“Out with it, girl. I’ve got a room full of thirsty customers,” Eva says. “Who was your first guinea pig?”
“Come on,” Lucy says impatiently.
“Okay, okay!” Martha says, but still pauses several beats. “Ladies, I have found my calling!”
Lucy raises her glass to make a toast and Eva mimes the same. “To FirstDate,” she cheers and the three of them clink glasses, real and pretend.
“That’s right,” Martha says. “No more temping. No more waitressing. I’ve already got more than a week of FirstDates scheduled and I haven’t even opened all the e-mail yet. Not only have I struck a chord in the collective subconscious of men, but they’re actually willing to admit they need help.”
“And pay for it,” Lucy adds.
“They want sex, for Christ’s sake!” Eva says. “The fact that men are willing to humiliate themselves for it is hardly news.”
Martha shushes Eva but is momentarily distracted by the sandy-haired man who smiles at her from across the bar. “He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”
“Take my word, you’re not interested,” Lucy says. “Now, date details please!”
“Okay,” Martha continues. “The stats: Jake Stevens, photojournalist, around forty, short, nice eyes—except they’re focused to the side of my head. I mean, he makes no eye contact. At one point, I turn around to see if there’s a cockroach crawling up the wall or a pinup calendar. What could possibly hold his undivided interest like that? But there’s nothing. So I get down to business and ask him what he thinks his dating issues are. Without skipping a beat he says, ‘I probably just haven’t met the right woman yet.’ ”
“Yeah, Jake, that’s probably it,” Eva snorts.
“My first thought is, Oh my God, they’re all going to say that.” Martha stops. “Then I think of how many times I’ve said it myself.”
Lucy takes a sip of wine. “This is humbling work, Martha. Noble and humbling.”
“Next, I notice that Jake’s hands are trembling—I mean really trembling—and I’m thinking, Um, isn’t that sort of a problem for a photojournalist?”
“Maybe he’s just nervous to be on a date,” Lucy says.
Eva shakes a martini. “As opposed to how he feels taking pictures in war-torn wherever.”
“Well, I have to admit I was nervous, too,” Martha says. “But I just treated it like stage fright and got into character. Remember that nurse I played on All My Children?”
“Sure,” Lucy says. “You were good.”
“I was great,” Martha says, clearly still riding high on the adrenaline wave of the evening. “With Jake I became the empathetic and highly efficient Nurse Joanne all over again. And it worked. I said to Jake: ‘Here’s the deal. For the first ten minutes, I’ll ask you questions; after that, we pretend it’s a real date.’ Then I asked him all the questions we came up with—what are his dating fears, what type of woman does he want to meet, blah, blah, blah.”
“And you told him the rules?” Lucy asks.
“No kissing, no second dates, and, once the date starts, no questions of the how-am-I-doing variety. We’ll go over everything in the debriefing.”
“Cool,” Lucy says. “And how’d phase two go?”
“That’s where things got tricky. When we left the bar, Jake took me to Yak-Yak.”
“Yak-Yak?”
“A Tibetan restaurant in the East Village. Four tables. No chairs. Cushions on the floor. It was by the grace of God that I’d decided not to wear my pencil skirt. I’d have never made it down. Anyway, Jake is talking so quietly”—Martha lowers her own voice—“I have to lean over the table to hear him. I say, ‘Excuse me?’ and he tells me he’s a Buddhist and would like to meditate for a few minutes before dinner. Next thing I know, he’s ohming away.”
“Jesus,” Eva says.
“What did you do?” Lucy asks.
“What could I do?” Martha replies. “But whether it’s Buddhism or Yak-Yak, something suddenly starts working for Jake. His hands stop shaking and he gets all serene, sitting cross-legged on his pillow. In fact, he’s so Zenned out that I start to feel like I’m intruding on what has become his date.”
Martha turns to Eva: “Ask me about the wine list.”
Before Eva can get the words out, Martha plunges on. “No wine. No beer. No nothing. Can you imagine?”
