by Jason Starr
“You mentioned psychology,” she said. “Well, I believe people fall back into old patterns. Date the same people, make the same mistakes again and again. I mean, take you, for instance. What do I know about you? I know your name’s Scott, you have a daughter, and you’re kind of cute, but what do I really know? You know what I mean? You could be hiding something, some dark secret. I mean nobody tells everybody everything on the first date, right? So there could be, I don’t know, like some big bombshell, a deal-breaker, that you tell me about on date five—and by that time I’m getting in deep, emotionally involved, and kicking myself for not realizing it sooner. Red flags, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m afraid I won’t pick up on the red flags. What about you?”
Scott was distracted. Kind of cute? What’s up with that? He said, “I’m sorry, what was the question?”
“What’s your darkest secret?” Anne asked.
Had that been her question?
“Um, wow, that’s a tough one,” Scott said. He had a suit under his clothes that gave him the ability to shrink to the size of an ant while gaining superhuman strength. That qualified as a pretty big secret.
“Come on,” she said. “I know when a man has secrets. You definitely have a past. I can see it in your eyes.”
Oh no—she wasn’t a psychic, was she? After a fling with Emma Frost from the X-Men last year, he’d made a pact with himself: no more mutants, and no more out-there, new-age women. He wanted someone normal, with no drama. Good luck with that in New York, right?
“Okay, I can tell I’m making you uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ll phrase it a different way. What are you hiding? What’s your biggest regret?”
This was easy—his past life of crime. Lately, he’d been doing a good job putting that troubled part of his past behind him, trying to redeem himself by fighting the good fight. But he still felt guilty about some of the things he had done when he was younger, and he preferred not to dredge up those memories—especially on first dates.
“Um, how about you go first on that one?” Scott asked.
“Okay,” she said. “I once stole money from a homeless guy.”
“You’re kidding me,” Scott said, trying to imagine this neurotic downtown mom stealing money from a guy on the street. For the first time in the date, he was intrigued.
“Nope,” she said. “I’m serious. It happened in Amherst—you know, where UMass is? That’s where I went to college. Anyway, I was drunk with my friends, and one of them dared me to take a dollar out of the guy’s cup. So I did it and ran away and felt incredibly guilty. I looked for the guy the next day, but I couldn’t find him. I thought I’d see him eventually—but, nope, I never saw him again. I still carry the dollar with me wherever I go, just in case I run into him.”
“Wow, that’s, um, really unusual,” Scott said.
“How about you?”
“Nope, never mugged a homeless guy. I hope to check that one off my bucket list someday.”
She didn’t laugh or even smile. Sarcasm definitely wasn’t her forte. Strike three.
She asked, “Have you ever stolen anything?”
There were times in life when honesty wasn’t an option.
So he went with, “Hasn’t everybody?”
“Not everybody,” she said. “I’m sure, like, Mother Theresa never stole anything.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Scott said. “When she was six years old there was probably a cookie jar with a cookie she wasn’t supposed to eat inside it, and I bet she ate it.”
“Cookies don’t count,” Anne said.
“I think stealing cookies should definitely be countable.” Scott smiled. “Can I be honest with you about something?”
“I love honesty,” she said.
Of course she did. Everybody loves honesty until they hear something they don’t want to hear.
“I don’t think this date’s going very well,” he said.
“You don’t?” She seemed hurt.
“Come on,” he said. “You don’t honestly think this is working, do you?”
“Well,” she said. “I’m not really sure.”
“You can’t connect with somebody if you’re looking for red flags from the get-go. Connections just happen.”
“You’re right. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I always do that, get too pushy. I mean not always and not too. It’s not that being a little pushy is good, either. I don’t know what I mean. I don’t go out on a lot of dates—I guess that’s the problem. Actually I haven’t gone out on any dates at all since my divorce, so maybe that’s part of the—”
“Totally understandable,” Scott said. “Also, I’d suggest not talking about your divorce so much. I mean not upfront. To be honest, it’s kind of a turnoff.”
“I do talk about my divorce a lot, don’t I?” she said. “I just said it again. I don’t know why I do that. I mean, I’m totally over my divorce. I just did it again. Oh my god, I can’t stop. I messed up the whole date, didn’t I? It’s just nervous energy. I’m on Xanax. I know that means I should be less neurotic, but normally I’m even more neurotic than this. That’s what my ex used to say. Oh my god, I just did it again. Can we start over?”
“Fine,” Scott said. “Let’s start over.”
“My name’s Anne with an e but my friends call me Annie.”
Scott laughed.
“See,” he said. “Now that was natural.”
Maybe she’d been right about her nervous energy getting the best of her, because now she seemed much calmer. They started to have an actual conversation. They shared stories about their kids, talked about movies and plays they’d seen lately, art exhibits they’d checked out. Scott wasn’t monitoring the level of her coffee anymore—he was having a good time.
“Well, it seems like we got off to a rusty start,” he said, “but can I be honest with you about something else?”
“Oh no, not again,” she said.
