The Blonde Theory

by Kristin Harmel

  Three hours after the ghastly firm dinner had started, Matt and I were standing back on the doorstep to my building.

  “Thanks for inviting me, Harper,” he said. I was touched that he had gotten out of the taxi to walk me in. Apparently, he was taking this acting gig very seriously, playing the part of the attentive date right up until the end.

  “Thanks for coming, Matt,” I said with equal formality, reaching out to shake his hand. He looked confused for an instant, then took my hand and shook it slowly, a strange look on his face that I couldn’t quite figure out. “Sorry about all the weird questions and stuff. I should have warned you about how awkward it would be.”

  “I didn’t mind,” he said, shaking his head. His green eyes looked so earnest as he gazed at me that I started to feel a little uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “Can I walk you inside?”

  I laughed.

  “I think I can make it to my door okay,” I said, shaking my head at him. “Besides, you can drop the act now. There’s no one watching anymore.”

  “What act?”

  I rolled my eyes. No wonder he had gotten the gig on Emmie’s show. He was good. “You know, pretending to be an attentive date hooked on my every word,” I said. I shook my head again, trying to suppress the hurt I was feeling over the realization that no one would probably ever really look at me the way Matt had pretended to that evening.

  “Oh,” Matt said, looking slightly confused. “Well, I guess I should go then.”

  “I guess you should,” I agreed, feeling suddenly uneasy. I was embarrassed that Matt had gone to so much effort tonight, putting on such an elaborate act for my colleagues’ benefit. How humiliating that he would feel he needed to do so. I was even more humiliated by the fact that it had made me feel better.

  “Harper,” Matt began, taking a step backward and looking me square in the eye. “What I said before, about you not giving yourself enough credit? I meant it. I think you were amazing tonight.”

  My heart skipped a beat but I ignored it. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Great,” I said, making sure that I sounded sarcastic. “Okay, seriously, Matt, you can stop acting now. I appreciate all your help, but the night’s over.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, his stare so intense that I started to feel a bit uncomfortable. I was just about to start squirming when he spoke again.

  “Yeah, I guess the night is over,” he said, shaking his head. “Thanks again.”

  Then, with a terse nod, he turned away from me and started walking east, toward Third Avenue.

  I watched him until he hailed a cab and climbed in. He didn’t turn back once.

  Not that I thought he would. They never did.

  Chapter Six

  The faux-date with Matt had unnerved me and mortified me. I couldn’t believe I’d ever expected it to go any differently.

  Of course, usually this would have made me hole up in my apartment for several days, grumpily smoking on my terrace, eating Chunky Monkey ice cream in an attempt to freeze over the mortification, and emerging only to go to the office.

  But with the Blonde Theory experiment in full effect, I actually had a task to put my mind to, although the task itself was somewhat ridiculous. Nonetheless, instead of having to hibernate for days to forget the awkward nondate with Matt, I could throw myself into a new date...a first for a girl who hadn’t had back-to-back evenings with different men since Clinton was in the White House. Hurrah!

  Resolving to erase the humiliation of the smirking (and infuriatingly gorgeous) Matt James from my mind, I used my lunch hour at work to get a manicure and a bikini wax (okay, so this was far too optimistic of me, but that’s beside the point), and, although I’m embarrassed to admit it, I actually sat in my office with my door closed all afternoon, practicing dumb-blonde-isms between patent paperwork.

  I just hoped Molly, my secretary, couldn’t hear me through the door as I repeated phrases like “It’s, like, so great to see you” in various high-pitched tones and practiced my giggle. I even got out the compact I kept in the top drawer of my desk and spent a full fifteen minutes hair tossing and eyelash batting in the mirror (so that Scott wouldn’t offer free eye care again, much as I appreciated his generosity).

  I stopped when Molly buzzed me on my intercom to nervously ask if I was okay.

  “Um, yes,” I responded, then, realizing that I was still speaking in an elevated octave, I cleared my throat and amended in my own voice, “Um, I mean, yes. Yes, I’m okay.”

