“Does everyone have to go to the bathroom, then,” said Diana, wearily.
Thirty hands shot up in the air. Thirty heads nodded.
“Fine, then, fine,” said Diana. “Get out of here, do your homework, and I’ll see you all first thing tomorrow morning.”
A stampede ensued. Students scrambled over each other to get out the door as quickly as they possibly could. Diana did her best not to take this personally. She remembered her own infinite, unending schooldays; and today was precisely the sort of day which seemed to stretch eight hours into eight hundred.
She pulled out her phone and checked it. Nothing from Tony. She shivered. It felt odd just to think about him by name. The idea that he should be a part of her life—even a small part, one in which he wanted to date her and she was disinclined—seemed ludicrous. If pressed, Diana would have postulated that the two of them had lived, up until today, on two different planes of existence.
Very different planes.
Diana gathered up her things and strapped them into her backpack, which she slung over her shoulder, and she stepped out onto the streets of New York City.
*****
Tony was getting nervous.
The ring box in his pocket seemed to glow and bulge. He felt sure that everyone in the room had to know what he was about to do—what he was trying to do. He imagined what precisely would happen if one of them were to come up and ask him about his plans.
“Hi, stranger,” one of them might say. “You seem nervous. What is it you’re about to do?”
“I’m about to propose to a girl I’ve never met,” Tony would have to say, if he were in a truth-telling sort of situation. “We were paired up by an application which I built. The algorithm says—”
“Algorithm? Whatever, man, you’re trying to marry this girl? Does she have any idea?” His inquisitive stranger would look at him with an eyebrow raised and almost offended air of incredulity.
“It’s okay,” Tony would say, defensively. “She’s probably going to say ‘no’, but, you see, I have to try—it’s for my company—”
“And marriage is for life,” his suddenly high-minded interrogator would say. “You’re sullying the face of an institution by doing this—”
Tony was saved from this particularly vindictive corner of his own imagination by the arrival of the waiter.
“What can I get you started on, sir? And are we waiting for someone?”
Tony watched as the waiter’s eyes flicked to the table setting laid on the side of the table opposite Tony. “Yes, I am,” said Tony. “She should be coming along in just a minute. In the meantime, I’ll have a beer, and two waters for the table, and—and a plate of buffalo cauliflower, please.”
As the waiter scribbled this down, smiled perfunctorily, and made to turn away, Tony was struck by a brilliant flash of indecision. “And—eh, while you’re here—could I—um. Could I arrange to have some champagne sent over about fifteen minutes after my companion arrives?”
“Sure thing, sure thing,” said the waiter, flashing up a more assessing glance. “What are we celebrating tonight? A promotion? A birthday?”
Tony remained silent.
“Your hands are sweaty,” noted the suddenly Sherlockian waiter. “A proposal?”
Tony glanced up at the waiter. This was all the confirmation that the waiter required.
“Lovely, lovely,” he said. “Well, congratulations to you both, and if she says no, just tell the bartender and he’ll comp you drinks for the rest of the night.”
He bounced away.
So there would be pros and cons on either side of Diana’s answer, thought Tony sardonically. If he ended up a jilted man, at least there would be free alcohol.
He waited for his drinks, quite moodily, and didn't look up when the door of the restaurant opened.
*****
Diana was hyperventilating.
This wasn’t a big deal, she kept telling herself. Not a big deal at all. This guy wanted to meet up with her—probably just to collect demographic information or something. She'd realized about a half hour previously that she wasn’t going on a date. She couldn’t be. This guy was a billionaire. He dated supermodels and business tycoons. He'd dropped the fact that he was the founder of LoveMatches. More likely they'd found something wrong with her account that he needed to complain about, or possibly he just wanted demographic data or a survey answered or something. She’d have to compliment him on how thoroughly he was involved with the grunt work at his company. He’d laugh and brush off the praise he was so accustomed to receiving. Diana would blush and look out the window.
Yes, she had it all planned out. She knew exactly what was coming. She wouldn’t get her hopes up. Although for what her hopes would be raising was unclear. She didn’t want or need a man in her life!
The memory of the bachelorette party thudded into her head. Of course she wanted a—
A man in a large trench coat bumped into her. Diana fell to the floor, skinning her knees, roughing up her palms on the concrete. “Hey,” she shouted. She leapt to her feet and fumbled for her bag. Once she'd made sure that it was there in its entirety, that none of her pockets had apparently been picked, she stood quiet for a moment and breathed.
