“Hey,” said Danny, moving couches to be next to Tony. “This is going to be good, Tony. This marriage is going to make you a mint.”
“This marriage.” Tony put air-quotes around the word. “You keep saying that as if it’s going to happen, as if it’s going to be a real thing.”
“Hey,” protested Danny. “This is your thing, Tony. This is a business model you’ve built from the ground up, that you’ve invested your life in. It’s a product that you’ve packaged up with a bow and promised to every other New Yorker. Why shouldn’t it be real for you? Why shouldn’t this happen?”
Tony was silent. Danny looked at him shrewdly.
“Yeah, it’s going to make you a bunch of money and make your investors happy,” said Danny. “But you can’t shy away from the fact that you’ll be getting married—which usually makes people happy.”
“All the stats say that it makes you live longer,” Tony said, recalling a report he’d read and used to promote LoveMatches 2.0.
“There you go! Longer life. Safer life. Happier life. And it could be yours.”
“All I got to do is go ask a stranger to marry me.”
“Yeah, yeah—but the algorithm’s done all the heavy lifting. It’s found the one woman in New York most mathematically posed to make you a happy, man.”
“And her a happy woman.”
“Precisely. Tony. You’re gonna make her day.”
“Gonna make her day weird.”
“Yeah, that, too,” said Danny. “But you’ve got to do it. Anyway, she’s expecting it. The app has notified her that you’ll come calling.”
“Oh yeah, I’d forgotten that I’d set that up,” said Tony.
“It’d be rude not to follow through, man,” said Danny. “Come on. We’re going to go to a jewelry store and grab a ring. Grab some flowers. It’s going to be great.”
*****
Two hours later, a foray into the local Farmer’s Market and a gut-twistingly expensive trip to the local jewelry retailer had landed Tony with a bouquet of roses and a diamond ring.
“I feel like a walking stereotype,” said Tony.
“You are one,” said Danny. “Roses are romantic. They’re classic. And diamonds are forever—like your marriage.”
“Like your ability to lie. Give me my phone.”
Danny queued up Diana’s phone number and pressed dial.
Tony glared at him.
“I don’t trust you,” said Danny. “Look, it’s ringing.”
Tony shifted the flowers and set the phone to his ear.
After four more rings, the phone was answered. “Hello?”
“Um. Hi, hello,” said Tony. “It’s, um. Tony.”
Danny rolled his eyes. Tony waved him away and turned around to face the other side of the room.
*****
Diana was halfway into her third episode of Project Runway when the phone rang. She scrambled for her phone and peered at the screen. It was an unknown number. Diana hesitated. Generally speaking, she didn’t answer unknown numbers. But the area code was a local one, and she'd just ordered that curry. It had begun to rain, and staying in had suddenly seemed far more interesting than putting on her boots and heading out to get soaked.
Perhaps this was the delivery person. Diana launched herself out of bed and ran around her apartment, looking for an acceptable sweatshirt and flats to head down to pay the person and get her food in. She answered the phone with an unintelligible mumble.
“Sorry?” The voice was male and confused.
“Hey, yeah, are you downstairs, then?” Diana began pulling on a sock. She was balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder while hopping. The phone fell. She groaned, and then picked it up.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “How much do I owe you, I can bring cash down.”
“Um. No, don’t do that. I’m—is this Diana?”
Diana stopped trying to quickly dress herself and put a hand on the phone. She looked at it, and then answered carefully.
“Perhaps. Who’s calling?”
She heard a sigh on the other end of the line. “Diana, this is Tony. You downloaded and signed up for LoveMatches recently, right?”
Diana sat on the arm of the couch. “Maybe.”
“We matched. Does my name sound familiar at all?”
Diana turned around so that her feet were on the body of the couch. She hunched over and debated how much to reveal. “Well. I suppose I did see your name earlier when I glanced at the app.” She frowned and racked her memory. Was he remotely cute? How invested should she be in this phone call?
Her stomach growled. She looked down and her frown deepened. Her curry was still on the way, right?
“Great, great. Well—I was calling because—um. I saw your picture, too, of course—obviously. And, well, I was thinking, if you wanted to meet up….”
He was doing this horribly. Diana half-smiled. He was obviously nervous. She wondered if he asked girls out often. Or,she thought,ever.
“Well,” said Diana. “Typically I don’t go out with men who I meet online.”
There was a silence on the other end of the phone. “But you signed up for LoveMatches, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Diana, shrugging. “Moment of weakness, I suppose.”
The silence fell again.
“So, um,” said Diana. “It was nice speaking to you? But you should probably go after one of the other girls you matched with.”
“Diana—”
“No, really, I—I don’t plan on pursuing this,” she said. “Have a great day. Did you say your name was—Brian?”
“Tony.”
“Good-bye, Tony,” Diana said, and she hung up the phone.
Chapter 3
Diana threw her phone on the bed. Her conscience pricked her, just a little. She knew she could have been nicer to Tony. He was probably a fine gentleman. But she just didn’t think she could do a relationship right now.
