by Sarah Title
Bernie pulled out her phone and looked at Take a Letter, Maria again. Her letter was still on top of the page. “That’s where all the interesting stuff happens,” Bernie read. “Interesting stuff happens here, too.” For example, she was sitting on a bench and talking to a dog who was not her own. That was interesting.
Interesting was one word for it, certainly.
“Everyone thinks this dating thing is such a good idea. Is my life really that pathetic that my friends think this is the best thing for me? There’s nothing wrong with my life, you know,” she told Starr, who turned her head for more scratches. “I’m totally happy.” She wiped her eyes. It was so windy, that was all. There was no way she was crying again. “I’m not crying, Starr. I’m totally happy.”
Starr stretched out and licked her cheek.
“What am I supposed to do, change my personality? I can’t help it if men don’t like me!”
Starr climbed onto Bernie’s chest. Her little ten-pound body was a comforting weight, keeping Bernie tethered to reality.
Even though reality sucked.
Reality was going on a first date with a guy and having to laugh at his terrible jokes or be impressed with his powers of acquisition. She wasn’t good at that. She didn’t like to laugh at things that weren’t funny. That was why she didn’t get second dates.
Or worse, the first date with a guy who she thought was nice and funny and who never called again.
But then there were the gray areas. “I don’t need a man,” she reminded Starr. “But . . . maybe it would be nice to have one. Sometimes. Right? Is that terrible?” She said that last bit on a whisper. Starr licked her cheek again.
She grabbed her phone before she lost her nerve.
Chapter Nine
COLIN FUMBLED FOR HIS PHONE. It was not where he had left it, on the coffee table next to his beer. Also, someone had emptied his beer.
He really needed to stop drowning his professional sorrows in alcohol.
But alcohol was so good.
“Steph!” He called out to his sister. She would know where his phone was. “Steph!”
She was ignoring him.
No, she was on a date.
“Dammit, Steph, I need you!” he shouted in a way that he would not have shouted if she had been home. It was cathartic. And it made his phone stop ringing.
Satisfied, he got up to get another beer, since someone had emptied his. But there was no beer in the fridge. Someone had emptied all of them. Also, the fridge was ringing.
“Huh,” he said, picking up his now-cold phone. “Who put that in there?”
He should find some food.
He should also answer the phone.
“Hello?”
“Colin?”
He didn’t recognize the voice, but it was a woman. Good. He liked women.
“Hey,” he said, happy to talk to a woman.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he repeated.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked.
“Mmm-hmm,” he purred.
“Are you having a stroke?”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. He just leaned his hip against the kitchen counter and tried to place the woman’s voice. She sounded familiar. He knew that he should remember her.
There was a sigh, and then “This is Bernie.”
Bernie was not a woman.
Oh, wait. Yes. Bernie was Melissa, the librarian who hated men.
Or maybe just him.
She definitely hated fun, and he was fun.
“Hi,” he said warily. Why was she calling him? She hated him.
“I’ve been thinking about your offer—”
What did he offer her? Oh, yes. To write an exposé on the Life of a Meme. And to set her up on dates. A ridiculous idea. What was he thinking, that this woman who hated men (or just him) (or just fun) would want to go on dates with other men that he picked out for her? He had terrible ideas.
“I’ll do it.”
Colin nearly dropped the phone, but managed a surprisingly dexterous bobble that prevented the destruction of both his phone and his job. “What?” he shouted, because he’d almost dropped his phone and because he wanted to make sure.
“But I want to set a few ground rules.”
Rules. Of course. The librarian wanted to set rules. How fun.
“First dates only, and all in public places.”
“Okay.” That was easy enough. San Francisco had lots of public places.
“I get to call off the dates at any point in the night.”
“After you’ve given the guy a chance.”
She sighed. “I’m not putting myself in danger to give a guy a chance.”
“I’m not going to set you up with ax murderers.” At least, not on purpose.
Well, maybe on purpose. He’d see how this experiment went.
“So if I’m getting a bad vibe from a guy, I need to sit there until he’s ready to leave? How is that fun for me?”
You hate fun, he thought.
“There won’t be danger,” he said. “You’ll be in public. I’ll be there with you.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m the reporter. I have to be there to report on what happens.” Because if I don’t report on it, I will be out of a job, not that you care, mean old librarian lady.
She sighed. “Fine,” she said, finally.
“What else?”
“No crazy dates, like bungee jumping.”
“Okay.” He wondered what his budget was going to be.
“But not all boring stuff. I don’t want to just go out for coffee with every straight man in the city.”
“And I won’t feed you after midnight.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“And I reserve the right to stop the story whenever I’m done.”
That, he wasn’t sure about. If she quit, the story would be over. And so would his cushy job. Although this conversation was making him rethink exactly how cushy it actually was. “Only if I have the right to try to convince you otherwise.” He could be very persuasive when he wanted to be. Despite all the evidence that Bernie was completely immune to his charms.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
“So now what?”
