“But.”
“But nothing.” I keep troweling, then add, “Okay, but,” I sigh, “he’s incredibly sweet and attentive, but I just didn’t,” I run my trowel across the upper lip of the baseboard carefully, “feel a spark, you know?”
“That sounds exciting.” He strains the word “exciting” as he stretches up to reach the bottom of the crown molding.
I laugh. “Yeah, exactly.”
“How long was it?”
“Dunno.” I shrug. “Maybe three months?”
“Dude, that’s a long time if there’s no ‘spark,’ or whatever.”
“I know. It was a mistake. He was just so nice, and smart, it was kind of scary to walk away from someone who’s so good to you and trying so hard.”
“Not if there’s no spark.”
“Well, yeah. There you have it. So . . . what about you? Why did yours end?”
“Seriously?”
“I mean, you just asked me the same question, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Dan dips his trowel into the bucket of plaster and stands back to look at the wall before answering. “It was good. She was cool. But . . .” he trails off.
“But.”
“But when I got your email, I realized I was that much more excited to see you than to see her . . . I figured it meant I needed to cut it off.”
I swallow hard and continue troweling my plaster, staring straight at the wall and careful not to make eye contact with Dan. “Oh.”
“Look, I know what your feelings were. Are. I’m not trying to make a grand statement or anything. But . . .” He pauses. “I don’t know . . . you were the best one.” I can hear him scraping his trowel against the wall again.
“Best Match girl?” I laugh, still focusing my eyes on the plaster in front of me.
“Yeah.” Dan laughs. “It doesn’t have to mean anything, but . . . you were. Are.”
And then he’s standing over me. “You have plaster on your nose, you know.” He bends down, flakes dried plaster off the bridge of my nose, puts his hand under my ponytail, and then we’re making out.
“Trowel!” I mumble in between kissing him. “Trowel. Trowel. Trowel.” I push him away with my free hand and reach for the plaster bucket and lay my wet trowel on top of it. “Sorry . . . where were we?”
Somehow, when we wake up the next morning, the walls are finished and look perfect.
“I can’t believe you made me stay up until 3:00 a.m. plastering,” Dan groans.
“I can’t believe I convinced you to stay up until 3:00 a.m. plastering. Thank you!”
“You look . . . different. Something’s different,” Dan says, squinting. “Oh, I know, it’s the new tattoo on your shoulder.”
“Gee, I wonder where that came from,” I say, twisting my head over my left shoulder to see the gray heart with an arrow through it. It says LIM. “I assume you were aiming for ‘limits’ and ran out of room?”
He smiles and nods proudly. “You want first bathroom or should I?”
“You.”
Dan rises from the drop cloth covering my floor, where we slept, and goes to the bathroom.
“My God, woman! What did you do to me last night?” he calls out.
I laugh. “Now you know why I wanted you to take first bathroom! Also, aren’t you not supposed to say the ‘G’ word?” I call back.
He comes back out and points to his face. “Really? On my face?”
“It’s not like I pranked you while you were sleeping. You let me do that. I asked permission before painting.” Dan’s face looks like a cat.
“I hope your mural-painting . . . inpainting . . . skills are better than your face-painting skills,” he says.
“Hey, don’t mock my face-painting skills!” I laugh. “So maybe my eagle didn’t turn out as well as my snowflake, but I thought it was a valiant effort.” Dan looks puzzled then runs back to the bathroom to inspect his chest, which he hadn’t noticed on first glance in the mirror.
“Why do I not remember any of last night? This stuff comes off, right?”
“You’re the master. You tell me.”
“Did you roofie me?”
“Yes, Dan.” I nod solemnly. “I slipped you a roofie so that I could take advantage of you, not sleep with you, and paint animals on your face and chest.”
“I thought so. You women are so weird. . . .” He shakes his head. “Why is it that I feel great whenever we hang out, and then I wake up the next morning seeing spots?”
“For the record, I didn’t touch that bottle of Captain Morgan. All damage done on that,” I point to the half-empty bottle sitting on the windowsill, “you are solely responsible for.”
He smiles and kisses my forehead. “You’ve discovered my Kryptonite. . . . So, do you want me to . . . come back again and help with the sanding and polishing?”
I hesitate, surprised by the offer. “I would love it if you did, but you’ve done more than enough. So, you obviously don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to. I’m being nice.” He nods emphatically.
“Then, yes! That would be amazing.”
