Match Made in Manhattan

by Amanda Stauffer

  “Nice pick,” Dan says as I meet him at the bar of Auction House.

  “Thanks. It’s kind of my favorite local watering hole.”

  “Yeah, I like the décor. It’s like Renaissance palace meets—”

  “—Dive bar?” I laugh. “I always say the same thing. Thanks, by the way, for trekking up here.”

  “You’re pretty hard to pin down, you know. So I thought I should be gentlemanly and make it easy for you.”

  “Thanks.” I smile. “And sorry. August was kind of . . . a crazy time for me.”

  “No problem. I’m glad our schedules finally aligned.”

  Dan tells me about how he moved into Manhattan a year ago from New Jersey.

  “Why New Jersey?”

  “I grew up there, went to college there, my job is there. So when I was living with my then-girlfriend, I bought a house out there to cut down on commute time.”

  “Did you buy the house together? With your then-girlfriend?”

  “No, it’s just mine.”

  “But now you live in Manhattan?”

  “Yeah, when we broke up, I didn’t want to be a single thirty-year-old in New Jersey. So I rented out the house and took a studio on the West Side, close to Penn Station so I could get out there quickly every morning.”

  I nod. “What’s your house like?”

  “It’s small. I did a lot of work on it myself.”

  “Oh, awesome! I wish I had a place of my own that I could spruce up. I restore buildings for a living, so it would be a pretty good use of my skill set. I keep thinking I should quit my job and flip houses full-time.”

  “You wanna see pictures?”

  “Yes, please!”

  He pulls out his phone and swipes through photos of his ranch-style home. “Here’s the dining room, which I Venetian plastered.”

  “Shut up. You did not Venetian plaster that all by yourself.”

  “Yeah I did.” He nods and turns his head to mine. His deep blue eyes sparkle. He kind of looks like the Irish gypsies I’ve seen on TV with black hair, pale skin, and bold blue eyes. “You actually know what that is?”

  “Of course! I restore, or retouch, Venetian plaster for work all the time. I’ve never done it from scratch though! So fun!”

  “Yeah, it was fun.”

  “Okay, so promise that if you ever decide to Venetian plaster anything else, you’ll call me? So I can come learn/help/watch?”

  He laughs. “Okay.”

  Dan comes back with a second round of martinis, and I thank him and take one off his hands.

  “So you were saying . . . that you are in business school? Or you just graduated from business school? Or . . . remind me what you said in your emails?”

  “Right. So, I spent three years doing a part-time MBA program at Columbia. They call it the ‘Executive MBA.’”

  “And that means . . .”

  “Instead of being full-time, you can keep your job and fulfill your coursework on nights and weekends.”

  “That sounds exhausting. So you work a full day and then go to class after?”

  “No. You can, but my schedule was to have class three full weekends a month and alternate Fridays.”

  “And work was okay with that?”

  “Yeah, work wanted me to do it. They paid for the program, so they approved the alternate Fridays off.”

  “Oh, cool. So, like a free MBA?”

  “Yep, that’s why I did it . . . well, and because I wanted the MBA.”

  “So . . . you’re done now?”

  “I’m about to be done. I’m four finals down, one-point-five to go, and then I’m done. I’ll walk at graduation in December.”

  “That’s awesome. Almost-congrats!”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what’s your remaining final? Finals?”

  “Financial Statement Analysis.”

  “Ooh, sounds riveting. . . . Why is it considered one-point-five finals? And when is it?”

  “It’s the most heavily weighted class for me this semester, hence the one-point-five thing. And it’s a take-home final, so you have twenty-four hours from when they distribute it before you have to turn it in.”

  “And when do you get it?” I take a sip from my martini.

  “I got it this morning—” I’m so surprised by his answer, my mouth full of gin and vermouth sprays out and soaks his shirt. I freeze in place, my eyes wide and panicked.

  “Umm . . . con-tin-ue,” I sound out slowly. As he explains that his last final is due the next morning at 8:00 a.m., I maintain eye contact while trying to surreptitiously, carefully, wipe the martini pool from his white button-down shirt with my bare hand.

