Did I mention that Amanda Frank—who threw around phrases like “bull’s balls”—looked like a shorter (but even blonder) version of Faith Hill? She could ask out a man who someone might mistake for Pierce Brosnan. I, however, had just been described by the notorious Natasha Nutley as adorable. Which meant I was way, way out of the stratosphere of Jeremy Black’s world.
Eloise took a sip of her merlot, then a drag of her Marlboro. “She can’t take Jeremy even if she got up the guts to ask him. The Gnat knows who he is.” She turned to the left to exhale the smoke away from Amanda.
“But Jane brilliantly didn’t mention The Boyfriend’s name,” Amanda pointed out. “When she shows up with Jeremy Black, the Gnat will fall off her chair, and so will Dana! They’ll both think you were too humble to mention that the mighty Jeremy was your man. Plus, you wouldn’t even have to clue him in to what you were doing, Jane. He’d never have to know he was your fake boyfriend.”
“But I said my boyfriend lives on the Upper West Side,” I reminded Amanda. “And Natasha knows that Jeremy lives in Tribeca. I overheard part of his phone conversation with her last week when he was signing her to Posh. They were talking about where they’re from and where they live now, blah, blah, blah. That’s how the Forest Hills connection came up in the first place.”
Amanda stirred her gin and tonic. Eloise gnawed her lower lip. I chewed the tip of my stirrer.
“Well, you might meet someone in time for the wedding—you’ve got two whole months,” Amanda said, tightening the low ponytail holding back her long blond hair. “Maybe even tonight. We could go hang out at the bar and start flirting. Or I could set you up with some friends of Jeff’s.”
Eloise and I raised eyebrows in unison. Been there, done that. And did I really want to feel even worse than I already did because of some horrific blind date? Even Eloise had gone out with friends of Jeff Jorgensen. He was cute and normal, if a little prone to an extended frat-boy lifestyle, but the random guys who surrounded him at work were not necessarily cute or normal, let alone the all-important both.
“He’s working at Ernst & Young now,” Amanda added. “It’s the hottest accounting firm in the world. Which means a new pool of very successful possibilities. You never know.” She eyed my Cosmopolitan. “I wish I’d ordered that. After the crapola day I had, I could use something pink and strong.”
I sipped the top of the cold drink and slid it over to Amanda. She’d learned crapola from me and Eloise. We both tried to use some of her ranch lingo, but you couldn’t say things like bull’s balls unless you were the real thing. Amanda was a paralegal at Lugworth & Strummold, one of the biggest law firms in New York. She had no interest in becoming a lawyer, but she loved her job. Sometimes she talked about trying her hand at writing a John Grisham–type novel and making use of her publishing house connections.
Eloise and I had met Amanda a day or so after I’d started at Posh, while smoking in front of our office building. (Amanda neither smoked nor worked in the building anymore. L&S had moved to the Wall Street area four years ago.) Anyway, two or three or ten times a day, the three of us would stand puffing away on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 57th Street. A few weeks of superficial chats turned into lunch invitations, which led to drinks invitations, which led to brunch invitations on the weekends, which led to the formation of the weekly Flirt Night Roundtable.
“Or, you could call up Max,” Eloise suggested, peering at me for my reaction. “You have been wondering what became of him, so this would be a good way to find out.”
I immediately shook my head. Why did just the mention of his name still hurt so much? I’d never call Max. I couldn’t. Who knew if he was still with what’s-her-name? Who knew if he was with someone else? And who wanted him to know that I was so desperate for a date that I had to ask my only ex-boyfriend to attend a function with me? A family function, no less.
Max and I had met in the men’s department of Macy’s. He’d been buying a shirt; I’d been looking for a birthday present for my uncle Charlie. And when I’d spotted Max, looking miserable and confused while sliding pants on a rack, I was smitten. Smitten enough to risk asking him if he thought an uncle would like the sweater I was holding. (Now there was a great way to meet marriageable men in New York. Only single guys bought their own clothes alone.)
Oh, wait a minute. Scratch that. I was forgetting that Max Reardon hadn’t been a marriageable man. After a year of pretty serious togetherness, he’d fallen for someone at work, and that was that. Well, that had been that for him. I’d been left with a broken heart at age twenty-three. I immediately lost twelve pounds because I couldn’t eat. Then I gained twelve pounds because I couldn’t stop comforting myself with the Häagen-Dazs Eloise and Amanda brought me every day. I’d ended up exactly where I started: heartbroken and seven pounds overweight.
