“Ah. Well, I do own a few, but as a general rule, I don’t pack heat on dates.”
“But they’re in your apartment?”
“You seem oddly fascinated by my guns.”
“No, not fascinated. Terrified. But anyway, continue.”
“You have a thing against guns?”
“Sort of. Actually, it’s funny. My father grew up in a tiny town in Ohio that’s not even really on maps, and with all that farmland and nothing to do . . . he was an avid trap shooter. Actually, our family claim to fame is that he was a National Trapshooting Champion. The NRA somehow got ahold of my dad’s name through trapshooting record books or something, and every few years they send him a complimentary membership card. . . . It’s pretty funny, since he’s pretty liberal and just tears them up on arrival. . . . But . . . where was I going with this? Oh yeah, guns. Scary . . . not that I’m judging.”
“No no, that doesn’t sound very judgy at all,” he teases. “But . . . you’re allowed to hate guns. I try not to use mine.”
“So how do you fly with your gun when you travel for work?”
“All federal agents do.”
“How do you skirt security discreetly? Do you walk through with the cabin crew?”
“They actually have us all meet before the flight, exchange business cards, et cetera, so we know who else is flying with a concealed weapon. That way, if someone gets up to go to the bathroom and you see the bulge of the weapon, you don’t tackle him to the ground thinking he’s a terrorist.”
“Is it really that easy to tell if someone’s carrying a gun under their clothing? I don’t think I could tell.”
“Yeah, if you have to conceal it yourself every day, it becomes easy to spot on others.”
“And how many times have you actually flown with other federal agents, though?”
“Every time.”
“What do you mean ‘every time’? Aren’t you flying to really random locations in, like, the American Southwest?”
“Yeah. I’ve actually never been the only federal agent on a flight. It might be a change post-9/11, but I wasn’t working before then, so I don’t really know. But in my experience there are always at least three federal agents on every flight.”
“And they all fly undercover?”
He nods.
“That kind of makes me feel really safe, knowing there are people to protect me on every flight. But also not safe in that there are people with guns on every flight?”
“No, you should feel safer knowing that.”
“So how can I pick them out? What do I look for—where do you hide your gun?”
“It’s really easy on overnight or red-eye flights. We’re not allowed to sleep on planes, so look for those lonely souls in coach who have the overhead light on at all times and are downing round after round of coffee from the stewardesses.”
“Do they know you? The stewardesses? Or flight attendants . . .”
“Yeah. That’s why we get special attention in the form of a steady stream of caffeine.”
“Wow. Your job is so cool. I’m sure you get that all the time, but really. It sounds super interesting.”
“Well that’s good.” He half smiles. “Because I think your job is super interesting. I was thinking about this on the walk over: we should start a reality show that trails us on our day jobs. I would totally watch the episodes that follow your discovery process of murals that have been forgotten and buried from view for centuries.”
“And who wouldn’t watch you take a polar bear home with you for the night? You’d get the CSI/Law and Order crowd and also those people who are addicted to cat videos on YouTube!”
Later that night, Nicole, my older brother Ben, and I are collecting our drinks from the bar and moving toward the main floor of Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side, where Ben’s friend is performing.
“How was the date?” Ben asks.
“It was great.”
“You get drinks?”
“Actually we got dinner.”
Ben looks surprised. “On a first date?”
“I know, I was surprised, too. But it was really nice. Food was really good. And he was really nice!”
“Was it pricey?” Nicole asks.
“I . . . assume so? The prices on the menu were not cheap, and he ordered a bottle of wine. But he didn’t let me look at the bill. . . .”
“That’s a serious date,” Ben says.
“I mean, not really. It’s . . . a first date. But yeah, it was nice.”
“Is he cute?” Nicole asks.
“He looks like his photos. He’s half-white, half-something else. Maybe Japanese? Really attractive.”
“Tall? How old?”
“Yeah, six-one maybe. Thirty-three? I think?”
