I make a salad. I try to start another Edith Wharton novel, but I can't concentrate in the silence of the phone not ringing.
Then I think, What if he does call? I'll just mess it up. The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.
I don't admit to myself what I'm doing when I put my bike helmet on and ride over to the Barnes & Noble a few blocks away. I pretend that maybe I'm just getting another Edith Wharton novel.
But I bypass Fiction and find Self-Help. I think, Self-Help?—if I could help myself I wouldn't be here.
There are stacks and stacks of How to Meet and Marry Mr. Rights, the terrible book Donna told me about, terrible because it works. I take my copy up to the counter, as furtively as if it were a girdle or vibrator.
—•—
There isn't a photograph of the authors, Faith Kurtz-Abromowitz and Bonnie Merrill, but after only a few pages, I see them perfectly. Faith is a reserved blown-dry blonde; Bonnie, a girly-girl, a giggler with deep dimples. I have known them my entire life: in gym class, playing volleyball, they were the ones clapping their hands and shouting, "Side out and rotate—our team is really great!" In college, Bonnie was my Secret Santa. In personnel offices, when I joked about my application phobia, Faith was the one who said, "Just do the best you can."
Now I am turning to them for guidance.
Still, they promise that if you follow their advice, "You will marry the man of your dreams!" And I read on.
Their premise is that men are natural predators, and the more difficult the hunt the more they prize their prey. In other words, the last thing you want to do is tap a hunter on the shoulder and ask him to shoot you.
Half of me has to make fun of the book, if only because I've broken all of their rules—"vows," they call them; the other half is relieved that I haven't broken any with Robert yet.
I read the book from bold blurb to bold blurb until I get to Don't be funny!
I think, Don't be funny?
"Right," I hear smooth, stoical Faith say. "Funny is the opposite of sexy."
"But I'm attracted to funny men," I say.
Bouncy Bonnie says, "We're not talking about who you're attracted to, silly! Go out with clowns and comedians if you want to! Laugh your head off! Just don't make any jokes yourself!"
"Men like femininity," Faith says, crossing her legs. "Humor isn't feminine."
"Think of Roseanne!" Bonnie says.
"Or those fat, knee-slapping girls from Hee Haw," Faith adds dryly.
"What about Marilyn Monroe?" I say. "She was a great comic actress."
"That's probably not why there's a new lingerie line named after her," Faith says.
I say, "But Robert likes me because I am funny."
"You don't know why he likes you," Faith says.
Bonnie says, "You looked terrific in that sheath!"
—•—
I hate this book. I don't want to believe it. I try to think what I do know about men. What comes to mind is an account executive at work saying, "Ninety-nine percent of men fantasize about having sex with two women at once."
My mother hardly ever gave me advice about men, and I only remember asking her once, in fifth grade. I'd dispatched a friend to find out if the boy I liked liked me. "Bad news—" my friend reported, "he hates you."
My mother kept saying, "What's wrong, Puss?" I couldn't tell her. Finally, I asked how you got a boy you liked to like you back. She said, "Just be yourself," which seemed like no advice at all, even then. At a loss, my poor mother suggested I jump on my bike and ride around the block to put roses in my cheeks.
—•—
My brother calls inviting me to a benefit for a theater company Friday night—his girlfriend, Liz, knows the director. "It's a singles event," Henry says.
"Singles?" I say. I think of individually wrapped American cheese slices.
"There's some theme," he says.
"Desperation?" I suggest.
He holds the phone and asks Liz what the theme is.
I hear her say, "It's a square dance."
"A square dance?" he says, in a you're-kidding tone.
"Don't say it like that," she says. "Let me talk to her." She gets on the phone. "Jane?" she says.
"Hi."
"It sounds dorky," Liz says, "but I went last year and it was really fun!"
It occurs to me that I might not like fun.
"You want to meet men," Faith says.
Bonnie says, "Say yes to everything you're invited to!"
