by Tash Skilton
“Yeah,” I respond instead. “Riverside Park.”
He nods. “A city gem you discovered in You’ve Got Mail?” He grins evilly.
I give him the finger when he turns around. The thing is, how would he know Riverside Park plays a crucial role in You’ve Got Mail if he hasn’t also seen the movie? Huh?
He doesn’t turn back around but does let me know that, “You know the windows? They’re reflective,” as he looks me in the eye through one of them. I carefully fold my middle finger to join the rest of my fist.
By the time I’ve gotten out of the shower, Charles and Dylan have left for a work dinner thrown by Dylan’s law firm. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” Charles has scrawled on the magnetic whiteboard on the front of it. “Seriously. Just. Eat. Them.”
I open up the fridge and count the six white cardboard boxes, and the one plastic one of sushi. Aside from a neat row of salad dressing, raspberry jam, and a bottle of ketchup in the door, that’s all there is in their fridge. Neither Charles nor Dylan cooks. I used to, if you can call getting all the ingredients and recipes delivered to me in a box once a week real cooking. But since I currently don’t have a home to deliver said box to, that’s not happening so much anymore.
I hate to admit it, but Charles is right. I should eat the leftovers. I should just heat them up and eat them . . . but doesn’t a nice bowl of soba noodles and veggies sound pretty perfect right about now?
Good job on throwing dreamboat my way. I feel like I’m working on a spread for Vanity Fair. It’s a text from Aisha. As predicted, it had been pretty easy to sell Jude on her add-on the day after our initial meeting.
He genuinely needs your help, though, I respond. His pictures were doing him no favors.
I spoke briefly on the phone with him too, Aisha writes back. He sounds like Jamie Fraser.
I wrack my brain, trying to figure out who that is. When I don’t respond immediately, Aisha figures out my problem.
Outlander, she writes.
Ah, right, I write back. I cut the cord a while back so I haven’t seen the show.
Why does this guy need your help again? Aisha writes.
As soon as I get that message, my phone buzzes with another incoming one. Jude. Hey. So I’ve gotten an initial message from a girl I’m interested in. What’s my next step?
I write Aisha back quickly first. I guess we’re about to find out. I gotta go. Cyrano duties call.
Then I switch over to Jude’s window. Hey. Perfect. You free to get on a video chat? Easier if we talk through the first one together.
My phone rings almost immediately.
“Hi,” Jude says, his face filling up my screen.
“Hey. So which site are we on?”
“Game Set Match,” Jude says.
“Great,” I respond. Of the many, many dating apps and sites I’ve worked with, it’s actually one of my favorites. The interface is pretty simple and intuitive. And matches are conveniently already sorted into three categories: Game (hookups), Set (a catchall for those who aren’t sure what the hell they want), and Match (long-term relationships). “Okay if I access your computer?”
“All yours, chief,” he responds.
I click to the remote access program that I already had Jude install on his computer, wait for him to “accept,” and then, voilà, his screen is up on mine. He already has the browser open to Game Set Match and I can see the notification that he has one message. I click through.
It’s from someone named RayaJack5, whose profile picture is ostensibly of the large cross she apparently wears around her neck, but is, in fact, mostly of her rack.
RayaJack5: Hey. Seems like maybe we’d be a match, so wanted to say: hey.
I see she’s in the “Set” category. Well, better than “Game,” since Jude and I’ve already established that he’s looking for more than that.
“Okay,” I tell Jude. “So, basically, she’s leaving the ball in your court. Which is pretty common.” Sometimes, people word vomit on the initial contact, trying to get everything that they’d ever want the other person to know about them across in a cramped, convoluted block of text that—more often than not—just reeks of desperation. That’s only slightly better than the absolutely infuriating “hey.” At least Raya added a bit more flair to hers than that.
“So should I write back . . . ‘hey?’ ” Jude asks.
“Um, no,” I respond. “Because think about it. What would ‘hey’ accomplish exactly?”