  “Uhhh.” I continue subtly patting at his chest and shirtsleeve with my hand. “I. Am. SO. Sorry!” I shut my eyes tightly and try to bury my face in my left, unsullied hand. “I can’t believe I just did that. I am so sorry! I promise to pay your dry cleaning bill!”

  “No, please. This is the most amusing date I’ve ever been on. Why was my answer so funny?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, biting my lip. “I was just so startled. Like, you have your very last final of a three-year grad program, and it’s due tomorrow, and you’re here, drinking with me. For . . . hours! Why are you here? Don’t you have a final to be slaving over?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You were pretty hard to pin down. Like I said. So I thought it might be a ‘now or never’ kind of thing. So I chose now.” He shrugs.

  I am so stunned by my own maladroitness that I can barely muster a word. I nod, repeatedly. “So.” I cough. I laugh at myself, then clear my throat and try again. “So, do you have a late night ahead?”

  He smiles at my attempt to play it cool and pretend like the last three minutes never happened. “Yeah, probably.”

  “Okay.” I laugh again, and he laughs with me, or at me, or both. “Although I am seriously troubled about ending the date on such a . . . sloppy? note . . . I feel like I should let you go, right? Should we go?”

  We walk up 89th Street to my corner. “Well, this is me. Good luck with your final. And thanks for coming out, especially given the circumstances.”

  “No, I’m really glad I met you. Do you want to do this again sometime? Maybe next week or weekend?”

  “Sure. And . . . let me just reiterate how sorry I am. I mean, I think you can tell how embarrassed I am, but . . .”

  “You? Embarrassed? Nope, couldn’t tell.” He smiles. “I’m kidding, by the way. But you can relax. It was actually cute.”

  I roll my eyes. “Stop humoring me. But good night! And good luck!”

  September 4 at 10:09 a.m.

  732-472-0818: THANKS FOR YOUR HELP PROCRASTINATING LAST NIGHT. HOPE WE CAN DO IT AGAIN SOON.

  ALISON: GOOD LUCK WITH THE LAST 1.5 FINALS! HOPE YOU KNOW THAT MY SHOWERING YOU WITH DIRTY MARTINI WAS MY WAY OF SAYING “THANKS FOR THESE DRINKS” . . .

  September 4 at 12:01 p.m.

  Subject: Last night

  Well, are you going to tell me about last night? Sorry I went to bed on the early side. I left you a note saying you were welcome to sleep in my bed. Hopefully you got it. It’s an open invitation for as long as you’d like.

  Love, Cassie

  September 4 at 12:33 p.m.

  Last night was fun. I did get your note - you are so sweet. I couldn’t bear the thought of you losing any more sleep this week on my account, so I decided to give it a try on my own. I slept four hours, which ain’t much but is better than three!

  OK so all this talk of sleepovers leads me to a big guess what?

  I hatched a plan last night during a fit of insomnia. And I actually think (maybe I’m in a worse place than you are, but whatever) it sounds viable: What if we decided to never ever date again? And to have sleepovers together and BYOB dinners with our friends (male and female) and to become rock stars in our fields and really good at yoga and running and then to adopt kiddies (we don’t have to share them. You can totally have your own kids, and I can h
ave my own. Or we can be mom partners. Either works for me) and get a bomb-diggity apartment and I’ll cook and you clean and we live together in domestic harmony forever and ever? Either in New York or in Italian wine country?

  Don’t worry, I have weighed the drawbacks of this plan, and I fully agree: We’re going to need to get laid by men, it’s just that they’re all too g-d demented to take seriously in relationships. Sooooo. Be swinger moms who rely on each other for good conversation and companionship and wedding dates and everything else that’s important in life except for bedroom stuff?

  I know you think I’m kidding.

  Guess what?

  I’m not.

  Love!

  Alison

  September 4 at 12:42 p.m.

  It’s me again. Hi!

  So wanna know something really weird?