“Heart surgery without anesthesia,” Eva says.
“Jake tells me to try the tea with yak butter. ‘It’s delicious,’ he says.”
“Why even bother trying to help men?” Eva asks, refilling Martha’s glass. “Men are men, and even you won’t be able to change them.”
“Now don’t start down that road again,” Martha says. “You’re becoming a cliché: the beautiful man-hating lesbian.”
Eva mouths the word beautiful back to Lucy and basks in the compliment. Then she leans over the bar, resting on her elbows so that her breasts are sandwiched between her biceps, and addresses both women: “Humor me. Think of the best man you know, picture how smart and good he is, remember the kindest thing he’s done for you, the funniest joke he’s ever told.”
Martha imagines her brother, Jesse, and Lucy thinks of her boyfriend, Adam. Both women smile.
“Now, compare those men with the best women you know.”
Lucy and Martha hear the jaws of Eva’s trap slam shut.
“You see? Even the best man you know only makes a so-so woman,” Eva says. “Am I right?”
Lucy swivels on her stool to face Martha. “So how was the tea with yak butter?”
Martha crinkles her nose. “Just as greasy and gross as it sounds. I only took one swallow. I mean, who in his right mind takes a first date to a vegetarian restaurant that serves no booze unless he’s squared it with her in advance?”
Lucy sighs. “Someone passive-aggressive?”
“More like Buddhist-aggressive,” Martha says. “But you know what? The beauty of FirstDate is that at our follow-up meeting tomorrow, I get to send Jake off on the path of dating enlightenment and start anew. Now, enough about me, already. Spotlight on you!” She points to Lucy’s magazine. “What animal porn are you reading tonight?”
Lucy looks at her Biology Today. “The usual stuff: all the ridiculous things males do to win females.”
“Ah, yes. My favorite topic. Go on.”
Lucy smiles. “This one is about a type of swallow that grows extremely long tail feathers to impress the ladies. And yet, the added weight can keep him from getting off the ground.”
“Seems like a small sacrifice to make,” Martha says, eyeing a man who doesn’t help his date with her coat.
“It’s not, though,” Lucy says. “Some of these males literally can’t fly, never mind helping with the nest work.”
“Let me get this right: In order to get the girl, the boy incapacitates himself?” Martha asks, thinking, That’s so sweet.
“Like women who wear stilettos,” Eva sneers, managing to serve the rest of her customers and still catch most of their conversation.
“In nature, the rules are reversed,” Lucy says. “Males must please females, no matter the cost.”
“So what’s in it for the girl if her guy can’t build a nest?” Martha asks.
“Think George Clooney. Would it bother you if he couldn’t patch the roof?”
“Point taken.”
“In the end, it all depends on what females need males for. In species where males help with domestic matters, females select based on domestic skills; in species where they don’t”— Lucy points to her magazine article—“females select according to aesthetic preferences. But in both cases, the males are always the seducers. They do whatever it takes—whether that means butting heads, fanning feathers, or flying loop-de-loops—to attract a mate.”
“So why are human men so hopeless in courtship?” Martha asks.
Lucy shrugs. “No idea.”
“But Adam seduced you, didn’t he?”
Good question, Lucy thin
ks back. Had Adam seduced her? Not really. She’d noticed him first, hunched over some economics book in the library. Then she’d switched cubicles to get a little closer. When she got a good look at his soulful brown eyes, she’d made a point of saying hello. “Now that I think about it, I’m not so sure,” she admits.
“Well, who asked who to dinner the first time?”
Lucy hesitates. “I think it was one of those impromptu grab-a-bite-after-work things.”
“Who kissed who first?” Eva asks. “I know you remember that!”
Silence. “Well, Adam did kiss me, but I think I might have said something to encourage him.”
“Something like ‘Hurry up and kiss me, already?’ ” Eva adds.
Martha glares at her, but Eva doesn’t back down. Her look says, See, I told you, even the best men are lacking!
