First Date

The first thing that really bothered me about James, besides being late to our first date, was the gold crown over his upper left cuspid, which glistened across the table at me when he sat after we’d shook hands and made our introductions.

It was pretty weird. As a dental hygienist, I really only saw those on old people. Then again, I worked in a low-income area for a dentist that charged on a sliding scale, so I what did I know about the habits of the types of people who show up to a first date in a Porsche, like he’d done just moments prior? He’d made eye contact with me through the window, winked coyly, and strolled into the cafe with the kind of swagger you’d expect from a dude walking away from a sports car he thinks will impress you.

But he was about 20 minutes late by that point, my tea three-quarters drunk, and I wasn’t inclined to be impressed. Admittedly he looked even better than his photos on Eros’ Arrows, the dating app where we’d met, so I pushed away my misgivings. Plus, I could just hear my girlfriends, all partnered up, telling me I was being too picky, that I had no right to complain about being single if I never gave any guy a chance, blah, blah, blah.

Plus, he was really cute. I greeted him, we sat, he smiled, and there it was: the tooth.

James had three photos on his Eros’ Arrows profile; all three were serious and dramatic, and resembled an actor’s head shots. No smiles, no teeth. When he’d first shot me an arrow (the dating app’s messaging system), I almost thought it was a catfish situation, but the photos had no match on a reverse image search and he did come up on Instagram. Unfortunately the profile was private so my sleuthing stopped there, but the number of followers and posts suggested a real guy, and at least none of the three photos I’d seen had a fish in them. I was somewhat encouraged. Nonetheless, I arranged to meet in a very public place.

James ordered a macchiato and told me about his job, his car, his Rolex. He asked me about my beauty regimen but stared out the window at his car while I listed some products I had in a drawer in my bathroom, but didn’t actually use. Then the macchiato arrived and James complained it had too much foam. Then he told me about his recent ski trip and how I reminded him of a beautiful waitress who’d served him a much better macchiato at the lodge in St. Moritz, which, to be perfectly honest, I had thought was an island in the Caribbean.

When he used the words “après-ski,” it was solidified for me that this was not a good match. By this point I’d been listening to him drone on for a good fifteen minutes, which seemed like enough time, but whenever I started to make an excuse to leave, he started to tell me about his watch collection, or his old coin collection, or his snow globe collection. Of course, the latter led back to his favorite vacation destinations, and it was twenty more minutes of braggadocio before I was able to make my escape.

At no point did he mention his gold tooth, though, which was surprising, considering how many words came out of his mouth right past it. I, too polite to interrupt, nodded along and tried not to nod off.

In the end I was saved by a phone call. I wouldn’t dream of being so rude as to answer my phone on a date, but when a phone in his pocket started buzzing, James had no such qualms. As he listened to the person on the other end of the line, with the occasional “mmhmm” and “I see” (apparently he was capable of listening for a minute), I flagged down a waitress and requested separate bills.

“No, no, no! One bill,” James proclaimed, snapped the flip-phone shut and put it back in his pocket.

I laughed. “Is that a burner?” I hadn’t noticed when he’d first answered the call, but his iPhone was sitting on the table next to his offensively foamy macchiato. Oh shit, is this guy a drug dealer? I wondered, and immediately regretted bringing any attention to his phone.

James’s face was serious. “Work cell,” he said and then flashed his blinding tooth at me again, but his eyes were cold and unsmiling.

The waitress came back with the single bill. I reached for it but he got to it first.

“You get the next one,” he said, but I knew there would be no next time. “How about lunch tomorrow?”

“No,” I said, way too fast. “I’m busy this week, and, uh…” I hated not being honest with a guy I didn’t want to see again but this dude was really starting to creep me out. I practically ran out the door when the waitress returned to take his money.

Then the calls and texts started. He had to see me again. I told him I wasn’t interested in a relationship right now. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told him to leave me alone and blocked his number, but the calls and texts kept coming, a different number every time. I stopped answering calls altogether.

A luxury black SUV started showing up outside my apartment building, conspicuous in a neighborhood full of beat-up old trucks and rusted sedans. Not the small blue sports car he’d driven to the cafe he did make sure I knew he had many cars. It even followed me to the police station, where the cop who took my report told me I didn’t qualify for a restraining order since James had never committed nor even threatened violence. As I waited for the bus back home, he drove up and offered me a ride, but thankfully kept driving when I didn’t move.

He started sending me flowers. Every day, to my office or to my apartment, always roses, and always two dozen. I started getting a coworker to drive me home, even though I lived just a 10-minute walk from work.

For a man who seemed so uninterested in learning anything about me on our first date, he seemed to not be able to get enough once I turned him down. He continued to text and leave voicemails, sounding increasingly desperate as time went on, but always ending his missives with “I must have you.”

One day, about three weeks into the ordeal, I woke up to a knock on the door. I’d stopped answering knocks, but each one sent shudders all over my body. I threw on some clothes and tiptoed to the front door. I peeked through the peephole and saw the back of a man waiting for the elevator. He was wearing brown, like a UPS driver, not the pink visor that marked the flower delivery guy. The elevator opened. He got on, and was gone.