  I literally convinced myself in the last five minutes that that is the greatest plan of all time. And I even came up with other people who might want to do the same thing and could live on the floor(s) above or below us if we bought a townhouse (not that I need other people if you’re around). Like maybe Jason? I’m pretty sure Blaire’s determined never to marry. It would be like Sesame Street where we’re all just happy adult friends.

  Before our second date, I decided to do a little digging on Dan. Given that his username is Nadatsoca, it didn’t take a cryptologist to determine that his full name is Dan Acosta. Based on just that keyword search, I found out that he works for Honeywell’s industrial technology, went to Princeton, posts too many photos of the city skyline on Instagram, and overuses the hashtag #nofilter. Working backward through his public profile on Facebook, I can pinpoint the day he and his last girlfriend broke up and see pictures of her. She looks like she stepped out of a Pearl Jam-groupie beauty pageant with bleached blonde hair, leather pants, and leopard-print everything. Maybe she hurt him so badly he’s seeking her polar opposite? Even barring that, the gold cross he wore around his neck at Auction House, his Facebook profile photo displaying him shirtless, steering a boat, with a bottle of Captain Morgan in hand . . . something tells me that soul mates we are not.

  Over dinner at Maz Mezcal, Dan tells me about his close-knit enormous family and band of thirty cousins. He tells me he’s half Puerto Rican (“Oh, I thought you might be Irish.”—“I get that a lot.”) and that he grew up on Latin cuisine.

  “Do you want another round?” Dan asks, when the waiter comes by to check in.

  “I will if you will.”

  I like talking to Dan and his piercing blue eyes. But I’m kind of over dating people who I have no future with. When our drinks arrive, I take a sip of liquid courage and begin, “You seem like a fun guy. So, do you want to play a game? My friend Paige and I have this thing we call the ‘three-martini question.’. . . When you’ve had three martinis, and you’re a little more . . . open? . . . you get to throw caution to the wind and ask really probing questions that you might normally save for awkward conversations further down the road. I know we don’t have martinis per se, but . . . can I tweak that and ask you a three-margarita question?”

  “I don’t know that I’d say this sounds like a fun game necessarily, but I’m up for it if you are. . . . This means I get to ask, too, right?”

  I nod.

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Okay. So.” I take another sip of my margarita. “You wear a cross around your neck.”

  He nods.

  “Which I take to mean that you are religious.”

  He nods.

  “Do you go to church?”

  He nods.

  “Like, on your own? Or only with family?”

  He looks at the ceiling and ponders this. “Honestly? Only with family.”

  “But it’s important to you,” I state, and he nods. “So . . . can I ask why you’re on a second date with a half-Protestant, half-Jew who, according to her Match.com profile, is a self-professed agnostic?” I smile.

  He nods, as if to himself. “I’m not gonna lie, you’re the first non-Catholic girl I’ve gone out with.”

  “Because normally that’s a deal breaker?”

  He nods a few times, again to himself. Then says, “Yeah.”

  “So. Are you going to . . . just . . . throw your religious morals out the window here? Or . . . was this just an experiment in crossing over to the dark side?” I smile.

  “No. Not that,” he says, nodding. “You know, I thought about it. It’s not like I ignored that detail or missed it. . . . I just, I guess over the years, I’ve decided that there are more important things.”

  “Okay.”

  “Would it be a deal breaker for you? That I’m Catholic?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Keep in mind my parents both diluted their own religious backgrounds through an interfaith marriage. . . .”

  “Does it bother you at all, though?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I just figured if you were going to turn around and say, ‘Ehh, forget it, I can only marry a Catholic,’ I’d rather throw in the towel now.” I add quickly, “Not that I want to marry you. I don’t want to marry you.” I feel my cheeks flushing again. I really need to start speaking more slowly so my brain can keep up with my mouth. I hang my head in embarrassment and sip on my margarita without looking up.

  “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to ask until at least the third date.” He smiles. “Okay. So, my turn?”

  I nod.

  “Why are you on here? Match, I mean.”

