Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel

by Nancy Kim

  Nearly all the men are looking for women younger than they are. A few give the upper limit at forty. No man is looking for a woman more than two years older than he is. One man, John431, age forty-six, is looking for “a long-term relationship, possibly marriage” with a woman eighteen to twenty-five. Eighteen?

  There are two ways to find a perfect setmeup on setmeup.com. You can post your profile, with a picture, and wait for someone to notice you. Or, you can adopt the “take your life in your own hands” approach and send an email yourself. While I would never approach a man in a bar, being online makes me feel braver. A handful of men describe themselves as “nice guys”: “The last nice guy in Southern California . . .” “A nice guy who is looking for a serious relationship . . .” “A nice guy who wants to meet someone . . .” I like nice guys but am a little leery of men who describe themselves as nice guys. Who says? Can I ask your last girlfriend? I exclude the long-bearded fellas, the fatty good old boys, the guys who look like they’ve spent the last few years in state prison, and the ones who are clearly insane, illiterate, or perverted (“The Lord hath ordered all Christian men to find theeselves womin . . .” “Firehorse looking for lovefire for me . . .” “I love food and fun and GOOD SERVICE for delicious taste . . .”). I also eliminate the ones who obviously can’t spell (“Funny, outgoing, inteligint . . .” “Loves movies, dansing, moonliting . . .”) but not the merely typo-prone (“Nice guys looking for someone with whom I can . . .” “Enjoy hiking, biking, swimmingg and . . .”), since that would eliminate virtually all of them. Out of the five hundred men, I have narrowed my list down to . . . seven. From that seven, I pick two: “Nice guy looking for partner,” even though I’m suspicious of nice guys, and “Enjoys hiking, picnics, and good conversation.” I consider adding “Food and wine lover looking for someone who enjoys life . . .” but fear that could be code for “Fat alcoholic hedonist looking for same.” Maybe when I get a little more comfortable with this whole online-dating scene, I’ll be less suspicious and give “Food and wine lover” a chance if he’s still available.

  So, now I have two potential setmeups. I can either send them an email and start a conversation, or I can take the chickenshit approach and send them a “smile.” The smile lets them know I’m interested and invites them to check out my profile. If they’re interested in me, then they can email me. It’s a more passive approach, but the rejection is milder. I take the chickenshit approach. I send my two smiles and then, to stop myself from obsessively checking my email, I log out of the computer. I even go so far as to switch off the surge protector. The whole machine noisily shuts down, and all the bleeping lights extinguish.

  I haven’t had a date, a real date, for about . . . twenty years. I can’t believe it, but it’s true. I met Louis when I was eighteen. Suddenly I remember the two of us, sitting at a coffeehouse on campus, studying for an anthropology final. We are drinking cappuccinos and sharing a piece of shortbread the size of a brick. He saves the last bite for me, even though I know that he wants it.

  I can still feel the smooth wood bench underneath my khaki shorts, smell the bitter espresso, taste the buttery shortbread. A tear slips down my cheek, and then a couple more, but I don’t wipe them away, afraid that if I move, the memory will disappear like a startled rabbit down a hole.

  Nice Guy emails me first: Thanks for smiling at me. I’m not exactly sure how this works, since I just signed on with this service. Do you want to meet for coffee?

  Getting coffee seems to be the activity of choice for setmeup first dates. It’s safer—less chance of someone slipping you a drug and carrying you out the door claiming that you’re drunk. Less time consuming, in case the date turns out to be a complete bust, and if it turns out to be a good time, you can always linger or move on to dinner. Date progression, Janine calls it. You start small and then build up if it looks promising. Kind of like buying a starter home, I guess. I email Nice Guy back: Coffee sounds great.

  Later that evening, Nice Guy emails me with three choices for dates and times at Spilled Beans in Brea, written as though they are answers to a multiple-choice question.

  I pick (c), I write, which is Sunday afternoon—tomorrow—at three o’clock.

  I don’t expect him to write back, but he does. I look forward to meeting you.

  Polite, and he writes in full sentences.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I posted the best picture of myself I could find, but now I’m worried that Nice Guy is going to expect me to be better looking and thinner than I am. I don’t have the shiny jet-black sheet of hair that Asian women are famous for—my hair is wavy and more dark mahogany than black as I rapidly descend into middle age and lose my pigmentation along with my jawline. I haven’t put on a pair of real running shoes since the turn of the century. I’ve started to develop a slight bra overhang, and the twin peaks inside that bra are looking more like melting glaciers. And don’t get me started on the pillowy softness of my belly and the age spots that have started to appear on my neck. I get onto the floor right then and there and start to do a hundred sit-ups. I stop at ten and take a breather. I wiggle my way up to ten more sit-ups with the help of my hands on my knees, then spring up from the floor like a ninja before crashing back down on my rear like the out-of-shape klutz that I am. Now, time for a nutritious fiber-filled breakfast.

  An hour before my scheduled date, Janine calls.

  “Are you checking up on me?”

  “Yes. Are you nervous?”

  “No, it’s just coffee.”

