“I am now I’m sitting down.” Sam glanced at her watch. “It’s almost midnight, how low are your standards?”
“I haven’t eaten since lunch, so pretty low.”
She smiled. “Then I know the perfect place.”
Ten minutes later they were sitting in the parking lot of the High Street McDonald’s, their order spread around them.
Sam unwrapped her cheeseburger. “Are you worried we’re gonna make the seats smell weird?”
“I’m too hungry to care, to be honest.”
Sam bit into her quarter pounder, trying not to think about her mother. The smell and taste of McDonald’s always conjured up Madeline DaSilva. One of her earliest memories was her mum taking her and Nicole through the drive-through and then the three of them eating parked beside a random football oval so no one would see them. Afterwards, she made them promise not to tell their dad where they’d been. It was a mean thing to do. Her dad wouldn’t have given a shit if he knew they’d eaten McDonald’s—her mum was just ashamed of what she liked. Or maybe she just liked keeping secrets. There was something to having a secret that brought you pleasure. She and Tab were never happier than when they were doing something they shouldn’t and Nicole had developed a lifelong addiction to nuggets that once saw her eat two dozen in one sitting.
“Can I ask you something?” Scott said, through a mouthful of fries.
“Anything,” Sam said, eager not to dwell on thoughts of her mother.
“How have you managed to stay off social media all these years? I don’t know anyone else who’s managed it. And I know some anarcho-communists.”
“I don’t know. It helps that I don’t have a phone.”
“I can barely believe that. Doesn’t it make you feel…” He shook his head. “I can’t think of the right word. Disconnected? Like no one can see you?”
Sam held up her arms. “Do I look like someone who escapes attention?”
“No, but then you are exceptionally beautiful.”
Unsure how to react to this unprecedented compliment, Sam stuck out her tongue. “I mean the tattoos, you posho charmer.”
Scott laughed as he unwrapped his cheeseburger. “Just speaking the truth. Seriously though, you’ve never had the urge to get Instagram or Facebook oranything?”
“I do get the urge,” she admitted. “I’m an exhibitionist at heart, it’s why I have tattoos. I want to show the world my stories and the symbols that mean things to me, but I want to reveal myself in a controlled way. On my terms. Being on the social media just feels like masturbating into a webcam—it’s so private and public at the same time.”
Scott chuckled. “Nice metaphor.”
“I mean it, I used to do burlesque but I still never felt as naked as I do whenever I see my picture on someone else’s Facebook or Twitter or whatever. It just feels like theft. Like people shouldn’t be allowed.”
Scott sat up straight in his chair. “Okay, backtrack with me for a moment—you used to do burlesque dancing?”
She laughed. “I did. I was a professional. Two shows a night, stripped off in the big martini glass and everything. It was only for a little while when I was twenty-two and only on the Melbourne scene. I was looking for something fun and I thought ‘why not?’ I love dancing.”
“I know you do,” Scott said and then cleared his throat. “Would you ever think about doing it again?”
“Right now, you mean?” Sam teased.
Scott grinned. “I wouldn’t say no, but I meant professionally.”
“Nah, it was fun at the time, but it was too much work.”
She could have said more. She could have told Scott how she’d unconsciously gone into burlesque to find the powerful, attractive man who’d know how to put her in her place in the bedroom. How it didn’t take long for those illusions to shatter, and once they did, burlesque lost most of its charm for her. Shecouldhave told him, but that would have been a bit heavy for a first date. Besides, the knowledge of her sexual modus operandi might give him ideas and he already had too many of those.
They ate in silence for a moment and it seemed to Sam that they were both weighing the tension in the air, the level of flirtation to which they’d quickly ascended. That was dangerous. She decided to offset this by asking what she always asked clients when conversation was flagging. “If you could have anything, right now, what would you want?”
Scott looked surprised by the question, but not put off. He stared into the middle distance for a moment and then smiled. “I’d want a puppy. A beagle puppy, like the one in John Wick.”
Sam grinned. “Oh, that was such a cute pup. Do you have room for a dog at your new place?”
“Yeah, it’s more complicated than that, though. I don’t know if I can handle the commitment. Besides, I’ve never owned a dog, I might be shit at it.”