“It’s a matter of commitment,” he replied, totally ignoring me. “Committing to being committed. Ever since you hit adolescence—and I’ve been there every step of the way, remember—you’ve put out vibes that you really don’t care too much about the long run. You’re into the here and now. You’re a creature of the moment. Which is a really cool thing, don’t get me wrong—it’s one of the parts of you I love the best—but what it means is that men pick up on that vibe, sugar.” He pointed at the chart. “Every one of these guys supports my theory. They’re all grasshoppers. We need to find you an ant.”
I slid his green martini toward my side of the table. “I think you’ve drunk enough of this bug juice. I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Charles reclaimed his cocktail. “The Aesop’s fable. You know, the grasshopper lives for the here and now, while the ant stores up for the winter.”
“I don’t think that’s a very exact analogy.”
“Okay, maybe not. But you know what I mean.” He flipped through the Excel chart. “Hey, you know who’s not on here?”
“The President and the Dalai Lama?”
“Them, too. The guy from your birthday party.”
“What guy?”
“The one who owns the bar.”
“Jake? I never went out with Jake!”
“No, the other guy. Mr. Capital Gains or Investment Capital…you know—curly brown hair, Armani tux, good grooming.”
“Oh. Umm…Owen Michaels, his name was. I didn’t go out with him, either. He played Good Samaritan when my place was robbed and then I got a birthday kiss at the end of the night. In fact, he played about the same role you did that night, except he looked a bit slimmer in his tux,” I teased.
“He’s an example, on paper, anyway—which is where you should put him,” Charles said, poking at a page of the chart for emphasis. “So you have a sample—of the kind of man you should be considering from now on. Remember how he sort of took charge after you realized you’d been burglarized? If you didn’t find that sexy, Mia, I did.” He put on his sanctimonious face. “You know, Miss Control Freak, even the most take-charge people like to be taken care of sometimes.”
I did want to call Owen, actually. I’ve got his card someplace; I’m not sure where I put it. I want to talk to him about my ideas for Miamore Makeup. I’ve got some money socked away—maybe I am an ant, after all—and Celestia did say that these days the stars would be on my side in the business sphere. “Yeah, I guess a phone call won’t hurt,” I said to Charles. “I could, like, sound him out about my start-up, in a real low-pressure way. We’ve got a mutual friend in Jake, so maybe I could see if Owen plans to go over to the bar on Saint Paddy’s day.” Jake always does a big thing that night. So if a conversation with Owen—either personal or professional—went south fast, the stakes would be really low and we could still enjoy the night by hanging and talking with other people.
I’m not sure this is a very committed way to commit to committing.
Dear Diary:
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! You can tell in this diary that it’s St. Patrick’s day anyway because I drew a four-leaf clover and a snake. Mrs. Heinie-face did not like my snakes from last week. She said they were disgusting. I said that I know snakes are disgusting and that everyone thinks snakes are disgusting, so it was a good thing that St. Patrick made them go away from Ireland. I made my project so you could put the snakes in Ireland and then take them away, because I just drew a picture and that was Ireland. And the snakes were made out of Play-Doh and I put plastic wrap on them after Mommy and me made them so they wouldn’t get hard. So they were still sticky on their tummies and you could stick them to the drawing or unstick them and take them away. Xander said he liked the snakes a lot and that made me happy.
Mrs. Heinie-face called my mommy and Mommy said that just because Mrs. Heinie-face said that she thinks snakes are disgusting, if she gives me a U because of that, she will make a big complaint about it. Mrs. Heinie-face gave me an S after all. I think my Ireland project was better than Satisfactory. I think I should have gotten an E. I can’t wait until third grade and no more Mrs. Heinie-face. June, when we have our graduation is really, really far away.
Mommy said we could make the leprechaun cupcakes for school but she didn’t want to make them from scratch like it said in my magazine. But the magazine said that if you want to use a cake mix, you could do that, too.
