by Hilary Dartt
When Delaney tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for Summer to hand over the keys, checking her watch because she was afraid of being late on the inaugural Carpool Tuesday, Summer finally said, “Oh! I have an idea!”
After a good three minutes’ worth of rummaging around on the floor of the van’s passenger side, she came up with a CD.
“Just play this,” she’d said. “It’ll make things simpler.”
Within a minute of playing the cheerful, high-pitched, repetitive kids’ music, though, Delaney could feel her ears starting to bleed. The CD mysteriously disappeared. Since then Delaney had allowed the kids to take turns choosing the radio station on the ten-minute drive home. If she heard bad language or sex talk, she switched the channel.
Today, because it was Sarah’s turn to choose, Delaney put in her mental earplugs. Sarah always chose the easy listening station. Always. And belted out every song. So today, by the time Sarah’s voice broke through the barrier, she was shouting:
“Aunt Dee! Aunt Dee, can you hear me?”
Delaney turned down the cheesy love songs and said with exaggerated sweetness, “Yes, Sarah?”
“I’ve been trying to get your attention for, like, six minutes!”
“Since the school dismissal bell rang only four minutes ago, I sincerely doubt it. But sorry. I was tuning out your sappy romance music. Let’s start over.”
“Okay.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Aunt Dee?”
“Yes, Sarah?”
“Remember that guy who helped us after the car accident last week?”
Boy, do I.
“Yep,” Delaney said.
“Well, he was really handsome, wasn’t he?”
Boy, was he.
“Yeah. I thought so.”
“Are we going to see him again?” Sarah said.
“Probably. It’s a small town.”
“Is he going to be your boyfriend?”
“I don’t even know him, Sarah. What if he’s not even nice?”
“Well, he’s handsome, isn’t he? And he did stop to help us after the accident. And he didn’t even know us. Only a nice stranger would do that.”
Delaney nodded at Sarah’s sound reasoning. “Good points,” she said. “All of them. Well, we’ll see, I guess.”
“We’ll see,” Sarah said.
***
The wheelchair access stall in the Juniper Public Library’s bathroom barely fit all three of them, but Delaney, Summer and Josie crowded in anyway, trying at once to be quiet and lay the ground rules for the next phase of The Dating Intervention.
“I’ve always wanted to do this!” Summer squealed.
“What? Strip down your best friend and tape a wire to her boobs, before eavesdropping on her pathetic conversations with pathetic men?”
Josie, who was busy taping a wire up Delaney’s torso and between her breasts, chuckled.
“No! Speed-dating!” Summer said.
That morning, Delaney had received an email from Summer, marked urgent. It was a forward, an advertisement about a speed-dating event that night. “Mid-week for Mid-Life,” the ad proclaimed in hot pink and purple letters.
“I’m not mid-life,” Delaney snapped when Summer answered her phone just a second after the email landed in Delaney’s inbox. “And the public library is not the most romantic spot for speed dating.”
“Who cares? It’ll be fun,” Summer said.
So here they were, a half-hour from starting time, stuffed into a bathroom stall and wiring Delaney up so the girls could listen to her exchanges and advise her, or, in other words, boss her around, about what to say. Josie had borrowed the wire from Paul, who said he’d arrest all three of them if they broke it.
“Paul says this thing can be wonky, but if we tape it right, it should hold. See? The microphone can come off the wire right here. I’ll just add a little tape…”
“Remember to keep your hair over your right ear, Dee,” Summer said. “Don’t do that thing you always do, where you tuck your hair behind your ear.”
“It’s a trick I picked up from you sophomore year, Josie. Remember? You used to do that all the time to make the guys hot.”
“It worked, too,” Summer said. “But neither of us could ever get the hang of it.”
“No, we couldn’t,” Delaney said. “But I still do it.”
“You guys kill me,” Josie said. “Just don’t touch your hair. And don’t bite your lip.”
“Okay. All right. I only do that because you told me you read about it in a magazine or something. Can I go now?”