Her mind went back to the bachelorette party. How lonely she felt that night—how inescapable, inevitable her future as a cat or dog lady had been. She relented a little. Would it have been so hard for her to let him down easily?
Whatever, she thought. He’d get over it. You needed a thick skin to survive dating in New York. If he didn’t already have one, she’d just contributed to his education. He should be thankful, Diana thought. In a way.
After all, she thought very dryly, that is what teachers do, isn’t it? Crush hopes and dreams?
She regretted thinking that the moment she had. Diana was aware of the immense importance of her chosen profession, and was proud of the number of children she'd helped inspire to follow their dreams. However on a Sunday night when her dreams seemed like they were in no danger of progressing themselves, Diana was feeling more than a little sardonic about the whole institution of success and ambition.
And love, apparently.
She picked her phone back up and deleted LoveMatches from her phone—something she should have done the moment she’d installed it, she thought. Or better, she shouldn’t have downloaded it at all. What she needed was some sort of app which would monitor the applications she was buying and ask her if she really needed another social media app on her phone, she thought, frowning. That would be useful.
The phone rang as she was staring at it. The delivery person was downstairs with her curry.
Diana still had her things in her hands. She walked downstairs and settled in for a cozy night alone—just her and her students’ homework. She might get some done. She might not. It felt like an evening for wallowing.
*****
“So, that wasn’t great,” said Danny, very conversationally. Tony had ordered a pizza and was now staring morosely at the wall.
“You don’t say,” said Tony. He drank some water and winced.
“You could pick someone else, someone more willing,” said Danny reasonably.
“Except I rea
lly couldn’t,” said Tony. “That’s the whole point of the app—the algorithm matches you with someone available, and that’s your shot. You don’t get do-overs. It’s simple, and it’s right the first time.”
“But your lady wasn’t exactly available.”
“My lady, if we’re going to call her that—and please, don’t—reneged on the user term agreement.”
“As you yourself have correctly pointed out,” said Danny, laying down on the couch and putting his hat over his eyes, “No one in the world reads that. And, her saying no to you doesn’t mean that she was unavailable. It just means that she didn’t want to date you. Nothing in the User Term Agreement mandates physical contact. I mean, that’s illegal.”
“I know, I know. She just wasn’t supposed to refuse to see me, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” said Danny. “It’s frustrating. It puts a rather large dent in the plan. And it’s wholly embarrassing.”
Tony glared at Danny.
“I mean,” said Danny, “This girl has to be desperate—everyone who downloads dating applications in New York who is of a certain age is, that’s all there is to it. And so the fact that a girl who’s likely to be desperate took a look at a picture of you the size of a postage stamp and immediately thought, ‘nah, dating’s not for me, so much—'”
“Shut up, Danny,” said Tony.
“I’m just speaking the truth.”
“You don’t know that.” Tony pulled out his phone. “I’m going to have to try again.”
“Doubt she’ll pick up the phone again for you.”
“I’m an unknown number,” said Tony. “Unless she memorized the digits, she won’t know it’s me, will she? Not when I’m first calling, anyway.”
“She can go check her call log,” Danny pointed out.
“Not until after she’s accepted or rejected my call.”
“If I were her,” said Danny, “I wouldn’t be accepting calls. Not right now. Not after one unsolicited dating offer.”
“It wasn’t unsolicited.”
“Still. Probably didn’t excite her about the possibility of connecting with strangers. Not particularly.”
Tony sighed. “Well, if I can’t call her, what am I going to do? Stalk her? Figure out where she lives? Works? Randomly show up on her doorstep one of these evenings with a wilted bouquet of roses?”
Danny side-eyed the roses Tony had bought for Diana and grinned. “Hey, mind if I swipe these? My girlfriend will love them.”
“Sure, sure, whatever,” said Tony, waving his hand at them.
“To answer your question: no, don’t do any of that. That’s the sort of story that starts off one of those true-crime documentaries,” said Danny. “Or at least a horrifying dating story which your girl will recount time and again to her friends when they’re trying to one-up each other about bad dating experiences. Don’t go there.”
“Okay, then, where does that leave me?”
“Not a call—not an in-person visit—“
“Oh, duh,” said Tony. He pulled out his phone. “I’ll just send her a text.”
*****
Diana was ninety percent of the way to falling asleep very early—which she would have been more than okay with, she needed all the sleep she could get before her predictably manic Monday the next morning—when her phone beeped. She had a text.
Diana sat up in bed. She was suddenly irrationally angry with her past self for forgetting to activate the Do Not Disturb function. Now she had to get up and answer it. She didn’t really have to, of course, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to let it go—not really—not until she'd seen what it was.
“Probably just a shipping notice, or something impossibly lame and frustrating like that,” Diana said under her breath. She grabbed her phone—it was laying on the other pillow on the opposite side of her queen-sized bed, the side of the bed which her laptop and books usually covered. She pulled it up. It was a text. A text from—she squinted—yes, she thought it was the same phone number that had called her earlier.
