The wine bar was dark, so I hadn’t been able to make out our server’s face as she left, and she hadn’t been able to see mine — the shock on it, from the surprise at the meager clutch of olives ten dollars had bought us. I did the math in my head. It came out to ninety cents per olive.
“You’re lucky,” Lena said, pouting. “Asians have it so easy.”
She had been sucking on the same olive for half an hour. In that time I’d eaten six. I stopped myself from reaching for another, not wanting to be seen as taking more than my fair share.
“Redheads are a thing, though,” I tried. “Aren’t you?”
“Only sort of.” She tipped her head back to drink her Syrah. “Not to the same degree.”
Her teeth were purple from the wine and I ran my tongue over my own. Recently I’d learned that East Asians have a distinctive tooth shape, an adaptation uncommon in other Homo sapiens. Something about the way our teeth curve toward the gums.
“I promise I’m not having any luck,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean!”
Lena had countless theories about Asian women and the sexual marketplace. Whenever I protested — she had been on many more dates than I had, with more-interesting and better-looking men — she refused to hear my empirical proof. She denied she wanted anything but my happiness.
The last date I had been on was with a man who arrived looking two decades older than he did in his profile picture, wearing what appeared to be a gravity-defying rabbit turd affixed to his lapel.
“Do you have a pet rabbit?” I’d asked, as casually as I could.
“How did you know?” he’d beamed, a proud papa, and leaned in to show me photos: it was floppy eared, with the blank, feeble expression of a hostage.
When I was 9 I cleaned rabbit cages at a ranch-themed summer camp where all the children were assigned character-building chores. At the end-of-camp awards ceremony, I was given third place, a yellow ribbon in rabbit-cage cleaning. I knew a bunny turd when I saw it.
As Lena talked, I found my gaze gravitating to the remaining olives. Would she eat any of them? Silently, I wondered how willing Lena was to date non-white men. We’d never explicitly talked about it, but I noticed that all her exes were a type: sandy haired, button nosed, skin like hotel linen.
The server rematerialized.
“Are we all done with that?” She put a hand on the olive dish, ready to whisk it away.
“No!” I yelped, too aggressively.
The server jumped, reprimanded. I stuffed the last three olives into my mouth and spat the pits into my palm, one by one.