  She cackles. “What are you wearing?”

  “Pink lace undies with ruffles, why do you ask?”

  She laughs again. “You are on edge!”

  “What do you expect? I’m going on my first date in twenty years.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Thanks for the support.”

  “Don’t forget to ask if he has any hot friends.”

  “That’ll be the first thing out of my mouth.”

  I hang up before she can say anything else.

  I won’t even bother describing the numerous outfit changes. Let’s just say that I end up wearing the first outfit I tried on and leave the mess in my room for later.

  It is two fifty-five when I get to Spilled Beans. Two fifty-eight. I check my lipstick in the rearview mirror. Exactly where I left it, on my lips. I check my teeth. Why does my skin look so bad in the rearview mirror? Every line is magnified. Is this really how others see me in the cruel glare of sunlight? Maybe I should move to Seattle. Three oh one. I get out of the car. I take a deep breath.

  I walk up to the counter, pretending I’m just here to get a coffee, as though I need the caffeine. My palms are sweating, and I feel light headed. I pay for my coffee and look around, feeling the heat from the paper cup warm my hand. A couple of college students, or are they high schoolers? I can’t tell anymore. An old man reading the newspaper. For a minute, my heart stops. But that can’t be him. Mr. Nice Guy posted his picture. I avoid eye contact, just in case. I head for the only empty table and notice a man sitting alone at a table outside. We make eye contact. He smiles. I smile back. He points to himself and then to me, meaning Should I come to your table? I shake my head and point to myself and then to his table. I walk outside, trying not to spill my drink, trying not to look nervous, trying to be perfect.

  He stands up as I approach, a gesture that I simultaneously appreciate and hate because it’s polite but draws attention to us. It also makes me feel feeble.

  “Alice?”

  “Hi.”

  “I’m Rick.” He pulls out a chair for me, and I sit. He is better looking than in his profile photo. He has thick, closely cropped dark-brown hair with flecks of gray, dark-brown eyes, and a strong jaw.

  “Have you been waiting long?” I ask, and then I pray that he didn’t notice me pull up, didn’t see me sit inside my car and check my lipstick and my teeth.

  “No, not at all.”

  I notice that he i
s not eating or drinking anything. I realize that he was waiting for me before he ordered. I look guiltily at my coffee.

  He stands. He is tall, at least a couple of inches over six feet. He is broad in the chest and trim in the waist. His jeans fit well. “Do you want anything else?”

  The else makes me blush. I shake my head. What is a man like this doing on an online-dating site? Why isn’t he already married to a former supermodel, with three gorgeous kids and a McMansion in the suburbs?

  He returns holding a cappuccino in one hand and a giant chocolate chip cookie in the other. He breaks it in two and offers half to me. Is this some kind of test? Is he checking to see whether I’m a dieting freak? A no-carb kind of gal? Or is he just being polite, and really what he wants is to scarf the whole cookie by himself?

  I take the cookie and place it on the napkin that he was thoughtful enough to bring. If he really didn’t want to share his cookie with me, he wouldn’t have brought two napkins, now, would he?

  He is looking at me expectantly. Did I miss a question?

  “Excuse me?”

  He is looking at the crumbled mess on my napkin. I’ve been playing with my food.

  “I guess I’m nervous.”

  He smiles and my stomach wraps around itself. “I guess you haven’t done this before.”

  I feel my face get hot again. I am having a hard time paying attention to what he is saying. “Excuse me?”

  “Online dating, I mean.”

  I take a sip of coffee and glance around. He laughs. I swallow hard and drop a few crumbs into my mouth.

  I learn that Rick is an architect with his own firm, that he likes to travel, and that he is forty-one years old. He was born in a suburb of Chicago but spent much of his childhood traveling and living in Haiti, Mexico, and the Philippines, all places where he has family. His upbringing sounds complicated and incredibly glamorous and worldly compared to my boring, stable one. He attended boarding school in England as a teenager and architecture school in California, where he met his wife. His marriage ended in divorce about six months ago (no kids), and he is just now ready to start dating.

  Janine says that a good coffee date is supposed to lead to dinner. Rick stands up at four o’clock and mentions that he has to be somewhere, which tells me something. It doesn’t matter. By the end of the hour, I am exhausted from the effort of trying to be good enough. My mouth hurts from smiling, and I have a slight headache. I call Janine as soon as I get into the car, and we meet at El Toreador later that evening.

  “So?” she asks, a sly look on her face, as though expecting to hear that I am planning to run off with my new setmeup.

  I sit down in the booth across from her. In between bites of chips and sips of margarita, I tell her everything I know about him. She smiles dreamily.

  “When are you going to see him again?”

  “Probably never.” I take another swig of my drink and pull it closer to my side of the table.

  She narrows her eyes and leans across the table so that her shirt gapes open like a yawn. “You don’t sound thrilled. His background sounds amazing, and I thought you said he was hot.”

  “He’s good looking, yeah. Amazing, really.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t think we hit it off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. We didn’t hit it off. I mean, he was perfectly nice, but I’m here and not at dinner with him.”