“Actually, Eva’s right,” admits Lucy.
“Who cares?” Martha says, sensing she’s hit a nerve. “What’s important is that you’re together now. You two love each other and that’s all that matters.”
“I guess so,” Lucy says, but her voice gets small. “Spotlight back on you. Seems to me someone has to find a legit date in the next ten days or risk the consequences of a failed New Year’s resolution.”
“What are the consequences again?” Martha asks.
“Dinner at the restaurant of my choice, which could get expensive once a month for a whole year,” Lucy says. “Besides, you promised you’d try.”
CHAPTER 2
“I love the idea of two sexes, don’t you?”
James Thurber
THE COST TO Martha for breaking her New Year’s resolution and not going out on a date in January is dinner for two at a pricy sushi bar in the West Village, where Lucy orders every delicacy she can think of—sea urchin with quail egg, fatty tuna, baby yellowtail, giant clam—on the assumption that a little financial squeeze will help persuade her friend to find a date in February. Lucy puts a piece of ginger on top of the last glistening slab of fish, dunks it in soy sauce, and pops it in her mouth. A moment later, she reaches for the menu. “Anything else for you?”
“I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work,” Martha says. “You’re forgetting that money is no longer an issue. I had four FirstDates last week, so eat until you burst.”
Lucy sighs and orders a pot of green tea instead. “How were those dates anyway? Any more religious fanatics?”
Martha shakes her head. “They were a peculiar bunch, all strangely nonmasculine. You know the type I mean. Good-looking, immaculately dressed, very witty, but with zero sexual vibe. Yet supposedly straight.”
“Exactly the kind of man you don’t want to be stranded on a desert island with, right?”
Martha nods and is silent for a moment. “Here’s a question for the biologist in you: If these femmy straight guys don’t know how to seduce women, aren’t they bound for extinction?”
“Only time will tell, I guess,” Lucy says, thinking of Adam, who’s gentle and cerebral, and arguably not a paragon of masculinity.
“Why is it that so many guys today don’t seem to know how to do basic man stuff? How have we lost that in a single generation?” Martha tries to think if she’s ever had a handy boyfriend. “Our fathers knew how to repair things, yet no man within ten years of our age does. What do you do when something breaks around your apartment?”
“The little things I take care of myself,” Lucy says. “For the complicated stuff, I wait for Cooper’s visits. Last time he was in town, he rewired a lamp, fixed the vacuum cleaner, and built shelves for my shoes in my bedroom closet.”
“Ah, that Cooper,” Martha says, thinking of Lucy’s best friend from college. “What do you think accounts for the difference in him? How does he know how to do everything?”
“Growing up on a dairy farm had to have helped. It wasn’t as if the Tuckingtons could call the superintendent every time something broke,” Lucy says. “Cooper’s just so capable and resourceful, he could survive in the woods for weeks with only a penknife. But he’s also polite in the way men from our fathers’ generation are. He holds doors and carries things, and it never feels patronizing. It feels natural.”
“And as I recall, he’s also big and handsome and strong,” Martha says, smiling. “Now remind me again why you two never hooked up?”
Lucy recollects the huge crush she had on Cooper when he was her residence counselor freshman year. “Oh, you know. In the beginning, one or the other of us was always involved with someone and then we just got to know each other too well to date.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means the man drinks Coke with breakfast, for God’s sake, and reads the last page of a novel first.”
And the problem with that would be? Martha wonders.
Lucy takes a sip of tea. “We do have the Pact, of course,” she says, referring to their promise to be each other’s backup if neither was married by the time Lucy turned thirty. Four years ago (on Lucy’s twenty-ninth birthday), they upped it to thirtyfive.
The last of Martha’s backups got married years ago. “At the risk of sounding like a snob, how does a Columbia graduate end up a dairy farmer?”
Lucy had asked Cooper the same question a dozen times in college. “If he were here, he’d challenge you to explain why the lessons of literature and philosophy are more germane to your life than his,” she says, picturing Cooper milking cows at dawn with a copy of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil in his back pocket.