"What else were you going to do Friday night?" Faith says calmly. "I think we're talking about Edith Wharton—am I right?"
I'm getting the address of the party when my call waiting beeps. It's Robert. "Hi," I say, flustered. "I'm on another call."
Faith says, "Say you'll call him back."
But I'm confused—isn't this my fish on the line?
"Not yet," Faith says. "He's just a nibble."
I ask Robert if I can call him back.
He says that he's at a pay phone.
"So what?" Bonnie says. "It's a quarter!"
But I say, "Hold on a sec," to Robert and tell Liz I'll see her at the hoedown.
Robert and I talk about how much fun the wedding was. I'm distracted, trying to follow the vows or at least not to break any, but the only ones that come to mind are: Don't say "I love you" first! Wear your hair long! Don't bring up marriage!
He tells me he's in the Village, he's been looking at apartments, and asks if I want to meet for coffee.
Bonnie says, "Don't accept a date less than four days in advance!"
I stall, asking him how the apartments were, until the recorded voice of an operator comes on the line, requesting another nickel or our call will be terminated.
He adds a nickel. "Terminated sounds so permanent," he says. "So final."
I think, Not if you believe in the aftercall. But Faith says, "No jokes."
"So," he says, "do you want to get some coffee?"
I make myself say, "I can't."
"Good girl," Faith says.
"Oh," he says. Pause. Then he asks if I want to have dinner Friday.
"You have plans." Faith says, "Say it."
"I can't Friday," I say.
He goes right by it and asks about Saturday.
"Fine," Faith says.
"Okay," I say to Robert.
Then the operator comes on again, asking for another nickel.
He says, "Listen to her pretending that she didn't interrupt us before."
I am fizzy with elation.
—•—
After therapy, I'm on the elevator when Bonnie says, "That was great!"
"What?" I say.
"You kept the vow Don't tell your therapist about the guide."
"Because I want her to think I'm improving," I say. "I'm hoping that one day she'll say I'm all better and don't need to come back anymore."
"And one day your dry cleaner will recommend hand washing," Faith says, brushing her hair.
—•—
Thursday night, Robert leaves a message with his sister's phone number; I copy it down and pick up the phone to call him back.
"Not yet," Faith says. "Make him wonder a little."
"Isn't that rude?" I say.
"No," Faith says, "rude is not writing that thank-you note to the gay couple who had you out to Connecticut three weeks ago."
"I don't know why you hang out with them anyway!" Bonnie says, looking up from a big bowl of popcorn. "Gay men hate women."
"Excuse me?" I say.
"It's true," Faith says.
"Why am I listening to you?" I ask.
Faith says, "Because you don't want to sleep with Edith Wharton for the rest of your life?"
—•—
I call Robert back from work.
"Eight o'clock okay?" he says.
I agree, barely able to keep the thrill out of my voice.
Bonnie points to her little watch and in a singso
ngy voice says, "Hang up!"
I say, "Look, I have to go."
After I hang up, Bonnie says, "Short conversations! And you be the one who gets off the phone first!"
Faith nods. "Make him long for you."
—•—
The square dance is way on the East Side, in the Twenties, just a gym with a caller in braids. I spot Liz, adorable in overalls, and Henry, still in his suit.
"Howdy-do," I say.
I stand with my brother and Liz. Here I am at a party on a Friday night and I have a date tomorrow. I think, I am a dater; I am a snorkeler in the social swim.
Faith says, "Feels good, doesn't it?"
It does.
Much clapping and stamping and yee-hawing. I can't clap, of course, but I'm about to let out a yee-haw when Faith shakes her head.
"I was just having a good time," I say.
Faith reminds me that that's not what I'm here for.
"This is a singles dance!" Bonnie says, clapping right in time.
Liz says that we should be dancing, and when I agree, she takes it upon herself to find a partner for me.
The guy she brings back is Gus, the stage manager, a big teddy bear with a fuzzy face and teeth so tiny they make him appear not to have any.
