by Devan Sipher
“Have you looked at the menu?” I asked.
“I was too busy admiring the view,” she said. I stiffened, and not in a good way. But then I humbly noticed she was looking out a plastic window embedded in the tent wall beside us. The lights of Midtown twinkled beneath a clear sky.
“This is a perfect romantic spot,” she said. It was. We both gazed out the window that gently billowed in the night breeze, while the candles flickered and nearby couples caressed. The moment was everything I had imagined. Except I was with the wrong Melinda.
Chapter Eight
Arrested Development
“If it was up to me, we would elope,” said Amy Wu the next morning, sucking down her second grande latte at a Starbucks in Union Square.
She wasn’t the only one who needed perking up.
I hadn’t slept well, having spent most of the night mourning the loss of a relationship I never had. The last thing I wanted was to hear someone talk about finding her soul mate, and I hoped Amy wouldn’t use the words “soul mate.” I had also hoped she would be an easy interview, but the pixieish brunette was less enthusiastic about our meeting than I had expected. A fashion editor at Elle magazine, she was used to staying behind the scenes and was becoming increasingly agitated being the focus of attention.
“I spent an hour on the phone yesterday with a vendor for color-coordinated confetti,” said the twenty-eight-year-old as she tugged at the hem of her body-hugging gray sweater. “Six months ago I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I still don’t know why I need it. Or why I need an article in The Paper. No offense, but I’m not a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“If you were, I would have paid for your coffee,” I said, trying to calm the caffeinated bride-to-be.
A nervous smile played across her angular face as she licked foam from the edge of her cup. She was rather adorable, I noted with a modicum of despair. Somewhere in the city, Melinda might also be enjoying a morning coffee. I banished the thought and concentrated on my near-empty notepad while nursing my Caramel Macchiato.
“Most people who want to elope don’t invite two hundred people to the Rainbow Room,” I said, changing tacks.
“Mike wanted a big wedding,” she said. “Sometimes, I swear—he’s such a girl. Don’t quote that. Mike will cry. I mean, freak. He’ll freak out. In a manly way.”
Mike Russo was a professional dating coach who had appeared on Oprah. Possibly in need of his own services, he had taken a month to get a first date with Amy. The question was why. The answer was not forthcoming.
“You must get tired asking people how they met,” she said, deflecting my query. “Doesn’t every bride’s story start to sound the same?”
I was tempted to say yes. However, I needed to salvage the interview. “I don’t write about every bride,” I said, “but I do want to write about an Ohio native climbing the ladder at Elle who gets her future husband arrested for asking her out.”
“You’re not going to include that, are you?” she asked, her brown eyes widening.
Of course I was including it. It was how I had pitched the piece to Renée. “Is it not true?” I said, hoping I could coax her into revealing more.
“I didn’t get him arrested,” was all she said.
“That’s not what he said.” Sometimes my job was a lot like playing Bob Eubanks on The Newlywed Game.
“I didn’t know I was marrying Chatty Cathy,” she said. “Did he also tell you about harassing me on the subway?” All I recalled was they had met on a crowded R train after work. He stood up to give her his seat, and there was a spark. According to him, it was mutual.
“I thought he was cute,” she admitted, blushing. “Handsome. Say very handsome.”
A six-foot former competitive skier, Mike’s attractiveness was not in doubt, but she seemed protective of him. I imagined what it would feel like to have someone be that way about me.
“When I got up at my stop, he asked for my phone number.” Of course he did, I thought, because that’s what normal people do. If only I had done the same, I could be dating the right Melinda.
“I wouldn’t give it to him,” Amy said flatly. I didn’t think I heard right. “He looked about as confused as you do now,” she said with a laugh.
I prided myself on not being so transparent, but I was confused. “You said you thought he was attractive.”
“I don’t give my number to random guys on the subway,” she said.
“But you had a spark,” I sputtered. “He gave you his seat.” If a guy like Mike Russo couldn’t seal the deal, I had no chance whatsoever.
