Your Dimension Or Mine?

by Cynthia Kimball

  Opening the door, she strode back to the table where Jay was noticeable by his absence. When she reached her chair, she realized his suit coat and briefcase were missing as well. “Weird.”

  She had just taken her seat and was drumming her fingers on the table when the waiter walked up. This time there was no doubt as to the pity on his face. “The guy you were with had to leave and asked that I give this to you.” He handed her a folded piece of paper.

  Relieved she didn’t have to do the leaving, she nodded, and opened up the paper to see what kind of excuse he would have left for his departure. Instead of a note, she found herself staring at the bill for their dinner. “So, he decided we were going dutch,” she chuckled, grabbing her bag. Boy, her sister sure knew how to pick them.

  “No, actually he said you would be paying for the whole bill.”

  Chapter Two - The Discriminating Single

  Slamming her front door behind her, Arwen Maria Reynolds stomped across her linoleum floor, leaving a trail of water behind her. “There isn’t supposed to be rain in February,” she grumbled, pulling off her soaked tank top, dress pants, bra, and underwear the moment she reached her bathroom. Usually she was in a good mood on a Friday afternoon, especially the Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend. But not this Friday.

  From the very beginning, it had been rife with stress. Some idiot had taken to putting religious leaflets between the pages of the books in the mystical section, and all available librarians, which of course she technically was since she did not work with the public, were called upon to find them all. Seven hours later, the books were finally sitting as they should be, instead of bursting at the seams. A pile of over a thousand pamphlets were strewn at her feet.

  By the time she got back to her desk to finish inputting the newest serials for the week, the network was down, and three irate calls got her nowhere. Two nice lectures by her boss about being a team player later, she left the library only to find it raining a deluge outside. Of all days she chose to walk to work, it would be the one when it rained.

  After taking a long hot shower that did not improve her mood, she dried off, changed into her comfy terrycloth robe, and went in to the kitchen to heat up soup and some milk for hot chocolate. To end the Friday from hell, her sisters were coming over to talk with her about her “dating situation.” When they discussed it on the phone about a week previous, Jane had said it so oddly that Ari could practically see her using hand quotes to punctuate her meaning.

  Her soup was barely warm when the first knock came at her door. “Nooo,” she whined like a little child, rolling her eyes at herself as she walked to the door. Before opening it however, she took a deep breath to calm herself. If she acted like a child, Jane would have the upper hand right away. Once she felt calm enough, she turned the handle. To her relief, Cory was there first. “Hey, sis.”

  Cory walked in, imposing at over six feet tall, and yet her reddish blonde hair that fell just over her shoulders and her soft blue eyes confirmed her kind heart. Ari was sure her sister could not hurt a fly. Well, not true. She had seen her kill many a fly, spider, scorpion, and any number of horrid insects. But that wasn’t the point.

  Since Jane hadn’t gotten there yet, Ari relaxed and drank her soup and chocolate while Cory talked about her day. “Ready for tonight?” she asked once Ari was done.

  “It’s been an awful day. So I don’t know how it could get worse. I am not going out with any more of her guys though.” Ari grimaced at her own tone. Even she didn’t believe her. True, she didn’t want to go on any Jane-approved dates anymore, but she never had been one to fight for her rights. Especially against a sister who was a decade older and wielded guilt like a weapon. Their mother would have been so proud.

  “Well, I think she is coming armed with ideas. So be prepared for a Jane attack.”

  Groaning, Ari went over to the cookie jar and carried it into the living room. “If I’m going to put up with that, I’m gonna do it with cookies.”

  She had just put the jar down on the coffee table when a series of loud raps came at the door, Jane’s signature soft, hard, soft, boom knock. Ari opened the door, grimacing at her sister who was wrapped up in the kind of winter coat you only needed if you lived some place like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Jane walked in, removed her coat, sweater, and galoshes, before walking into the living room, barely acknowledging her baby sister.