  And strangely, I was. Very okay.

  I couldn’t believe I was actually excited about my date.

  I mean, that was silly, right? Because it’s not like Scott Jacoby wanted to go out on a date with me. He wanted to go out on a date with a ditzy, brainless Knicks dancer who just happened to look like me. But still, I was going out on a date. A real date. With a man who wasn’t scared of me. With a man who wasn’t a slickly smarmy soap actor who probably thought I was a total nerd. I had to admit, that had a certain appeal.

  Emmie called at four o’clock on my direct extension.

  “You’re still in the office?” she demanded. I assumed it was a rhetorical question, as I was clearly in the office; she had just called me there. “You need to be at my place by five thirty,” she continued, without waiting for me to answer. “Scott will be here to pick you up by seven, and we have a lot to go over before then.”

  Emmie was apparently taking her job as my dating-slash--acting coach very seriously. She had decided that when Scott called me to set up our date, I was to give him her address and not mine. After all, it wouldn’t make sense for a brainless dancer to be living in a spacious Upper East Side apartment whose sale had required a patent lawyer’s salary, now, would it? Emmie’s tiny East Village third-floor walk-up was much more realistic.

  “Why can’t I just arrange to meet him somewhere instead?” I had asked what seemed like the obvious question.

  Emmie had sighed impatiently. “Because, Harper, the dumb blonde you’re pretending to be isn’t the same empowered twenty-first-century woman you are,” she had explained, like she was talking to, well, a dumb blonde. Hmm, my act was apparently already working. “Pay attention, because if you’re going to play the part, you’re going to have to do it right.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She went on to run through a laundry list of dumb-blonde rules. The dumb blonde will not talk politics. The dumb blonde will not disagree with her date. The dumb blonde will not bring topics up, but she’ll cheerfully discuss anything her date brings up, to the best of her rather limited ability. The dumb blonde will always speak in breathless, high-pitched tones. The dumb blonde will speak no more than ten words at a stretch without inserting the word like.

  Who knew that being a dumb blonde was so hard? I suddenly had new respect for the women who were cursed with too little intelligence and too-easy access to bottles of peroxide. Walking a mile in their stilettos was harder than I had suspected.

  I quickly finished the remaining work on the briefs I needed to have ready for a meeting the next day and gathered my things. I was walking out the front door of my Wall Street office building by four forty-five and pulling up to Emmie’s place in a cab by five twenty.

  “See, no need to worry,” I said as she opened the door and stared at me. “I’m ten minutes early.”

  Emmie looked at me suspiciously. “You also look way too smart to be going out on your first dumb-blonde date in an hour and a half.” She shook her head in what appeared to be disappointment with me. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Come on in,” she sighed. “Luckily I brought some blue eyeshadow and bright lipstick home from the set yesterday. I knew you couldn’t be trusted to prepare well enough on your own.”

  “Blue eyeshadow?” I asked, stepping inside. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope!” Emmie said cheerfully as I followed her back toward her bedroom. “It’s very dumb-blonde chic. Besides, blue is back in a big way, if you believe
what the fashion magazines are saying.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “Just when I thought we’d left the eighties behind.” As far as I was concerned, this opened the door to leg warmers, tie-dye, and those little clippy things that tied ’80s T-shirts on the side. Not to mention side ponytails. No, it was better if the door to the ’80s stayed closed. But clearly it was too late for that.

  In addition to the blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick Emmie was about to massacre my face with, she had also brought Dumb Blonde Outfit Number Two home from the set of The Rich and the Damned. The moment she pulled it triumphantly out on its hanger to show it to me, I was horrified. The dress was bright blue and skintight, which I was more than a bit concerned about, even after Emmie produced a Spanx girdle—a girdle!—to help hold me in. The dress was low-cut on top and short on the bottom, and I knew it would barely cover my back end before coming to an abrupt halt midway down my upper thighs.