After two weeks of watching me cry and blow my nose and mope, Eloise had decided that she, Amanda and I should pretend we were tourists in New York every weekend. Each month we did a different borough. While Eloise and Amanda handed out tissues, I cried up the stairs to the Statue of Liberty’s chin, gazed swollen-eyed through the viewfinder on top of the Empire State Building and sobbed over the railing of the Staten Island ferry. I cried while staring up at the World’s Fair globe in Flushing Meadow Park. Cried through a Mets game at Shea Stadium. Cried during a Lilith Fair concert at Jones Beach. By month five, my tear ducts had dried up. I was over Max enough to notice how beautiful the flowers were at the Bronx Botanical Gardens and how incredibly cute some of the Yankees were. I’d tried to sell Gwen on the idea of The Broken-Hearted Girl’s Guide to New York City, but she told me it was too gimmicky.
Max had been my first real boyfriend, and I hadn’t had a real relationship since. Except for Soldier of Fortune Guy and two other short-lived romances, plus a couple of dates here and there with a maybe that always fizzed out, I’d been totally single.
Why? Amanda had Jeff. Eloise had her Russian. And I was surrounded by a Tapas bar full of women sitting across from men. What was my problem? Truck drivers and construction workers seemed to think I was cute enough to merit a catcall, so why couldn’t I wrap a man around my little finger the way my friends could? The way Natasha Nutley could?
Amanda slid back my Cosmopolitan, and I slurped a sip.
“Nix calling up Max, Jane,” Eloise said. “I totally forgot that your family knows Max. You can’t pass him off as the new love of your life, and you can’t pretend you’re back together. Bad idea. I’m really sorry I even brought him up.”
I sent Eloise an it’s-okay look. We all went back to chewing, gnawing and sipping.
Amanda pointed at me with her stirrer. “Do the blind date thing, Jane. All you need is one guy to bring to a wedding. What have you got to lose?”
Eloise and I stared at her. There was no need to add a sarcastic response.
My silence, though, was enough of an answer for Amanda. She whipped out her cell phone. “Jeff, guess who’s willing to go out on blind dates again? Jane! Shut up—that was, like, two years ago! Got anyone for her?” We all waited. “No! He’s bald! No, too short—Jane’s five-six. Hmm. Oh, that guy? No way—he’s cute, but an idiot! Jane’s an editor—he’s gotta be smart. Ooh—yes! Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh…he sounds really good! Set it up.”
Sounds good? So Amanda had never clapped eyes on Mr. Uh-Huh?
Amanda clicked off her cell, her blue eyes twinkling. She leaned forward at the table and whipped her long ponytail behind her. “Kevin Adams. Thirty-three. Senior Accountant. Lives in a brownstone off Central Park West. Jeff says all the admins in the office salivate over Kevin.”
I almost spit out my mouthful of Cosmopolitan. It was fate. Kevin Adams was exactly who I’d described to Natasha! Right down to the brownstone on the Upper West Side.
“He sounds good, Jane,” Eloise said, nodding. “Damned good.”
“Do it, Jane,” Amanda seconded. “Or it’s telling Dana and the Gnat you lied. It’s going out with Incinerator Man!”
They’d mistaken my look of shock for disdain. I burst out into a grin and beamed at Amanda. “Tell Jeff to give him my number. At home and work.”
Eloise and I gave Amanda real kisses on the cheek and disappeared down the steps into the Union Square subway station. Both Grammy and Aunt Ina had made me promise never to take the subway. They refused to believe that the New York City subway system wasn’t the crime pit it had been in the seventies when they’d been “career women” with jobs in the garment district. Eloise and I swiped our metro cards in the turnstile and headed for the Uptown IRT line.
A woman pretending to be the Statue of Liberty stood stock-still on a platform (she was painted silver), holding a torch. An upside-down hat in front of her had a few bills in it. Down a few feet, three teenagers played drums, an open drum case in front of them without a coin. Eloise and I stopped for a few minutes to listen to an overweight gospel singer. We each threw the change from the bottom of our purses into what looked like the case of an amp.