I waited a few minutes, eye glued to the peephole, before finally opening the door. On my threshold was a box, wrapped in black paper, with no name or address or postage on it. The black was so dark it seemed to suck in all the light in the hallway. I felt sick. I closed the door again without touching it, but I couldn’t stop wondering what was inside the package.

The next morning, it happened again. This time I was sitting on a chair in my kitchen, arms hugging my knees. I nearly fell over at the loud knocking just a few feet away. I hadn’t slept, eaten, or moved, really. The gift was driving me crazy but I knew nothing good would come of giving into my curiosity. Silence filled every inch of air in my apartment, like a toxic miasma.

I looked through the peephole again and, again, I saw the back of a man in brown get on the elevator and leave. I expected another package but when I opened the door, it was the same black box sitting on the threshold. Just looking at it made my stomach churn. I thought I would throw up. It was firmly in front of my door and I couldn’t make myself step over or around it; it felt like an impenetrable barrier exuding bad vibes.

On the third day, I decided I had to get rid of it. James had stopped calling but the box at the front door was my new torment. I’d missed two days of work and enough was enough. I opened the door and nudged the box with my foot, but it didn’t move. The thing must have weighed a metric tonne. I still could not make my body move over or past it. The wrapping paper was so black my brain couldn’t even register the edges of the box; it just looked like a chasm, a black hole threatening to pull in every bit of matter in my being.

I went back inside. From the window, I could see his car parked on the road. The lights were off. It looked almost as dark as the box that was making me batty. I had no escape, in either direction. I thought about calling the police again, but I knew how unhinged I’d sound. I considered ordering some kind of burglar alarm or booby trap or something but the last thing I wanted was more delivery guys at the door.

The fifth morning after the appearance of the box, I had still not slept. This time, instead of a knock, a voice came from the door.

“Come on…” he said slowly. It was James’s voice, but lower, more gravelly than the one ranting about foam in the cafe. “Just look inside. If you don’t like my gift, I won’t bother you anymore.”

I wanted to scream, “Leave me alone!” I wanted to tear open the door and then tear out his throat. But I didn’t move.

A minute later, I heard the ding of the elevator. He was gone. I opened the door slowly, with the chain still on. The box wasn’t there. I opened the door fully and looked down the hall, but no sign of it. I went back in and breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he’d got the message, finally.

But I knew he hadn’t. The nauseous feeling emanating from the box was still there, in my apartment, all around me, inside me even. I frantically began to search for it. I tore apart my closets, threw couch cushions to the floor, furiously searching for the unwanted gift. I was huffing and my face was hot. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but the whole thing felt like psychological torture. And a not-small part of me wondered if I was just truly insane now and maybe I had imagined the box and James and all of this?

I stripped the bed. Pillowcases and sheets flew around me. I pulled up the mattress and box spring for good measure, and there it was, under the bed frame. The vantablack box emanated misery and soaked up any remaining light inside of me. I pulled the bed frame away and crouched next to the object I was now fully convinced was evil. It was cool to the touch. I couldn’t find any seams in the paper so I scratched a tear into it with my nail, and pulled the paper back.

Inside the box was nothing. It wasn’t empty; it was full of nothingness. It wasn’t even a box; the paper fell to the side revealing an abyss that pulled at me, and grew with every passing moment, until it had engulfed me altogether. I gasped for air, but there was no air to be gasped. I thrashed my body against the darkness but I found nothing all around. The ground was gone from under me, and all that remained was the chasm, empty and full of nothing.

Centuries later (or hours—I had no idea), when light finally began to return, I only saw the pink of my eyelids. For several minutes, I was too scared to open them.

It’s a dream, I told myself and forced my eyes to open. A glass window was directly in front of me. I tried to look around but I couldn’t budge. On the other side of the glass, a giant mouth smiled, a hideous, huge mouth with a giant golden tooth.

“Did I tell you about my collection?” the mouth said. “This is the one I got in St. Moritz.”

An enormous hand with French-manicured nails reached toward the glass ball that surrounded me, picked it up, and shook it vigorously, but I was able to neither scream nor move. Huge wads of white powder flew up from around my feet and floated back down through what I now realized was water all around me. The hand moved the snow globe in front its female owner’s laughing face, bangle bracelets clanging against the glass.

She frowned. “I don’t like this one as much,” she said, and set me back down on the shelf I’d come from, now facing the full gallery of snow globes that made up James’s collection, each with a woman posed inside, in front of a ceramic mountain, or building, or palm tree.

An even larger hand, adorned with a gold watch to match the gold tooth, grabbed me now, and turned me to face him again. As snow fell gently down, I heard him tell his visitor how she reminded him of a flamenco dancer he’d met on a trip to Seville. He didn’t have a snow globe from there, but he hoped to add one to his collection soon.