  “You’ve got to me kidding me,” I said. This was beyond humiliating.

  “Nope,” Emmie chirped. “Afraid not.”

  Growling at her, I took the horrible outfit into her bedroom to change and came out ten minutes later—after summoning Emmie to help pour me into the girdle—looking like a completely different person. Gone was the buttoned-down attorney who had entered Emmie’s apartment; instead, standing in her living room, was a full-on stereotypical nightclub princess in a man-hunting dress. Well, an expensive, designer, man-hunting dress.

  “This is horrible,” I said, looking down at my body and wincing. However, I was secretly pleased that the dress fit me and actually didn’t look as bad as I thought it would clinging to my curves. I never wore tight clothes, so sometimes I forgot that I had curves, albeit unimpressive ones. Once the girdle was in place—and I had donned Emmie’s water bra that made me look like I had generous C cups instead of my own less-than-impressive small B’s—the dress didn’t look half bad on me. Not that I would ever wear it voluntarily.

  “Actually, you look pretty hot,” Emmie protested, looking at me admiringly. “Who knew that inside that lawyer facade there was a hottie itching to get out?”

  “Don’t jump the gun,” I mumbled, wondering vaguely why it had never occurred to me to dress a little more sexily in the past.

  MEG AND Jill arrived at six forty-five with amused grins that only grew wider when they saw the ridiculous outfit I’d been stuffed into by the very talented Emmie.

  I waited with the girls in Emmie’s living room, not sure why I felt so nervous. But my heart was doing that pitter-patter, pitter-patter it sometimes did before I walked into the courtroom to face a tough judge or before I had to argue a thorny case in front of the patent board.

  Was it possible I actually liked Scott Jacoby? I mean, at face value, the pairing made sense: Smart young lawyer meets smart young ophthalmologist and they hit it off. The only thing wrong with this scenario was that the smart young ophthalmologist in question thought that I was a dumb, slightly over-the-hill NBA dancer. So unless I intended to come clean—which of course I didn’t (I had been dared, and I took that very seriously)—I was stuck pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

  Well, it was worth a try, I had to admit. Acting like the person I actually was hadn’t been working out so well lately. And tonight, I figured it was better to be the one pretending rather than being out with an actor pretending to like me.

  “So how are you going to convince him you’re dumb?” Jill asked as she and Meg settled into Emmie’s raggedy-looking beige couch.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. I felt embarrassed as I added, “I practiced some blonde-isms in my office today with the door closed.”

  “Blonde-isms?” Meg asked.

  I shrugged. “You know, just speaking like a dumb blonde.” I could feel my cheeks heat up a bit. “Saying like every few words. Giggling. Acting vacant.”

  “Sounds like a good start,” Meg mused, nodding thoughtfully. “I think you have to have a better plan than that for tonight, though.”

  Jill nodded. “Since it’s your first blonde date and all,” she added wisely.

  I looked back and forth between the two of them, then glanced down at my watch. “He’ll be here in ten minutes,” I said. “Do you really think I’ll have time to prepare more?”

  “I think you’d better,” Meg said with a solemn nod.

  Emmie came back into the room and squeezed onto the sofa with Meg and Jill. For the next ten minutes, they sat and stared me down like a harsh tribunal while drilling me on blonde responses, making suggestions about how I should fawn over Scott because he was a doctor and quizzing me on all things blonde.

  “But do I really need to act so over-the-top?” I asked hesitantly. I hadn’t thought this was what I’d signed up for. Jill and Emmie looked uncertain. Meg shrugged.

  “Look,” she said. “We’ve never done anything like this before. Why don’t you give it a try acting really ditzy and see what happens? If it’s a total disaster, you can scale it back on future dates. But this guy, this Scott, he liked you because you acted like a total ditz at the bar the other night. You have the perfect opportunity to follow up on that and see what happens.”

  “I guess so,” I sighed. I could see her point. I just wasn’t sure how acting outlandishly ridiculous would help anyone.

