See Jane Date

by Melissa Senate

  The eight of us each stood on a circular platform in our peach peau de soie shoes in front of a wall of mirror. We all wore the same peach sleeveless dress with a high neckline and an empire waist. There was something very Audrey Hepburn about the dress. It was utterly simple yet elegant. I still thought the color was weird. Why peach? It wasn’t even a color. It was in between pink and orange. Karen, the maid of honor, was in the same dress with a different neckline, showing off her ample cleavage.

  Aunt Ina and Larry Fishkill’s mother stood smiling on their little perches in the corner. “You all look so beautiful,” Aunt Ina said.

  “Just beautiful,” Larry Fishkill’s mother agreed.

  Ms. Fancy’s assistants and seamstresses pinned and tucked and turned us around.

  As a few other women let out little shrieks when they were stuck with pins, I was busy being annoyed that Dana had so many friends to make bridesmaids. Granted, out of the eight, one was her cousin and one was her sister-in-law-to-be, but that left six others who were honest-to-goodness good friends. Good-enough friends to stand up for her at her wedding.

  I recognized four from Forest Hills, women she’d grown up with. So not only had Dana managed to find true love and book a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel, but she’d also managed to hang on to her friends. Again I wondered what my cousin knew about life that I didn’t.

  Today Dana and Larry were meeting with their photographer, then visiting the florist to confirm their order. Dana had already had her final wedding dress fitting last week. I’d been invited by Aunt Ina, but I’d made some excuse. I wasn’t ready to see Dana in her white gown. I doubted I ever would be.

  Ms. Fancy announced a five-minute break to stretch. I immediately reached for my purse, planning to escape outside to smoke. And then I remembered. I sat down on my platform and twitched.

  “Omigod,” declared bridesmaid Julie. “My waist has gone up an entire inch! I am so going on a diet starting tomorrow.”

  “Shut up!” sing-songed the other bridesmaid named Julie. “You’re a size two!”

  Julie number one smiled in the mirror. You’d think the size of her dress would have been enough proof, but no, she needed her friend to remind her and the entire room. The two Julies were from Forest Hills; Dana had known them from grammar school. I remembered my parents’ delight in their little niece having two best friends named Julie.

  Maid of honor Karen was admiring her cleavage; she still stood on the platform next to me, turning slightly to the left and to the right.

  “Um, Karen?” I began, eyeing her in the mirror. “I just wanted to apologize for pulling an attitude the other day, on the phone. I know you’re taking on a lot as maid of honor, and—”

  “Forget it,” Karen said with a smile. “So tell me about Natasha Nutley! What’s she like? It’s so cool that you’re editing her autobiography.”

  Memoirs, I wanted to correct her. Autobiography always sounded so official to me. And who was Natasha Nutley to be writing down her life story at age twenty-eight as though she had anything to say to the world?

  “She’s, um, like you’d expect,” I said, not even sure what I meant. “She’s very glamorous.”

  “I’m so psyched that she’s coming to the wedding. Dana says she has an amazing boyfriend who lives on a houseboat in Santa Barbara. Is that the life or what?”

  I smiled, not sure what to say. It was bad enough that the Gnat had encroached upon my life at work and at home. Now she’d managed to become the topic of conversation at my bridesmaid dress fitting.

  “So Dana mentioned that you’re bringing your new boyfriend to the wedding too,” Karen cooed, checking out her butt in the mirror.” She smiled that ooh, tell me all about it smile. “Is it serious?”

  “Uh, yeah, it’s getting there,” I said. “I don’t like to talk about it too much. You know how it is. You can jinx a new relationship by talking too much about it.”

  Karen nodded sagely. “I know. I talked so much about my fiancé that it took him almost eleven months to propose. It’s a year or forget it.”

  A year or forget it. I’d been with Max Reardon for a year, and he hadn’t even thought about proposing that we move in together, much less get married. I wondered what it was like to have the luxury of tossing aside a guy because he hadn’t proposed after the big year mark.