Together, the girls emerged from the bathroom stall. A woman, on her way into the stall next to them, looked like she didn’t know whether to hide or turn tail and exit as quickly as possible. Summer and Josie linked their arms through Delaney’s and propelled her over to the mirror.
“You look great,” Josie said.
“Just have fun,” Summer said.
“And be yourself,” Josie added.
“What? Mid-life?”
“We’ll be right there with you,” Summer said, patting Delaney’s arm.
As Delaney left them, she called back over her shoulder, “Enjoy living vicariously through me, ladies. Only chance you’re getting.”
Two-person tables decked out in yellow tablecloths ran along the room’s edges, forcing the participants of the Mid-Week for Mid-Life to crowd into the center. Uncomfortable, Delaney approached the knot of people looking for a friendly face. The woman from the bathroom came in, made eye contact with Delaney and immediately changed her course of direction. Delaney just looked at her coolly.
“You look nervous.” A man spoke from behind her and Delaney thought, That’s a crappy pick-up line. Just a breath later, she wondered if she really did look nervous and if so, whether nervous was ugly.
“Nice voice,” Summer said cheerfully in her right ear.
He did have a nice voice. But he suffered from a geek complex: a scraggly comb-over, a closer-than-necessary shave (he had nicked his chin and forgotten to remove the tiny fleck of toilet paper) and a sweater vest. A bulbous red nose overhung a thick mouth. His lower lip protruded in a manner Delaney thought was quite unfortunate.
“It’s my first time.”
Oh, geez. Her voice was high, breathy, nervous. She heard Josie giggle in her ear.
“Oh, I’m an old pro,” the man said. Then, holding out his hand, he said, “Karl.”
“Elizabeth,” Delaney said.
“Elizabeth!” Josie shrieked.
Delaney’s hand flew to her ear and she winced.
“Are you okay?” Karl said.
“Yeah, fine. I’m fine.”
“Your name tag says Delaney.”
“Yeah. That’s my name.”
“I thought your name was Elizabeth.”
Shit.
“She forgot about the nametag,” she heard Josie whisper to Summer. They giggled. Delaney sighed.
“It is. It’s Elizabeth Delaney.”
Karl raised his bushy eyebrows. “Oh. So is this your first speed-dating event, ever, or just your first time at Mid-Week?”
Delaney could tell the girls were trying to muffle their laughter, but she could hear it just the same.
“What? Oh. Sorry. First for both.”
“It’s fun, actually. You get to meet some interesting people.”
“Yeah. I can imagine. So how does it work?”
As Karl explained the drill (women sit nearest the wall, men sit nearest the center of the room, moderator rings a bell every three minutes and men shift to the next table), Delaney looked at the motley group who’d shown up. Were they all very desperate? They looked very desperate, she concluded, taking in the women’s too-bright lipstick and the men’s too-stiff posture. She scolded herself for judging them.
I’m here, too, aren’t I?
“Well, thanks for explaining,” she said. “Looks like we’re about to get started.”
A schoolmarmish woman in a knee-length skirt, tight ves
t and puffy-sleeved shirt approached a podium and held up her bell. Delaney walked toward one of the corner tables near the window.
“Don’t sit by the window!” Josie shouted into her ear.
Again, Delaney was surprised at her friends’ psychic-like ability. She did an about-face and chose a chair near the door, instead. Once the women were seated, the men filed into their positions.
“Hi, Karl,” Delaney said as he sat down across from her.
“Ooh, it’s the nice voice guy!” Summer squealed.
The moderator rang the bell, shouted, “Three minutes, Mid-lifers!” and stepped off the podium. The noise level in the room rose immediately as the very desperate Mid-Lifers started rattling off questions in a rapid-fire attempt to get to know one another. On one hand, Delaney could see the appeal. She’d get through a bunch of men in one sitting. But on the other hand, this whole process felt ridiculous. How much could you really learn about someone in three minutes? And were people in such dire dating circumstances that they couldn’t go out and meet people in a real setting?