Hey, Diana,this is Tony. I’m the one who matched with you earlier and I’m actually the owner of LoveMatches. I think LM is awesome, but I admit I’m a little biased. But even I was astounded at the striking similarities between our profiles. I think it’d be worth your time if you have just, say, twenty minutes after work tomorrow to meet up. If you don’t see any reason to continue after that, no sweat. But I’d love to meet you, and drinks are on me. If you don’t show up, I won’t pester you anymore promise. Hope to see you tomorrow.
He included a time and a place—a bar just down the street from the school she worked at. Diana decided to choose to interpret that as nice rather than creepy. Anyone could find where she worked online, she thought. The fact that he probably had just meant that he’d actually done his research.
So Tony was the programmer behind LoveMatches! Even Diana, a relative recluse, future cat/dog lady in the making, knew about LoveMatches and its mysterious, young, genius of a CEO. She googled ‘Tony LoveMatches’ and was regaled with site after site extolling the programming prowess of its young founder.
And this guy wanted to meet with her.
She flicked back over to his text message. So, their profiles had been similar? Interesting. Diana racked her brain for a moment, trying to think of anything which could possibly be similar between the mysterious, handsome—of course now he was handsome, Diana thought sardonically—programmer behind the hottest new dating app in New York—and her, a teacher whose greatest accomplishment most days was selecting an outfit which didn’t make her feel or look like a burrito. She was mystified. She knew that when she tried she was a joy to hang out with. Her many friends would have all gladly backed her up on that. But this guy? He was a stranger. And a billionaire. He could have had his pick of any socialite in New York.
But his precious algorithm had matched him to her. Diana furrowed her brow, wondering again what on earth they would have to say to each other.
What they would have to say to each other—well, according to where her brain was going it sounded like she'd already made the decision Tony was asking her to make.
It was sort of a formality, but Diana pulled up her calendar. She didn’t have anything going on after work the next day.
At this point, she was more curious than anything. She couldn’t have turned down the date—but not because she was interested in it as a date or in Tony as a love interest. That was such a far-flung possibility to her that she couldn’t imagine it happening. But…but, she thought. But this guy had put himself out on a limb to meet her.
She had to know what he was thinking.
She put the date in her calendar without committing to it. She’d she how she was feeling after work tomorrow. That’s what she would do.
The next morning, she was feeling even less certain. She tried on seven different outfits, completely ignoring her usual Monday morning uniform of a grey pleated skirt, black mock turtleneck, and red heels. No, something about today was different—and therefore she needed to have a different look. She spent thirty minutes longer than usual fussing about with her hair. Then she did her makeup studiously normally, because she didn’t want to feel like she was getting done up to meet some guy who probably would be just like all of the rest—here today, gone tomorrow.
Diana was completely distracted all day during work. Her students noticed that her brain was elsewhere and took advantage of the time to pass notes between themselves. Her colleagues noticed that she was unusually vacant at lunch and asked if she was okay. Diana smiled shyly. She didn’t feel like she had anything to share. Not yet, anyway. Or probably ever, she thought.
Four o’clock couldn't come fast enough. She stared at the clock as much as her students did. They misbehaved outrageously because they could tell that their teacher wasn't fully present that day. When it came time to study Chemistry, no less than fourteen graduated cylinders broke because the children were attemp
ting to use them as light-sabers. Diana pulled out a movie for history class and decided just to write off any attempts at getting the children interested in history or art. Other days would prove better for that, she thought, feeling a little queasy. But then, most of the time she was a very dedicated teacher. The most dedicated! But today her brain was simply elsewhere, and she felt she had to own up to that.
At the very least, she thought uncomfortably, this would give her some stories to speak of in the teacher’s lounge the next time she and her colleagues were swapping de-motivational work stories. She plucked at the too-fancy skirt she had chosen to wear and thought longingly of her usual low red heels. She wondered if any of her coworkers were looking at her strangely, wondering why she was acting nervous, wondering if she looked different than usual. But then she abandoned the thought. Other people weren’t paying attention to her. It was Monday. Everyone was simply mourning the weekend and attempting to survive past Tuesday.
As the clocked ticked its slow way to the end of the day, both students and teacher became antsy and anxious.
“Now, I’d like to remind you all about the homework policy here,” said Diana, anxiously watching the clock, trying to spin out her words without being too obvious. It was now 3:58. There was an audible groan from the class. “If you fail to complete homework or if you send it in late, we will first refer to a recourse of calling your parents, and if the problem persists we will escalate…”
“Ms. Rohr?” A student raised his hand. Diana looked at him, then at the clock. It was now 3:59.
“Yes, Brian?”
“I have to use the restroom,” the boy said self-importantly.
Diana looked at him suspiciously. “The day’s almost over, Brian, you can use the restroom on your own time.”
Looking a little deflated, Brian took his hand down. Immediately the girl next to him stuck her hand in the air.
“Yes, Matilda?”
“Restroom, Ms. Rohr, it’s an emergency.”
Usually this type of exclamation while in class would have garnered snickers from her classmates, but—Diana realized as she looked around the room—today they were all unified in purpose.
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