Despite this intrusion (or perhaps because of it . . . ), the elders were able to visit her at a better time a few days later, and apparently the follow-up conversation went something like this (you have to imagine her comments in your best Russian accent, as I can't quite do it justice):
"But vhere is ze third one? Dere vere thrree of you last time."
"Oh, well, Bro. Dalton was just visiting with us that evening--he's not a full time missionary."
"Too bad. He vas . . . incrredibly handsome."
I thought: hey, at least she has good taste. Josh expressed surprise that she even noticed him, considering they were only on her doorstep for about 30 seconds, and she seemed a bit brusque and irritated. I once again tried to drive home my point about the rapid analytic powers of women when it comes to assessing male good looks in great specificity.
By this I mean that where a man would notice a woman and think: "she's pretty," a woman would notice a man and note the slant of his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, and the texture of his hair. I remember walking down the streets of Oxford and London during my study abroad, and turning around to catch the eye of my dear friend Nelly, who was walking behind me. One sly smirk between us was all it took to acknowledge that yes, we had both seen the Robert Burns look-alike who had just passed us on the other side of the street (yes, Robert Burns has been dead for 200+ years, but there are pictures and statues of him all over the British Isles, and he was one handsome Scot). Granted, in this particular instance the only males on the study abroad were our professor, his 12 year-old son, and the one married and long-suffering Physics major who came to be with his wife, so we may or may not have been slightly man-starved.
In brief, there is no moment too short and no mood too cranky for a woman not to notice a darkly handsome half-Japanese man on her doorstep, brooding in the shadows behind two bright-eyed young missionaries. Or something like that.
And sure enough, the elders let us know that this good lady had shown up to Stake Conference last Sunday. Josh even nobly offered to go say hello, but the elders declined, perhaps with a look or two in my direction. I am rather formidably large these days.