“You can take notes,” Karl said, motioning to the notepad and pencil on the table.
“What kinds of things do you write?”
“Well, most men write things I won’t say out loud,” he said, “but I usually write down a comment that struck me. Like for you, I’ll write that it was your first time speed-dating.”
“For him, write that he has a nice voice,” Josie prompted through the earpiece.
Delaney pictured her friends, perched side by side on a toilet seat, huddled in a tiny stall, listening intently to everything she said. It was all she could do to avoid rolling her eyes.
“What’ll you write for me?” Karl asked.
“I’ll write that you were the first friendly face I saw,” Delaney answered. “And that you were very helpful.”
“Awww,” she heard Summer say.
“And then, if you want to see someone again, you put a checkmark next to his name,” Karl said, watching her pad carefully.
With that, she busily began scribbling notes. Mental note: Kill Summer and Josie.
“So what do you do, Delaney?”
“I’m a bartender at Rowdy’s, but I’m looking for a different job. How about you?”
“What kind of job are you looking for?”
“A veterinary position. I graduated from vet school a few years ago.”
“Don’t tell him how long ago that was,” Josie barked.
Delaney nodded, but froze when she realized she was nodding at Josie. She switched gears and asked, “What about you, what do you do?”
“Oh, vet school,” Karl breathed, sitting back and crossing his legs, which Delaney found womanly. “Must be interesting. How’d you like that?”
“I liked it okay,” Delaney said. She tried again. “What about you? What do you do?”
“Answer the damn question,” Josie shouted.
Delaney flinched.
“So how’d you come to work at Rowdy’s?”
On her notepad, Delaney wrote, Won’t talk about himself at all. It’s a no-go.
Out loud, she said, “Isn’t it uncomfortable to cross your legs? I thought men always sat with their legs spread.”
The bell rang.
“Well, see ya,” Karl said.
“Yeeeeah, probably not,” Summer said into the earpiece.
“Guys, shut up!” Delaney said under her breath. “You’re supposed to be coaching me!”
“Well, hello, gorgeous!”
A slick, plastic-looking man slid into the seat across from Delaney and she immediately noticed his perfectly straight, bright-to-the-point-of-glowing white teeth. His hair resembled a helmet, shiny and hard, mounding up over his skull in a perfect sphere.
“Wait. Don’t tell me. Hair gel,” Summer said. “Lots of it.”
“Delaney, huh?” he squinted at her nametag. “I’m Patrick.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“First time, huh?” He winked.
“Yeah. How could you tell?”
“You said ‘nice to meet you.’ Usually people don’t waste time on the pleasantries since we have only three minutes to chat. But it’s sweet. It’s nice to meet you, too, Delaney.”
She felt oddly charmed.
“He is sweet,” Josie said. “Ask him how his day’s going.”
“How’s your day going?” Delaney asked.
“It’s all right,” Patrick answered. His dark eyebrows drew together. “Busy, you know? I deliver furniture and damned if the crappy economy’s not stopping folks around here from buying furniture!”
He slapped his hand on his leg and giggled wildly. Furniture buying and delivering was a funny business, apparently.
“Ask him if he has a big penis,” Summer said.
“Do you have a big –” Delaney began, before stopping herself. “A big truck? Do you have a big truck?”
“Oh, yeah. I have a big truck. It’s huge.”
The bell rang.
Josie’s voice piped up in Delaney’s ear: “What’d you write down for that one?”
The rest of the evening proved relatively painful, Delaney thought as she collected her notes and deposited her nametag. After Karl and Patrick, she’d met ten others, including Joey the plastic surgeon (surely he could find dates elsewhere?), Nicholas the car salesman (who Summer declared a definite narcissist) and Eric the pastor (“Even pastors need some love, Josefina,” Summer said when Josie scoffed at his profession).
She heard grown men, single men looking for women, say things like, “But I don’t need a job. Screw ’em. That’s what welfare’s for, right?” and “Yeah, I live with my mom, but things are different nowadays. Haven’t you heard of the boomerang generation?”
