He finally found her near the reception area, leaning over the desk and signing some papers. Her back was towards him so he crept up behind her slowly and quietly.
"Hey, pretty lady," he said, "did you see me out there?"
Without turning to look at him or even putting down the pen she was using, Jasmine replied. "You saw me in there, didn't you?"
Mike stepped back a bit, but tried to show none of the dismay he felt in his face. "So, then you owe me a date, right?" he said, trying to sound playful, but inwardly feeling tense.
Jasmine looked his way for a moment, studying his face, and then went back to her paperwork. "I guess so," she said, "Remember when I said I don't do fast food?"
Mike nodded and moved around to the other end of the desk, where he would be facing Jasmine. "I was thinking more like the Capitol Grille off Broadway."
Jasmine looked at him and put the pen down, giving him her full attention for the first time since the conversation started. "The Capitol Grille?" she said, "Have you ever been there? Do you even know how to get to it?" Her eyebrow raised in a look of incredulity.
Mike just smiled back at her, knowing he had piqued her interest, and almost wishing she would underestimate him, so he could surprise her. "What?" he said, feigning ignorance, "I heard it was a nice place."
Mike could almost swear he saw Jasmine smile a little, but he wasn't sure if it was her starting to warm up to him or her looking forward to seeing him fail awkwardly. "So what time can I pick you up?"
Jasmine returned to her work again. "You can meet me at the restaurant at seven tonight, on time, assuming you can get there."
"Absolutely," Mike countered, "I'll be there early. You won't be able to miss me. I'll be the one holding the rose in my teeth."
At this last, Jasmine audibly laughed, but stifled herself quickly. "Okay," she said, after composing herself, "I'll be there."
Mike touched her arm as he stepped backwards, and Jasmine looked up at him again, as if he had said something. He just winked at her, turned, and walked through the lobby and out into the hall to wait for Alex.
Once out of view, Mike realized the gravity of what he had done, and excrement crashed over him all at once, like one of the big waves at Hollywood beach. When he was a boy, paying in the water, those waves would see huge to him sometimes, easily twice his height. He would stand in front of them watching them slowly approach, anticipation making his heart race. He would keep his eyes open until the last moment when he would jump into the wave as it hit him, knocking him almost flat and trying to turn him over in the sand. It was frightening, in some ways, but he still loved it, and jumped back up to get ready for the next one. This was what he felt now. He couldn't remember being this excited about a woman. So much of his time was spent hustling, running after money, that he rarely even paid attention to women. He hoped he was getting this right, but couldn't really tell from Jasmine's reaction. Tonight's dinner would be his proving ground. Either he would gain some ground tonight, he told himself, or he would give upon her.
Mike waited in the restaurant. He had gone shopping in the little time he'd had between the taping of the show and the time he was supposed to meet Alex at the hotel. Luckily for him, Alex had some meetings set up in the city, and some old contacts to look up, so Mike was able to get almost three hours to himself. In that time, he bought a new outfit for the date, something more appropriate to the upscale restaurant they would be eating at. Of course, he never told Alex about the crisp black Cole Haan shoes, the black slacks, and the blue designer sweater he had bought, and didn't intend to either.
He took a cab to the restaurant, and passed by Zuccatti Park on the way, with its green spaces filled front, back, and sideways with tents and sleeping bags and people walking around as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Through the window, he could see so many unkempt faces that it reminded him of those commercials for organizations that feed starving children around the world, except that below these unwashed faces were American fashions, some of them soiled and tattered, but most of them looking like the kind of clothes you might wear to a camping trip you had been planning for a while.
They were chanting something and shaking fists in the air, while one or two people, obviously some form of leadership, circulated throughout the crowd and got them stirred up. Mike couldn't make out what they were chanting and yelling, but he could see anger and alienation and hysteria in their eyes. Mike had lived through enough riots and uprisings in his lifetime to have seen that type of crowd several times, and all it needed was a spark to explode. Maybe it would be a police officer's bullet, or a baton falling on a woman or child. Maybe it would be an insulting word spoken through a megaphone. Whatever it was, it was always quick, and it was always nearly unstoppable afterwards.
Just as he was noticing the faces in the crowd, three police cars turned the corner, lights on but no sirens. They stopped in the entrance to the park, blocking the street a little, forcing traffic to move around them. Mike's taxi cab came to a stop within full view of the edge of the crowd, and all six officers of the law got out of the squad cars at once.
The police officer closest to Mike was a tall, slim black man, only about fifteen feet away. He wore his street blue uniform and cap, his left hand gripping the baton in its loop on his belt, and his right hand hovering a few inches above his gun holster. He moved more slowly than the others, almost intentionally taking the rear of the group. For some reason he couldn't quite figure out, he recognized the man. While he was still trying to place him, the officer turned and looked his way. In fact, the man looked right at his can, through his window, and into his face, as if he had known Mike was there all along. Then Mike got it. It was the intense blue eyes like flood lights that shone through the dark face, visible even in the evening under the street lights, that tipped him off.
"Hey, buddy," Mike called to he driver, leaning forward, "any way around this? Can we get out of here?"
The driver, an older man who looked to be Jewish or Italian, glanced at Mike in the rear view mirror without turning his head. "Unless you can rig the car to fly, Doc Brown, we're stuck for a few minutes. Don't worry, this has been going on for weeks," he said, "it looks a lot worse than it is." The old man looked in the mirror again after moving a few feet forward and stopping. "Hot date, right?"
Mike looked back at the blue eyed officer, but couldn't find him again. The police had surrounded the crowd and were trying to corral them farther away from the street and the curb. "I hope so."
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