But we didn’t have a lot of the ingredients. Mommy was tired from work when she said we could make the cupcakes because I said “remember I need to bring something Irish to school tomorrow” and then she said okay, but then we had to go to the grocery store because we needed to buy all the ice cream cones and the cake mixes and we had to get the icing and the special candies to decorate them and we had to buy a lot of bags of gum drops so we would have enough of the right colors because they have to look exactly the same as the picture in the magazine.
I stayed up extra late to help because I wanted to do the decorations and that was my favorite part but we had to wait for the cupcakes to cool off before we could decorate them. From the directions we had to paint the cones with green food coloring because the cones are the leprechaun hats. And we had to put vanilla icing on the cake part because those were the heads and the faces and then we had to put candy on it to make the eyes and the nose and the mouth and the beard. But we couldn’t do that unless we turned the cupcakes upside down. Which was really right side up so they would look like leprechauns.
While we were waiting for the cupcakes to be finished baking, Mommy helped me with my homework. We have math that I don’t understand. We have to add numbers that are three numbers big to other numbers that are three numbers big and I keep getting confused. I keep forgetting about carrying numbers. Mommy said that if I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up then I have to know how to do math. Maybe I won’t be an astronaut. I don’t think Rockettes have to know math. And that’s my second choice.
When we took the cupcakes out of the oven, most of them spilled out over the sides of the cones and they were all gloppy. I think it was because Mommy filled them too much, but the recipe said halfway and that’s what she did. I saw her. Mommy said maybe it would be okay when they cooled off. But then some of them flopped out of the cones when we turned them upside down and then others of them, when Mommy tried to cut off the parts that glopped over, they just got all crumbly.
Some of them were okay, but because of the messy ones and the broken ones we won’t have enough for one for each of my class. And then I was crying because we wouldn’t have enough and it was a lot past my bedtime, so Mommy said I should go to sleep and we would wake up extra early and decorate them in the morning, because even the good ones were still too hot to put the icing on.
But in the morning, the cones got all mushy during the night and it made the leprechaun hats all smushy and you couldn’t hold them by the hat to eat them because they were too mushy and the cupcake part squooshed out. So we couldn’t decorate them and I wanted Mommy to make new ones but she said we didn’t have enough time to start all over again from scratch. I said we weren’t doing it from scratch. We were using cake mixes but then she said she meant that we didn’t have enough time to start all over again at all. And she made me add up the numbers like math class. 10 minutes to put all the ingredients together and mix them up and 30 minutes to bake them and then to be extra sure they would be cool so we could decorate them it would be 30 more minutes to wait and then it might take a whole hour just to decorate all of them.
And then Mommy saw what I was wearing to school because we didn’t have to wear our uniforms again today because it’s a special day. She said, “Aren’t you supposed to be wearing St. Patrick’s Day colors?” And I said yes, we could wear green or white or orange or we could put the colors together. I was wearing a yellow dress that Granny Tulia made for me that has bright pink pockets. Mommy said that she didn’t think I was following the rules. And I said yes I
WAS following the rules because Mrs. Hennepin said you could put the colors together and yellow and bright pink makes a kind of orange and orange is one of the St. Patrick’s colors. Mommy thought I should wear something green instead because she said Mrs. Hennepin likes it when people follow the rules. And that she knew Mrs. Hennepin was going to be unhappy with both Mommy and me because I wasn’t following the rules. But I didn’t want to change clothes.
And I was crying because I didn’t want to change and because the cupcakes didn’t come out and because I have to bring something Irish to school and now I don’t have anything and I would get a U for the whole St. Patrick’s Day. I asked Mommy if I could just be sick today from school. But she said no and that I was sick for real last week and already missed a day of school and it wasn’t good to pretend to be sick just ’cause something bad happened.
Mommy told me to stop crying and she got a smile on her face and she said she wasn’t going to make me any promises but she had an idea. So she went to the telephone and she made a call and then when the other person picked up the phone she said “Hi, Dennis, it’s me. Is today still a day off for you?” And I heard her listening. And she smiled even more and she said, “I want to know if you can do Zoë and me a big BIG favor? Can you go to school with her today?”
