by Tash Skilton
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“Nondrinkers suck,” Bree declares.
I can’t disagree.
“How about ‘occasional’ drinkers, then? ‘Everything in moderation’ types?”
“Hallelujah. Yes, please.”
We order fondue because why not? We’ve been here two hours already and have barely made any progress. I’m sleepy and headachy, and I’m pretty sure Cheesy Nuggets wants us to tip her out so she can go home. In fact, a different waitress brings us our fondue. Her nametag reads, “Golden Moldies.”
“What does that mean?” Bree asks, pointing to her tag.
“Your Gorgonzolas, your Camemberts, your Stiltons and Roqueforts. All cheese is basically mold, right? My favorite deliberate moldy cheeses are available on a platter,” she replies, somewhat robotically.
“Should we get some?” Bree asks.
“I think we’d better save those for next time,” I answer gently. “And I want to apologize, because I think I’ve been putting you on the spot too much. How about I go through some profiles on my own, play around with the other filters, and I’ll send you a list of five later tonight for you to check out. Would that be cool? I won’t contact any of them without your approval.”
“Do it. Yes. This is exhausting.”
We ask for the check and while we’re waiting, Bree leans in. “Can I ask about your background?” she asks.
Seriously? What is this obsession with my race today?
“Where do I come from, you mean?” I ask guardedly.
“No, I was wondering if you’re married, what your parents are like, anything you want to share. We’ve talked so much about me—I want to hear your story.”
“Oh, okay.” My shoulders ease back down. “I’ve never been married, and my parents are a couple of save-the-world types who met in the Philippines, where my dad grew up. My mom was there with the Peace Corps, volunteering to rebuild houses after Typhoon Herming, and they fell in love. Nine months later, ta-da,” I say, pointing to myself.
“Aww, you got to be their new project.”
“More like I got folded into the old one. They dragged me from one natural disaster to another until I was ten and my nana put a stop to it.”
Her exact words were: This is no way for a child to live. “She got them to settle down?”
I swallow a mouthful of my wine. “Oh, no. They wanted to keep traveling.” I shrug. “Which I get. It’s part of their DNA. I mean, they coined the term ‘voluntourists’ for what they do. So Nana and I rented a little one-bedroom place in Santa Monica by the beach.”
If I close my eyes and hold my hands over my ears, I swear I can hear the ocean calling me back.
“That must’ve been an adjustment,” Bree remarks. “To go from being free and, like, traveling the world, to being stuck in one place with Grandma?”
“No, oh no, it was a dream come true. No disruptions, no surprises, getting to unpack a suitcase and mean it … I loved it. Waking up and going to sleep in the same place every night was all I ever wanted.”
Nana felt the same way; once we arrived, we never left. We never even took vacations. (Why would we need to? We already lived in paradise.) It was a huge relief. And for college I didn’t even have to leave town because Santa Monica City College was right there. My first ten years were spent like a vagabond, and my next twenty were spent with my feet on solid ground, surrounded by comfort and routine, and I know which I prefer.
“What brought you to New York, then?” Bree wonders.
It wasn’t by choice, I’ll tell you that … .
I force a smile. It makes my teeth ache. “I’m supposed to be writing a screenplay. Anyway, I’m boring myself so I can’t imagine how it feels for you.”
“I’m not bored, I’m fascinated! Where are your parents now?”
I signal for the check.
“That is an excellent question.”
Once Bree and I part ways, her Undersea DVD safely tucked into my laptop bag, I wonder if I should head to Café Crudité and scour more profiles. That would be the smart, productive thing to do.
But it’s Saturday, a small voice inside my head protests, and you go to the café every day. What if you broke the mold, just once? What if you pretended you were going to the café but instead of going inside, you put one foot past the door, just one extra step, and then another, and kept on walking?
I adjust my various bags and look inside Crudité as I glide past, trying not to make it obvious I’m scanning for someone in particular, the only person I’ve said more than two words to outside of work since I arrived.