  “Did you have stuff to talk about, or were there awkward silences?”

  “We talked the whole time.”

  “Did he look bored?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did he make eye contact? Did he pay attention when you were talking?”

  I remember his dark-brown eyes looking into mine. My stomach does a somersault just thinking about it.

  “I guess.”

  “It’s the usual Alice thing. You just have no grip on reality.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t been on a date in nearly two decades! I’m telling you, I’ve been in the trenches. It’s not easy and it’s not fun. And he sounds like someone you made up.”

  “I didn’t make him up.”

  “I know you didn’t. What I mean is that he sounds great. It sounds like a perfect date.”

  “It was a perfectly fine date. We just had coffee.”

  “You have no idea how lucky you got. Your first setmeup, and you don’t get a pervert or someone who is six inches shorter than his profile. The fact that he resembles his profile picture is amazing!”

  “He actually looks better than his profile picture. But I seriously doubt that he’s going to call. He’s out of my league.”

  “Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror? Do you even know what you look like? I think you’re just afraid of being in a relationship. You’re afraid of rejection, and you’re afraid of making yourself emotionally vulnerable.”

  I cringe and hunch my shoulders. Fortunately, the music is loud and nobody can hear us.

  “Don’t you want to be in a relationship?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard to tell with you, Alice. Sometimes I just don’t know.”

  “Why? Because I’m not talking about getting married to someone I just met?”

  “He checks all the boxes.”

  “I don’t have a checklist.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Anyway, he’s too good to be true.”

  She furrows her eyebrows suspiciously. “Do you think he was lying? That he’s one of those online scam artists, like that guy I met who dined and ditched me?”

  “I don’t think so. But maybe. I mean, why else would he be on an online-dating site?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There must be something wrong with him.”

  “Alice! You’re on an online-dating site. I’m on an online-dating site! You told me to do it.”

  “Yeah, but that’s different.”

  “Why? How?”

  I look at her, and she is glaring at me. “There’s a difference,” I say slowly, reminding myself to tread lightly here—minefields abound.

  “Yeah, and what’s that?” Her nostrils are slightly flared, and her face is flushed.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “The problem is, I do know what you mean, Alice. You think I need to be on a dating website and you don’t. You’re just doing it for me.”

  “Listen, you are making too big of a deal of this.”

  Janine takes a long slurp of her margarita. No, wait, that’s my margarita, but I don’t care. I just want to go home.

  “You have no idea how hard it is to be your friend sometimes.”

  “No, I guess I didn’t know that it was so hard to be my friend.”

  “Sometimes I feel like the main reason we’re friends is so that you can feel better by comparing yourself to me.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  She shrugs and takes another sip of my margarita.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” she says. “I’m your pathetic single friend. The one who will probably never get married. Don’t think I can’t tell.”

  This conversation has veered into dangerous self-pitying, drunken territory.

  “If you felt so resentful, why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  “And hear you deny everything? That’s the thing about you, Alice. You don’t say anything. But you’re not fooling anybody.”

  “I’m not trying to fool anyone!”

  “Only yourself. Remember that night at Megan’s? The summer before you left for college?”

  It was the night my former prom date aurally treated everyone to his deflowering.

  “You don’t have to bring that up . . .”

  “Jim was screwing that girl from Saint Vincent’s, and everyone at the party could hear them? And he was your boyfriend, and you didn’t do anything about it!”

 
; “He wasn’t my boyfriend. We just went to the prom together. I even told you that back then.”

  Janine’s features harden. Her pity has vanished, and in its place is contempt. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about that. What’s the point?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I really wasn’t upset. I felt weird because everyone was looking at me, but you were more upset about it than I was.”

  I can still hear Janine banging on the locked bedroom door. Her cries echoed down the stairs, “Open the door, you asshole! Open the goddamned door!” I remember Jim’s best friends, Walter and Greg, snickering and elbowing each other. Still, the moans from the bedroom didn’t stop.

  “You know why I was upset?” Janine asks. I shake my head and reach for my purse, but she grabs my wrist and forces me to look into her eyes. “You broke the Number One Friendship Rule.”

  “So did you.”

  “You broke it first. You knew I had a crush on him even before he asked you out. I told you how excited I was when he told me he wanted to talk to me about something important. You remember?”

  I do remember. She had thought he might ask her to the Homecoming Dance. I remember that she wore her best jeans and freshened up her shiny pink lip gloss before meeting him at the football field after school. But instead of asking her to the dance, he asked her whether she thought I would go with him. I still remember her face when she told me afterward, her smile wide and stiff, her voice loud with forced excitement. I felt the effort she was making to hide her disappointment. I can still see the contorted expression on her face as she said, “I can’t believe I thought he was actually going to ask me. Who would want to ask fat, zitty Janine?” Then she laughed as though her feelings weren’t hurt at all, and instead of putting my arms around her like I wanted and telling her how beautiful she was and saying, Screw him—we’ll stay home and watch a movie on my parents’ new VCR, I laughed along with her and then told her to tell him yes, I would go with him.