See Jane Date

by Melissa Senate

  The Blind Date Excitement Energy had just plummeted from negative one to negative one hundred. How was I supposed to keep up this pace of serial dating when each date was sure to report the same lack of interest back to Jeff and Amanda? Ben Larson was cute? Big deal. They were all cute. What I was looking for at this point was tolerable. And just a tiny hint of attraction. On both our parts.

  Ben Larson had become too important. I had a miserable feeling that he was my last shot at a date for Dana’s wedding. There was no way in hell that Saturday night’s date, a doctor, mind you—who also lived on the Upper West Side, though not in a brownstone—was going to work out. The Fates of the universe were not going to bless me—a woman who wouldn’t visit her grammy often enough, was sarcastic to her cousin, and disappointed her aunt Ina on a regular basis—with a doctor who lived on the Upper West Side. Life just didn’t work that way. I’d learned that a long time ago.

  Doctor Guy was going to be an asshole. I knew it already. And my very last scheduled blind date next Tuesday couldn’t possibly work, because it was the very last. Which meant that tomorrow night’s stroll around the Museum of Modern Art was my only hope. And so far, I was 0 for 2. Not good.

  I typed a message of my own to Amanda and Eloise: How about a hometown FNRT? Big Sur, 80th & Third, same time.

  This would be a departure from our usual routine. We usually tried to pick interesting places in varied neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods we had no reason to ever be in otherwise. Like Tribeca. Twice I’d spent over a week in the huge Supreme Court building on Centre Street for jury duty without ever knowing I was in Tribeca. The West Village was another unexplored neighborhood, except for the area right about NYU, where I’d taken two classes in the school of continuing education (I hadn’t met a guy, of course). But I wasn’t even so sure that NYU was in the West Village. Maybe it was just Greenwich Village. When it came to the island I’d lived on for the past six years, I was as knowledgeable as a tourist. I hoped Eloise and Amanda wouldn’t mind a Flirt Night Roundtable in our own overly explored neighborhood. I doubted they would; secretly, I thought we’d all be quite content to stay a few blocks from home. It was just that no one wanted to admit that.

  I packed the Gnat’s revised chapter and outline into my tote bag, along with my disk of back cover copy and title suggestions. I’d surely have to give myself another oatmeal facial tonight; the Gnat’s porno would have hives on my face by paragraph five. The McKinley manuscript in my arms, I headed down the hall to Jeremy’s office to let him—or the window behind his head, more accurately—know that he’d have my preliminary edit in ten minutes.

  “If the copier doesn’t break down in the middle of it,” he joked, flashing that Pierce Brosnan smile at me for a half second.

  I pictured Jeremy twirling me around for a slow dance at Dana’s wedding, his Caribbean eyes focused on me in my lovely peach dress. That image alone would keep me happy for the twenty minutes I’d have to stand in front of the photocopier and the twenty minutes I’d have to spend clearing the nonexistent paper jams from area F.

  Thursday night, 5:40 p.m. I’d timed my arrival at the Museum of Modern Art twenty minutes too early. But, considering that it was a hundred degrees and a hundred percent humidity tonight, I was grateful for the extra time to duck into the bathroom to mop myself off and clean myself up. Posh was located only a few blocks and one avenue from MOMA, and I was already completely wilted. Not the way to arrive for a blind date with my only real wedding escort possibility.

  Dry and freshly powered and lipsticked, I headed upstairs in the thankfully cold museum, my favorite in New York, by the way. I still had ten minutes to kill, so I figured I’d meander around the bookstore and gift shop and check out the posters.

  As usual, the gift-bookshop was packed with people. The museum was even more crowded than usual tonight because of the special late hours. I couldn’t tell the New Yorkers from the tourists. Everyone was wearing black, even in June. I headed down the steps to the poster shop and waited for three blondes to finish flipping their way down the line of oversize posters (the least crowded area at the moment), then I zoomed into place and began flipping myself. Maybe a huge poster would cover up the coating of smoke grime that I’d suddenly noticed on the walls last night. I’d needed a break from the Gnat’s outline—which I’d been loath to admit was developing very well (how had she become a good writer?)—so I’d gone on a little cleaning frenzy in my apartment. I’d lifted a framed black-and-white poster that Eloise had given me for a housewarming six years ago so that I could dust the bottom of the frame; the space underneath the picture was white. I hadn’t realized or remembered that the walls were white. I’d thought they were the typical New York tenement beige. I’d been a little grossed out to realize that my beige walls were the result of my exhaling cigarette smoke on them for six years.

