Mismatched in Manhattan: the perfect feel-good romantic comedy for 2020

by Tash Skilton

  TheDuchessB: Woo. Is it hot in here? But, seriously. Keep talking Scot to me.

  GreatSc0t: Whiskey. Heather. Kilt.

  TheDuchessB: Hmmmm … maybe something else we need to save for our in-person meeting.

  GreatSc0t: This isn’t translating?

  Mentioning meeting up in person twice is a good sign.

  TheDuchessB: I actually have to run. But this was fun.

  Uh-oh. Hope I haven’t been reading this wrong. “This was fun” might be the first generic thing Bree has said and it’s only a positive about 60 percent of the time. I hope I didn’t blow this for Jude. Or myself, as I remember the little remote access icon that’s been quietly flashing at the bottom of my screen this whole time.

  TheDuchessB: Can we pencil in another one of these? Maybe tomorrow.

  Whew.

  GreatSc0t: Name the time.

  TheDuchessB: Is 9 AM too early?

  GreatSc0t: It’s perfect. I don’t have any personal training sessions until the afternoon.

  What Jude does is already in his profile, but might as well work in a nice, organic reminder.

  TheDuchessB: Is this your subtle way of reminding me you have muscles?

  Oops. Maybe that wasn’t as organic as I thought. I should be more careful, especially since this girl seems extra sharp.

  GreatSc0t: Yes. It obviously worked, right? You feel very subconsciously attracted to me?

  TheDuchessB: Of course. Freud would be having a field day with my id right now.

  I grin at my screen.

  GreatSc0t: So … until the morning sky kisses the stars away, my Liege.

  Another pause.

  TheDuchessB: You’re a little bit of a rule-breaker, aren’t you?

  GreatSc0t: Only in the best way.

  I send through a winking emoji.

  She sends one back.

  TheDuchessB: I guess we’ll see about that. Talk later.

  GreatSc0t: Later.

  Bree logs off. I copy and paste the conversation to tack onto my unsent e-mail to Jude, feeling pretty pleased about the turn of events. Apparently, I’m not the only one.

  Leanne T: Nice work.

  Miles I: Thanks!

  Leanne T: So … can I be relieved of babysitting duties now? Regular Miles is back up and running?

  Miles I: Consider yourself relieved.

  Leanne T: Thank God.

  And then, right before she logs off my computer, one more message:

  Leanne T: P.S. I missed you.

  I appreciate the sentiment but is Regular Miles back? Not really. It’s going to take more than eight weeks to accept that the woman I thought I was going to marry has now wholly disappeared from any future scenarios I can imagine for myself. Jordan won’t be chatting with me while I cook, she won’t be snuggled next to me on the couch while we’re watching some Netflix documentary, and she’ll never walk toward me down an aisle in a white dress. I inadvertently look toward Nathan and realize that we are never going to stare down at a human we made together, feeling both exhausted and content.

  But for Leanne’s purposes, sure, I can be back. I can orchestrate other people’s romances. I’m good at it. And, luckily, I think Bree and Jude just might make this easy for me.

  A projectile something catches the corner of my eye, and I see that Nathan has just lobbed his sock out of his stroller in a fit. I also notice that his mom is stuffing all her items back into a myriad of bags, and stroller hooks, and a large underseat compartment that is stretched below Nathan’s purple, contorting body.

  I start to gather up my belongings when …

  What’s this?

  No. It can’t be.

  But it is. It’s I Am Legend, who has picked up a snack cup that has rolled underneath the large table and is now chatting with Nathan’s mom.

  “Need any help?” she asks. She then looks at Nathan, opens her mouth wide, crosses her eyes, and makes a bizarre gargling sound.

  Immediately, Nathan breaks out into a fit of giggles.

  “Oh, God, please,” Nathan’s mom says. “If you could just keep doing that, I would be forever grateful.”

  “No problem,” Legend responds before kneeling down to Nathan’s level. “Did you know I once won a face-making contest? It’s because my tongue can touch my nose. See?” She demonstrates.

  “Wow,” Nathan responds, eyes wide. He sticks out his own short tongue which, of course, just goes straight out.

