Finally, after a month of courting, she agreed to come over to my side of the door for drinks. To the drone of a lame-ass Wednesday-night band, we sat at a table and chatted. She told me about her war against the cancer, and how it had enlightened her about the important things in life. She said she might be moving to San Francisco to be near her family. She said she loved to surf naked at twilight, and that she had a butterfly tattooed onto her shoulder blade which she would show me later if I was lucky.

I went to the bar, bought another round and returned, of course, to find an enormous, swaggering, intoxicated oaf in a wifebeater hovering around our table, appraising Michelle as though he were Paul Bunyan and she a peach tree that needed axing.

"Let’s get out of here," blurted Michelle, wide-eyed.

We guzzled our drinks, warned Tom (the newly hired doorman) about the lumbering, love-sick lumberjack, and walked the 8 or 9 blocks to my apartment. home. When we were about a block away from my pad, a Chevy truck pulled alongside of us. It was Tom, the doorman. He was distraught. Apparently, just after we left the bar, Paul Bunyan flew into a rage and ripped the front door off its hinges. Once the melee was over, the owner of the bar fired Tom for doing nothing to stop it.

"I need to talk," moaned Tom. "Can I come over?"

Greeeeat, I thought. I can’t wait to listen to some guy I don’t even know mewl over his problems while I’m trying to make time with the enchanting Princess Papillon. Was it not clear to Tom that Michelle and I were about to unravel the quintessence of the cosmos? Couldn't he see that he was about to become the biggest, bulgingest, squeakiest, annoyingest third wheel of all time?

Tom stared at us from the window of his truck. He looked like he was going to cry. So I invited him over.

When we entered my apartment, I took a seat on the far left of the couch. Michelle sat next to me. And Tom -- instead of taking the vacant, super-dooper reclining arm chair --plopped his fat ass on the sofa next to Michelle!

So there we three were on the couch. Tom groused about his miserable existence, scratched his fat belly, and swiftly dispatched four beers while Michelle and I stole fleeting gropes and kisses on the other end of the couch. The truth was that I didn’t care about the firing, or about Paul Bunyan and the front door. It all seemed pretty clear cut -- a doorman needs to protect the door, by definition. I cared only about the ticking clock. There was much loving to yet lavish, many toes to very massage, two nipples to much lather.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, they did. Tom's head tipped back, his mouth dropped open, and he began snoring as though his lungs were gasping the last few droplets of the world’s air supply.

I shook him repeatedly until his eyes slowly opened. "Tom, it’s very late. You should be going, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, and fell back to sleep.

I woke him three times. Three times he fell asleep.

I wanted to kill.

Defeated, Michelle and I crawled into each other’s arms. We sweet-talked, kissed, and fondled to the soundtrack of Tom's baritone snores. She unbuttoned her shirt (though her bewitching black bra remained intact) and showed me the infamous butterfly: a masterpiece of ink, muscle tone, and femininity. But I needed more than that butterfly -- I needed the cocoon. However, with the snoring beast contaminated the air and fouling our mood, she would take things no further.

At 5amish, my sweet Lady Papillon rebuttoned her clothing, scribbled my number on a matchbook, and climbed into a cab. She said she would call me that night.

One. . . two. . . three days passed and no call. Had I done something wrong? Was our love not meant to be? Was the great snoring beast to blame?

On the fourth day, I sat dejectedly in my living room, watching the news. The coroner was hauling an apparent shark attack victim out of the water in Ocean Beach. The victim -- a woman in her 20s -- was naked and unidentifiable, except for one distinguishing physical characteristic: a tattoo on her shoulder blade of a radiant Monarch butterfly.

Later that day, a mutual friend confirmed the horrible truth: Michelle had gone late-night surfing and encountered, unbelievably, a Great White shark.

There’s a moral in there somewhere. Perhaps "Just when you beat the cancer, they send in the sharks." Perhaps something more.

I don't work at that bar anymore. And the coffeehouse is gone. The mellow scent of percolating java has been replaced by the stench of mildew. All that remains on the other side of that backroom door is a vacant, grimy building where bums panhandle for Popov and nothing good ever happens anymore.

In warm memory of Michelle Von Emster

Wikipedia entry about Michelle's fate:

Michelle von Emster, 25, April 16, 1994: Killed while swimming off Pt. Loma, California. The San Diego County medical examiners office ruled that she was killed in a [great white] shark attack; however, some in the law enforcement community have questioned this conclusion and feel that she may have been murdered and dumped in the Pacific Ocean. Her leg was bitten off by a great white shark. [13]

EJD
circa 2001