Now he had to find some non-jerks to date the most difficult woman in San Francisco.
“I’ll get back to you,” he said. Then he hung up and looked for some food to soak up all the beer someone had thrown down his throat. He was doing it. He was going to find dates for the undateable librarian, and he would keep his cushy job, and life would go back to normal. He let out a little whoop, then remembered his sister wasn’t home, so he let out a bigger whoop.
He could do the impossible.
He’d find dates for the undateable.
So fun.
Chapter Ten
Dear Maria,
My job sucks. Can I quit and join the circus?
Clowning Around in Potrero Hill
Dear Clowning,
I don’t know what field you’re in and I don’t know what your financial situation is, so I don’t have enough information to tell you what to do (not that that’s ever stopped me). Let me tell you this: I once had a job working with nice young people who were part of a circus collective in Oakland. They were all unique and talented performers, and it took months for me to forget the smell of their body odor.
Chin up, Clowning. Every cloud has a silver lining, and if that lining is a lame clown costume, you’ll never get the stink out.
Kisses,
Maria
DON’T THINK, JUST DATE, she told herself as she carried Starr over the dunes to Ocean Beach. She took a deep breath of Pacific air and watched the waves roll in and out. “It’s a metaphor,” she told Starr, and let the dog down in the sand. “That wave is the meme, where my frowning face turns out to be the butt of a very public j
oke. And there it goes, back into the sea. And there goes the next wave, the wave where Glaze.com posts an online dating ad for me and nobody responds because I don’t look like someone who’s any kind of fun.” Starr barked, and Bernie started walking, doing her best not to trip over the tangle that Starr’s leash became whenever they came to the beach. The dog loved running in the sand and barking at the waves. So Bernie took her there as often as she could.
“I’m fun, dammit,” she reminded Starr, who was busy investigating a seaweed pod.
Bernie didn’t understand the disconnect between her and men. When she was with her friends, she could laugh. She loved a good dance party. She could talk about feelings and nonsense and make fart jokes and be spontaneous and go on adventures. It was just dating that she was no good at.
For some reason, when a date was part of the equation, she looked for subtext in every spontaneous, jokey, nonsense fun time. What did it mean that a guy took her to this type of restaurant? What did it say about him that this was the movie he picked for Netflix and chill? Everything that was said, every look that crossed every face was up for scrutiny. Every comment was turned around and around until she found something wrong with it. Every date was a new opportunity to keep her guard up, because no date was worth letting her guard down for.
What if the problem wasn’t the dates?
What if the problem was her?
She took a deep breath, and let it wash out with the tide while her borrowed dog barked at it.
Chapter Eleven
DISAPPROVING LIBRARIAN IS DATING
____________________
By Colin Rodriguez, Staff Writer
Fiercely independent. Uncompromising. She’s worked hard to build a life of her own. She doesn’t need a man to make her happy.
But what if she does?
Melissa Bernard has worked hard to cultivate an independent, fulfilling life. She has a promising career, a cadre of creative friends, and a full social calendar.
So what does she have against love?
If you’ve been online recently, you know her face. She’s the one giving you a look that makes you think of every time your mother said she was disappointed in you, every time your father grounded you, every time a teacher told you you weren’t working up to your full potential.
Melissa Bernard is the Disapproving Librarian.
In real life, Bernie is relaxed. The lines on her face that make her meme so funny were nowhere in evidence when I sat down to talk to her the other day. That is, until we started talking about dating.
COLIN SAT BACK AND READ over the article that had just gone live. It was a bad habit of his, admiring the work he’d just posted. But his laurels were comfortable, and he liked resting there. Besides, he never really got tired of seeing his own name on an article. Take a Letter, Maria was fun to write, and he loved that Maria had such a following. It was a little frustrating, though, that he couldn’t bask in any of that glow.
Bernie would have a field day with his ego if she knew what he was thinking.
If she was speaking to him.
He’d called her and e-mailed her, but she hadn’t responded. At first he was just letting her know that the article had gone live, and that the story was really happening. It was going to be great, for both of them. He’d get a great story and keep his job, and she’d get the man she didn’t want to admit she wanted. Win-win.
The radio silence was bothering him. Did she not like the article? Maybe he shouldn’t have said that thing about the lines on her face. However, he thought her whole deal was that she wasn’t vain about her looks. Besides, he was just telling the truth. When he’d first walked into her office, he didn’t think she was even the Disapproving Librarian. It was only when he started explaining his project to her that the Internet-familiar face came out. The transformation was extraordinary, really. He wondered what it would take to get that look off of her face for good. It was going to take a guy with balls. Although she’d probably be offended that he had balls and that he was using them to challenge her autonomy. The thought crossed his mind that maybe she was too independent, not that he’d ever say that out loud. Not if he wanted to keep his balls.