“So he was a polite, random guy. Do you know how many freaks there are in this city? And speaking of freaks, the next morning he was waiting for me on the uptown subway platform. Right here at Union Square.”
“How did he know what time you left for work?”
“How did he even know where I lived?” she said, pushing a loose strand of straight, dark hair behind her ear. It was the same shoulder length as Melinda’s. “When he saw me get off the train, I could have been going to dinner or visiting a friend. It’s crazy. He’s crazy. He got to the station at six in the morning and waited until I showed up at eight thirty.” I was impressed that he made such an effort. Especially since there was no guarantee he would even see her.
“He came over and said, ‘Good morning,’ like it was the most natural thing in the world, shooting me this big toothy smile. I asked him what he was smiling about, and he said, ‘I can’t help but smile when I see you,’ which is the corniest line ever. Which I told him. He told me he could come up with cornier ones, and after three years together I can tell you he wasn’t lying. So I asked him if he lived in the area, and he said, ‘No. I’m just here to invite you to dinner.’ I couldn’t believe his audacity.” Neither could I, but he was a camera-ready dating professional. Mere mortals couldn’t be expected to be that ballsy.
“I told him I had plans,” she said.
“How did that go over?” I was very curious how a guy like Mike handled being turned down.
“The next morning he was there again.” He had just become my hero. “This time with Starbucks coffee and mini cupcakes from Crumbs Bake Shop. He asked me out again, and I said no again.”
“Why?” I found myself taking the rejection personally. This wasn’t just an interview anymore; it was an education. After my missteps of the past week, this was my chance to penetrate the labyrinth of the female mind. “What did he do wrong?”
She bit her lip and seemed to be deliberating about sharing more. “I just didn’t feel like going out,” she finally said. “I had a bad breakup a month beforehand. The guy I had dated since college dumped me at my sister’s big, fat Chinese wedding. I was the maid of honor, so I was wearing this cheesy fuchsia bridesmaid dress and my hair was all in ringlets. Which took hours. Before the ceremony we were posing for pictures in a vintage convertible, and he told me he had fallen in love with someone else. So let’s just say that I wasn’t keen on romance when I met Mike. As my Grandma Jade used to say, if you let someone sweep you off your feet, you better be prepared to land on your ass.”
“So what changed things?” It was a standard question in my repertoire, but I really wanted to know. I was no longer a journalist. I was a lonely guy seeking vital knowledge. Something fundamental I was supposed to have learned years ago. I feared that my academic honors at Cornell had come at the expense of an incomplete grade in Relationships 101.
“He kept showing up with coffee and cupcakes, and I kept turning him down.”
“You turned down the cupcakes?”
“No. The dinner invitation. I love cupcakes.” She smiled, and for a moment she looked about twelve. “Then a week later, there was a power outage on the subway. No trains were running. But we didn’t know that. We were just standing there waiting. And waiting. Until we finally gave up and tried to get a taxi. Except there were no taxis to get. Which is when I started freaking, because I had a nine fifteen prese
ntation scheduled at work. So Mike ran into the middle of the street, zigzagging through the traffic and flagging down drivers until he convinced someone to give us a ride uptown. We were smushed together in the back of this Honda Fit, and as I climbed over him to get out, he asked for my number again.”
“That’s when you gave it to him.”
“No.” She laughed, shaking her head. “That’s when I called the cops. Well, actually, I called my roommate’s brother, who works as a PI and had offered to do a background check. He’s the one who contacted the police. How was I supposed to know Mike had a dozen unpaid parking tickets?”
If incarceration was a form of foreplay, I had more to learn than I thought.
“The background check somehow triggered him getting sent a bench warrant for the tickets,” she said. “He had to appear in court and pay a fine, but the way he carries on, you’d think troopers showed up at his door and handcuffed him.”