So Fireman Dennis came to school with me and he talked to our whole class about being Irish and he told us stories that his granny used to tell him when he was a little boy my age about the Little People and the banshees and it was so fun! And Mrs. Hennepin gave me an Excellent for bringing something Irish to class. She said that it was a wonderful surprise. And THAT was the biggest surprise. That I got an E.
Oh. I forgot. Mrs. Hennepin said I didn’t follow the rules with my yellow and pink dress because everybody else was wearing green or orange. And she didn’t understand when I explained it. That I WAS wearing orange. So in art class today I asked Ms. Bland if I was right that yellow and bright pink make orange and she said they make peach which is a shade of orange. And Mrs. Hennepin didn’t like it that I asked Ms. Bland. So I had the best time when Fireman Dennis came to class with me but I had the worst time when I got in trouble for my dress. I don’t think Mrs. Hennepin will EVER like me. She IS a Heinie-face!
Chapter 19
APRIL
“Claire, are you sitting down? I’m getting married!”
“Oh—wow—oh my God, Mia, that’s amazing! I mean—who’s the guy?”
“April Fools!!”
“You witch!”
I laughed. “I could always get you, you know? I’ve been waiting for this for weeks.” Some people look forward to Christmas. Me, I can’t wait for April Fool’s Day to roll around. I was a real prankster at Thackeray, back in the old days. Senior year, sixth form, we dressed like commandos and “liberated” the student body. I think we were trying to reenact the invasion of Grenada or something. I had Claire, who was only in second form then, posted as a lookout. She was pissed at me because we wouldn’t let her do more. I was all for it; I knew she was as good as any of us, but the boys outvoted me. The guys, dressed in camouflage fatigues and toting pretty authentic-looking black plastic machine guns, staged a distraction with “explosives” (baking soda and water in plastic 35mm film canisters) strategically placed in trash cans throughout Thackeray’s halls and classrooms. Then our ringleader nailed Kiplinger with a water balloon and he surrendered immediately. After all, “boys will be boys.”
“Okay, you got me—for the nine zillionth time since I was born,” Claire admitted. “But something must have made you pick that ‘gotcha!’” I could hear her smiling. Her voice took on a sweet, probing quality.
“That Owen Michaels is a pretty cool guy, after all.” Oh, God, I just got an all-gooey face, I’m sure of it. Good thing I don’t have picture phone. I’m so embarrassed. “But, Claire, he’s a DB! On my Excel charts. Charles made me add him, even before Owen and I went out. And he looked like a total keeper on paper, until our actual date, and then I had to add him to the DB category. Although, to be fair, he’s a DB with a star.”
“Don’t be so judgmental. You can be picky about the stupidest things, you know that, Mia? You’re just as bad as your friend Gina with that Adam-Sandler–movies guy. And what do you mean by ‘he’s a pretty cool guy after all’?” Claire quizzed. “He was mighty cool at your birthday. And that’s the only time I met him, but he didn’t come across as an uncool guy at all. Not to me, anyway.”
I told her about our date.
On St. Patrick’s Day, I’d run into Owen accidentally-on-purpose at The Corner Bar, like I’d more or less planned to. Charles came with me, in case I had to bail. That wasn’t the “date,” though. That was just hanging out with a lot of other people around, kind of like my birthday. And Owen had just come from meeting a client, so he was dressed in a suit again, like the first time we’d met. Two smart-ass, ex-dot-com guys who’d gone to Yale, went through job re-training or whatever they call it, something Claire’s ex should have tried. Anyway, these savvy MBAs, seeing all the construction always being done in New York, figured they’d cash in. On the other end. Since there’s no empty land around here, you’ve got to demolish the old structure first. So they went to Owen to help them start up Edifice Wrecks. I told him that just ’cause of the name alone, I’d hire them anytime I had a building I wanted to knock down.