Meanwhile, Josie said things like, “Do you smell something? This guy’s voice is so high, he must have terrible gas,” and “I don’t know why, but his story about being in an outhouse when it got knocked over made me want to eat chili cheese fries.”
“Well that was a resounding disaster,” Delaney said as the girls came out of the bathroom to meet her.
“Yeah, but it was fun,” Summer said.
“Your next date will be better,” Josie said. “I promise.”
“I hope so. If not, you guys are fired.”
“Oh, honey,” Summer said. “It’s not gonna be that easy.”
***
The call never came. Delaney had expected the puffy-sleeved moderator from Mid-Week for Mid-Lifers to provide her with a list of all the men who were interested in her. She’d already worked out all the scathing things she could say about how the interest wasn’t mutual. So she was surprised and slightly offended, not to mention disappointed and feeling rejected, when her phone didn’t ring over the course of the next couple of days.
She steeled herself for the next date, another man the girls found on FindLove.com.
“Uh, I’m in consulting,” Mitchell Evans, Esq. said.
All the din in the crowded restaurant – silverware clinking, conversation humming, piano music tinkling – ground to a halt in Delaney’s mind. She remembered Josie (or was it Summer?) saying “consultant” was code for unemployed. He definitely hadn’t listed “unemployed” on his FindLove.com profile and the girls certainly wouldn’t have chosen him if he’d listed “consultant.” She was puzzled … she was almost positive they’d said he was a lawyer. But maybe she was getting him mixed up with someone else.
“What about you?” he said, his tone implying he’d already asked her once. Maybe even twice.
“Me? Oh. Uh, right. I have to use the ladies’ room. I’ll be right back.”
She texted the girls: He’s a consultant!
Josie: Hahaha!
Delaney: What do I do?
Josie: Back to the table, sister. Suck it up.
Delaney: But he’s unemployed!
Josie: And you’re a bartender.
Delaney: I need a second opinion. Where’s Summer?
Summer: She’s barfing her brains out.
Delaney: Oh, I’m sorry, Summer. I forgot. Late first trimester. Gets you every time. You can ignore this, then.
Summer: Oh, I’m not ignoring it. Back to the table, sister. Suck it up.
Delaney: Fine.
She’d always liked The Blue Fish, Delaney thought as she walked back through the dining room. Hand-painted Mexican tiles on the tabletops and pottery in festive colors on wooden shelves along the brick walls made for a cheerful atmosphere. And she would enjoy it tonight, she promised herself. She had to.
“Sorry about that,” she said as she sat back down across from Mitchell.
“It’s okay. You were saying you…”
“I tend bar at Rowdy’s. But I’m looking for a new job.”
Mitchell threw his head back and chortled.
“I wait tables at Eddie’s. I, too, am looking for a new job.”
Relief flowed through Delaney, even as she scoured her memory for images of Mitchell at Eddie’s when she’d gone there with Craig ball-and-club Densmore.
“Really?” she said.
“Really.”
“But your profile says you’re a –”
“A lawyer, I know. I am, technically. But I’m taking a break right now. It’s false advertising, right? But the thing is, it’s as hard to find a woman as it is find a job in this town.”
“Don’t I know it!”
“Well, now that that’s out of the way,” he said, “let’s eat.”
Her inner voice rang a tiny warning bell – “I am, technically.” Technically? – but she stilled it. Over a huge plate of nachos, they eyeballed the other patrons at The Blue Fish, guessing what they’d order.
“Name her drink,” Mitchell said, pointing a tortilla chip at a woman who was wearing a navy suit with a red scarf.
“White wine. Something sweet, though. Riesling, I think.”
“And to eat, Pollo Fundido. No finger food for that lady.”
“Him.”
“Overalls, dirty boots, dirty fingernails? Corona. With lime and a Cuervo sidecar.”
“Fish tacos.”
“Those two, in the corner.”
“Sharing fajitas.”
“And Margaritas. See her brand new, pink cowboy boots? Going for a theme night.”