I needed to know how these two people ended up together. Because it wasn’t inevitable. When I interviewed couples it was easy to believe that their relationships were predestined, but I knew that wasn’t true. Something happened between dodging motor vehicles and picking confetti colors, and I needed to understand what it was. More to the point, I needed to understand love. I was like a scientist studying the components of a foreign substance, and for the first time I realized that my job offered the ideal laboratory. I’d been so focused on the irony of being a single man writing about weddings that I’d overlooked the serendipity. I’d been going about my articles with blinders on, fixated on deadlines and word counts and not appreciating that each of the couples I met had something crucial to teach me. If I could just figure out what it was.
“Did Mike stop showing up in the morning?” I asked, wondering if he pulled back.
“Are you kidding?” She looked amused. “He insisted that after all the trouble I caused, the least I could do was go out with him.” Seemed logical to me.
“And I considered it,” she said.
He was asking for a measly date, not a bank rescue, I almost shouted in frustration. What was there to think about?
“I debated the pros and cons in my head. Was I ready to start dating again? Was I not ready? Should I go on a diet first? I have a crazy brain. I ponder all the possible combinations and permutations. When we go to sleep at night, he says to me, ‘I can hear your thoughts. They’re very loud.’”
Okay, she was a little neurotic. In a Zooey Deschanel kind of way. I got it. So what won her over? That was what I wanted to know. She had skipped over that one crucial detail. “Why did you finally agree to go on a date?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “He showed up at my office at lunchtime one day with white calla lilies, a bottle of Moët, and takeout from Nobu. We had a picnic in the conference room. Who can say no to Nobu?” It all came down to expensive sushi and champagne? He must have spent two hundred dollars. I couldn’t afford that. At least not on a first date, and it wasn’t even a first date. It was a pitch for a first date.
“You didn’t at any point encourage him?” I asked, dumbfounded. It was a new concept for me, and I was having trouble fully grasping it.
“Well, I didn’t discourage him,” she said. Was he supposed to comprehend the difference? Was I? “It’s not like I didn’t talk to him. Even the first day he showed up on the subway platform. We got into a stupid conversation about Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. I remember calling him a doofus, and he called me a movie snob. Which is completely untrue. My all-time favorite movie is Shrek. Which I told him. And he started jumping up and down like he needed Ritalin or something, and shrieking that it was also his favorite. Total BS, right? But then he showed me he was wearing a Shrek watch. Who wears a Shrek watch?” No one I knew. But no one I knew would pursue a woman who continually turned him down.
“He was so sure of himself and so sure of wanting me,” Amy said, growing pensive. “The way I look at it, Mike found me. He found me over and over. Even though I didn’t know that I was lost.”
Chapter Nine
Fire, Aim, Ready
“I need to find Melinda,” I said to Gary, whom I called while heading downtown from Starbucks.
“You need to have sex,” he told me. “Let me clarify that. You need to have sex with someone you can physically touch.”
I had phoned to get an update on Bernie, but Gary was more interested in critiquing my love life. Or lack thereof.
“You need to meet people,” he said. “Have you thought about taking a class?”
“In dating?”
“No,” he groaned, “in something like wine tasting, where you might meet someone.”
“I did meet someone,” I said as I crossed Waverly Street. “I met Melinda.” I just wasn’t making much headway in locating her. I had contacted Lonely Planet, and, as I suspected, they didn’t give out personal or personnel information.
“You’re never going to see that girl again.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I noticed I was passing NYU’s school of the arts, and I remembered that Melinda had said she was starting a master’s program there. I had about thirty mintues to kill before my next interview. Possibly forty-five if I took a taxi.
“‘Why do you suppose it is we only feel compelled to chase the ones that run away?’ That’s Dangerous Liaisons.” He emphasized the word “dangerous.”
“I’m going to find her,” I said with new resolve.
“As Julia Roberts once said, ‘You’re a restraining order waiting to happen.’”
“Have you talked to Bernie’s doctor?” I changed topics as I turned about-face and dashed toward the school.