  The doorbell rang at precisely 7 PM.

  “At least he’s punctual,” Emmie said with a smile. She uncrossed her legs and stood up from the couch. “Extra points for that.”

  “Good luck!” Meg murmured excitedly. Jill nodded eagerly beside her.

  I rolled my eyes and got up to answer the door—after all, we were pretending that this was my apartment, not Emmie’s. As I unlocked her four deadbolts and swung the door open, I was greeted with the sight of an even more handsome Scott Jacoby than I had remembered. Despite my best intentions, I could feel my heartbeat pick up.

  He was freshly shaven and dressed in a charcoal suit with a tie-less pale blue shirt, with the top two buttons sexily undone. His dark brown hair was tousled—with some effort and lots of pomade, I suspected—and I could smell just a hint of some sort of musky cologne, not too overpowering, but just present enough to reveal that he’d put some effort into all the little touches.

  Unfortunately, as I had suspected, this was just my kind of guy—which might make things difficult. After all, I was only testing out this stupid theory, right? I wasn’t supposed to actually like the guy. I had to remind myself that he actually didn’t like me, either. He liked the gum-snapping, eyelash-batting, lowered-IQ, dancer version of me. Still...

  I was suddenly nervous. I wasn’t sure I could convincingly pull off the blonde act.

  “You look beautiful,” he said with a smile as I invited him in.

  “Thank you,” I said demurely. Then I remembered I was supposed to be speaking in a higher octave in a voice peppered with giggles and likes. Fortunately, I had practiced all afternoon. I took a deep breath and threw myself into the act. “You, like, look awesome, too.” I giggled for emphasis. He grinned back, apparently flattered, and for a moment I let myself bask for a moment in the glow of his perfect smile.

  Inside the apartment, I could hear Meg saying something softly and Jill giggling. Scott apparently heard it, too.

  “Are those your roommates?” he asked hopefully.

  “No,” I said, remembering to keep my voice high-pitched. “Just some friends of mine. We were just, like, having a drink. Want to, like, say hello?”

  Wow. It was getting easier to throw random likes around. I gave myself a mental pat on the back.

  “Sure!” Scott enthused before looking at me hopefully. “Are they dancers, too?”

  I giggled as if he’d said something funny and tossed my hair over my shoulder with exaggerated enthusiasm.

  “No, silly,” I squealed. “I usually just, like, go out with the other dancers after practice, of course.”

  “Of course,” Scott said with a nod as if my answer had been the obvio
us one. We rounded the corner into the living room, and the girls stood to greet us.

  “This is Scott Jacoby. He’s an ophthal—” I quickly stopped myself before completing the word that would clearly contain two many syllables for a dumb blonde to process. “He’s, like, an eye doctor. You know? Like Monica’s old boyfriend? Richard? On Friends?”

  Woo-hoo. Score one blonde “cultural reference” for me.

  “This is Emmie. She’s on my totally favorite soap opera, The Rich and the Damned,” I said as Scott grinned at her and shook her hand. “This is Meg. You already met them at the bar the other night. And this is Jill. Her husband is a doctor, too.”

  “Nice to meet you girls,” Scott said, shaking hands all around.

  “So, Scott, what are you and Harper up to tonight?” Meg asked politely after the introductions were complete.

  “I thought we’d start off with dinner at a nice little French bistro in Midtown called Café le Petit Pont,” he said with a charming smile. “It’s one of my favorites. Then we’ll see where the evening takes us.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Meg said. She turned to me and gave me a wide-eyed look that I assumed was supposed to have some sort of significance. I just wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

  “I thought it would be a perfect little romantic spot,” Scott said, draping a protective arm around me. I snuggled close to him, like I figured a dumb blonde would do, and beamed stupidly at my friends.

  “Can I see you in the kitchen for a moment, Harper?” Meg asked innocently. “I have a quick question for you.” I nodded and followed her into Emmie’s kitchen as Scott continued chatting with the girls.