Why is it I never saw him until the Biscotti Incident, and now I see him there all the time? Is he there right now, clicking away at whatever it is he’s trying to clack?
Gazing beyond my own reflection, I see the big table is empty. I could go in and grab it right now, but a victory without an audience is hardly a victory. If he’s not there to see me enjoying it at his expense, what’s the point? And by the way, of course he’s not there, I reprimand myself. It’s the weekend. He has a life.
No reason I can’t have one, too.
My bravado lasts precisely five blocks. The entrance to the subway beckons, like a gateway to hell.
I could go down those stairs, but what if I never come back out?
I halt abruptly. My feet refuse to take another step. People knock into me on both sides as they pass, clipping my elbows, giving me dirty looks, but I’m rooted to the spot like a fork in a river. Unless someone steers me to the side or shoves me out of the way, they’ll have to go around me. I picture a ladder leading to a pit, and I’m in the middle of it, unmoving. I can’t get down the ladder, and I can’t go back up, either. I’m paralyzed.
Below me, below ground in the dark, a train arrives, bringing with it a whoosh of sound and a gush of hot, disgusting air that’s been living below the city streets for a hundred stagnant years. What madness makes people ride this thing, squashed together with strangers, shaking through the city, jolted every five feet, as though humankind was ever meant to travel that way, underground like rats? Because make no mistake, I’m in rat territory now. Or I would be if I descended. Why can’t I stop feeling so scared, so stupid and helpless?
A trickle of sweat drips down the back of my neck. I feel like a lost child. But no one’s going to find me because no one’s looking for me. They haven’t even noticed I’m gone.
I take a deep breath, duck my head, and turn around to go home. My breath comes out in panicked gasps, making me dizzy.
I can’t go on like this, I tell myself. And I wish, more than anything, it were true.
Because what if the real problem is that I can?
In a city of nine million people who pass me by without a single thought, who would care if I did?
CHAPTER 7
To: All Tell It to My Heart Employees
From: Leanne Tseng
Re: Hypothetically
Team,
I’ve been speaking to Giles, and we want to offer a bit of general advice. Hypothetically speaking, if you’re ever asked to be “the face” of a company you’re not actually running—don’t. What if the company crashes and burns in a fiery wreck of its own doing and now your image goes along with it? As in your actual image? No so-called bonus is worth that … hypothetically speaking, of course.
Now, if said theoretical company uses your likeness without permission, thereby finally giving you legal recourse to light the spark that just happens to culminate in that five-alarm blaze? I would call that the circle of life, moving us all, and so on and so forth. Giles is standing by—just in case this lioness gets her Simba in the form of a sweet, sweet lawsuit.
Yours,
Leanne
MILES
Charles is a great breakover motivator. If this whole law professor at Columbia thing doesn’t work out for him, he should consider a career change. Maybe Leanne could even hire him as one of her consultants.
I leave the house at around six a.m. now, before he’s woken up, and hit the seven-mile run at Riverside Park. I grab a bagel and coffee from the cart around the corner, and I’m back at the apartment by eight a.m., at which point Charles is gone for his first class of the day, and I get a good twenty minutes of chatting with solo Dylan—my favorite Dylan.
I shower and get dressed—I even bother to put in my contacts—and am out the door again by nine forty-five, so as to miss Charles coming home in between his two classes of the day. This is when I grab the subway and am down to Café Crudité by ten thirty, a perfect lull of time between the morning rush and the lunch crowd, which lets me stake out the good table.
I’ve started looking into the big picture window before I even enter to see if I can catch the telltale two-toned hair and wide-eyed stare of Mary Tampa Moore. She’s not here today. I wonder why. Did someone raise an eyebrow at her and send her scurrying for cover? Moreover, the table appears to be empty and, when I walk in, there’s a handful of free biscotti left at the counter. Look at that: Everything’s coming up Miles. Who cares why she’s a no-show?
I’ve just grabbed my coffee and biscotti and gone over to the sugar and cream station when I sense something wheeling by in my peripheral vision. I glance over.