We slipped inside the 6 train just as the doors were closing and grabbed two of the hard orange seats. A pack of teenagers huddled together playing a hand-held video game. An elderly man was clipping his fingernails. Two or three sad sacks read newspapers or the ridiculous advertisements lining the top rim of the car. And six attractive women, all in their late-twenties and early thirties, were dotted around, their Kate Spade handbags tight against them as they read reports, books or stared blankly out the dark windows.
Looking at them depressed me. I was one of them. Like me, they’d spent a few hours after work with friends, maybe even on a date, and now they were going home. Alone. On a Friday at ten-thirty. To open their mail, check out cable, root around in the refrigerator, flip through a Vogue, fantasize about promotions, boyfriends, marriage proposals and be depressed until sleep thankfully took over. One of the Me’s caught me staring, so I shot my gaze upward to an advertisement for a local podiatrist.
“So tell me more about her,” Eloise said as the train rumbled uptown.
“The Gnat?”
Eloise nodded. “Is she a total diva? All fabulous and tragically hip?”
I envisioned Natasha. “Yes and no. She is sort of ‘super-fabulous’ in the way you mean, but there’s something I can’t put my finger on about her. I don’t have her figured out yet.”
“You will, though. You’re gonna know her inside and out after working with her on the memoir. Why is she going to Dana’s wedding, anyway?”
I shrugged. Yeah, why?
Eloise was flung against me as the train short-stopped in the 42rd Street station. “Maybe she wants the free booze. Does she still have a drinking problem?”
“Not according to her book outline,” I said. “And she didn’t have any alcohol at lunch.” Which, by the way, had come in just under eighty-five bucks. Maybe I could treat myself to a fifteen-dollar pan-seared salmon tomorrow night. That was practically a cure for Another Saturday Night Alone Syndrome. Even if you had to eat the salmon alone while renting a video. I glanced around the car at the Me women. Not one of them had that I-have-a-date-tomorrow-night contentedness in their “adorable” faces. “El?”
“Yeah?”
I kicked the toe of my sandal against the dirty floor. “You don’t think what I did was pathetic? I mean, telling Natasha and Dana I had this great boyfriend?”
Eloise raised an eyebrow. “Pathetic? Try necessary! And you didn’t tell Dana anything. Natasha did. You had no choice. Don’t worry, Jane. I’ll bet Kevin turns out to be everything you described and more. He’ll ask you out for a second date, you’ll start seeing each other, and suddenly you’re bringing your boyfriend to Dana’s wedding.”
I laughed. Eloise was forgetting that stuff like that only happened to her. Serge had confessed his love on their fifth date. (She still hadn’t said it back, by the way.) “I’m not gonna get my hopes up too high about Kevin. He’s just a possibility.”
Eloise raised her eyebrow.
“Okay, so my hopes are up,” I admitted. “You’ll dress me, right, Eloise?” She nodded. “Just think—this afternoon I had no boyfriend, then a fake one and now a blind date possibility who could become a real boyfriend. If he even calls.”
That was pathetic, actually. Hoping that some guy you’d never even met would call you, then like you enough to want to go out with you again, all so you could dance with him in a hotel ballroom at a wedding that had been promised to you a long time ago.
But if you stopped hoping, stopped believing, stop playing the stupid game for even one second, you were doomed. You couldn’t give up, ever. Because if you did, you’d be alone for the rest of your life, like my great-aunt Gertie. And all your hard work would be left in the form of an inheritance that would go to your undeserving relatives.
My eyes flickered over the date on my watch, and my heart stopped for a second. “Hey, El, do you know what today is? I almost forgot till just now. It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary.”
Eloise gave my hand an empathetic squeeze. The train lurched into the 77th Street station so violently that we both had to grab on to the edge of our seats. We stood up and waited for the doors to open. “Let’s stop for frozen yogurt,” Eloise suggested. “Tasti D-Lite has fat-free hot fudge now.”
We emerged out of the subway and ducked into the Tasti D-Lite on Lexington Avenue. I got chocolate marshmallow. Eloise got a twist of vanilla fudge and fake Snickers. We both got a dollop of fat-free hot fudge.
Content to lick our cones and people-watch, we strolled east to First Avenue, then north to 79th Street so that Eloise could buy the new In Style magazine at the kiosk on the corner. Catherine Zeta-Jones was on the cover.