“Cool. Does Sunday work?”
“Okay.”
“It’s a date,” he says.
Sunday comes and goes, and despite a text and an email that I sent Dan to confirm our plaster-polishing plans, I don’t hear back from him. Until Monday night.
A yellow cab slows to the curb on Seventh Avenue. I open the rear door and load the first of three file-storage boxes into the back seat. Deepa hands me the second, and I push it over to the middle seat.
“Forget about Joanne, we’ll talk soon.” Deepa gives me a quick hug.
“Better get back inside before you get in trouble,” I joke. Though, on second thought, that’s not a joke. As I lift the last cardboard box from the sidewalk and climb into the taxi, Deepa shuts the door from the outside, waves, then scurries back into the office building.
“Thirty-ninth and third, please.” It comes out more strained than I expected. The driver nods.
I try to clear my throat then touch my fingertips to my left cheek: still burning. My mind whirring, I try to replay the last ten minutes, then the last six hours.
“You look like a nice lady,” the cab driver calls over his shoulder. “You know what I say?”
“Oh.” I’m roused from my contemplation. “What’s that?”
“Fuck ’em. Seriously. Fuck ’em all.”
Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror and I try to smile kindly. “Thanks.”
“No, I mean it. Fuck ’em! You don’t need them to succeed. Success comes from within.”
I smile again and nod. “Thanks.” I look at the haphazardly packed boxes: one even lacks a lid on account of my protruding field microscope. I can see why my midday departure might give the impression I was fired. In fact, Joanne’s version of events would support that notion, too.
As we hung up our two o’clock conference call with the Armory architect, I had risen from my chair to leave Joanne’s office. Could you please sit down again? Joanne had asked.
Earlier this morning I’d gone into Joanne’s office to let her know, via a much-rehearsed speech, that I had accepted another job and would be leaving in four weeks. I assured her I would continue to work diligently until my departure. Not surprisingly, Joanne expressed little emotion or interest, apart from asking—multiple times—whom I was going to work for. After initially hesitating, I admitted that I’m going to work for Gilded Artists, a contractor I’ve interfaced with on several projects. I could see Joanne was not impressed. The view of my RA colleagues (Joanne most especially) is that they are superior to all competing firms along the East Coast. So it’s practically sacrilege that I’m not even going to a less prestigious conservation firm, but to a contractor. Joanne chastised me for “abandoning [my] responsibilities” and for being “unappreciative of all the resources” they invested in me the past four years.
I wondered what more Joanne had to add to wha
t she’d said this morning?
“I phoned Bill Garland”—the president of Gilded Artists—“and told him you’d be leaving us in the lurch, and I asked him to rescind your offer.” I felt the wind knocked out of me, and my eyes began to blur. I wanted to shout, You put me on notice five months ago! Why do you all of a sudden care that I’m leaving? But the words didn’t come; I was too stunned to speak.
“Since Bill refused to rescind your offer”—I exhaled suddenly, only then realizing that I’d been holding my breath—“we don’t see how you could be of any further use to us.” Joanne continued, “You can clean out your desk and leave, effective immediately.”
As I struggled to process her words, I stumbled through some questions about unfinished exposures at the Armory, about being able to say goodbye to my coworkers. I returned to my cubicle to find three empty cardboard boxes under my desk. Quickly, silently, I threw all my chemistry textbooks, my steel-toe sneakers and site gear, my scalpels and Swiss Army knife into the boxes. Before I was even done, the office manager returned to collect my office ID and company cell phone.
If I needed any further convincing to quit RA, Joanne generously proffered it.
“We have a saying in my country,” my cab driver encourages. “A change is as good as a rest.”
“Oh. I like that,” I say, grateful for this man’s compassionate efforts to comfort a stranger. Though Gilded Artists isn’t doubling my salary, I did get a 50 percent raise. Now that I can finally afford to quit tutoring, it’s fun to dream up what I will do with all these reclaimed hours. . . . Rest is at the top of the list. “Change and rest, both reinvigorating,” I echo.
“There’s another Arabic proverb that my grandfather shared with me when I was nervous, leaving my family to move here. He said, ‘Life will show you what you did not know.’ Maybe that applies now, too?”