Jude shrugs. “Don’t know.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Think of it this way: Every interaction should have a purpose, however small. Whether it’s to get to know more about the person, make them laugh, flirt with them, tell them more about yourself, etc. Everyone’s busy, right? Why waste your time or someone else’s time on something that’s obviously not going to work? You ask the right questions, and you won’t have to.”
Jude laughs. “That might be the most New Yorker thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.”
I shrug. “Maybe. But it works.”
I see Jude looking at Raya’s message again before turning his attention back to me. “All right then. So what would you say?”
“I’ll type it on your screen, and if you like it, you hit send, okay?” I can always get my thoughts together better in writing.
“Sure,” he responds.
“Give me a minute to check her profile out,” I say.
Jude nods and I click around Raya’s profile. She’s twenty-three, an assistant pastry chef, and apparently into something called Christian horror. (Is that, like, movies about exorcisms? I’m slightly intrigued.) Ah, she also moved to the city just a couple of months ago.
“Okay, how about . . .” I say before I start typing.
GreatSc0t: Heya. I see you’re new to New York. That was me two years ago. Have you figured out whether you love it or hate it yet?
“What do you think?” I ask Jude.
“Great,” he says. “That works.”
“Okay,” I respond. “You’ve got final approval power with the send button.”
“Approved,” Jude says as he hits send and the message pings over to Raya. “Okay, so now . . . ah. She’s online.”
So she is. I see the icon that means she’s typing in real time. We wait for her response. It doesn’t take long.
RayaJack5: Haven’t decided yet.
I wait, in case Raya decides to take it a step further and ask Jude anything about himself. But we get bupkes. Apparently, she’s never taken an improv class either.
GreatSc0t: I have a theory that it’s almost completely reliant on where you have your first slice of pizza. You have a good one, and you and New York are a Match. You have a subpar one and . . . it might just be Game.
The message lingers as I watch Jude’s brows furrow a bit over it. “You don’t like it?” I ask Jude.
“No, it’s good,” he says. “It’s just . . . I don’t eat pizza. I’ve been paleo for over two years now.”
“Ah, okay,” I say, deleting the message, before realizing what he’s actually saying. “So you’ve . . . never had a New York pizza?!”
He shakes his head.
“And you’re still here?” I ask incredulously. “How the hell do you know if you like it?”
Jude grins. “The hot dogs weren’t bad. I had one from one of those carts once.”
“I guess but . . . wait. You had it without the bun too, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Jude says sheepishly.
I shake my head. “Impersonating you might be tougher than I expected. Okay, how about this then . . .”
GreatSc0t: I have a theory that it’s almost completely reliant on where you have your first run. You pick someplace scenic, on a beautiful fall or spring day, and you and New York are a Match. You end up in the horror show that is midtown in February, you’ll be lucky if you can even bring yourself to call it a Game.
“Much better,” Jude says, hitting send.
RayaJac
k5: Running is cool.
Christ. This woman might need our help even more than Jude does.
“Okay, so real talk,” I say to Jude. “How much do you like this girl based on her profile and this brief interaction?”
“Er,” Jude responds. “I don’t know. There isn’t much to go on.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Remember what I said about being efficient? Now, if there’s something really striking you about her, some chemistry thing that’s jumping out at you, then we can keep this going. But, if not . . . I say we give her one more chance to wow us in this chat, or we cut bait. What do you say?”
I see Jude click around on her profile. “The second one,” he finally says.
Thank God. I mean, I’ve dealt with having to steer the conversation with reticent matches on more than one occasion, but this feels like we’re parked in neutral.
“Let’s give her a real shot though,” I say. “Talk about something she’s supposed to be interested in, okay?”
“All right,” Jude agrees.
“Have you seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose?”
“Um . . . yeah. I think I have,” Jude says.
Okay. Good enough.