“I’m really starting to like you,” he said.
She blushed a little and said, “That’s sweet.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. Wow, talk about going from zero to sixty. This date had gone from life support to one of the best dates Scott had been on since he’d split with his ex. He was already thinking about their next meeting—he would suggest that they get together again later this week. Maybe he’d take her out to his favorite tapas place in the West Village.
Then Scott noticed the ant crawling along the table near their interlocked hands. He wasn’t surprised. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, ants were attracted to him when he had on his Ant-Man suit, even when he wasn’t shrunk down. And lately ants came over to him even when he left the suit home, locked in a safe. He wasn’t sure how or why the ants wanted to be around him. Perhaps it was because he’d been exposed to so many Pym Particles—the main component in the shrinking gas that allowed him to become Ant-Man—that the gas had had a permanent effect on him. Or maybe the ants simply were able to sense an ant-friendly nature in Scott’s essence. Scott was continually amazed by the intelligence of the tiny insects. He didn’t get why society as a whole scorned ants, associated them with filth and infestations, and considered them an overall nuisance.
Anne noticed the ant, grimaced, and said, “Oh my god, this is so disgusting! Starbucks is a huge corporation; they should have standards.” Then she took a napkin and raised her hand to squash it.
Scott grabbed her wrist before she could kill the ant and said, “Don’t ever do that.”
“What?” Anne sounded confused.
“Knowingly kill an ant,” Scott said. “I mean, it’s one thing if you step on one on the street by accident—some tragedies can’t be avoided—but when you do it on purpose, it’s like murder.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”
“Let go of me, please.”
Scott let go of her wrist. Well, so much for this being a great date.
“Excuse me?”
“You were about to murder that ant,” he said.
“Murder?”
“Kill, extinguish—however you want to put it.”
“It’s just an ant.”
“Is that what you’d say if I went up to your dog or your cat and tried to kill it? It’s just a cat? It’s just a dog?”
“Please tell me this is a joke,” she said.
Scott, more upset now, said, “So you were lying on your profile when you said you love animals and believe in—how did you put it? Oh right, ‘kindness to others.’ This is how you express kindness? I mean, stealing the dollar from the homeless guy—okay, you were a drunk college kid. But now you’re an adult, a mother. What’s your excuse this time?”
“If this is a joke, it’s not funny,” she said.
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“Making such a big deal about some stupid ant.”
“Ants are not stupid!”
Now all of Starbucks was their audience.
“They’re not?”
“Ants have bigger brains, proportionally to their weight, than humans.”
Scott didn’t know whether this was true, but he’d said it with assurance.
“A lot of good that does them,” Anne said. “Who cares about ants?”
“I’d rather read a memoir of an ant than a memoir of your divorce,” Scott said.
People in the coffee bar were looking over, wondering what the fuss was about. Now there were a few more ants crawling on the table. They had sensed the tension and possible danger, and were coming to help Scott and their fellow ant.
Anne noticed the ants, too, and stood up, putting on her jacket. She said, “You have serious problems, you know that?”
“You almost murder an innocent ant, and I have problems?”
“An innocent ant? That’s it—I’ve had it. This is officially the worst date ever.”
“You got that right.”
“I’m going home.”
“Yeah, well, don’t kill any ants there, either.”
She was about to leave, but then she turned back toward Scott. “See? I was right about patterns,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you so much for revealing your true self on date number one. Saved me a lot of time.”
She was rushing toward the exit.
“Never hurt an ant again.”
“Freak!” she shouted.
“Assassin!” he shouted back.
RIDING home on the 6 train, Scott knew he’d gone too far. Yeah, it had been wrong of Anne to try to kill that ant, but probably tens of thousands of ants were killed every day in Manhattan alone, stomped on and exterminated by pesticides. Scott couldn’t save them all. Still, watching an ant die—or almost die—was always emotional for him, and sometimes he lashed out.
When he got out at Seventy-Seventh Street, he texted her:
Sorry for blowing up like that. That was wrong of me.
A couple minutes later he sent another one:
Really enjoyed meeting you!!
Who was he kidding? She probably thought he was a total psycho/ weirdo—there was no way he could turn this thing around. He knew he’d never hear from her again. If anything, the apologetic texts would probably make him seem even more unstable.
Well, he’d have to put this behind him—chalk it up to experience. He obviously wasn’t ready to have a girlfriend again, anyway. Next time he’d try to keep his pro-ant emotions in check.
As he walked, he texted Cassie to ask whether she’d had dinner yet. Scott hadn’t, so he picked up takeout Chinese—pepper steak for him and Cassie’s fave, shrimp chow fun—and then continued to his building on East Seventy-Eighth Street between First and York.
Scott had moved to the Upper East Side from the East Village several months ago, before Cassie began her freshman year at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. “El-Ro” was one of the top schools for science in the city and, like Scott, Cassie was a technology geek. She loved computers, video games, and learning about the brain. Scott hadn’t gone to college, so he wanted Cassie to get on a good track and stay on it. She wanted to be a neurologist, which sounded like a great idea to Scott; hopefully she’d make enough money to support him in his old age.