“Oh, I like that one also. Very wise.” I nod for emphasis. “Thank you.” I’m well aware that there’s a lot I don’t know, and that I still have much to learn. In my newly created position of Supervising Conservator (read: Sole Conservator) for Gilded Artists, my first order of business is to procure a microscope and build out a lab. Though I’ll sorely miss having the infrastructure and resources that RA provided, Gilded Artists has entire studios of gilders, decorative painters, and stained-glass artisans; I may not have architectural conservators to bounce ideas off of, but can’t I learn equally from the artists who execute the kinds of works we later restore? That’s my working theory, at least.
Either way, being surrounded by old-world art and process on a daily basis, in the eye of such a vortex of creativity and verve . . . surely it trumps walking on eggshells around Joanne.
The driver helps me unload the boxes to the curb in front of my building. “You just made what could have been the worst ride into the best,” I say gratefully. We exchange names, a handshake, and I hand him a hefty tip.
“Remember my country’s saying, Alison: A change is as good as a rest.”
I nod.
“And also, fuck ’em.”
Later that night, I carry the broken-down cardboard boxes to my building’s recycling room. On my way back upstairs, I feel unburdened, freer. My phone vibrates in my back pocket just as I reach my front door.
December 18 at 8:44 p.m.
DAN: HEY. SORRY, YESTERDAY GOT AWAY FROM ME. WAS WATCHING FOOTBALL WITH MY COUSINS OUT IN NEW JERSEY. DO U WANT TO COME OVER?
ALISON: NO, THANKS. I’VE GOT SOME WALL POLISHING TO DO. :) BUT HAVE HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND MAYBE WE CAN GRAB COFFEE OR SOMETHING IN THE NEW YEAR.
poplockandroll03: Doppelgänger Greg. Again
When I’m out Saturday night, my phone vibrates and a text flashes on the screen:
December 2 at 11:22 p.m.
GREG: YOUR DANCE ROUTINE TO YOUNG MC’S “BUST A MOVE” WAS SICK. ALL OF ATLANTIC CITY SAYS RESPECT!!
ALISON: I’M SO GLAD YOU NOTICED! I’VE BEEN HITTING UP HIP HOP CLASSES AT THE GYM RELIGIOUSLY AND SPENDING WAY TOO MUCH TIME MEMORIZING VIDEO DANCE STEPS AT THE JOSHUA TREE. YOU MADE MY WEEK BY NOTICING! WHAT’D YOU THINK OF THE BACK HANDSPRING I PULLED OUT OF NOWHERE?
GREG: YOUR DANCE MOVES ARE INSANE. LIKE GANGNAM STYLE MEETS A WHIRLING DERVISH.
GREG: I ALSO HAVE INSANE MOVES. POP LOCKING CLASSES AT ALVIN AILEY NEAR MY APT . . . FIVE SEASONS OF SYTYCD ON MY DVR . . .
GREG: . . . “SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE” (IN CASE YOU’RE NOT A FAN . . . BUT YOU ARE A FAN . . . I HOPE?)
ALISON: YOU TAKE ALVIN AILEY CLASSES? BET WE COULD DO A MEAN PAS DE DEUX TO “ROCKA MY SOUL”!
GREG: I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THAT GAME, BUT IT SOUNDS RIVETING. BFFS . . . FINALLY!
Discovered when I walk in the door to my apartment later that same night:
December 3 at 1:08 a.m.
GREG: STATES ON HE T DANE FLR?
GREG: STATIS ON DAN E FLOOR?
GREG: DAMMIT
ALISON: STATUS? ON THE DANCE FLOOR, YOU MEAN? JUST WHIPPED OUT A MEAN GRAPEVINE FOLLOWED BY A STELLAR RUNNING MAN. HOW DO YOU HAVE A KNACK FOR ALWAYS TEXTING THE MINUTE I GET IN THE DOOR?
His response, early the next morning, reads:
December 3 at 7:57 a.m.
GREG: HOW DO YOU HAVE A KNACK FOR ALWAYS TEXTING JUST AS I HAVE PASSED OUT ON MY COUCH STILL CLUTCHING A HALF-EATEN CHICKEN PARMESAN?
Three days later:
December 6 at 9:24 p.m.
GREG: OK. I’M BEING 100% SERIOUS. ARE YOU AT THE PHISH CONCERT RIGHT NOW? SECTION 114? ROW C? WHEN DID YOU GROW DREADLOCKS, ALISON?
December 6 at 10:11 p.m.