  “The key is to practice,” Legend says. “Every day, for at least twenty minutes. And, I’ll tell you a secret …” She looks around, and whispers, “Cafés are the best place to practice. I learned everything I know while my mom was drinking her coffee.”

  Nathan nods studiously, while his mom looks at Legend like the Sunshine State is, in fact, beaming out of her ass.

  “Thank you,” she mouths, tears practically in her eyes, as she strolls a face-making—and therefore silent—Nathan, and his rack of luggage, out of the café.

  Legend smiles after them and I can’t help noticing what a bright smile she has. It’s all dimples. I’ve never seen her smile before, and the distraction costs me; sometime during that exchange, she has managed to place her bag right on the seat Nathan’s mom just vacated. She glances over at me. Her smile disappears and it’s like the sun has gone behind a cloud.

  Let it not be said I’m a poor sport, however. I give her a slow clap, and she takes a little bow before sitting down with a flourish. I roll my eyes, but, privately, I have to admit I’m pretty impressed. Maybe MTM is going to make it after all.

  Nathan’s sock, on the other hand, is doomed to haunt the café floor for the rest of eternity—or at least until the barista sweeps up—reminding us all of his lengthy and memorable residency at Café Crudité. And also reminding me that I should call my mom.

  I’ve been putting it off, listening to a lot of concerned voice mails that have been responded to with brief texts just so she knows I’m alive. But this seems like as good a time as any, if for no other reason than when she scans the screen for clues to my mental well-being, she’ll notice that I’ve showered and am out of the house.

  I put on my headphones and start up FaceTime. She answers on the second ring. I see her face for a second before my screen is filled up with the white and purple flowers on her shirt as she hugs the iPad to her.

  “Oh, thank God. Ahmad, come here. It’s Miles.”

  She sets up the iPad on the table in front of her and brings her face closer to it, as if that’ll help her peer at me better.

  “At least you’re out of the house. But you look skinny,” she says, like all Jewish moms from time immemorial. “Have you been eating?”

  My father comes strolling in then, wearing his standard outfit of a neat, striped button-down with two pens—one red and one black—tucked in the pocket. He is the only person I know who uses an actual pocket protector and is not a stock nerd from an eighties comic book.

  “Miles. How are you?” Baba asks. He’s been in America for what will be fifty years next year, but he still has never lost his faint Egyptian accent. My mom looking at me with concern is one thing, but my dad doing the same means I should’ve called them ages ago.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Liar,” my mom immediately responds, putting on her cateye reading glasses and staring me down.

  “Okay,” I respond. “Not exactly fine. But I’m doing better.” Of course I had to tell them the wedding was off. And of course, this being my parents, I had to tell them why—the real reason. Though I’d let Aisha handle explaining most of the gory details.

  “When are you going to come visit?” they say then, practically in unison.

  See, everyone thinks that Jews and Muslims are mortal enemies, that my parentage shouldn’t even be possible, let alone harmonious. But what they don’t know is that there are so many similarities, it’s practically laughable. Starting with the parental guilt skills. Separately, they are forces to be reckoned with, but together,
they are unbeatable. Like when the Power Rangers all united to make the Megazord.

  “Soon,” I say.

  My mom raises her eyebrows and I just know she’s about to call me a liar again.

  “I promise,” I say. There are very few things that would drag me down to God’s Waiting Room, aka Florida, but seeing my parents is one of them. Especially if I’m feeling extra mopey about love, fearing that it doesn’t really exist … .

  Well, they are living proof that it does, that it can be stronger than where you’re from, or how you were raised. That it can even be stronger than what your own family is telling you. When my parents got married straight out of Penn State, I don’t think anybody thought it would last, not even the one person who supported them the most: Uncle Hassan, my dad’s brother and Aisha’s father. They were both so young—twenty-one and twenty-two—and everyone thought it was puppy love spurred on by the fact that my dad’s student visa was expiring.