Another great thing about the school—it was only a couple of blocks from their apartment, and the location was convenient for Scott, as well. He was working as a cable technician for NetWorld, a computer-networking company in Midtown. It was a nice low-key job that kept him out of trouble—and out of the spotlight. Those were his main objectives these days.
Cassie’s mom—Scott’s ex-wife, Peggy—had moved to Portland, Oregon, to take care of her mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Scott already felt tremendous guilt for missing time with Cassie while he’d been in prison, and then putting her through a divorce. He was grateful for the time he had with her now. He had to hand it to her—she was a tough kid and was doing great in school—but he wanted to provide a stable home, to devote himself to being a good father.
Scott set the table and called for Cassie to come out of her room. As always, he had to yell a few times to get her attention, but then she came out and joined him at the table. She had long blonde hair and was effortlessly pretty. Part tomboy, part geek, she wasn’t really into girly things, like shopping and wearing lots of makeup. She wasn’t into sports, either, which was fine with Scott. One of their favorite father-daughter activities was to take apart computers and other electronics, and then put the devices back together. She and Scott used to love playing video games together, building crazy cities on Minecraft, and assembling intricate model airplanes and spaceships. But lately, since she’d started high school, Cassie had stopped hanging out with Scott as much, and she spent a lot of her free time at home Skyping and Facetiming with her friends. Normal teenage behavior, of course, but Scott missed his little girl.
“So,” Scott said, as they started eating, “how was your day?”
“Fine,” she said, looking at her cell. She tapped out a text message.
“Let’s go,” Scott said. “Hand it over.”
“Dad, come on—”
“The phone, right now.”
Cassie rolled her eyes and handed Scott her cell phone. Scott had a rule at the dinner table: If you text at the table, the other person reads the text out loud.
“Thank you, and don’t roll your eyes,” Scott said. He read the text out loud: “I think I’m in love with Tucker McKenzie.”
Cassie was blushing.
“Okay, who’s Tucker McKenzie?” Scott asked.
“Just a person,” Cassie said. “Can I have my phone back?”
Still holding the phone, Scott said, “A person. Okay, that narrows it down. Is he a person who goes to your school?”
“What difference does it make?”
“He doesn’t go to your school?”
“Yes, he goes to my school…oh my god…can I have my phone back?”
“Is he in one of your classes?”
“No, okay? He’s like a tenth-grader.”
“A tenth-grader?” Scott was horrified—a tenth-grader was practically a man. “Isn’t that a little old for you, Cassie?”
“It’s only one year older than me, Dad.”
“It’s a big deal to date someone one year older than you, especially in high school.”
“To what?” she asked.
“Date,” Scott said.
“Huh?”
“Date.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t know what date means?”
“People don’t date anymore, Dad.”
“They don’t? Then dating is just a concept I imagined? I’ve been hallucinating for, well, my entire life?”
“I mean people people. People-in-high-school-type people.”
“Ah, real peo
ple,” Scott said. “I get it now.” He had a feeling she was missing his sarcasm, just like Anne had. For a moment he wondered whether maybe he was the problem. “So what’s dating called these days for real, high-school people?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“It’s called nothing?”
“Just, like, hanging out.”
“Okay, well, if you and this Tucker McKenzie start hanging out, I want to meet him, okay? By the way, I don’t trust that name—Tucker McKenzie. He sounds like a total player.”
“It’s just a name,” she said, “like any other name. And we’re not going to start hanging out. We’re not going to start anything.”
Scott stared at her.
Finally, she said, “Okay, Dad.”
Scott smiled. It felt good: parenting, creating boundaries. All those self-help books he’d read on single parenting were starting to pay off.
Then Cassie said, “What about you?”
“Me?” Scott asked.
“How was your date?” she said, making date sound like something silly that only divorced dads would do.
“How did you know I was on a date?” Scott asked.
“You’re wearing a nicer-than-normal shirt and shoes, not Nike Airs. You might as well be holding a sign.”
Scott had to smile.
“Don’t think I made a love connection,” he said, remembering how Anne had called him a freak.
“Oh well,” Cassie said. “She probably isn’t worth it, then.”
After dinner, Cassie went to her room and shut the door, and Scott heard the lock click. A sign on her door warned, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Scott accepted that Cassie was a teenager now and sometimes needed her space, her alone time. He was glad that her rebellion had manifested as a quote from The Inferno on her bedroom door, instead of drugs or sex. But how long would it be till the full-blown rebellion started? Was Dante only the beginning?
Scott cleaned up, did the dishes, took out the garbage. The hardest part of being a single dad was having to do everything—all the parenting, all the chores—on his own. But there were pluses. Scott and Peggy used to bicker all the time about doing housework, and it was nice to have relaxing evenings at home now. He put on some jazz, flipped through a Time Out New York, watched some BBC detective show on Netflix. At ten o’clock he turned to the news.