“So how’d you ditch him after a dinner like that to come down here?” Ben asks.
“I . . . said thanks and goodbye? . . . I mean, it was a first date! Just ’cause he bought me dinner doesn’t mean we need to make a whole night of it or anything.” Ben looks skeptical. “It was a first date!” I insist.
“Oh-kaaay.” Ben rolls his eyes. “Well, how’d you say goodbye?”
“What do you mean, ‘how did I say goodbye?’ I said, ‘Awww, thanks so much for this delicious dinner! I have to go meet my brother downtown now.’”
“Did you . . . kiss him?” I must look taken aback, because Ben adds belatedly, “On the cheek?”
“What? On a first date? Do you know me at all?”
Ben and Nicole are laughing heartily at my expense. Ben asks, “Well, did you shake his hand? Give him a hug? You have to have exited somehow.”
“We . . . walked two blocks to the subway. I said, ‘Aww, thanks so much for this delicious dinner!’ and then I waved and ran down the stairs before it could get awkward.”
“You waved? You waved goodbye? Was it, like, a beauty queen wave, did you blow him a kiss, or was this a Paul-Pfeiffer-from-The-Wonder-Years enthusiastic wave?”
“It was . . . a Paul Pfeiffer kind of wave,” I admit sheepishly. “But that’s the only kind of wave I know how to do!” I protest, to peals of laughter from my peanut gallery.
“But you had fun?” Ben confirms.
“Yes, I already told you that!”
“Good god, Ali, you are never going to date again.”
“But . . . But . . . But I already sent him a text message when I got off the subway that said thanks and that I had fun. So he knows I’m at least somewhat interested . . . or else why would I have bothered to text him to say I had fun?”
Ben shakes his head. “You waved goodbye. I mean, couldn’t you have at least hugged the guy?”
“But . . .” I start to fret. “But if I hug him, then our faces are in proximity, and he might . . . I don’t know . . . get the wrong message and try to kiss me? And that would be way more awkward!”
“Seriously? Are you twelve? You could at least—”
“Be nice to your sister!” Nicole chastises, though she’s laughing with him, at me, too. “Besides, isn’t it better for her to wave than to scare him off on date one with the Pants Speech?”
It’s the following weekend, and I’m sitting at a table by the window inside Corner Café and Bakery waiting for my second date with John. He walks in, smiles, and reaches out and massages my left shoulder as he says hello. The only sense I can make of this is that while Ben was 90 percent wrong in that John did call again, Ben was 10 percent right in that I thoroughly scared him off from ever trying to touch me. Beyond a one-handed, one-shoulder massage.
“Ah, this place is so awesome. I was drooling on the walk over. I can’t believe you’ve never been here before.”
“You can now take credit for introducing me to two cool neighborhood joints. What’s good?” I ask.
“The mozzarella-pesto-red-pepper omelet. The best omelet I’ve ever had.”
“Hmmm. I do have a weakness for pesto, but I also have a weakness for grits and was kind of tempted by the s
hrimp and grits.”
“Wanna split?”
“Man after my own heart! You pass and share? Even on a second date?”
“There’s . . . a lot you don’t know about me,” he says mischievously, smiling behind the menu.
Brunch food is as tasty as billed, and after we’re done, John asks, somewhat timidly, “Do you want to keep hanging out? Or do you need to . . . go home?”
“I can keep hanging out,” I offer. I’m curious to see if the conversation can continue to be so comfortable and effortless.
“How do you feel about ice skating?”
“Good, I think?”
We place our shoes in the lockers of Wollman Rink and sit on the wood bench to lace up our skates.
“I used to be really good at skating, but I haven’t done it in probably a decade,” he says.
“Well, I won an Easter skate competition when I was four.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes, really. The competition was fierce. But the award was actually for the best Easter hat. Worn by an ice skater.”
“Your family goes all out for Easter outfits? I thought you said you were half-Jewish.”