  But Ahmad and Louisa knew better, their ages and backgrounds be damned. It was very Romeo and Juliet, in that nobody’s parents were happy, but with a meet-cute that took place at a frat party rather than a masquerade ball. Louisa’s parents wanted grandkids who would be bar/bat mitzvahed (I was, in fact. Maybe the only kid who read a portion of the Quran along with my portion of the Torah, but still. Like the millennial multitasking Jewslim I am, I became a man in the eyes of God/Allah at the same time). Ahmad’s parents wanted their son to come home and marry a nice Egyptian woman so that they could see their grandkids.

  But there weren’t kids, plural. Just me. And I came along fifteen years after their City Hall nuptials. My mom liked to joke that “it took them that long to figure out the schematics for the nursery.” Which might be more believable if they hadn’t settled for the uber-creative theme of … sailboats. In reality, I know they were too busy being in love to think about having children yet. They were young; they had time. As to why there weren’t any more after me … well, I have heard rumors that I was somewhat of a terror. And by rumors, I mean my mother likes to remind me two to three times a month.

  Anyway, back to the Capulet/Montague saga; by the time I was born, Grandpa Frank was gone and Grandma Naima wasn’t too far behind. Grandma Ellen came around at the end. I have some memories of being with her, playing near her carpet shoes, drawing on one of her throw pillows, and hearing her cackle in glee and tell my mom not to yell at me—that she thought it was an improvement on the paisley.

  But I don’t think my dad spoke to his dad ever again. They’d ask after each other, via Hassan. But a hereditary stubborn streak remained in both of them that not even illness or death could tear asunder.

  “Maybe for Memorial Day?” Mom asks, trying to pin down an actual date of visitation from me.

  “That’s a little too soon,” I say. “I’ve got some work stuff going on. But … before the summer is over. I promise.” I immediately regret this because there are few places on earth more miserable than Florida in the summer. But I see Mom is already jotting something down in the little planner she keeps on the coffee table, so I know I’m doomed to be bound to what I said.

  I ask after some of their friends down there and they bring me up to date on who has gout, who has dropped out of the mah-jongg club, and whose kids are getting married/divorced/ having babies.

  “It’s going to be a granddaughter for Julia,” Mom says, maybe not even wistfully but in my current state of mind that’s what it sounds like to me.

  I glance over at the tiny sock on the floor and feel compelled to ask her, “Mom, how do children appear?”

  Mom blinks. “Didn’t we already have this talk?” She turns to Baba. “I mean, I mostly left it up to you but I thought it was taken care of.”

  “So did I,” Baba responds. “Of course, I taught physics, not biology, so maybe something got a little lost in translation?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t mean where do they come from …”

  “Thank heavens,” Mom says. “I’m not sure I have enough blood pressure medication to explain this to you now. Plus my consolation that you were a boy instead of a girl was that I didn’t have to.” She playfully glares at Baba.

  “Let me double-check my notes,” he says. “I’m positive we had this talk.”

  “Yes, Baba. We did. I was just thinking how come they morph from tiny babies into overgrown ones so suddenly. Like there’s no in-between … you know what? Never mind.”

  “I think this is a lack of food talking,” Mom says. “Come here immediately and I’ll make you my chili, okay? And mandel bread.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I respond dutifully.

  “You never make me mandel bread,” Baba says.

  “You can make it yourself,” she responds.

  “So can he! He’s a thirty-one-year-old man.”

  “That’s true,” Mom responds. “But he’ll also always be my baby. Aren’t you, my little oogle-boogle.”

  I shake my head, grinning despite myself, as my mom makes kissy faces at me. They’re punchy today.

  But they’ve also made me feel better. Because at least there are some parts of my future that are crystal clear.

  Like me, a month from now, sweating my balls off at their community pool as I swim laps, much to the delight of my mom’s lounging, loungewear-clad girlfriends.

  CHAPTER 8

  To: You Know Who You Are

  From: Clifford Jenkins

  Re: A Spy in the House of Nothings

  Look, I’m sorry, but this won’t be an easy memo to read.

  It’s come to my attention through RUMINT (rumored intelligence) that we have reason to believe a traitor walks amongst us. An unwitting traitor, perhaps. A useful idiot, for those who know the term. He, she, or they have been doubling for another company that, on the surface, appears to serve a similar function to our own.

