8/21/22 — Dine and Dash

“Should we do it?” Alice squealed, looking around. Her date said nothing.

“I’ve never done something like this. God! Imagine! Nobody would expect something like this. Not from me.”

Alice’s date fidgeted in her seat, not sure what to say. She offered a weak “I think we should just pay the check like everyone else and leave. We can go watch Netflix or something.”

Alice scoffed at her. This was Alice’s first time out in public with a woman. First time she showed any sign that she was anything other than the perfect straight white subservient princess her parents wanted her to be. She picked this place because it was her dad’s favorite. She felt, no, relished, in the stares from the staff and customers who knew her. She wanted more. She wanted to buck every expectation her parents and their social circle had of her, and she wanted to start here. Tonight. Now.

“I’m gonna do it. If you don’t want to, you can leave now and I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

Her date wanted to stop this but didn’t know how. Didn’t have the will to try. So she sat there, watching, as Alice flagged down the waiter with the international hand movement for “check, please.”

The waiter came. Alice nodded to her date to make a break for it, but she stayed put, frozen to her chair. She was transfixed as she watched Alice slowly slide her hand off the table, surreptitiously palming the steak knife while making banal small talk with the waiter about daddy’s latest business venture.

Alice’s date watched as Alice smiled sweetly at the waiter’s misguided attempt to flirt as she slowly brought the knife up from under the tablecloth. Watched the blade glint against the reflected light from the wine glass. Watched as Alice plunged it into his gut.

Alice’s date snapped out of it when the waiter crumpled to the floor and Alice gleefully grabbed her wrist and led her out of the restaurant and skipped through the parking lot, giggling gleefully all the way.