ALISON: OMG SOMEONE’S ALVIN AILEY CLASSES HAVE BEEN PAYING OFF! YOUR SICK MOVES ARE TOTALLY RIGHTEOUS. DIDN’T KNOW YOU’RE A PHISH FAN. MSG’S A GIANT CLAMBAKE RIGHT NOW.
It’s Thursday night, and I’m sitting in a beer garden with Cassie and Nicole. My phone buzzes:
December 21 at 10:16 p.m.
GREG: I LIKE RED FISH, BLUE FISH, ONE FISH, AND YOU.
ALISON: ???
GREG: ALISON. ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, YOU’VE BEEN MY TEXT BFF FOR AGES, LET’S BE DRINKING BUDDIES, TOO?
I read this last text aloud, and I hesitate.
“Al, why don’t you just meet up with him?” Cassie asks.
“I don’t know. I just don’t feel like it.”
“You can invite him to come join us here,” she encourages.
“Thanks. But I just don’t really feel like seeing him. You know, in person.”
“Then why waste time texting back and forth with him for all these months?”
I have to pause to think about this. “Because he makes me laugh, and usually at odd hours when I don’t have anything better to do than text random semistrangers.”
“What’s the worst that could happen if you two hung out?” she asks.
I look to Nicole for backup, but she raises her eyebrows, silently seconding Cassie’s line of questioning.
“Well, if we don’t have chemistry—” I interrupt myself, “which I don’t think we do—the whole thing could fall apart. And we’d become ex–texting buddies.”
“Is that really such a terrible outcome? You have never hung out with him in all the months of your corresponding. It doesn’t sound to me like you’ve got a whole lot to lose.”
I nod.
Ever the optimist, Cassie presses on, “But you could stand to gain something.”
“Yeah. But I’m just . . .” I search for the right word, then settle on “tired, like seriously drained, from all the witty emails, and texts, and telephone conversations. Meaning . . . the witty emails and telephone conversations with everyone else. Not Greg because those are one-off no-brainers. But I feel like I have to be funny, and ‘on’ all the time for everyone else. . . . And three-quarters of the time, you write these thoughtful, hilarious, referential emails that take thirty minutes to draft and revise, and then the correspondence suddenly stops, and you’ve wasted all this time flirting with someone you’ve never even met in person. These mystery men could be bots, and
I wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Wait. What?” Nicole laughs heartily at my leap in logic.
“Gah! I don’t know,” I wail, palming my forehead. “And then here’s Greg. And I haven’t seen him in . . . ten months? Eleven? And I don’t think I’m attracted to him, and we never hang out, and we never will. But I love knowing that he’s thinking about me, and I am a more carefree, lighthearted version of myself when we ‘talk,’ and . . . this is the most functional relationship I’ve had all year! And I don’t want to ruin that.”
“That’s just plain sad, Al,” Cassie says.
“But. I like this . . . non-relationship. It’s easy, and no-maintenance, and whimsical . . . and I want to freeze it in amber and never have it change.”
“So what are you gonna write back?” Nicole tilts her head inquisitively.
ALISON: GREG. I LIKE YOU AND I LIKE BEER, BUT THIS IS THE MOST FUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIP I’VE HAD ALL YEAR. LET’S CONTINUE AS IS AND HEARTACHE AVOID, SO WITH EACH OTHER’S EMOTIONS WE WON’T HAVE TOYED.
The following week, an email from Match.com lands in my inbox. Subject: Notification of Account Expiration. Renew Today!
Has it truly been a year already?
I think back to when I first signed up last winter: in many ways, that feels like just yesterday. But on the other hand, when I think of all the men—the personalities I met (Matt, Marc, the Lukes, John, James, Paul . . . when I picture them in that sequence, they sound like the New Testament of bachelors)—who taught me things, or impacted me in ways both small and large, I can’t figure out how they all fit into twelve short months.
It’s like I told Older Luke: life moves fast! . . . And then, sometimes I think it moves slowly. . . . Somehow both seem true?
Well, apparently, it has been a year. I got my six free months and, as with each of these men, it was fun while it lasted. Actually, it was more than fun—in a weird sort of way, I love this past year. I love it madly and deeply and forever for everything it taught me:
I always thought that by the time you became an adult, you were pretty much fully formed, and your actions were, to some extent, predictable. It’s now clear to me that this is far from true. Especially when it comes to matters of the heart, you can still surprise yourself.
Match Made in Manhattan Page 31