  “What do you think of this?”

  Startled, I turned around into the warm, open face of a cute, tall guy. He had something of a game-show host’s too-big smile, but otherwise, he was good-looking, nicely built and well dressed. He appeared to be in his early thirties. I sensed he was a New Yorker.

  “Do you think it’s too much?” he asked. “I’ve got a bare wall in my bedroom, so I was thinking maybe.”

  “It’s great,” I said, nodding. And so are you. His eyes were hazel and fringed with dark lashes. His brown wavy hair was thick and lush.

  So it was happening. Just like all those guidebooks and women’s magazines said. If you were minding your own business and going about your life, you’d meet someone.

  He aimed the game-show-host smile at me. “I’ll have to come back for it. I’m meeting someone. Blind date,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Like I’m really in the mood to make forced small talk for an hour with a total stranger.”

  I would have laughed and agreed if I hadn’t been getting the sneaking suspicion that I was talking to Ben Larson. The coloring and age matched.

  “My friend said she was cute,” the Maybe Ben Larson continued, “but you know how friends lie about blind dates. I mean, if a woman needs a blind date, she can’t be too hot.”

  That goes double for a guy, you moron. I smiled my sort-of smile. My ears started to burn.

  “So, um, you live in the city?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Upper East Side.”

  “Really? Why?” He laughed. “Isn’t it boring up there?”

  “I like it,” I said, immediately bristling. “Where do you live?”

  “West Village. I don’t go above 14th Street.”

  Now there was a cliché that I hadn’t heard in a few years.

  “Hey, so it’s too bad I’m meeting someone,” the Maybe Ben said, “because I’d really like to talk to you some more. So, unless you’re seeing someone, perhaps we could meet for a drink sometime.”

  Why would a guy who’d just insulted me—and who was about to go on a blind date with another woman—think I would be remotely interested in ever going out with him? Were guys that egotistical? Scratch that. Was this guy that egotistical?

  More importantly: “Are you by any chance Ben Larson?”

  He straightened, and his smile faltered. “Yeah, how’d—oh, man, oh hey, wow, are you Jane Gregg?”

  I nodded and looked away from his embarrassed expression to the huge Picasso poster he’d been debating buying.

  “Wow, so this is awkward,” he said, game-show-host smile fading.

  I offered up my a good-sport grin. “Well, we can always tell our grandchildren the great story of how we met before we met on our blind date.”

  He looked at me quizzically with the horror of a guy who’d heard the words our and children in the same sentence.

  “I’m kidding?” I offered.

  He sort of giggled. “Uh, I’m really sorry about trying to meet you. I guess I don’t look so good anymore, huh. Well, it’s kind of funny, right?”

  Hysterical. “Totally,” I said. Like your jagged bottom tooth and your sma
ll hands.

  Those small hands gave me some consolation. You knew what they said about small hands. If Ben Larson turned out to be the jerk he was rounding out to be, he’d have to live with those small hands for life. I wouldn’t.

  “So, uh, should we check out the French painters?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, picturing the empty seat next to me at Dana’s wedding. Picturing Natasha Nutley nuzzling Mr. Houseboat and dancing all night. What excuse could I possibly make for why my adoring boyfriend couldn’t make it? Emergency brain surgery? Urgent rocket trip to Neptune? Meeting with the Pope?

  The Gnat would know. Dana would know. And Aunt Ina would know.

  Plus, as I’ve stated for the record, the brain surgeon I was scheduled to meet on Saturday was sure to be the biggest jerk of them all. (Okay, he was really just a resident at New York Hospital.) But that left Ben Larson as my only blind-date shot at dignity. Especially given the sad fact that if three in a row went bust, my blind-date bookie was sure to cut me high and dry before I even got to meet next Tuesday’s guy.