“Not yet,” Gary said, “but I noticed that flights from New York to Fort Lauderdale are on sale. Not that I want to pressure you. Just trying to keep you out of trouble.”
It was too late for that.
“You’re asking me to do something in violation of school policy,” said the work-study student manning the desk in the writing department. I had hoped the romantic nature of my mission would convince her to let me peek at the list of first-year master’s students so that I could learn Melinda’s last name, but the grad student’s eyes flared with indignity behind her circular wire-framed glasses.
“How about if you just confirm there is someone named Melinda currently enrolled?” I asked.
“That would also be a violation,” she said, tilting her computer screen toward her in a way that seemed intended to guard both its contents and her maidenhood.
The office was a cramped space with unwieldy furniture, which I suspected had a psychological impact on those who worked there. I kept looking toward the open doorway in the hope of seeing Melinda appear.
“Could I just get a schedule of classes while I’m here? That’s available online anyway.” I was bluffing.
“That information is absolutely not available online,” she said. She was either a darn good poker player or had a potential future career as a medical-claims adjuster.
“I’m sure I could find it if I tried,” I said in a friendly, lighthearted way.
“I doubt it.”
I wanted to point out that I was a reporter for The Paper, but if I mentioned that, I’d be breaching all kinds of ethical lines. As I considered my options, two undergraduate bohemians in training wearing clashing plaid shirts squeezed their way around me.
“Do you have any more drop/add slips?” one asked.
My adversary efficiently distributed Xeroxed forms, and the teenage boys slumped out of the office as a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks darted in. He declared that he had a manuscript for Professor Rubin, which he handed over before promptly leaving.
“Busy day?” I asked. She glared. “Listen,” I said, “you’re absolutely right to not give out private information. I think the best thing for me to do is to just hang out. Here.”
“Here?” she said, her eyebrows furrowing.
“Seems like anyone in the department would come
through at some point. So I’ll just stay here between classes and during lunch. I’ve got time right now.” About eight minutes, but she didn’t know that. “I can keep you company for the next week. Or two. Or however long it takes until Melinda shows up. And we don’t have to worry about breaking any rules.”
“Loitering is also against the rules,” she said. “We have a strict policy about nonstudents.”
“But I am a student.” I flashed the same NYU identification card I had used at the security desk. It was from a French class I’d taken a couple years back (Je parle mauvais français). I doubted it would stand up to much scrutiny, but Bride of Cerberus didn’t know that. “In fact, I was thinking about enrolling in one of your graduate writing workshops,” I added for good measure.
“You’d need to get approval from the director of the department.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said, plopping myself down on the vinyl love seat.
“There’s a reading tonight by Joan Didion that all students are expected to attend,” she said with a hint of nervous desperation. “Information about the reading is available online.”
The reading was at the NYU student center on the south side of Washington Square Park. I arrived an hour early and positioned myself just inside the front doors of the building.
This was it. In less than an hour I would see Melinda again. It occurred to me that I had no idea what to say to her. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood” wasn’t going to work. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you” would be the most sincere approach, if it didn’t make me sound borderline psychotic. Then I thought of Mike Russo, and decided I would simply tell Melinda I was there to ask her out to dinner. It was direct, truthful and flattering. I was ready.
I was also nauseous.
I noticed my reflection in the glass doors. The unflattering lighting made my skin look sallow and splotchy, and standing alone in the lobby was like being in a fishbowl. An overly bright fishbowl with no plastic sea galleon to hide behind. I repositioned myself outside the doors as a woman approached from the park. She had a knit hat pulled down over her ears and was clutching her pea coat tight around her. Melinda’s coat! I took a couple steps instinctively toward her, but as she passed beneath a streetlight I could see red hair springing from beneath her hat, where there should have been brown curls. She looked at me suspiciously, and I quickly turned away. When I turned back, she was standing a few feet away, lighting a cigarette. I smiled nervously, and she shot me another suspicious look.