  I get it. Times are tough. Everyone needs to take work where they can find it.

  The part that concerns me, on a personal, human level, is that those who serve more than one master risk being taken advantage of (by them, obviously. Not by me). The good news is, there’s an easy way out for the person or persons who is double-dipping.

  Flip the script.

  I’ll throw in a title bump and 250 business cards.

  You have 48 hours to accept my offer.

  Clifford

  P.S. See you all at Porchlight at 4 p.m. for the monthly meeting. I may or may not be there physically, but rest assured I’ll make my presence known …

  ZOEY

  I thought Undersea would be a welcome escape. After my failure to ride the subway over the weekend, and a full evening of procrastination in which I Aced over thirty matches on Bree’s behalf, I fired up the DVD and some microwave popcorn. Unfortunately, fully sober at the midnight hour was not a good time to be subjected to wooden dialogue and so-so special effects. I wanted to appreciate the historical significance of the first fantasy-action film directed by a woman, but the outdated, 1980s-style, battle-of-the-sexes banter made me cringe more than cheer, and I abandoned ship halfway through, right at the moment Mary’s fins made their debut.

  All it did was make me miss Mary, the real Mary.

  I went online and Googled Mary Clarkson Undersea for the first time.

  Playboy, 1996

  Long Time No Sea: How Mary “Jane” Clarkson Went from Persona Non Grata to Hollywood’s Best-Kept Secret

  Ten years ago, at the age of twenty-two, Mary Clarkson landed the role of a lifetime as Duchess Quinnley in the Undersea films. Well, film. What was intended to be a trilogy famously went off the rails when the actress, a self-described former adrenaline junkie, insisted on performing her own stunts. She tripped (while in the tight-fitting mermaid costume that launched a thousand wet dreams), hitting her head on a camouflaged rock submerged a foot beneath the water. After a month at the hospital recovering from a broken vertebra in her neck, she punched her physical therapist out cold when he told her swim therapy was the only way to achieve f
ull spinal mobility.

  Now, “running at 87 percent capacity,” as she puts it, “without ever stepping foot in a goddamn whirlpool, thank you,” she lives in a secluded fortress in the Hollywood Hills, as far from the ocean as one can get in Los Angeles without leaving earth. Over several hours, our conversation touched on her short-lived acting career and her new, behind-the-scenes role as Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctor whose dialogue and plot tweaks you’ve seen in two dozen movies without knowing it.

  On the assault charge that landed her in prison for four days

  “All I ever wanted my whole life was a captive audience, so it was a dream come true, really. The other women, all of whom I’ve kept in touch with, would say things like, ‘I was at Bedford Hills maximum security before this’ and I got to say, ‘I was in Undersea.’”

  On her Hollywood blacklisting

  “Obviously, it’s sexist as all f*ck-out. Male artists get into fights all the time and it just increases their mystique, their virility. It’s the Hemingway effect. I give one asshole, who I think we can all agree deserved it, a concussion, and it’s lights-out for my career? I’m ‘uninsurable on set’? Come on.”

  On the PEZ dispensers that bear her/Duchess Quinnley’s likeness

  “I mean, it’s cruel. The neck unhinges! How would you like it if your most terrifying moment was captured in candy form?”

  On fans who wish she’d Mermaid Up and complete the trilogy

  “While I value the opinion of strangers much, much more than my own health and sanity, my scarlet L for liability is not going away anytime soon, even if I wanted to perform again, which I don’t. Life is much safer behind a typewriter.”

  If she could clear up one misconception about her assault charge, what would be it?

  “Okay, first off, it was not a punch that knocked him out. No, I threw a copy of Dorothy Parker’s collected works at his head. I mean, he should be so lucky. Probably increased his IQ points by double digits.”

  Is it true you sometimes put on a Duchess Quinnley mask and go to midnight screenings incognito?

  “I’ll never tell.”

  You’ve testified in front of Congress multiple times advocating for medical marijuana on the federal level. What was that like?