GreatSc0t: Hey, you’ve seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose, right? Did you know they were originally going to use a dummy to get the character’s contortions, but then the actress was so flexible, it’s actually just her with very minimal special effects. Isn’t that wild?
Jude hits send. We wait.
We wait awhile. This could be a good sign. Maybe Raya finally has something to say.
“Is that true?” Jude asks me.
“Yeah,” I respond. “I think it’s one of the reasons she got the part.”
“That’s brilliant,” he says.
“We’ll follow the little trivia up with a more open-ended question,” I assure him. “This is just so that she knows you have some knowledge about something she’s into.”
We finally hear a ping.
RayaJack5: Never seen it.
Er . . . . okay, I have to ask.
GreatSc0t: Really? When you said you liked Christian horror, I figured that was a perfect example of the genre?
Apparently, Jude is as curious as I am, because he hits send immediately.
RayaJack5: Christian Horror. www.fifty-shades-of-horror.net
I click on the link and my eyes are immediately assaulted by a black website with neon pink writing. I squint trying to read it.
I stop reading. Dear God, is this fanfic of fanfic? And is it turning the whole thing back to being about vampires? Also, what the hell is it with this week and Fifty Shades of Grey?!
“So . . . seen enough to make a decision about Raya, you think?” I turn back to the task at hand, trying to keep any judgment out of my voice. After all, I’m not here to comment on our clients’ tastes, just to help them find what they’re looking for.
“I might have seen too much, mate,” Jude says, his face one of confusion. “I don’t think this is a match.”
Good man. “All right. Let’s do this properly, okay? No ghosting.”
GreatSc0t: Ah, got it. Must have gotten my signals crossed. Listen, I have to go. But good luck on here. It’s been nice chatting with you.
There’s no great way to do this. A rejection is a rejection. But better an obvious one than one that says something like, “Maybe chat again sometime?” Because no. They won’t.
RayaJack5 doesn’t respond, just logs off.
“Sorry that one didn’t work out,” I tell Jude, “but it sometimes takes a while to find someone worth chatting with.”
“Nah, man. I appreciate it,” he says. “The ‘efficiency’? Is that what you called it?” He laughs. “Well, you were right. It did save me a lot of time.”
“I’d suggest taking a gander at your matches yourself,” I say. “See if there’s anyone who catches your eye. We can initiate the conversation and start it off on the right foot.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll take a look.”
“Stick with the ‘Match’ section if you can,” I suggest.
“All right. I’ll let you know if I find anyone.”
“Great,” I respond. We say our good-byes and hang up, after which I immediately use my phone to order that cup of soba noodles.
Apparently, the delivery guy reaches the building at the same time as Dylan and Charles, because it’s, in fact, Charles who delivers the food to me.
I briefly consider tipping him, but there’s no option on Grub-hub for tipping the belligerent man whose house you’re crashing at. Besides, like any true New Yorker, I don’t have cash on me.
CHAPTER 6
ZOEY
I sleep late on Saturday and ration myself to one cup of coffee while getting ready for my lunch appointment with Bree. At ten forty-five, Clifford lights up my phone with a video call request on WhatsApp. I could pretend it’s cutting it too close to my meeting at eleven, but the location’s one minute away. With a sense of impending doom, I answer the video chat.
“Hey champ! I’m calling all the rock stars this morning to make sure they installed WhatsApp.”
Clearly I did, or he couldn’t have called me on it. “Ay, ay, Captain.” I salute him, hoping that’ll be the end of it.
“Did you, ah, see the memo I sent around earlier?”
“I did, yes. Very cool about the . . .” I quickly scan the memo, surprised. “Oh wow, global initiative. I didn’t realize there was a demand for it.”
“Totes, totes. But, we really are in need of some visuals. Specifically, of people.”
“Oh, right. With an ‘international flavor.’ Like lamb-and-mint chips.”
“Good one! You have a mildly exotic face and I was wondering if you’re fully American, half, or just mostly. I can ask that because my ex-wife is Chinese.”
