Love Sick (15 page)

“How did your trip change your life?” I asked.

“I was free. I’d go days without talking except to buy food or to get directions. I decided somewhere in Galway that I want to live that way. I have twenty-seven years in with the public schools. I’ll go to twenty-eight and retire.”

“And do what?” I asked. I envisioned him on a bike in Norway in June and on a bike in Australia in January.

“I’m on this date.” He laughed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date. So that’s the first thing. I’d like to take more classes in advanced mathematical theory, complex variables and stuff. I’ve been volunteering at the Madison community garden and I’m playing electric guitar in a band. We’re doing covers of oldies.”

I groaned to myself. I hate doo-wop.

“You know—Harold Arlen, Glenn Miller. Those guys.”

My heart leapt. That’s how I grew up, drinking that music with my baby formula as my parents put on their stiff, whispering evening wear for a night of dancing.

The scalding non-conversation about music with Dar was recent. At least I had a chance in this one.

“That’s fantastic!” I said, visions of being called forward, a new Annie Hall, charming if tending to go off-key in the blue light of “Seems Like Old Times.”

“We’re doing an anniversary party in September, maybe some club dates in bars. I came back from Ireland wanting to live out loud, I guess.”

I didn’t know what to make of this budding John Pizzarelli. He’d scored on tofu but I tied him with photography, he was winning my heart (or whatever it is when you’re still splitting the bill) with Glenn Miller, only to leave the door wide open on “live out loud,” which is what the Oxygen Channel commands its mostly female viewers to do during the Saturday night primetime Jennifer Aniston movie when about the only things you do out loud are cry (at spending Saturday night with Aniston) and scrape (ice cream spoon against dish, the last edible puff of popcorn). Nothing makes me feel like more of a spinster than hearing that motto coming out of my TV.

So I smiled and suggested we walk down to the Promenade. Romantic matters tend to be decided on the Promenade at night. If push has a good chance of coming to shove, it’s going to happen with the panoply of downtown Manhattan painted across the river and sky.

“Do you have a favorite song?” Lou asked as we walked down Montague.

“That’s an impossible question,” I answered. “It depends on my mood and the circumstances and every other thing I can think of.”

“Okay, composer.”

“H’mm. Bach. But if you’re asking because of your band, I’d go with Gershwin.”

“Not bad,” he said. “How about Kern?” He began humming a slow, sad tune and dwindled into a few words, “‘Yesterdays . . . Days I knew . . . ’ Know that song?”

“Nope,” I said, and kept walking as I stared straight ahead.

He started again with a soft little scat and then, “Keep on smilin’.” He looked down at me.

“Nope,” I said again.

He sighed heavily. Was he one up on music in general or two up on individual songs? Where’s Alex Trebek when I need him? I considered singing Will’s “We dined on garr-bage” song. It never failed to have me in stitches, but I didn’t think Lou was interested in getting a laugh out of his music.

Ironic, then, that he turned jaunty and jivey and I let him go on before cutting in with “
Den mann Mackie Messer nennt
.” I laughed. “That was too easy,” I chided. “I have the original cast recording of
Threepenny Opera
. Berlin, 1930: can you imagine? What was Hitler doing in 1930?”

He laughed, too. “Mackie Messer, huh?”

We walked along the iron railing over the skeletons of the old waterfront being turned into one of those parks every Iron Belt city has these days. I hate competition. It makes me shrink and feel stupid. I looked up at him as I sang, “You say knife and I say
Messer
, you say chest, I say dresser. Knife,
Messer
, chest, dresser. Let’s call the whole thing off.”

“So you do know something about the era.”

“Uh, yeah. Bits and pieces. Sometimes I surprise myself and know the lyrics and then again I’ll think I know them and can only get through a line or two.”

“You have a nice voice,” he said.

“Thank you. It helps when I get to choose the register.” As compliments go, that’s got to be my favorite—and least received.

He walked me home and kissed me on the lips, chastely.

“I enjoyed the evening,” I said.

“Me, too. Let’s do it again sometime.”

“I look forward to it.”