  “Cory, how was your trip?” she asked, taking a cookie and sitting down in Ari’s favorite chair. Her short white blonde hair was styled into a bob that she somehow kept tamed even with the humidity in the air. At only five-feet-two, she was the shortest of the sisters, yet somehow she was also the bossiest.

  “Good. Got two more contracts signed so I’ll be busy through the end of next year.”

  “And Brent?”

  “Brent’s doing fine. He is in Florida doing something for a theme park.”

  “Good, good.” Jane turned her eyes to Ari. “And how is the library?”

  Sighing, Ari flumped onto the sofa next to Cory and grabbed a couple cookies. “Good for the most part. The whole place was crazy today.” She didn’t feel like telling them about the pamphlets. Jane wasn’t really in the mood to hear about it anyway.

  “Well, we all know why we are here,” Jane began.

  Cory nodded. “So you can harp on Ari about the fact she doesn’t date.”

  A snicker bubbled up Ari’s throat, but she pushed it back.

  “I don’t harp,” Jane snapped, her normal calm demeanor ruffled for a moment. “But Cory, you have to admit, Arwen is not any good at finding a date. And—”

  “And,” Cory cut in and Arwen began to wonder if she even needed to be here for the conversation. “You have taken Mom’s last request a bit intensely and, in my opinion, the wrong way.”

  Pursing her lips, Jane took a bite of a cookie. “Mom asked that we make sure Ari was happily married.”

  “Exactly. And by happily, I take it to mean that she’s with someone of her same intellect. You take it to mean someone you would be attracted to.”

  A faint blush lit Jane’s cheeks. “What do you have against Tony?”

  Chuckling, Cory grabbed a cookie. “Nothing. He’s perfect for you. But Ari is nothing like you, Jane. The kind of person who would be perfect for her is not your type.”

  They continued to quibble back and forth, never once asking for Ari’s input. Part of her felt annoyed about that, but the other part, the part that did not want to argue, was quite happy with the way things were working out. Until…

  Jane turned to look at her. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  Gulping the last of her cookie, Ari shrugged. “I don’t see what’s so wrong with focusing on my career. I’m only twenty-eight.”

  Her sister sighed. “I was married with four children by the time I was twenty-eight. Cory had three long-term relationships by that time. There is more to life than work, Arwen.”

  Chuckling, Cory stood up and walked into the kitchen. “You know, this kind of thing never would have happened to the real Arwen.”

  Ari laughed. “No, she had Aragorn to defend her.”

  Jane cracked a smile. “How did you get stuck with such a fanciful name? Cory was born Corren, which she changed to Corrine, and I was given the name Jane. But you…”

  “Mom was reading Fellowship of the Rings when I was born. The last scene she read before they whisked her into the delivery room mentioned Arwen. I bet if I had been twins, the other would have been named Frodo.”

  “Or Frodette,” Cory offered, coming back with three mugs of milk.

  The conversation veered away from her dateless life for a while, and the three chatted like they normally would at their weekly get-togethers. Then Jane looked at her watch. “Oh! I need to get home. Tony has to be at work in an hour.” She turned her eyes on Ari, a speculative gleam in her eye. “So, let’s solve this little issue. I will grant that I never meet the kind of men you might fall for, but I w
ill keep trying unless…”

  Ari started groaning, but sat up straight at the last word. “Unless?”

  “Watch it,” Cory stage-whispered. “Jane has something up her sleeve.”

  “Unless you promise to go on one date a month.” Jane stood up, satisfied, and drank the last of her milk before going into the kitchen and placing it in the sink.

  “No way!”

  Cory placed a hand on Ari’s knee, stopping any further exclamations. “A date a month when she never dates? That’s asking a lot, Jane. Even you don’t set her up that often.”

  “So? If she wants me to stop setting her up, she will set herself up.”

