🗿 Joan’s Stone on Loan

IN MY DEFENSE, how else was I going to get his number?

Picture this: Thursday evening, 5:00 PM, LA traffic, the intersection of Pico and La Cienega. You see the most beautiful man you have ever seen in your life driving in front of you. Not even his whole face, just a sliver—brown eye, freckled skin, angular cheekbone, deep-set brow. You’re one green light away from the world’s worst missed connection: what would you do?

It was supposed to be gentle. A love-tap, really.

A silly little rear-end incident; “oh my god, I’m so sorry, we should exchange information for insurance,” followed by a comment on his boots, or hair, or face, and watching the flush creep up his oh-so-pale neck, confirming that yes, he is indeed batting for the same team, and then a text a few days later, “hey, how are you doing? So sorry about the car, can I give you a ride to pick it up after repairs?” and then the ride turns into coffee, the coffee turns into lunch, the lunch turns into love, and there you have it folks: my future husband.

Except, it didn’t go down like that, because my dumb ass forgot…

“Joan’s Stone on Loan?” The handsome stranger reads the side of my car while holding his bleeding nose—unfortunately broken by his airbag, which shouldn’t have deployed from a mere love-tap… if that love-tap hadn’t been backed by 1200 pounds of premium Calacatta marble.

“Yeah,” I scratch the back of my neck awkwardly, taking in the crooked logo sprawled across the side of my Subaru Crosstrek—crooked because the rear tires decided to burst with the recoil impact of the previously aforementioned 1200 pounds of premium Calacatta marble currently occupying my bungied-closed trunk. “It’s uh, my business.”

“You’re Joan?” The stranger has to look down his pinched nose to ask, trying to staunch the bleeding.

“No, I’m uh, Steven. Sorry about…” I gesture vaguely in the direction of his ruined Honda Civic.

“So, who’s Joan? And why is there a statue of Bob Ross in your trunk? And—is that Bill Nye?”

It was Bill Nye, before the force of my imbecilic impact chipped off most of his nose and left ear. Insurance is so not gonna cover this.

“Joan is, um, Joan Didion. My pet pigeon. Just seemed fitting naming the business after her. We do statue rentals.”

In my head, this would be something I revealed over our car-crash-coffee;“Yeah, I’m an entrepreneur, current gig is in government contracts, no biggie. Next will be private sector.” The middle of a crowded intersection—Subaru hood billowing smoke, assholes honking in a car-exhaust cacophony—is not how I imagined this going.

“Statue rentals?” Mr. Ex-Future-Husband asks.

“Yeah, when cities get called out for their old racist statues in parks and courthouses and stuff—you know, Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus, etcetera—they commission new ones with more socially conscious public figures. But in the meantime, they can’t just leave the old problematic one up. Enter: Joan’s Stone on Loan. We offer a variety of inoffensive public figures to serve as interim replacements until the final statue arrives.”

“But… Bob Ross? Bill Nye?”

“We’ve found that the socially conscious white man is a very popular option. We like to consider it a baby step towards having, say, a woman, or a person of color.”

Mr. Ex-Future-Husband laughs, then winces and clutches his nose. “Ok, that’s good,” he laughs again, winces again, and it’s only natural for me to want to help, right?

“Here, lean forward,” I put a hand on his back to guide him—sharp shoulder, warm skin, soft shirt, big yes. “Better to let it bleed. I’m really sorry…”

“Owen,” he says, not shrugging my hand off (!!!). “And don’t be sorry. It’s my ex’s car. It’ll be his headache to deal with.”

Euphoria—birds singing, harps playing, rainbows shining, Owen’s big brown (and apparently single) eyes eating me up.

“Still, the whole…” I gesture vaguely at his face. “Can I take you to the doctor, maybe? Once the tow truck is here, I mean.”

“Don’t you have your own problems to deal with?” Owen eyes the burst tires of my crumple-nosed Subaru.

“I have problems, but I also have priorities,” I shrug. “You strike me as a priority.”

Owen cocks a brow—winces again too, but I ignore it, because holy cow is he cute with the eyebrow, single-cocked, like he’s practiced.

“Are you coming on to me?” he asks.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained?” I offer.

Something ventured, statue cracked, nose broken, congestion caused—in both sinus and traffic form.

Owen laughs, but then the symphony comes crashing to a halt with his next question: “Is that why you decided to hit me in the first place?”

Time stops. Horns honk. Hearts break. Or at least, mine does. It’s suddenly very, very hot, more than the heat radiating off summer-scorched asphalt.

But then I look, and there’s Owen, fucking Owen, brown eyes downright twinkling at my discomfort.

“... would you say yes if it was?” I ask carefully.

Owen considers. “If it’s the last crazy thing you do… maybe. Because I just broke up with a load of crazy. Now I wrecked his car and I’m potentially agreeing to a date with a guy who runs a socially conscious statue rental business out of the back of his Subaru and thought the proper meet-cute was a car crash, so…”

“In my defense, there was no other way to get your number,” I counter.

“You could always pull a La La Land in literal stopped traffic and, ya know, just get out of your car and ask.”

“You’d think I was a crazy person!”

Owen gives me a look. The look.

Game over.

“Wanna skip the hospital and just marry me?” I ask.

Owen laughs again, a rivulet of red running down his pale paisley shirt. “How about you buy me dinner first?”

“Ok; hospital, dinner, then holy matrimony.”

“Deal.”