  As Ben and I smiled awkwardly at each other on the escalator to the second floor, I realized that I might have judged him too quickly, as I was prone to do. Okay, he’d made that crack about the Upper East Side, but then again, so did everyone who lived in New York City. Even people who lived on the Upper East Side tended to apologize for living in a nice neighborhood. And, so what that he’d tried to pick me up before knowing I was his blind date. Hadn’t I been all too happy to be picked up by the cute stranger I’d thought he was? Hadn’t I myself planned to be picked up by T-shirt Guy before I knew he was Kevin Adams? Did I have a double standard for guys? Well, did I? Okay, I sounded like I was rationalizing a bit. But not really. Dating was complex. Anyway, my point was that Ben Larson had been right about one thing: Blind dates did suck. That gave us a sensibility in common. It was something to go on.

  Ben turned the game-show-host pearly whites on me. “So, later I thought we’d check out the sculpture garden, once it cools down a bit out there. A little hot out, huh? It’s good you dressed scantily. I wish I could wear a little tank top.”

  I peered past Ben to the garden to cover my surprise. Had he insulted me? Or not? I couldn’t tell. The sculpture garden was dotted with stone benches on either side of a narrow rectangular pond. Sitting out there seemed incredibly romantic. Unless he had just insulted me. Chill out, I yelled at my brain. Just because the last two guys were nightmares doesn’t mean you should read something into everything Ben says. You just met him. Give him a minute. Maybe he’s nervous.

  “You’re not cold?” he asked as we neared the second floor landing. “The AC is blasting. I’m cold and I’m in a dress shirt.” He pulled at his light blue Oxford.

  Who was he, Al Roker? What was with the weather commentary? “Not at all,” I said, smiling. Was he insinuating that it was more important to me to dress sexy and show a little skin than to be comfortable, or was I being paranoid? You’re being paranoid. The guy can’t ask a question?

  I had worn one of my many Ann Taylor jackets to work today, but Eloise had insisted I leave it draped around my office chair. “You want to say to Blind Date #3—if you’re lucky you’ll get to see more,” Eloise had told me, laughing at her own cheesiness. “So the jacket stays here.” That, even after I’d explained how it felt to face a blind date’s mother with a Miracle Bra pushing up everything you had in a clingy, low-cut matte jersey dress.

  “I can’t wait to see the Modiglianis,” I told Ben as we stepped off the escalator and headed straight ahead for the French Painters exhibit.

  “Oh, you like him?” Ben asked. “I find him sort of, I don’t know, cartoonish.”

  I stared at my black slingbacks. If Modigliani was good enough for the Museum of Modern Art…

  “Will you excuse me for a few minutes?” I said as we reached the entrance to the exhibit. “I’ll meet you inside.”

  “Everything okay?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I just drank a lot of water today.” I cringed. Why did I say that? That was grosser than admitting I needed to sneak outside for a cigarette.

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll be in here.” He pointed straight ahead. I could see a Modigliani’s long neck across the wall.

  I watched Ben Larson’s back walk away, then I turned tail and bolted back down the escalator as fast I could in a crowd. It took me five minutes to weave around the mob of people in the lobby and get out the door. Warm, muggy air greeted me. I lit a Marlboro Light and sucked in a deep, oh-so-necessary drag, then exhaled. My equilibrium was now restored. Puff, puff, puff. One more drag, and I dropped the cigarette on the curb, ready to crush it.

  “Hey, don’t waste that perfectly good cigarette, young miss.”

  A homeless man was zigzagging toward me. He bent over to pick up the discarded cigarette.

  “Here,” I said to him, handing him a fresh cigarette. He grinned, revealing a need for dentistry. I lit the Marlboro for him, then ran back inside. I often plucked day-old butts out of ashtrays in my apartment when I ran out of cigarettes and was too lazy to go out for a pack. But I’d never stooped to picking one up off the street. It was so hard not to feel for the homeless in New York, to want to help them, to offer them change. They reminded me on a daily basis that it was possible to end up with nothing and no one if you weren’t careful.

  I popped a Certs in my mouth, figuring it would dissolve by the time I made my way upstairs and found Ben. I wondered if I’d interrupt him in the middle of chatting up some woman. But there he stood, in front of a Picasso, arms crossed. He eyed me as I joined him and wrinkled his nose. “Did you just smoke a cigarette?”