He turned and walked back toward the R train. I told Daisy that I liked this one, I thought, that maybe that I’d misinterpreted, and he wasn’t trying to one-up me. If I was lucky, I’d impressed him as someone who has her own Stuff. A traveler, a taker of pictures, not so thoroughly dumb about music. Witty, I hoped. Daisy snuffled along the gutters looking for chicken bones and Cheerios and had no advice on the subject. She pretty much loves any visitor and lives for sleepovers when she can slither in between two sets of adoring hands.

With that in mind, I wrote him a quick email, thanking him for the stories and telling him his journey interested me. Had he used the word “journey” with me I would have choked but it’s the sort of word most people love thinking they are a part of.

I waited three days before deleting his email address. I remembered after I did so that he’d been singing “Wives and Lovers” under his breath when we walked home. I should have taken that (“There are girls at the office, and men will be men . . .”) as a warning.

While I was at it, I should have listened to my own warning in the half-conscious sound track of “But Not for Me” that had been playing in my own head.

• • •

I was already laughing when I sat down at the bar to wait for Galean. A friendly Goth girl in polka dots and crinolines brought me a club soda and laughed back when I said, “I’m meeting a guy for the first time and it doesn’t matter what he’s like.
This
is a date!”

It was also
my
date. I’d posted it on How About We, a New York–centric site on which people propose specific dates. How About We is romantic, but it also has a huge spirit of fun that leaves room for kindred desires that might not include sex. I’d read about it in the
Times
, which tracked dating trends through its postings. In June, it seemed, everyone was eating fish tacos.

The one time I had gone bowling it was fun. I was bad at it but there’s an element of luck in it, too. So I suggested bowling and found myself at Bowlmor Lanes on University Place. It’s decorated by someone whose own dating profiles would highlight his favorite movies as
Blade Runner
and
The Wizard of Oz
, and who chose his color palette from the
Smurfs
and Legoland, assisted by Pee-wee Herman. Even if Galean turned out to be Sol from Bleecker Street, my club soda under the déjà vu of all the gay clubs I’ve been in would be worth it.

An arm reached around me and turned my book over. “
The Beauty Myth
,” Galean—at least I supposed it was Galean: he looked like his photo, shaved head, Mephistophelean beard—said. “Looks heavy.” He bopped around a little and took a sip of my drink. “Oh no, Frances. No, no, no. What do you
really
want to drink?”

I looked around and laughed. “Margarita, don’t you think?”

“Think? I think it’s as much a rule as wearing bowling shoes.”

“Although I think a blue Hawaiian would go with the décor better.”

“‘Anything that you say, I hear myself agree,’” he sang along to the music and hopped up on the stool next to me. “But I think we only want drinks that come decorated with limes. Don’t you?”

Galean was thirty years old and cute. I’d recently done the cut-color-eyebrow-treatment rounds at my salon and was wearing a white cotton sweater and a white skirt with a big black belt over black leggings. I felt almost cute enough to be with this kid who had melted into the beat and the vibe without hesitation.

Galean was as delighted by his bowling shoes (red and navy) as I was by mine (green and maroon, like ribbon candy). He hesitated over the balls because they gave him the choice of cherry bombs or watermelons. He bragged that he’d knock down the far left pins, then blamed the Blondie song for destroying his concentration or did a chicken dance in victory. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he gave me wretched advice in a low coach’s voice.

He reminded me of Dar. At least until I finished the first margarita. After the second margarita I probably couldn’t have told you Dar’s last name. By the time we’d bowled four games and drunk three margaritas, I proposed marriage to the mozzarella sticks. We sat on a banquette and drank a last margarita, refusing to give up our shoes until we had to.

“I like the Bingo Players,” he said into my ear, “but not for a bowling alley. People waiting their turn or walking up to the lane, they want to sing along.”

“Yeah, you were jammin’ on Joan Jett out there.”

“That’s because I
am
Joan Jett.” I looked at him skeptically. “Really. My hair is black, I have black eyes, I own a leather jacket.”

“You’ve convinced me,” I assure him.

“Bowling should be balletic. Especially when you’re as bad as we are. All we can do is work on presentation. Being that I’m Joan Jett, no one had the balls to look at my score. I rule Bowlmor.”

“No such luck for me,” I lamented. “I can only say that I throw a beautiful gutter.”