“You had to make your own Easter hat, so it was kind of a fun arts-and-crafts project my mom had me and my brother and sister do. I actually still remember sitting around the kitchen table gluing the plastic bluebird onto the rim of my hat.”
“So by ‘ice skating trophy’ you mean ‘arts-and-crafts trophy.’”
“I never said ‘trophy’ at all. I just said I won an Easter skate competition. Which I did. You had to skate out and show off your hat.”
“But you could skate.”
“Hey now, I still can skate. My parents’ vacation house has a lake, and when it freezes over every winter, we pull out our skates and make up some really fabulous routines.”
“To music?”
“We don’t have a sound system, but to music we sing aloud, yes.”
“Like?”
“I dunno.”
“Come on.”
“Like ‘Everybody Dance Now,’ . . . you know, and other classic late eighties, early nineties hits.”
“So you’re going to reenact your award-winning routine for me now, right?”
“Nice try,” I say wryly.
Caught up in the counterclockwise flow of our fellow skaters, we reminisce about our first memories of New York City and critique the pros and cons of living in a concrete jungle.
“I’m getting cold,” I say shyly. “Is it okay if we head back now?”
“What? We’ve only been skating for”—he glances at his watch—“two hours. You don’t want to stay out until sunset?”
“No, I just—”
“I’m teasing. It’s okay.”
We walk east down 90th Street. “Do you want to come over to my place?” he asks, keeping his eyes on the pavement.
He has a gun. In his apartment. And there is a nonzero chance that he also could be psychotic, even though my assessment based on the cumulative seven or eight hours I’ve spent with him is that chances of that are slim. But really, how do you ever know? “No, thanks. I’m . . . uhh . . . I have dinner plans tonight with some friends, so I should probably get home and . . . change. . . . Rain check?” I ask, biting my lip.
“Sure.”
We reach Lexington Avenue. “I turn right here,” I say, halting abruptly at the corner.
“Can I walk you home?” he asks.
Such a gentleman! But a gentleman who owns a gun. So I’d rather he not know where I live. “No no.” I shake my head. “It’s really close, and you’re turning left. No need to go out of your way.”
“Okay.” He shrugs and smiles. He reaches over and gives me another one-handed, one-shoulder massage. “This was fun. Let’s hang out again soon?”
“Sure.” I smile, back away, wave like Paul Pfeiffer, and cross the street.
“Sooooo’d you wave?” Nicole asks from the couch before I’ve even crossed the threshold into the apartment. Cassie giggles beside her.
I open my mouth to speak, then shut it. “Kind of?” I pause. “Okay, yes.” Then I add quickly, “Don’t make fun of me!”
“I won’t. But did you also hug him?”
“No.”
“Did he try to hold your hand?”
“No. But he did quasi-massage one of my shoulders. Twice!”
“Ohhh, that’s like, the new second base for women in their twenties, I hear,” Nicole teases.
“Ha ha. Very funny,” I say flatly.
“Do you think you’ll see him again?” Cassie asks, sounding hopeful.
“I don’t know. It’s weird. Dating is weird. He is super interesting, and he’s really nice, and smart, and cute, yadda yadda. But I feel like when I’m on these dates, not just with him, I find myself sort of . . . zoning in and out. Like I’m listening 80 percent of the time, and assessing if I’m interested 20 percent of the time. Is that weird?”
“But don’t you know, like within the first five or ten minutes, if you’re attracted to him?” Cassie asks. “If you’ll want to see him again?”
I feel insanely lucky to have Cassie as my friend. She is the textbook definition of supportive. When a key writer for the campus publication I edited quit, Cassie—with no interest in journalism whatsoever—joined the staff and took over his workload. When I broke my foot in an intramural game and couldn’t descend the stairs to our basement, Cassie did all my laundry—every week. She even ironed my jeans, which I’d never done before. When I broke up with Scott on a Tuesday night of senior year, Cassie approached her history professor on Wednesday morning and explained that her best friend was going through an emotional rough patch, and she requested to be excused from class—weirder still is the fact that her professor complied. So Cassie and I spent Wednesday afternoon drinking hot chocolate, strolling across campus, and ruminating on life and love. And yet, we are essentially opposites in every which emotional way. She’s a Republican, I’m a Democrat. She wants everyone to like her and is a self-professed pushover, whereas I don’t especially care what people think of me. She wears her heart on her sleeve where I . . . don’t. Consequently, she falls for men instantly, often, and hard, where I, again, don’t.