“I guess he has a point. It’s not as if my psychology degree has done a whole lot for my acting career,” Martha says, applying a perfect coat of bloodred lipstick. “So, do you have any plans after dinner?”
“An article on the monogamous nature of the California mouse and then bed,” Lucy replies.
“You mean all mice aren’t rats? And here I’ve been looking for a man when all I really need is a mouse!” Martha shakes her head. “Why don’t you come over for a nightcap? I’m meeting Jesse at my apartment in a half hour. He’s going to help me put up a shelf.”
“Put up a shelf?” Lucy says. Her tone implies the rest: Your brother? Carpentry? Are you kidding?
“Tread lightly, Luce. We’re talking about my gene pool.”
“I just had no idea he was even remotely handy.”
“Well, I’ll have to let you know tomorrow if you’re going to pass up a ringside seat.”
“Hey,” Lucy says, as Martha gets ready to leave, “let’s not forget the purpose of our little meal tonight.”
“To punish me for not having a date?”
“Not punish, Martha. I’m on your side. Can’t we at least try to discuss why you’ve been such a hermit lately?”
Martha shrugs. “I’ve been busy,” she says, sinking back into the chair and wrapping her cardigan tightly around herself. “I don’t know, Luce, it feels too hard. Besides, I was dating in January. Sort of.”
“FirstDates don’t count.”
Martha shrugs again.
“Who was the last guy you went out on a real date with?”
“Simon Hodges.”
“The political historian who nearly bored you to death? That was months ago.”
“What can I say? Simon was the straw that broke this camel’s back. I don’t even know why. He didn’t do anything terrible, but part of me gave up after him.”
“Gave up what?”
“All hope?” Martha forces out an unconvincing laugh.
“Oh, Martha. I know it’s hard,” Lucy says. “But maybe you could pretend that every date you go on is a story you can tell me later. The bad ones will be hilarious and, eventually, there’ll be a good one. I was about to give up when I met Adam, remember?”
Martha makes an effort to smile, but it fades almost immediately. “I just wish my mother felt the same way.”
“What did she do this time?”
“Nothing, really. Her attitude has shifted, though.” Martha fills her mug with tea. �
�After a lifetime of telling me that no man is good enough—this one’s forehead slopes, that one doesn’t make enough money, he drinks too much, and so on—suddenly Mom’s panicking. She used to worry that I’d settle for someone beneath me. Now she’s worried that no one will settle for me.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yesterday she called to tell me that I shouldn’t feel like I’ve totally missed my chance at marriage. ‘There are still widowers,’ she said.”
“No!”
“I swear, Luce, if I brought home a Neanderthal tomorrow, my mother would tell me how charming knuckle-dragging can be.”
Lucy pictures Martha’s mother, Betsy, in action. An inveterate hostess, Betsy approaches motherhood with the detached politeness of a flight attendant. She treats her daughter like a first-class passenger, making sure she’s comfortable and well fed, and always keeps the conversation breezy.
“She actually suggested that I go out with Stanley.”
“As in the neighbor’s son who thinks he’s writing the Great American Novel and still lives at home at the age of forty?” Lucy asks. “That Stanley?”
“That Stanley.”
Lucy takes off her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if there’s one thing that your mother’s good for, it’s making me feel slightly better about my own.”
“I feel exactly the same way about your mom.” Martha laughs. “Virginia scares the hell out of me.”
“My mom is scary,” Lucy says, “but at least she’s still in the no-man-is-good-enough-for-me camp. Of course, that includes Adam.” Lucy sighs. “I get so tired of her trashing him. It’s as if she wants me to doubt him.”
“She probably does. That way you depend on her more, right?”
“Exactly. But as much as I try to ignore her, what she says seeps into my head. Then, when Adam does something annoying, I hear her voice coming out of my mouth.”
“Oh God. The dreaded realization that you’re turning into your mother,” Martha says.
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