“Oh, but it’s important to throw gutter balls. It’s Rosie the Robot’s job to retrieve them.” He made two high squeaks. I looked at him blankly, then squeaked back in my Flipper voice. “Don’t change mediums on me here. I can’t make you laugh under water. Let’s stay in Orbit City, daughter Judy, and worry about Spacely’s Space Sprockets. Understood?”

Maybe it was four margaritas or my string of God-awful dates, or maybe mirth is a dearly loved and dearly missed commodity in my life, but I was rubbing my aching cheeks.

“Because if it wasn’t for Spacely’s Space Sprockets I’d have to worry I’d drunk to excess and that would defeat George Jetson’s computer, which is very specifically against cruelty to humans. Let’s give our shoes back and take a walk.”

I was surprised to find a bouncer and a velvet rope outside. I don’t think Bowlmor discriminates according to looks and connections, but latecomers definitely had to wait their turn while Galean picked out a pink ball and sang, “I hate myself for loving you” to it before rattling it into two pins.

I felt . . . young. The line of pretty people
we
had usurped was a grandeur I couldn’t have predicted. It was warm but not as oppressive as four hours ago. NYU students and faux-hipsters filled the sidewalk bars.

“I’m glad I answered your proposal,” Galean said. “Most of the dates are pretty pathetic. ‘How About We . . . walk the High Line!’ It’s ninetyfuckingdegrees outside. How About We take a tour of a crematorium!”

“Thank God the bowling alley had air-conditioning made by NASA,” I agreed. “What do you usually do on a first date?”

“You’re my first date-date since I got divorced,” he said.

I stopped. “Wait. You’re thirty. You went to college. How much bad stuff can happen in a couple of years? And if I’m a date-date, what did you do on your date?”

“Went out with my best friend and her husband and her best friend. Drank a lot. Went home with the best friend. Now I’m fighting with both my best friend and her best friend.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. The only good thing I can say about her best friend is that she can hold her booze. I have two requirements about women and the first is that they don’t go slobbery-stupid when they drink.” He kissed me. “You’ve met this first requirement.” He kissed me again.

He was a great kisser.

“You’re a great kisser,” he said.

“Uhmww,” I said as I kissed him.

“Why dontcha take it inside?” someone yelled, and we laughed, rubbing noses before starting to amble down Thirteenth Street.

It is two long blocks to Seventh Avenue and we made it longer. We necked, made out, snogged, pashed. We rouler-ed un patin.
*
When we got to the subway station I announced I was taking a cab home. I gave him my phone number and told him to call me when he got home to Locust Manor in the far reaches of Queens. Galean hadn’t wanted any preliminary chitchat and I thought him a genius for that now.

He snapped his cell phone shut and hailed me a cab, then stopped the next one for his own long trip to Queens. It was after one, far later than I’m used to being out. By two, we’d both come to orgasm and fallen asleep on the phone.

• • •

If the seeming possibilities of that night were true, tonight his best friend, her husband and her best friend would be noshing on guacamole while I whirred up a batch of something from a nice Puerto Rican rum that Galean and I bought on a visit to his grandmother.

• • •

I woke, late and hungover, because the phone rang. Galean offered to come to Brooklyn for brunch. I had stacks of essays, which meant I’d given up the niceties of scrubbing the bathroom and dusting. I could give him a clean toilet and bathroom sink and a clean me in the hour and a half before he arrived. When he called from the Clark Street station Daisy and I set out to meet him halfway.

“Who’s that?” I asked enthusiastically. I half-crouched and pointed. “Who’s that man? Who is it? Is that Uncle Galean?”

This is our routine whenever we see a friend or, today, a new friend. Her tail turns into a blur of anticipation and her ears go back against her head as she shakes and barks. As soon as I’m absolutely sure she has her target I let go of her leash and she runs in her own half-crouch of submissive love. Her lovers will pat their chests so that she jumps up to kiss. Her true lovers will swat her neck and forequarters in play so that she dances a quadrangle through their legs. For her worshippers, she throws herself on her back and gazes knowingly up for a belly rub.

Galean looked askance.

Daisy looked equally askance. She expects that anyone called uncle or auntie will do something. I clapped my hands and she raced back to me.