carnation in his lapel. His dark hair was on the long side, swept back dramatically from his face. He was also sporting a truly magnificent mustache, something you didn’t see much of anymore.

When he registered me coming towards Lauren’s table, he sat up and stared at me. His eyes were even darker than his hair, like twin dots of ink. Their intensity, even from halfway across the room, was unsettling.

Lauren noticed him noticing me and looked up. When she saw me, her own face broke into a smile.

“Hi,” she said when I had closed the distance.

“Hi,” I said back. “Lauren?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, rising from her chair. Her companion, if that was what he was, stayed seated and glared at me. “It’s good to meet you finally.”

“Yes,” I echoed. I looked at the gentleman in the suit, then back at Lauren. She did not appear to want to introduce him, and he made no move to introduce himself, only stared.

“Please,” she said, “sit. I hope you don’t mind, I ordered a drink.” She indicated the glass of Merlot on the table before her. She couldn’t have been waiting long. It didn’t look like the glass has been touched so far.

“Not at all.” I waved at the server, who comes over and takes my own drink order. She did not acknowledge the third member of our party, who was rapidly becoming the elephant in the room, at least to me.

“So,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry, I’m bad at this. I haven’t been out on a date in a long time.”

“That’s okay,” I replied, wondering again how a woman this attractive could end up, dateless, at home. “I haven’t either. To be honest, I was a little nervous. Even though we’ve talked a lot over the phone, it’s different meeting someone in real life.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “I’m a little nervous, too.”

Nervous enough to bring along a chaperone, I thought. Is that what this is?

“So, not to be rude, but I have to ask,” I said. “Who’s your friend?”

She looked at me uncertainly.

“My friend?”

I pause. What, exactly, is going on here?

“Your friend,” I repeated. I nodded to the man in the suit. “Him.”

She looked to her left, studied the man in surprise for a moment, then looked quickly back to me.

“You can see him?” she asked, more in a whisper than in a normal tone of voice.

“Of course,” I said. “He’s right there.”

She continued to look at me. So did her companion. I continued to be confused.

“What does he look like?” she asks, now sounding positively conspiratorial.

I frowned. “Suit. Tie. Er, mustache.” I decided to take a more direct approach here. “Excuse me, sir,” I said to the man. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Lauren murmured.

I looked from her to him and back to her again. “I’m sorry, I’m a little lost here. Is he a friend of yours? Or is he bothering you?”

“He’s no friend of mine,” she said with a rueful smile. “And yes, he’s most definitely bothering me.”

“Then maybe it’s time you find another place to be,” I said to the man. I’m not normally a confrontational person, but this situation was just too weird to continue.

The man in the suit showed no inclination to be elsewhere. He only regarded me with those dark eyes, like those of a poisonous reptile, and said nothing.

“That won’t work,” Lauren said with a sigh. “He won’t go.”

“Why not?” I asked, now completely befuddled. “Who is he?”

“That,” she said, looking into her wineglass, “is Salvador Dali.”

***

There was a long silence among the three of us. The rest of the restaurant’s patrons continue on about their business as though this fantastic claim had not even been uttered.

“Salvador…” I began. “Dali,” I finished.

“Yes,” Lauren said.

“The Salvador Dali? He’s not just an impersonator?”

She chuckled. “Is there such a thing? I said he’s Dali, not Elvis. And I’m impressed that you can see him. Most people can’t.”

I waved my hands. “I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around this. Salvador Dali is dead. He died over thirty years ago. Are you telling me he’s a ghost?”

The man in the suit, who to be fair sure looked like Salvador Dali, right down to the waxed and curled mustache, produced a cane from his side and rapped it on the tabletop. The liquid in our respective glasses sloshed.

“Awfully solid for a ghost,” I commented.

Lauren looked at him. “I’m not sure he’s a ghost. I don’t know for sure what he is, besides a twenty-four-hour-a-day nuisance.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re…what, haunted? By the ghost of the most famous surrealist painter of all time?”

“Surprise!” she said, giving a little flourish with her hands. “It’s not the kind of thing you can put in your online profile, you know. ‘Likes hiking, Thai food and reading on rainy afternoons. Is also haunted by the specter of the Twentieth Century Catalonian artist Salvador Dali.’ It would be kind of a red flag.”

“So…” I said, then trailed off. I had no idea where to take the conversation. I decided to just stick to the pointy-mustachioed Spanish elephant at the next table over.

“Does he ever talk?” I asked.

“Not much. I guess that’s a blessing.”

“But…but this is incredible! Salvador Dali! One of the most legendary artists ever!”

“Believe me, it gets old quickly,” she said, touching the base of her wineglass and looking at it wistfully. I noticed she still hadn’t drunk from it. She looked at me and smiles weakly.

“I love Merlot,” she said. “But he doesn’t like it when I drink.”

“He’s a ghost,” I replied. “What’s he going to do?”

Dali – and it surprised me how readily I had been to accept that that was indeed who this strange character was – leaned over, looking like he was going to whisper into Lauren’s ear.

“Go away, Dali!” she snapped at him.

He pursed his lips, mustache fairly bristling with indignation. Reaching across to our table, he flipped over our basket of bread. Buttered rolls tumbled out onto the tabletop. He jumped to his feet and stalked off, cane rapping jauntily on the restaurant’s hardwood floor.

I watched him go, only looking back at Lauren when he was out of sight around a corner.

“I don’t get it. You can make him go?”

She brought up her glass and took a large swallow, then another. “Oh, don’t worry. He’ll be back. He always comes back. He doesn’t stay mad for very long.” She drained her glass and signaled the server for another one.

“What’s he got against wine?” I asked.