Eloise smiled at the cute Indian guy behind the kiosk’s counter. “Will you be a sweetie and drop the change and the magazine in my tote bag?” She held up her cone.
“Of course, anything for you,” he told her, his dark eyes sparkling. He leaned over the counter and slid the thick magazine and some bills into her bag.
“You’re a doll.” She blew him a kiss as we headed away.
I usually loved watching Eloise in action. But right then, my heart felt like a big painful blob.
“Hey, Jane, let’s make pit stop at St. Monica’s Sunday morning to light candles for our moms and your dad,” Eloise said as we walked past the huge church.
I nodded gratefully and licked a dripping stream of hot fudge off the sugar cone. We lit candles once a month, even though neither of us was Catholic. The whole idea had been Eloise’s. She said you didn’t have to be the thing to do the thing. You just had to want either.
Didn’t I know it.
On Saturday morning, Eloise and I had gone shoe shopping at the store Dana had told me about. I walked out with a pair of $125 peach fabric shoes I’d never wear again and wouldn’t be able to return. Eloise had then gone to meet Serge for lunch after his ESL class. He was studying to become an American citizen. Serge’s friends at the hair salon had told him that American women worried that foreign men were only interested in green cards. So even though Eloise had told him she wanted to keep their relationship casual, he’d headed straight for the Immigration office and filed the necessary papers to get his green card the hard way.
And I was headed for my blind date with Kevin Adams! He’d surprised me with a ten-in-the-morning phone call, which, according to Eloise, was a good sign. It meant he was eager to meet someone, in the market for a relationship. Kevin had told me he was playing squash till eleven thirty, then had brunch plans, but he’d love to meet me for a cup of coffee—if I wanted to be spontaneous.
I did. And I happened to be free since my own fictitious brunch plans had suddenly fallen through. According to every person in the world, you never accepted a date for that day. You never accepted a date less than two days away, preferably three. Doing so was tantamount to telling the guy you had absolutely no life. Usually I listened to that crap. But I was on a major deadline. Dana’s wedding was barely two months awa
y. Anyway, we were just meeting for coffee.
At two on the dot, I neared DT UT (stood for Downtown Uptown), a trendy coffee lounge on Second Avenue at 84th Street. Kevin and I had arranged to meet on the side of the pastry counter, under the hanging roll of brown paper that listed the smoothies and shakes. I was to look for the guy in the navy blue sweater and jeans. Amanda via Jeff had provided the vital stats: tall, lanky, dark brown hair, brown or green or blue eyes—Jeff hadn’t been sure.
I took a long drag of my cigarette as I approached the door to the lounge, then crushed it out. Had Jeff told Kevin I was a smoker? If he cared, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to meet me. Maybe he smoked, too. I envisioned us puffing away in the ballroom of the Plaza, blowing smoke rings as we sipped champagne.
And then I remembered that guys who played squash didn’t smoke. Should I step into the deli next door for breath mints? Hmm. It was already five minutes after two, and if I had to wait for the mint to dissolve in my mouth, I’d be late. It wasn’t like I could meet my fake-to-be boyfriend while sucking on a mint. I cupped my hand, blew into it and sniffed. Seemed okay.
I pulled open the door and was immediately greeted by a Pat Benatar song that I hadn’t heard since grammar school. Lisa and Lora Miner and I had listened to that album over and over and over. Pat Benatar knew from heartache, as Aunt Ina would say.
A short line was snaked around the pastry counter, but no tall, lanky guy alone, and no guy in jeans and a dark blue sweater. I glanced around at the overstuffed chairs to the side of the counter. A good-looking, dark-haired guy with what looked like hazel eyes sat reading The New York Times; he wore jeans and a white T-shirt. A giant-sized mug of coffee was in front of him, next to a scone of some sort. A gym bag was by his feet. An empty chair was next to him.
Well, that couldn’t be him. Kevin Adams wouldn’t be sitting down, or have ordered already. Plus, he said he’d be wearing a navy sweater. Two young women chatted away in the other two chairs, across from T-Shirt Man. Lining the lounge on the other side of the pastry bar were some hard-backed chairs. A few people were in those, but no one matched Kevin Adams’s description.
See Jane Date Page 5