“Uh . . . I’m pretty sure no employer can ask that.”
(Me, two months in, working for Mary, after I messed up some basic accounting: “I hope you didn’t hire me because you thought I’d be good at math.”
Mary: “No, no, I hired you because I thought you’d be good at meth. Boy do I have egg on my face!”)
“Let’s backtrack,” Clifford says quickly. “Let’s approach it from a new angle.”
“When you say ‘mildly exotic,’ are you talking about these ‘almond beauties’?” I ask dryly, pointing to my eyes. “They are one-half Filipino, from my dad’s side of the family.” My father’s mom, Nana Dalisay, is the one who raised me in a tidy bungalow by Santa Monica Beach starting when I was ten.
Speaking of the ocean, the more Clifford talks, the more I’d like to walk into one and just keep going. Wave good-bye to Nana and Mary along the shore and slowly submerge myself. My final act on earth will be giving the finger to Clifford as the water rises above my head.
Fat chance of that happening. Now I live in a city truncated by walls, even outside. Is the sky still there? Who can say? It’s buildings and windows all the way up for me now; claustrophobia by way of the outdoors.
Clifford proceeds to dig himself deeper. “Could you pretend to be fully or three-quarters Asian? Just for the photo’s sake? Not like as a representation of your true self or whatever. We are, after all, in the business of pretending, right? It’s all part of the same op?”
“Nope. Sorry.” I refuse to be the poster child for his cluelessness.
Clifford looks deflated, but his finger guns fly out of their holsters nonetheless. “Gotcha. Okay. All good.”
“Gotta run. I’m about to meet a new client.”
“Oooh, is she international? Could you snap some shots on the sly and send ’em to Aisha for—”
I’m always happy to refer clients to Aisha, our freelance photo expert, but not without a client’s permission, and not so they can secretly be part of an international ad.
I click off, ending the call. If he asks later, I’ll say the Wi-Fi in my apartment is spotty. Of course, he has about a million other ways of communicating with me, a
nd right on cue, a new message materializes on-screen.
CliffBar: We got cut off somehow. Good luck with Bree! Go get ’em, Tiger.
I wait, wondering if that’ll be the worst of it or if there’s more to come. Sure enough . . .
CliffBar: Not like a Tiger Mom, though! LOL. Any kind of tiger. Rawr. See you at the meeting next week.
It’s only eleven a.m. but I’m in desperate need of alcohol.
* * *
At Cheese, Bree sits at a booth in the back—plenty of space for our laptops—and pours herself a healthy slug of pinot noir. The way the liquid sloshes against the side of the glass makes me nervous. What if she spills some on her special shirt? The shirt is a print of the movie poster for Undersea. It’s faded, and the material looks whisper-soft. I can see why she likes it. As she mentioned on the phone yesterday, she’s got blond hair, which she’s pulled into a side braid. That hair combined with her light blue eyes and pale pink lips would normally give off a Barbie vibe, but the fact that she’s a bookkeeper at a doctor’s office cuts into the stereotype. Still, from the shallow end of the pool, she’ll have NO trouble attracting “suitors.” I make a private challenge to myself: Secure her a first date within the week.
She stands upon seeing me, and when she moves in for a hug I’m surprised at how emotional the gesture makes me. It’s been a month since I’ve been hugged or touched in any way that didn’t feel like the prelude to a knife fight. My poor vestigial broken pinkie toe. It doesn’t hurt anymore—I don’t think it can—but if it turned blue and fell off while I slept, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised.
Bree’s taller than me by a few inches, so my head tucks against her collarbone briefly before she releases me. Her hair smells like coconuts.
“How are you?” I ask. “Does the menu look okay?”
“It looks awesome! But . . .” She lowers her voice as we face each other across the table. “They’re not a BYOB. She charged me a fifty-seven-dollar corkage fee. I’m so sorry.”
What is with New York? At Bottega Louie in LA you can bring as many bottles as you want for free.