He's aware of performing a kindness; he seems to regard me as poor, plain Catherine from Washington Square or poor, sick Laura from The Glass Menagerie.
He takes my hand and leads me danceward.
"Bow to your partner," Braidy says. "Ladies, curtsy."
When Gus and I promenade, he smiles encouragement at me, like I'm Clara from Heidi and he's teaching me how to walk. But I suddenly remember square dancing in gym circa third grade, and it's the nine year old in me swinging my partner and do-si-doing.
"Great!" Bonnie says.
Faith offers up a restrained, "Yee-haw."
After dancing, I'm about to say I'm parched as a possum, but Faith interrupts: "Say, `Let's get something cold to drink,'" and those are the words I say.
"Sure," Gus says.
We go to the beer-sticky bar, and Faith says, "Ask him what a stage manager does."
"Men love to talk about themselves!" Bonnie says.
So I ask, and he says, "I do what no one else wants to do."
I'm told to smile as though captivated.
Sipping a beer herself, Faith says, "Now let him do the work."
I am only too happy to oblige.
Bonnie says, "Let your eyes wander around the dance floor!" But this seems unkind.
"He's a prospect," Faith says, "not a charity."
I look around, and Gus, trying to regain my attention, asks me if I'd like to dance again.
Bonnie says, "One dance per customer."
Instead of saying a jokey Much obliged, but I should join my kin, I anticipate Faith and say, "It was nice meeting you, Gus."
Like a caller herself, Bonnie says, "Circulate!" And I do.
Faith says, "Do not establish eye contact."
"Really?" I ask.
"You think that's the only way to get a man to notice you, don't you?" she says.
"You poor lamb!" Bonnie says.
I've never acknowledged this even to myself. I sound pathetic.
"Yes," Faith says, "especially because nothing is more compelling to a man than a lack of interest."
To my astonishment, she's right. Men appear out of nowhere and glom on to me. Bonnie and Faith tell me what to do, and I obey: I refuse a second dance with a man I'm actually attracted to; I don't enter the pie-eating contest; I ask questions like "What kind of law do you practice?"
By the end of the night, my phone number is in a half-dozen pockets. "This never happened to me before," I tell Faith.
She says, "I know I should feign surprise."
When my brother and Liz walk me to my bike, he says, "Who were those guys you were talking to?"
"Who knows?" I say, giddy with the freedom to make jokes. "I feel like the belle of the ball."
He says, "The ho of the hoedown."
"You know what just occurred to me?" I say, laughing. "I went to a singles square dance in a gym, to meet men."
When Liz says, "You can't think that way," I'm reminded of Faith in personnel saying, "Just do the best you can."
I wonder if my brother is going to marry her.
—•—
Right before Robert arrives, Bonnie says, "Don't be too eager!" When I look in the mirror, my smile is huge and my eyes bugged out with anticipation. I tell myself to think of death. When that doesn't work, I think of yesterday's brainstorming session to name a new auto club for frequent drivers.
Robert buzzes. I open the door and he looks as excited as I did a moment before. He sees Jezebel and gets on his knees and rubs her haunches. "Jezzie," he says.
"Do you want a glass of wine?" I ask.
He does.
He follows me into the kitchen. He's still in apartment-hunting mode, he says, and do I mind if he looks around?
"Go ahead," I say, and he goes.
He asks if I've had a chance to check on vacancies in my building, and I'm reminded of Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard saying, "It wasn't Madame he wanted, it was her car."
"I'm sorry—I haven't," I say, and if I were in one of his cartoons, there would be icicles hanging from my balloon.
Maybe he hears it, because he's quiet a moment. He walks around my living room and stops at the table with my little cardboard barnyard animals on their wooden stands. He picks up each one—the bull, the lamb, the pig, the cow—and reads the breed information on the back. I say that I found them at a flea market in upstate New York; I pictured little farm kids coming in from their chores to play with their cardboard cows and lambs. I'm about to explain what I find moving and also funny, but I see that I don't have to.
