Jenna Everyday

[This is really just a meditation on beauty, and my main goal for this story is to clarify that insight, but it could certainly stand some detailing as well.]

---

Jenna was plain in the eyes and tender in the mouth, her lips sweetly upturned, her hair fashionable as a hat. When the top button of her cardigan slipped out of its buttonhole – and it always did – a slice of her marzipan skin glowed in the sunlight and every living creature within a mile longed to marry her.

Jenna went on one thousand dates. Whoever was lucky enough would meet her at her apartment on a partly cloudy day and walk with her four blocks to the little café on the corner. If all the benevolent forces of heaven were aligned perfectly on this particular day, Jenna might extend her small hand and her date would timidly take it, scarcely believing the fact of their touch.

Jenna would pick a table by the window, and she would sit in the only wooden chair in the restaurant. She would put her napkin in her lap and order a Shirley Temple from the waiter with the lisp, and when he brought it to her she would pluck the cherry from the bottom of the glass with her fork and place it on her plate. As her date ate their meal, she would suck on the cherry until it disintegrated, then tie the stem into a knot with her tongue.

With the gentle harmonies of her voice, Jenna would make conversation. She would talk about the weather; she said she hoped it would clear up, even though that was a lie. She would tell the joke about the two rabbits that her mother used to tell her as a child, and her date would laugh nicely at the punch line even though it wasn’t funny anymore. She would say that in some languages there is no way to say “goodbye”, only “we’ll meet again”.

Did you know that? she would ask.

No, her date would say, I didn’t.

Jenna might ask her date what their favorite color was, and when her date asked her the same she would think for a while, chewing her finger thoughtfully. Then she would smile and say yellow, just like the rose on this table.

But the conversation would always die out after about twenty-three minutes when her date ran out of words and surrendered to rapture, and there would be a silence so great that Jenna could hear the movements of each fork in the restaurant. Jenna would play with her fingers, her eyelashes casting shadows over the makeup on her face. When she looked up her eyes shone.

Do I bore you? she would ask, achingly.

Then all the forks in the restaurant would pause, and a sparrow would fly by the window where they sat, and her date would fall twofold in love.