  “Really? That’s your question? That’s not a three-martini question. That’s, like, a sober coffee-date question.”

  “Well . . .”

  “That’s easy.” I give him a quick summary of my serious relationships, explain my need to branch out beyond the population of my college graduating class, the same unintentional script I’ve been spewing off since January.

  He nods. “Cool, that makes sense.”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t everyone use websites or apps or platforms these days? Tinder, Bumble. . . . What about you? Why are you on?”

  “I don’t have that many friends in New York, so I feel like my circle’s kind of small.”

  “From Princeton? I find that hard to believe . . .”

  “Well, right out of college everyone was here. But at this point, most people have left. . . . So when the girlfriend I lived with,” I get a mental picture of Nikki with her black choker necklace and fishnet tights, then try to abolish this picture from my mind, “and I broke up . . . I took a while to get over it. And then moved to New York. And then needed a way to meet people.”

  “Did she go to Princeton, your last girlfriend?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

  “No.”

  “So how did you meet?”

  “It started from a random hookup.”

  “Huh. Really?”

  “Yeah, I woke up in the morning and she was gone, but she’d written her number in lipstick on my mirror.”

  That is one classy chick! “Wait, seriously?”

  He nods.

  And you are on a date with me because . . .? “How long were you together?”

  “About five years.”

  “And you said you lived together. . . . Why did it end?” He looks taken aback, and although he’s right—this question may have been a bit too probing for date number two—I wave my margarita glass in my hand. “Three-margarita question.”

  He smiles. “Honestly?”

  I nod.

  “I proposed and she said no.”

  And suddenly, all the feelings I’ve been grappling with come back at once, and my heart aches. For Dan this time, though. “I’m so sorry, Dan,” I say softly.

  “No, it’s fine,” he says confidently. “But, you know, when you live together for multiple years and propose and get rejected, you’ve kind of got no choice but to pick up and move on.”

  I nod. “That’s terrible. Did she explain it? Her reasoning?”

  “Kind of. Not really. She said she d
idn’t feel ready to settle down.”

  “But isn’t living together kind of settling down anyway? I feel like the marriage license is just the ribbon on the box or something.”

  “I agree. But that’s what she said.”

  “So I imagine you didn’t stay friends?”

  “No. But it’s kind of a funny story. We both moved out, and two months later, she calls me, asks to come over, and tells me that it was the biggest mistake of her life and she’s been . . . I don’t know . . . devastated ever since . . . and she asks me to get back together and to get married.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said no.” He shrugs.

  “Why’d you say no?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe it was a combination of things. I spent so long being angry at her, you can’t just shove that aside and get over it. Also, during the time that I was angry, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the things that were wrong with her. Or with the relationship.”

  “No, but mostly with her,” I say, half-smiling, and he raises an eyebrow. “Come on, you’d be right to. I’m not judging.”

  “Well, yeah. Mostly all the things that were wrong with her.” He twirls his fork and watches it. “So, this time I said no.”

  “That must have been confusing. And hard.” I nod, then he nods. “I’m sorry.”

  He blinks hard and shakes his head as if clearing it of these thoughts. “Whoa, your three-martini questions can get deep.”

  “Yeah, I’ve never actually had them be that deep before.” I laugh. “Usually it’s dumb stuff like, ‘I kind of think you’re hitting on me. Are you hitting on me?’ Or,” I add quickly, “that’s how Paige always uses it at least.”

  Dan gets up to go to the bathroom. While he’s gone, I check my phone. I have a new text:

  September 12 at 10:13 p.m.

  GREG: DID YOU JUST EAT MY SLIDERS AT OYSTERFEST?

  I type back:

  September 12 at 10:47 p.m.

  ALISON: HIGHLY LIKELY. THE BLUE POINTS WERE DELICIOUS, SO I WANDERED AROUND PICKING UP THE FLOATERS. . . . SORRY IF I TOOK YOURS! IF YOU SAW ME STANDING NEXT TO YOU, WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY HI?