She was standing in the middle of a busy street. She was only a block away from the restaurant. She'd spent the hour between school and the named meeting-time essentially pacing around this city block with her head down and her thoughts jumbled. It was frankly astonishing that she hadn’t bulldozed over someone by now, or been trodded over herself. Diana wiped imaginary dust off her coat and checked her phone again. She wasn’t sure whether she was hoping he would cancel or expecting him to—
She noticed the time. 5:01. She was officially late. She squinted at the sky. How had she managed to let that happen? With all her worrying, all her effort—
Furious with herself, Diana marched to the front door of the restaurant and pulled it open. It was perfectly heated inside, not too warm, not too cool. She took off her jacket and hung it over her arm. The simple feeling of opulence and wealth in this place exuded from every square inch, starting in the small foyer in which she stood. The floor was an array of broken marble pieces from which the hostess’ podium swept up, a striking sculptural statue itself, carved from the blackest mahogany. The lighting was understated. No bulbs could be seen, as they were all hidden behind screens which glowed with a golden light. The servers were wearing red cocktail attire, and a light tinkling of piano keys could be heard in the background. Diana felt her heart rate drop just in proximity to such relaxation, such grandeur; and for a moment, she closed her eyes and pretended that she was going to sleep in the nicest hotel—something she'd never even stepped foot in.
“Ma’am? Ma’am. May I help you?”
An inquisitive hostess in a one-shoulder floor-length red gown and a violently blue pixie cut was looking at her. Instead of impatience—what Diana would surely have felt—Diana felt that the hostess was genuinely interested in assisting her. A warm smile melted across her face.
“Yes, I’m meeting someone,” Diana found herself saying. “Tony—”
“Ah. Right this way,” said the hostess with a friendly smile. Diana followed her through the maze of booths to a private room at the very back of the establishment.
Chapter 4
Sitting within that private room at an impossibly small cocktail table with circular napkins and very tall champagne flutes was a man whose face Diana found vaguely familiar. Tabloids, she assumed. Wikipedia, possibly. She’d gone through a haze of late-night hours Googling the man.
“Diana?” His voice was low and confident.
Diana gulped. “Um, yes! Hi. Hello. I’m Diana.”
She took the proffered hand and shook it vigorously before remembering that she should help extend the conversation. Bright blue eyes were staring at her with a mild look of confusion. His hand was sweaty—or, more likely, it was her hand. Here
she was, sweating all over Tony Miran’s hand. She managed, with great effort, not to roll her eyes at her own ineptitude.
“And—and you’re Tony,” she said, attempting to sound confident.
“That I am,” said the man. “Won’t you have a seat?”
He got up to assist her onto her fashionable cocktail stool. The resulting near-miss of Too Much Touching was awkward for both of them. Tony returned to his seat, his neck flushing red, and Diana slurped at her water, discomfited. She then kicked herself for actually, audibly, slurping.
“So. Ah—how are you today?”
Tony smiled at her meltingly. Diana worked to focus. “I’m doing quite well, thank you. And how are you, sir?” Her voice was quite prim. She thought she should work to make up for her—to her mind—disastrous entrance.
“I’m doing well. We could drop the ‘sir’, though, and I’d be doing better.” He said this in a warm and joking voice, as if he was working hard to make her feel at ease. Instead of making her feel better, this threw Diana completely off course—and she hadn’t particularly been on-course to begin with. What could possibly be the purpose of this meeting? They’d matched, Diana had ignored him, he’d called—she felt, impossibly, as if she were in a strange and unprecedented amount of trouble.
Perhaps this showed up in her eyes.
“Are you sure? You seem nervous,” Tony said, with a little catch in his own voice.
“No, not nervous. Just—long day.”
“Ah,” said Tony. “Teaching?”
Diana decided not to ask Tony how he'd come across this information.
“Yes,” she said. “Middle-schoolers. They’re quite a lot at that age.”
“Yes, they are,” said Tony with a bit of a far-off look in his eye. Diana wondered if he was remembering his own days at school, and she was suddenly curious. Had he been a troublemaker or a teacher’s pet?
“Do you enjoy it, though?”
“Yes,” said Diana, startled through her reverie into answering truthfully. “I do—I really do. It’s a privilege and an honor to be working with these children so closely, during such an impressionable stage of their development. You just know, as one of their teachers when they’re this age, that what you say is going to have a lasting impact…even if it doesn’t seem much like it at the time.”
“Takes a special person to make that happen.”
“Well, I work hard,” said Diana modestly. “It goes well most days. But—but you,” she said, hastening to bring the conversation off herself and what she imagined to be the purpose of their meeting, “You programmed LoveMatches when you were in school, weren’t you?”
“You’ve done your homework,” said Tony, taking a sip of water.
“Not really,” said Diana defensively. “You’re just quite famous. Your details are everywhere.”
“I suppose they are,” said Tony. “And I suppose that should make me far more wary than I am; yet, here we are. Can I order you a drink? The margaritas here are fabulous, and they have an extensive wine list.”
Diana was nonplussed. “Well—I’m actually a bourbon girl, myself.”
“A girl after my own heart.”
A waiter was passing nearby. “Two bourbons, please. Whichever maker happens to be your favorite,” she said. The waiter nodded and disappeared.
Taking this small bit of control helped center Diana. She smiled back at Tony, and when their drinks came an impossibly short amount of time later, she took a small sip and was warmed from within.
Tony swirled his and sniffed it. “It’s like fire, drinkable fire,” he said, before he downed the entire thing.
Diana stared at him.
“Sorry,” he said, when he noticed her gaze. “Nerves.”