We spent most of the evening talking business, since the atmosphere in the bar was not exactly romantic. Owen listened to my Miamore Makeup pitch and was genuinely interested. It was so loud in The Corner that it was really hard to chat, but he seemed pleased to see me. He said he’d been thinking about me a lot since my birthday, but he’d gone out of town on business, and was swamped when he got back. He told me he was glad he’d run into me, complimented my green mini-dress, and asked me out.
This was cool. Him asking me out, I mean. Very cool. I feel a connection with this guy. I can’t explain it. He’s so different from me. So not my type. But he’s so easy to talk to. It’s like I’ve always known him or something. I have to ask Celestia. Maybe I have known him and it’s some past-life thing. I hope we were never siblings. That would completely skeeve me.
We set up a real date for the following Saturday night.
He rang the bell at six o’clock and I buzzed him in. When I opened my door, I could have died. It, like, wasn’t the same guy. I mean, he can’t dress! I’d seen him in a suit and then a tux and then a suit again. And all three times he looked great. Like James Bond. But he must have a sartorial blind spot for dressing down.
Owen picked up on my reaction immediately. “Is there anything wrong, Mia? You said to dress casual.”
“Caszh isn’t really your thing, is it?” I said, too bluntly. I felt like shit as soon as the words were out of my mouth. His face went all red. “I am so sorry, Owen. I’m an asshole. Please don’t go away. What can I do?” I started to run around the apartment, panicky, picking up a pair of wine stems, looking for a bottle of good stuff. Anything to appease. “Truth told, I’m scared shitless about fucking up this date, and, hey, look! That’s what I did as soon as you showed up! Appearance isn’t everything. It’s nothing, in fact,” I continued to blather.
I uncorked the wine and poured. “Now you’ll think I’m the most shallow bitch in New York, if not on Earth.”
Owen took a glass from my hand. “Slow down, Mia. Calm down. Deep cleansing breaths. All that.” He steered me to my couch and we sat, side by side. “Actually, I dressed this way on purpose.” He was wearing a Harris Tweed herringbone over a brown and orange argyle cashmere V-neck over a blue and yellow tattersall-patterned sportshirt. “I mean not on-purpose badly. This is the kind of thing I always wear when I go casual and I get ribbed about it all the time, but no one wants to tell me why. They’re too busy laughing at me, or else they don’t say anything. Even my sisters refuse to help. They’re all sparing my feelings, I guess.”
“You can’t do anything about your kin, but maybe you need to find yours
elf some new friends. Including me, probably, after what I said to you a few minutes ago.”
“Well, knowing the way you are, a real shoot-from-the-hip kind of person, I figured you’d be honest about it. I realize I need some help, here. But it’s like getting a math problem wrong, and you acknowledge that, okay, you got it wrong, but no one shows you how to get the right answer.”
“Honey, you need more than me. You need the Fab Five.”
“Oh, I’m not that bad,” he chuckled. “I’m a stickler for good grooming and you could eat off my bathroom floor. If you had really a mind to.”
“I think I’ll pass. But I believe you.” I laughed.
He raised his glass. “Cheers.” We took our first sips. “I’m okay with everything else, clothes-wise. I know how to dress up. You’ve seen it. Three times already. So you know it’s not an accident.” He chuckled at his own expense. “I guess it’s a good thing I went into a white-collar profession.”
“How are your comedic skills? Because, with this,” I said, gesturing to his outfit, “you might get hired by Barnum and Bailey.”
“I was a clown, actually. Back in college. I did kids’ birthday parties. I more or less sucked at it,” he added. “That’s when I decided that business school was a better bet for me.”
“I don’t want to spend our first date giving you wardrobe pointers,” I said. “But here’s a quick tip. Lose the sweater for now. ’Cause the jacket and shirt actually coordinate pretty well.”
“But I’m going to need it for where we’re going.”
“Which is…?”
“A night cruise. The food may not be four-star, but it’s good enough. The view, however, can’t be beat.”
I love boats. “You made a good choice. I mean it. It doesn’t have to be a dinner cruise to get me revved up. We could paddle around Manhattan in a kayak with a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and a few cold beers and it would be a great date.”
Play Dates Page 27