It is … a stroller. Inside of which is a child of maybe two or three. Is that too old for a stroller? Jordan and I used to joke that children always seem to leap from tiny, burrito-sized wraps to enormous slabs of chunky thighs and grubby hands who somehow look too big to be engaging in whatever activity they’re engaged in: drinking a bottle, sucking on a pacifier, whining. “Have you ever seen a kid who’s in the in-between phase?” I asked her one day, not long after we’d gotten engaged. “Do you, one night, put down a tiny blob of indeterminate features and then return the next day to hear Seth MacFarlane’s voice coming out of someone who looks like a Halloween costume of a gigantic baby?” She laughed, as expected. Less expected was when she said to me, “I don’t know. But let’s find out soon.” I don’t think I ever loved her more than at that moment, when I looked at her and knew we were both envisioning the same future.
Anyway. This stroller is being pushed by a different mom, a woman in her mid-thirties who is very, very pregnant (definitely plus six weeks). She looks like she might have been awake for about as long as I have, minus the benefit of a long run or a cup of coffee. Her child is screaming, and I can hear her hissing under her breath, over and over again, “Nathan. Please.”
This causes no change in Nathan’s behavior. But now they are settling down at the large table while she takes out an assortment of jangling, screeching, singing, and flashing toys from underneath the stroller and places them on the table in front of the red-faced Nathan, who merely screams louder with every object that emerges. The last thing she takes out is an iPad, which is the sole thing he finally lunges for—immediately quieting down mid-sob.
I look away as I scan the café for another table. There’s one in a corner farthest away from the large one, which will make it harder to swoop in and grab the table once Nathan and his mom leave. Oh, well. How long can a two, three-year-old last in a café anyway? I’ll just be on high alert for the next half hour.
I squeeze my laptop onto the tiny table, where it takes up the entire surface area, and I log on. There’s an e-mail from Leanne asking to check in on me remotely this morning, and one from Jude saying he found someone in the Match pool he thinks he’s interested in.
I ping Leanne that I’m ready for her, and she sends me the remote access request, which I accept. I ran this morning; I’m on my second cup of coffee—thanks to Charles, I’m feeling pretty confident that Leanne isn’t going to see something she shouldn’t.
Then I click through to the profile Jude linked to. Twenty-five-year-old Bree, aka TheDuchessB. The first thing I notice is the first thing everyone notices on an online dating profile (and the reason Aisha’s never going to be out of a job): She’s attractive. Blond, tan, and fit, she’s definitely playing in the same gene pool as Jude, unless it just so happens that she has a photography consultant too. (Right. What would be the odds?)
Then I start to read. She’s looking for something a little more serious. Good listening, Jude. She enjoys ghost tours: nice, quirky little detail. And—what’s this—she likes classic, action-adventure fantasy films … I put two and two together with the screenname and bingo! Someone I can chat about Undersea with? This morning is shaping up to be better than expected.
I start to type a brief but pithy message. In his e-mail, Jude wrote that he has back-to-back clients today and probably won’t be able to hop online but has given me his log-in and blessing to send whatever I think is best. He’ll get a full report of all messages at the end of the day.
Greetings from the ’Neath, my liege. The Sea Lord sends his regards, I start out. Then I delete it. Better to include it at the end, a little wink instead of a full-blown geek-out.
From: GreatSc0t
To: TheDuchessB
Hi Bree, [always include their first name. It’s the simplest thing in the world, and yet, more than 65 percent of messages are cut-and-paste jobs—and they sound like it too.]
Haunted tours, eh? I ain’t afraid of no ghost. But seriously, what a cool idea. I’ve been in New York for two years now and I haven’t even thought to do one of those yet. (Do you think there’s one that includes that guy from Twitter whose apartment is haunted? I mean, honestly, some guys have all the luck. Why couldn’t a terrifying poltergeist choose my building to plague for all eternity so that someone could snatch the rights to my life story. As always, I blame the co-op board …)
The café door jangles and I inadvertently look up. It’s Miss Flo Rida herself. I see her eye the large table first, her face falling as she registers the full-blown toy shop that seems to live there now. Then she scans the café and stops when she sees me.