  Busted. “Um, yeah.” I couldn’t even use my I always smoke when I drink lie. Which was the usual baloney I gave guys when I lit up on a date in a bar.

  “Smoking’s really bad for you,” Ben said.

  Really? That was another one I’d never heard before.

  “I only smoke a few cigarettes a day.” Liar. “I guess when I get a little nervous, I get a craving.” I was trying for coy.

  Ben nodded and returned his attention to the Picasso. “Of course, Picasso was Spanish, not French. But he lived in France, where he did most of his best and most admired work.”

  “Of course,” I said in the same pedantic manner. Coy didn’t seem to have any effect.

  We moved on to a Chagal. Ben glanced at it, then moved on to the next painting, adding, “He’s a little too religious for me.”

  I stayed put in front of the Chagal, staring at one of the paintings I loved most in the world.

  “Now, this, this is more my speed.” His game-show-host smile was aimed straight ahead.

  I stared up at a giant square of black paint with three short orange lines on it.

  “Isn’t it violent in its expressiveness?” Ben remarked, his arms crossed over his puffed-out chest as he gazed at the painting. “It’s so in-your-face. I love it.”

  I remembered a family trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my parents, Aunt Ina, Uncle Charlie and Dana, who’d been in a stroller. I must have been six or seven. I’d been bored beyond tears and resented Dana, who not only got to be wheeled around in a stroller, but got to nap through the most boring day of our young lives. Uncle Charlie had just finished blabbing on about how much he loved a painting, and then he’d asked me what I thought of it. I rolled my eyes and said it was ugly. My mother had grabbed me by the arm and led me to a corner and told me that I was never to criticize something when someone had just finished saying he liked it. I was to keep my negative opinions to myself and nod. I wasn’t sure whether or not I agreed then or now, but I’d listened. Other people offered their differing opinions all the time, usually to hurtful consequence, as Ben Larson had moments ago done to me over the Modigliani.

  “Jane!”

  I’d know that voice anywhere, even without the crackle of the speakerphone. I turned around to see Gwen Welle and her husband smiling at me. Groan. I t
hought I wouldn’t have to look at her phony face for three more months. Now I had to talk to her and her phony husband on my own time. The problem with New York was that for a city with eight million people, it was really a small town where you ran into people you knew everywhere. In museums, stores, the subway, the street. And because of Murphy’s Law, you generally ran into familiar people at the worst possible moments. When you either looked like absolute hell or were playing hookey.

  “Hi Gwen,” I said, my own phony smile plastered on. “You look great.” That wasn’t phony. She really did look good. She was glowing. Her husband had his arm around her shoulder.

  “Thanks! I think it’s because we left Olivia with a baby-sitter—for the first time. This is the first evening Ron and I have had to ourselves in four weeks!” She squeezed her husband’s hand. “You remember Jane Gregg, from the office, don’t you, Ron?” Ron and I produced the requisite smiles and handshakes. Gwen’s eyes were on Ben; she was waiting for an introduction.

  “This is Ben Larson,” I said. “Um, this is Gwen Welle, my boss, and her husband, Ron.”

  Handshaking. Smiles.

  Gwen turned her glow on me. “I’m so glad to see you out having a good time, Jane. I figured you’d be sweating it out in the office at—” she glanced at her watch “—6:20 on a workday. It can’t be work, work, work all the time!”

  Anger, hot and sharp, burned in my gut. “Well, considering that I worked, worked, worked till one o’clock last night on the Nutley outline, I thought I deserved a walk around a museum.”

  Gwen had the decency to realize she’d stung me. “Oh, well, I mean, I didn’t mean that you weren’t working hard, Jane. Oh, silly, you know what I meant!”

  The husband looked at his watch. “Gwen, we’d really better go, or we’ll be late for dinner with the Hudsons.”

  “Busy, busy, busy!” Gwen trilled. “Well, see you in a few months, Jane. But we’ll have a chance to chat on Monday at the ed meeting when I call in.” She eyed Ben. “Nice to meet you.” She flashed me a Good job on him look, and then, after the typical goodbyes, they were gone.