Lauren accepted the fresh Merlot and started in on it. “’Painter, don’t drink alcohol.’ That’s what he said in his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.”

“You’re a painter, too?”

“Graphic designer. I work from home.” She shrugged. “I have to. I’d never get anything done in an office.”

“But if he’s a ghost –”

“Again, I don’t know what he is. He can affect the world around him when he wants to. You saw that.”

I took a deep breath. “I can’t get over what an opportunity this is! We can learn so much from him!”

She shook her head. “He’s not interested in communicating with anyone other than me.” She pauses. “Well, I say ‘communicate’, but mostly he just hangs around, watching me.”

“Is it because you’re an artist?”

“I don’t think so. It’s probably because of my grandmother.”

“Your grandmother?”

“She was a model for Dali in the 1960s. I could point her out in some of his paintings from that time period. He’d probably love that.”

“Does that mean that Dali and her were…”

Lauren looked alarmed. “Oh, god, no! It was strictly an artist-model arrangement. And anyway, Dali only had eyes for his wife, Gala.”

I knew the story. Dali had worshipped Gala, both figuratively and literally, for the entire span of their marriage. Even when she took other lovers, Dali had still practically groveled at her feet.

“So why do you think he’s haunting you because of your grandmother?”

“Well, for one thing, she was his favorite model after Gala. He made hundreds of drawings of her. Supposedly, I look just like her.”

“What about your mother?”

“My mother died in 1996, not long after I was born. Dali had already died, in 1989. I don’t know what he did in the interim time.”

“He didn’t…er, haunt your mother?”

“Not that I know of. That’s the kind of thing your dad would mention when you ask what your mother was like.”

“So how long has he been with you?”

“My. Whole. Life.” She enunciated each word like a verbal thud.

As if summoned, Dali reappeared back at our table. He righted the bread basket, then reached into his inner jacket pocket. From it, he pulled a lobster, which he placed on its back in the basket. From his side pockets, he extracted a small number of sea urchins. The spiny creatures joined the lobster in the bread basket. He gestured at this eclectic still life as if to say, “Ta-da!”

“He loves to gift me gifts,” Lauren said to me wearily. Then, to Dali, she said, “Thank you.”

For the first time, Dali smiled. He seated himself again, glanced my way, then returned his attention to Lauren.

“You were surprised when I told you I could see him,” I said.

“Yes, most people are aware of…something, but they can’t actually see him. Sometimes, artistic people can catch glimpses of him. You must be a pretty good artist.”

“Been painting my whole life. Surrealism, actually.”

Dali looked at me and smiled again, only this time it was more like a sneer.

“Does he ever draw you?” I asked.

Lauren nodded. “All the time. But he always tears up the drawings afterwards.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. He never says. There’s a lot about this that I still don’t know or understand.”

“And having him around keeps you from having a normal life, then, I guess,” I said.

“I could never go to a regular school. Can you imagine, being in Kindergarten and having Salvador Dali following you around the playground? Children can see him, and more often than not, they’re terrified.”

“It sounds like the pits.”

“It is. I have to shower and get dressed in the dark.”

“But if he’s solid enough to do…this,” I indicated the bread basket, “then why not have him restrained or something?”

She shook her head. “Try to touch him.”

I put out my hand. Dali actually leaned forward, his eyebrows raised.

My hand passed right though him, as though he were made of smoke. Dali looked pleased and sat back, his arms folded triumphantly across his chest.

“It’s the same thing with me,” Lauren said. “Any time I try to touch him, he just fades out like that.”

“This is going to sound silly, but could you outrun him?” I asked. “Go jump in a cab and speed off without him? It’s not like he could flag down a ride to chase after you.”

Lauren shook her head again. “Tried that. I even managed to ditch him once and get on a plane. Transatlantic flight. Twelve hours later, who do you think was waiting for me at Heath Row Airport?”

“Was he angry?”

She laughed without humor. “The only thing that makes him mad is when I drink. I even took up smoking for a while, thinking that would irritate him enough to make him go away. He didn’t seem to mind. I guess he just has a thing against alcohol. It’s a shame.” She looked longingly at her glass. “This is a really good Merlot.”

Dali notices her eyeing her wineglass and gave her a severe look.

“Okay, okay,” she said, and settled back in her chair.

The server came around again to ask if we were ready to order.

“I think we’re going to need another minute,” I tell her.

“Speaking of needing a minute,” Lauren says once the server is away from the table, “now that you know about my…infirmity…where do we go from here?”

“Am I the first person you’ve ever told about him?”

“No, I’m up front about it each time I meet somebody new. I said this was my first e-date, but I’ve been asked out the traditional way a couple of times over the years, and I felt it was best to be up front about my problem.”

“How’d they take it? And what does Dali think about you dating?” The absurdity of my last question was…well, it was almost surreal.

“Most other people think I’m crazy,” Lauren told me sadly. “The ones who can see flickers of him and who believe that he’s really there see him as some kind of competition and give up before too long. After all, he’s the one I always go home with.”

“And him?” I prompted. “What does he say about your personal life?”

She looked at Dali, who only continued to stare silently back at her.

“I’ve asked him hundreds of times what he wants, why me, why he’s so possessive of me. He’s never given me an answer. The only thing I’m sure of is that he won’t go away, no matter what I say or do.”

She let out a long breath, and I thought it sounded singularly exhausted. We were silent again, and for longer this time. Time passed. Dali stared. The lobster on its back in the bread basket squirmed.

“Excuse me,” Lauren said at last. “I need to go the ladies’ room.”

She stood. Dali immediately got to his feet as well. Lauren sighed and off they went, with Dali trailing along behind her, actually twirling his cane.

I watched them until they disappeared around the corner.

“That poor girl,” said Edgar Allan Poe from behind me.