I give her a sort of half smile and a shrug. Guess it’s a stalemate today. But I can’t really read her expression back. Within moments, she’s looking away, eyeing the only other empty table in the place. She looks at her bag, clearly wondering whether it’s worth putting it down and risk getting it stolen or better to possibly lose the table.
Don’t do it, I immediately think. Sure, this is expensive AF, $7.99 latte, Million Dollar Listing New York … but it’s still New York. I keep looking at her, sort of trying to will her not to part with her belongings. She walks over to the table anyway though, hesitates, and then takes off one of the arm warmers she’s always wearing and places it over the chair.
She doesn’t look at me as she walks back to the counter, but I almost smile at her again. That was pretty clever.
With impeccable timing, I hear a whoosh informing me of a new company-wide memo from Leanne, and I’m transported back to the whole reason I’m in this café to begin with: to work, save my career, and prove to everyone—most importantly myself—that I am not just a shell of a man.
I reread what I’ve written so far to Bree. It’s a little out there. It could possibly turn someone off.
The Sea Lord sends his regards, I type in the next paragraph. And he’d absolutely love to conspire further with you.
~ Jude
I stare at it for a moment and then, before I can second-guess myself, I hit send. It is out there but the truth is … my instincts for this stuff are pretty good. At least, when it comes to other people’s love lives.
I’ve just copied the message into an e-mail that I’m about to send Jude, along with a brief intro telling him I think Bree is a good choice, when I get a little ping.
Bree has just jumped online and lobbed back.
TheDuchessB: It’s not a poltergeist. It’s a phantasm disguised as a child demon. Honestly. Don’t you know anything about the Internet famous?
I type back immediately:
GreatSc0t: Must have misplaced my Hashtag Handbook for the Recently Deceased.
A little bit of a shot in the dark. But maybe
if she likes classic eighties action/adventure fantasy films, she might also know …
TheDuchessB: #Dayo …
Bingo.
TheDuchessB: You know, when I was a kid, I always wanted ghosts to move in so that I could dance by the ceiling.
GreatSc0t: Is that why you like haunted tours? You’re hoping to become the living embodiment of a Lionel Richie song?
TheDuchessB: Maybe. Wow, my therapist never cracked that one. And here we are two minutes into a chat … excuse me, a “lob.”
GreatSc0t: You’re welcome. I charge $125 an hour. But I give special discounts to duchesses, especially those of planet Undersea.
There’s a slight pause, the first of our conversation.
TheDuchessB: Rule number one of Fight Club: never talk Undersea on a first chat.
GreatSc0t: Oh really?
TheDuchessB: I’ve been burned. This is strictly an in-person subject. I need to see the whites of your eyes before I can discuss Her Highness with you.
GreatSc0t: Like … in the Battle of Bunker Hill?
TheDuchessB: Dating is war, my good man.
GreatSc0t: Touché. I respect that. Soldier to soldier.
I hesitate.
GreatSc0t: Is it too forward of me to say I’d like that conversation to happen soon?
A pause. Damn, did I jump that gun too early?
TheDuchessB: The Duchess acquiesces …
Her most famous line, of course, although …
GreatSc0t: Uh-oh. Is this a trap?!
She sends through a skull emoji.
TheDuchessB: Whites of your eyes, remember? Don’t make me break my own rule on a first chat.
GreatSc0t: Yes, soldier.
TheDuchessB: Captain.
GreatSc0t: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought this was an even playing field.
TheDuchessB: Is it ever?
There’s a pause, allowing me to take another glance at Bree’s picture. Beautiful and smart. Nice work, Jude.
TheDuchessB: So is it true you’re fresh off the boat? Would you happen to have what they call a brogue?
GreatSc0t: Aye. ’Tis true … and you should hear how I sound when I say brogue.