  Ari sent Cory a “help” through lips that would not make a sound. She could not imagine trying to line up monthly dates. Didn’t Jane get the memo? Arwen was clueless when it came to men. The few times she was actually around a guy she was attracted to, she lost all ability to think and came across as a ninny. This scenario had neurotic film written all over it. If they did it without clothes, Jay would be thrilled.

  Standing up, Cory walked over and stood next to Jane. At an inch over six feet, she was almost a foot taller, thus giving her the semblance of control. “What if she does it a different way?”

  “Meaning?” Jane asked, glancing at their little sister where she sat wrapped up in her terrycloth robe watching them with wide eyes.

  “Online dates. There are tons of online dating sites. She could meet guys there, weed out the idiots, get to know the others…”

  “Oh. Now that has promise,” Jane nodded, her eyes starting to twinkle. “Five of my friends met their husbands online.” Turning she grabbed a pen from Ari’s pen jar. Their mother had a pen jar in every room when they were growing up, and all three women did the same. It was one of their few homages to their mother. Walking back to her chair, she grabbed her purse, pulled out her notebook, and tore out a piece of paper. Scribbling something on it, she handed it to Ari.

  “These are the sites my friends used. Join them. I will want weekly updates!”

  Before Ari could agree or disagree, Jane was out the door.

  Chuckling, Cory walked over and looked at the list. “Well-known sites. You might as well do it, Ari. This should keep Jane at bay, plus who knows, maybe you will meet someone.”

  Ari smiled to herself. Cory was always sure to use gender-neutral comments when referring to someone she might end up with, unsure of whether she was hetero or homosexual. Except for one crazy night in college, Ari definitely liked guys. But she appreciated her sister’s thoughtfulness anyway.

  “Okay, I will give it a try. It’s better than another Jay—WAIT!” Ari rose and ran to the door, opening it and yelling, “Jane! You still owe me for that date!” Jane had promised to reimburse her the $42.49 for that horrible meal with Jay.

  “Good luck with that,” Cory chuckled, hugged her sister and left, running swiftly through the raindrops to her car.

  Closing the door, Ari went back into the living room and grabbed the cookie jar, taking it back into the kitchen, where she placed it in its spot to the left of the oven. After stuffing the paper in the pocket of her robe, she washed the cups and placed them on the counter to dry. Then, after going back into the living room and curling up in her chair, she pulled out the list.

  “Oops.” Looking down she saw her pocket was wet. She must have leaned up against the counter. Now the letters on the paper were wiggly and out of focus. Some she could make out. Matchinone.com. Yes, she had heard of that one. OKdate. Sounded boring, but she could check it out. The third one though was hard to make out. The name was a blue blur, but the description next to it was somewhat legible. for the… dimension…ability.

  Chuckling, she set the piece of paper by her computer and went to bed. There was plenty of time in the morning to set up a few online profiles to placate her crazy sister.

  ****

  The next morning proved to be another rainy one. “Geez! Come on Ma Nature! It’s winter!” Sighing, Ari pulled herself out of bed and went through her normal morning rituals, except she did not go running. Running down by the park was one of her favorite things to do. Just not in the rain. She was lucky she wasn’t sick from walking home the day before, and she was not one to press her luck.

  Without the run, her shower, breakfast, and running through the channels only to find nothing was on took a lot less time than normal. That left nothing to do except read or go on the computer. Glancing at the little piece of paper, she thought it would be a good time to get that out of the way and turned on her laptop.

  In the time it took her to get a cup of hot cider, her computer was up and running and already notifying her she had new emails. Unsurprising, five were spam, and only one was something she wanted to look at. She ended up surfing through her favorite online shoe store before she remembered the whole online dating thing.

  “Oh, right. Okay, let’s see what this whole thing is about.”

  It turned out to be a lot more complicated than she expected. Just filling out a profile was a monumental task, and she had to do one for each site? This would take forever. Grumbling through each question, she forced herself through the Matchinone and OKdate profile screens. She uploaded the same photo on both, an image taken the year before when she and two other women from the library went to San Diego for Labor Day weekend. She looked at the photo critically. It wasn’t the best photo she had ever taken, but she was smiling at least.

