Chapter 12: Bachelor No. 2

My grandmother told us she had decided to have Michael Garza come for dinner as well.

“I really like both of them, and I want to be fair.”

A week after Rafael and Ofelia’s overnight visit, my grandmother opened the door to greet Michael. My first impression of him matched the expectations he’d created when we’d overheard his first telephone call. He’d said something like, “Tall, handsome, and athletic? No, I’m the other guy.”

But Sallie and I did agree that he had undersold himself. He wasn’t tall, true. In other respects, he seemed fairly ordinary, with the soft belly typical of a man his age. Sallie took me aside to whisper, “He has the most beautiful honey-brown eyes, and flashes a killer smile.”

“Like me?” I teased.

“Of course.”

My grandmother had described him as above average inside his pants, but Sallie and I weren’t going to verify that!

Apart from his endowment, Grandma had also described him as very funny, based on their previous encounters. However, to me on this night he seemed nervous and inhibited. I think my grandmother kept glancing at him as if he was behaving differently than she expected.

Before dinner, Michael was perfectly polite, but guarded whenever the conversation turned to personal matters: his family, childhood, education, and career. He answered in brief statements, skating over the details of his life with as few words as possible.

Finally, I had had enough. This couldn’t be the man my grandmother had spoken so highly of. Instead, I had an inspiration. I was a young man, but I’d seen women at social gatherings go to the bathroom in groups and apparently carry on extensive private conversations behind the door marked “Ladies.”

I adopted the same idea, but instead of a bathroom I took Michael out onto the back porch where I had an ice chest full of different beers.

“Michael, dude, you’re blowing it. You’re behaving like at any minute a bunch of reporters and cameras are going to be asking when you decided to stop shoplifting.”