What did have Tony Miran to be nervous about?
Something of this sentiment must have made its way into Diana’s expressive eyes because Tony looked up at her, blinked, and took a deep breath. “So, I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you here.”
“Well, you sort of detailed your line of reasoning in the note.”
“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about that. Well—that’s not all,” Tony said, hedging a bit.
Diana took another sip of bourbon and decided to wait him out. She looked around the room.
“The thing is,” said Tony, now visibly nervous. “I’ve asked you here to ask you a very specific question. A favor, if you will.”
“What could you want from me,” said Diana. She was then a little shocked to find that she'd actually voiced her thoughts aloud that time.
A wry smile twisted Tony’s lips. “Well,” he said, slowly, wresting something from the pocket of his khakis. “If you wouldn’t mind, terribly—if you would do me the honor—“
Time slowed down. Diana knew this script. Her eyes flicked down to the object which Tony had removed from his pocket, which he was now unfolding—a ring. A huge diamond ring. Possibly the biggest rock Diana had ever seen—and she'd hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.
Tony was mouthing words. Diana shook her head and asked him to repeat himself.
“Will you marry me,” he was saying.
Diana fainted onto the floor.
*****
A dash of cold water brought her to her senses.
“I was hoping for a washcloth,” she heard that sardonic, amused voice say. It sounded less sardonic and more nervous at the moment, but still, she recognized him—
“Tony,” she said, opening her eyes. The man above her blurred into focus.
After that, the world around them did as well. They were in the private room at the back of the restaurant. Diana was laying on the floor. Something was balled up beneath her head—she reached up to touch it and in the same moment noticed that now Tony was just wearing a short-sleeved white shirt. His coat-jacket. That must have been what was forming her makeshift pillow.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Well,you sort of...fell off your chair,” said Tony. “Can you sit up?”
Carefully, with Tony’s help, Diana resumed a seated position. Tony reached up to the table and brought down a tumbler of water. Diana took a long drink and then looked back at him. She'd remembered the seconds before her fall.
“What did you ask me, again?” She remembered—she just wanted confirmation. The last thing she needed was to bring up marriage—marriage!—to Tony Miran without that having been his actual focus. She thought she’d remembered. She couldn’t have. Because, clearly Tony Miran couldn’t have been asking her to marry him. The thought was absurd—
“I was asking you to marry me,” said Tony, clearly and distinctly.
Diana began to laugh.
Tony wilted. “Is it that ridiculous of a thought?” He looked at her anxiously.
The amount of ludicrousness in this day was beginning to overwhelm Diana. She continued laughing.
Tony frowned.
“No, I’m sorry it’s just—it’s not ridiculous, you’re not ridiculous, but—why on earth would you want to marry me? We’ve never met,” said Diana.
“We matched on LoveMatches.”
“Okay, yeah. But I ignored the match. And—marriage?”
Tony looked at her shrewdly for a moment. “Are you doing okay? Head spinning, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Let’s sit back up and get some dinner.”
“What?”
“Are you hungry?”
Diana realized that she was famished.
“Yeah, okay,” she said.
They stood and perched themselves back on their stools, which Diana now fervently wished were more conventional armchairs. Tony must have realized the same thing. He discreetly summoned a waiter with a small button inset over the table.
“Hello,” he said, winningly. “We’d like a lounge setting to be brought in.”
Within minutes two armchairs and a coffee table had been set up in a corner for their use.
The waiter came back in and Tony murmured a string of instructions. The waiter then vanished.
“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” Tony looked stricken for a moment. “I thought it’d be easier to just ask for some food to be brought, I didn’t think—”
Diana shook her head. “It’s fine, no, thanks for doing that.” She sank into her armchair. Tony sank into the one next to it.
Diana took another sip of bourbon, and then looked over at Tony. “So.”
Tony took a deep breath. “I suppose I have some explaining to do.”
Diana nodded.
“First, let me just ask—if it’s okay—are you single? Do you have anything in particular against marriage? Not just to me, let’s set that aside for a moment, but the institution thereof?”
“I suppose I’m planning on getting married someday,” said Diana. “When I find the right guy.”
That landed harshly in the room. Diana hadn't meant it personally, hadn't meant it as a lashing-out at the man who'd just proposed marriage to her. But, on quick reflection why shouldn’t she? She cleared her throat to clarify—
“No, no, it’s okay, you don’t have to explain anything,” said Tony. “Let me try and paint you a picture. Sit back, drink your bourbon, we’ll get you another when you’re done. Food should be here momentarily.”
Diana accordingly arranged herself back on her pillows and looked straight at Tony.
“So,” said Tony. “I founded LoveMatches. I know you’ve heard of it—but maybe you haven’t actually, you know, thought about it—couldn’t blame you for that. So. What is it?
“LoveMatches is a dating service. That’s all it is. Simple, right? But I hit on something when I wrote the algorithm, and, as you know, it took off. Wildly popular. Millions of people signing up, thousands of happy couples. Real best-case scenario situation.”
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