  Ari wasn’t one of those girls who looked down on their looks. She thought she was pretty enough, with her shoulder-length blonde hair and hazel eyes, though she didn’t think that counted for much. She still didn’t attract the right sort of men. After four hours of mind-numbing entries, she elected to do the other site later. She needed food.

  The rest of the afternoon, she spent doing the simple things: grocery shopping, a wax job, getting a juice drink at the mall. After she got home and made her dinner, it was only six and with nothing else to do, she went back to the computer to create a profile at the unknown dating site. She considered calling Jane to ask but figured she would look up the description first. It made no sense to her, so she typed it into a search engine.

  dating dimension ability

  She received over thirty-four million responses of which the first real one was titled Does Penis Size Really Matter? “Yes,” she snickered conversationally as she looked through the results trying to find a dating site. Fourth and fifth down were two site listings for eCongruence, which sounded rather cheesy to her. As she went on to the second page of results, something on the right caught her eye.

  Interdimensional Dating Service

  For the discriminating single

  Not for everyone

  Interdimensional? Now that sounded like it might fit the bill! And they sounded snooty which Jane would correlate with upscale intellectual. Smiling because she had been able to find the site herself, she clicked the link and waited for it to load. To her surprise, the screen flickered three times before the site popped up. “Well that was weird.” She looked out her front window, wondering if there was a power outage coming. It was not unheard of in her building.

  The site was laid out rather simply, so she figured the profile questionnaire would not take as long as the others. Looking through their front page, she was amused at some of the usernames and pictures. The faces did not look quite right, as if they were slightly out of focus, but then the images were so tiny it was hard to see anything. And the usernames? On the other sites, she had seen usernames like waiting4you and NeedUNow. Here they seemed to want to be funny. One was called DifferentiallyOrdinary and another CoordinationallyBlatant. Maybe this site was more for people like her.

  Humming to herself, she clicked the link that said SignUp and came to a regular information page. She filled in her email address, description, photo, as well as a small history about herself, and clicked to the next page. At the top, it read 3 of 12 pages. “Twelve pages? Ewww.” Well, she was already in, she should pr
obably continue.

  Deciding wine would help, she went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of her favorite red, electing to bring the bottle back in with her, just in case. After taking a sip, she sighed and sat down. “Whoever decided to make a wine that has a hint of chocolate was brilliant.” After taking two more large sips, she went back to the profile. The questions were worded strangely. She wondered if the site was created by someone for whom English was not their first language.

  For if you had a choice, what hair on top of head would you like?

  “I would prefer there would be hair,” she chuckled aloud.

  The question was multiple choice, and the answers were even more odd than the question.

  Tough

  Wiry

  Cotton-ized

  Shriveled

  Bear

  “This has got to be a joke.” There was a microscopic picture next to each word, which gave her an indication of what they were talking about. Tough was short and straight, Wiry was sticking up, Cotton-ized looked like an afro, while Shriveled didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Bear, however, meant bald. “Why didn’t they use bare?” Maybe this wasn’t for the intellectual. Finishing her wine, she poured another glass and, after marking Tough, went on to the next question.

  What body type you prefer?

  Two arm

  Four arm

  Two leg

  Four leg

  One head

  Two head

  A snort escaped her lips at the images. They showed a stick drawing of someone with four arms, four legs, and two heads. Chugging the rest of her wine, she ploughed on.

  By the seventh page when enough alcohol infiltrated her system, the questions started to make sense.

  Do you handle change well?

  Yes, she marked quickly, unsure if it was the truth but too buzzed to care.

  An interdimensional shift can cause mood swings. Would this bother you?

  “No.” She snickered as she clicked the button. No doubt the oddness of these questions was due to her drinking. Tomorrow when she woke up, they wouldn’t be nearly as funny.