“No? I mean, sometimes yes. But only when I know I don’t want to see them again. When I’m tuned in and . . . not turned off? . . . I feel the wheels in my head turning to figure out if I want to see them again.”
“So what’d you conclude about Secret Agent Man?” Nicole asks.
“I guess . . .” I sigh. “I guess I won’t?”
“But you said he’s really interesting! And cute! And he likes good food?” Cassie would greatly prefer it if I were a romantic, too.
“Yeah.” I nod. “These are all true things.”
“But?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel . . . spark-y? Sparkly?”
“But did it feel ‘sparkly’ with Scott and Dave right off the bat?” Nicole asks.
“With Scott it definitely did,” Cassie answers for me. “Their eyes practically locked across the quad on the first day of college.”
“It’s true,” I sigh wistfully. “I felt so . . . lucky that he would talk to me at all. He was so gorgeous, and he laughed at everything I said, this great, belly-filled, totally unforced laugh. When we met, it was kind of a take-your-breath-away moment, so sweet and innocent, so . . . you know, sparkly. I couldn’t believe my good fortune when he asked me to sit next to him on the bus that day. I was on cloud nine the whole ride. The whole weeklong orientation, actually. All of freshman year, in fact.”
“What happened after freshman year?” Nicole asks.
“Nothing. I mean, we stayed together. I guess I just got used to the fact that he was my boyfriend, so it wasn’t quite so . . .”
“Sparkly?” Nicole raises an eyebrow.
“Probably.”
“So if the ‘sparkle’ doesn’t even last beyond a year, does it have to be t
here from the outset? Does it matter?”
“I mean, kind of. Doesn’t it?” I look to Cassie for affirmation.
“Do you even need to ask?” Cassie rolls her eyes.
While I was living out one great love in our college years, Cassie lived out approximately seventy. Or eighty.
“I broke up with Scott because—despite him being my favorite guy on earth—that spark had sort of petered out. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was just too young and immature to realize that if it’s a good relationship and you love each other, you can work to restore that zesty, passionate part. But if it had never been there at all, how could I have been interested in . . . kissing him? Or sleeping with him?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Cassie feigns backing up. “Let’s not get carried away here. You can hook up without it needing to be sparkly.”
“Yes, we know you’re a little passion pit,” Nicole teases, “but what if it can be more like a slow burn? It feels like that for me sometimes.”
“I think it might have been like that with Dave, the slow burn? But there was this quality of levity or amusement from the beginning that translated into instant ease. And that in and of itself was kind of sparkly. Like, the first time Dave took off his shirt in front of me, he burst into that Rod Stewart song, ‘If you want my body and you think I’m sexy, come on, Sugar . . .’”
“I can totally see Dave doing that,” Nicole muses.
“He sang in this silly falsetto, and it immediately diffused the awkwardness of disrobing for the first time; he made me laugh so hard, which just made me more attracted to him. I don’t know, maybe I just need that levity or humor to minimize the awkwardness of dating in general.”
“But it’s always going to be awkward in the beginning,” Nicole says.
“But it wasn’t with Scott. And it wasn’t with Dave. Those first years, they were . . . kinda sparkly.”
“But that sparkliness died!” Nicole protests. “How do we know it isn’t always going to die after three years? Maybe that’s the sparkly threshold, and then it segues into a different kind of love?”
“Or maybe the whole point is that you just keep chasing that sparkle until you find the one where it sticks forever?” I wonder aloud. “Or you never find it?”
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