Well, she couldn’t back out now. Not now that they’d announced their intentions to the world. Not when he’d worked so hard to make her seem likable. And he’d had to work hard. Clea was obsessed with worry that the readers wouldn’t relate. And, yes, it was true that Glaze.com readers didn’t generally wear quite so many cardigans, but there was something about her. She wasn’t like other women Colin knew, but he had the feeling that he’d be itching to tell her story, even if his job wasn’t on the line.
Which it was.
Good thing there was no such thing as undateable.
He hoped.
* * *
Bernie wanted to kill him.
Lines on her face? She was not generally vain, but reading those words had her running to the mirror to see what he saw. He was right. When she wasn’t paying attention, her resting bitch face totally made her wrinkly.
The worst part was, Colin’s article made her care about stuff like that. She didn’t care if she had lines! She was a woman! Time was happening! Of course she would get lines on her face! It wasn’t like she was fighting off crow’s feet and saggy jowls, and even if she was, so what? It was nature!
And then she read the comments. Apparently lines on her face were not the worst of her problems.
She should back out. She’d feel bad for Colin, but he’d made her feel bad, so it served him right. It wouldn’t do anything to rehabilitate her image, but had she really thought that putting herself up for further scrutiny from the Internet was going to make her look better? The article wasn’t terrible. He’d spun the story into a real underdog case, like she was a champion who deserved something good. But she didn’t know that she liked being pegged as the underdog. She wasn’t. She was happy, dammit.
But hadn’t she pegged herself as the underdog? Hadn’t she told herself that the reason she was single was because nobody took the time to give her unvarnished appearance a second look? Didn’t she lament that she never got flirted with because she didn’t act like normal women, that she didn’t prance and pretend? But she didn’t want to prance and pretend; that was the whole point.
If Colin’s quasi-journalistic treatment of her didn’t kill her, all of this convoluted self-reflection would.
And if she died, she wouldn’t have to go out on a date tomorrow night.
That was healthy, right?
When she’d finally decided to answer Colin’s calls (and texts and e-mails), she’d agreed to meet him at the sandwich shop across from her apartment. He wanted to strike while the iron was hot, he’d said. She supposed that meant that she was the iron and the potential to tame her shrew was the hot. All she had to do was decide whether or not it was worth shaving her legs.
“Here you go, with extra sprouts,” Colin said, putting a plate in front of her. She supposed she should have paid for her own lunch, and gotten it from the counter herself. But she was dating now. She needed to practice being helpless.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked as he settled into the seat opposite hers.
“I’m not thinking anything. Why do you say that?”
He made a circle in the air. “Your face. You look like you’re thinking.”
“It’s just my face!”
“It looks like the face of a woman who wants to run and hide.”
“I don’t!” she lied.
“So you’re not going to bolt?”
“Not until I finish my sandwich, no.”
“Then we’ll eat and talk.”
He pulled his chair around the table so he was closer to her, and pulled out his laptop.
“We had a great response to the article,” he said. She snorted.
“You didn’t like it?” he asked.
“I didn’t say anything!”
He studied her face for a second, then he said, “Is
this how it’s going to be all month? You making passive aggressive noises at me while pretending everything’s fine?”
“What? No—”
“God, it’s like we’re dating.”
“I thought you said dating was fun.”
“I’m starting to change my mind. Look, you agreed to do this. I understand it’s outside your comfort zone and maybe you’re scared or whatever—”
“I am not scared.”
“Fine. But just . . . can you just be honest with me? If you’re not fine, say you’re not fine and we can talk about it.”
“I thought you didn’t like arguing with me.”
“I’m not talking about arguing, I’m talking about a conversation.”
She sighed. He was right. Dammit. She’d signed up for this, all on her own. She might as well act like she actually wanted to do it. Because she did want to do it. Sort of. No, she did want to do it; it just scared the crap out of her.
“I’m not going to pretend to be happy when I’m not,” she told him.
“I wouldn’t expect any less.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Yes. Can we do this now?”
Bernie took a bite of her sandwich.
“The good news is,” Colin said, gently extracting the laptop from Bernie, “you are not as unappealing as you’d like to think you are.”
“So, basically, a bunch of dudes in their parents’ basements said they’d do me?”
Colin winced. He’d clearly read the comments, too. “I apologize on behalf of my entire gender.”
“I wrote an op ed for the local paper at my first job, and the responses online were all ‘I’ve seen that hot librarian. I’d totally do her.’”
“That’s alarming,” Colin said.
“That’s the Internet. No place for a woman.”
She looked up from her homemade potato chips and artisanal pickle to find Colin looking at her, his expression unreadable. It looked like he was reading her. Like he was coming to some kind of understanding.