He goes to my bookshelves and notices my portable typewriters from the fifties. He whispers their names, "Silent" and "Quiet Deluxe," which is what I did when I first saw them.
—•—
Over dinner, at a goofy little French place in the neighborhood, he asks how I got into advertising.
Bonnie says, "Don't be negative!"
"It started as a day job," I say. I tell him that I thought I'd write plays or novels or appliance manuals at night. But advertising made my I.Q. go down; every night I had to work just to get it back up to regular.
"What did you do?" he asks.
I got rid of my TV, I tell him, and read classics.
"Like which ones?"
"Middlemarch was the first," I say.
He laughs. "You say it like you're not sure I've heard of it."
We keep talking books, and when I tell him that Anna Karenina is my favorite, it seems to have the effect "I'm not wearing any underwear" has on other men.
I say, "The good thing about reading is that you never get blocked—and every page is really well written." He smiles, but seriously, and I can tell he hears what I'm not saying.
I ask about his work, and he says that it's hard to describe cartoons—you wind up just saying the plot, and his cartoons never have one. "I'll show them to you," he says.
When I ask him why he left L.A., he tells me that it was the loneliest place on earth. "Especially when you're hanging out with people," he says. "Everybody smiles at your jokes."
He loves New York, he says. "It's like Oberlin—it's where people who don't belong anywhere belong."
Only when Faith tells me to stop gazing do I realize that I am. I look down at his hand on the table. I see the indent where he holds his pen, which is slightly darkened from ink he couldn't wash off.
Bonnie says, "Ask if he uses a computer."
"You don't use a computer?" I say, which seems like the most mundane question I could ask.
"Just for the animation," he says. "I'm a Luddite, like you on your—" he whispers, "—Quiet Deluxe."
I don't know what a Luddite is, but Bonnie won't let me ask.
When the check comes, Faith says, "Don
't even look at it."
"Let him pay!" Bonnie says.
"What are you thinking about?" Robert asks, putting his credit card in the leatherette folder. "$87.50 for your thoughts."
Be mysterious!" Bonnie says.
"Excuse me," I say, and go to the ladies' room.
"The red wine stained your teeth a little," Bonnie says, handing me a tissue. "Just rub the front ones."
"Listen," I say to them, "I appreciate what you're trying to do for me, but I think I'm better off on my own with Robert."
"Last night wasn't a fluke," Faith says.
"But Robert's different," I say.
"The only difference is that you want him," Faith says.
Bonnie says, "Which is why you need us more than ever!"
—•—
On the way home, Robert takes my hand in his, not lacing our fingers, but really taking ownership of my whole hand.
"Let go of his hand first," Faith says.
I love holding hands. In my entire dating life I have never let go first.
"You can do it," Faith says, and I make myself.
At my door, instead of asking if he can come in, Robert asks if he can take Jezebel out with me.
"On our first date?" I say.
"If you let me," he says, "I'll respect you even more."
Outside, he meets the neighborhood dogs—and says what I always do: "Can I say hello to your dog?" His favorites are my favorites—Flora, the huge bulldog; Atlas, the harlequin Great Dane.
I think, You love dogs as much as I do.
Back at my apartment, I take Jezebel off her leash, and in my mini-vestibule, he leans toward me and we kiss.
"The date ends now," Faith says. "It's not going to get better."
"Okay," I say in my love daze. "Good night, Robert."
His eyes look disappointed, and I want to touch his hand or pull him toward me, but Bonnie says, "Keep him guessing!" And I do.
—•—
He calls the next morning while I'm walking Jez. "Hi, girls," his message says. "I wondered if you wanted to go to the dog run."
There's nothing I want to do more, but I know that I can't.
Bonnie actually gives me a hug.
"I want to see you," Robert says when he calls later.
My whole body hears these words.
He asks when we can get together, and though I think, Right now is too long to wait, I say, "Friday?"