  “So were you and Natasha friends in high school?” one of the Julies asked me. “I remember her. My older brother was a year behind you guys. He was totally in love with her.”

  “Him and every other guy,” I muttered. “We weren’t friends then.”

  “But you are now,” Karen put in. “Dana said she ran into you and Natasha having lunch in a really nice restaurant in the city. You and your boyfriend are sitting with her and her boyfriend at the wedding, right? I’ll bet her boyfriend is an actor too. He’s probably gorgeous.”

  “Natasha is only a professional acquaintance, nothing more,” I snapped. “We’re not friends. I don’t even like her. Don’t forget that she’s an actress. Just because she was on television doesn’t mean she’s a nice person.”

  “Okay, whatever,” Karen said, eyeing her friends in the mirror.

  “Who is this Natasha, the actress?” Larry Fishkill’s mother called from her perch in the corner.

  “Only a famous actress who’s going to Dana and Larry’s wedding,” Aunt Ina explained. “Natasha Nutley. She used to baby-sit Dana for years. She was a raving beauty even back then, a pipsqueak of a girl around twelve, thirteen. Homecoming queen, prom queen…Jane,” Aunt Ina called to me, “didn’t Natasha win some local beauty pageant, too?”

  According to the outline of her memoir, she’d won two local beauty pageants and was third runner-up for Teen Dream New York. But I’d known that then. I’d read all about it in the Forest Hills High newspaper, which covered every little and big thing the Gnat had done.

  “She became an actress, commercials and one of the hospital dramas,” Aunt Ina continued. “I can’t watch those—all the blood and guts, ugh. Jane, which was the program?”

  “She was on two of them,” I said, stepping back onto my platform. “She had bit parts for a couple of days on each one.”

  “Oh, so that’s why no one knows who she had the affair with,” the other Julie said. “Because she was on two different shows.”

  “Right,” I said. “She had bit parts on both.” I emphasized the bit parts.

  “I saw her on Sally Jessy Raphael last winter,” Aunt Ina said. “She almost brought me to tears! What that poor girl went through over that actor. I wonder who he is. Do you know, Jane?”

  “How would she know?” Larry Fishkill’s mother asked. “She said she’s not even friends with Natasha.”

  “Oh, Jane’s her editor,” Aunt Ina announced, pride in her voice. “She’s helping Natasha write her autobiography. Jane knows everything about her.”

  All eyes swung to me. “I don’t really,” I said. “Just what she chooses to reveal in her manuscript. I swear I don’t know who The Actor is.”

  I didn’t. But I had an idea. It was almost too unbelievable to conceive. He was too stunning, too movie star. Too everything to have had a relationship with the Gnat, even for seven weeks. What was so special about a two-bit actress like Natasha Nutley when he could have had any woman in the world he wanted?

  That was the only answer I wanted. The only answer I’d ever wanted. It was about her looks, yes, but it couldn’t be just that. There was something else the Gnat had. What? What was it?

  “Break time is over, girls!” Ms. Fancy announced. “Step back on your stools, please.”

  “Did you know that one of your hips is higher than the other?” the seamstress asked me in a totally conversational tone.

  The bridesmaid to my left eyed me in the mirror, then her gaze dropped to my hips.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I never knew that. But I’m glad you told me.”

  The seamstress had the decency to look embarrassed. She ducked her head ba
ck down and continued pinning.

  Perhaps that had been the reason why Blind Dates One, Two and Three hadn’t been interested. It wasn’t the smoking, after all. It was my Hip Issue. And just my luck that Blind Date Four was with a doctor, whose business it was to notice such deformities.

  Eight

  “Me too!” I said for the fourth time in twenty minutes to Timothy Rommely.

  He smiled, revealing one perfect dimple in his left cheek, which I wanted both to pinch and kiss. “I can’t believe how much we have in common,” Timothy said, taking a sip of his sangria. “I’ve never said or heard ‘me too’ so many times on one first date. Jeff must have really put some thought into fixing us up.”

  I laughed. If only he knew.

  Timothy Rommely was, in a cliché, the man of my dreams. And for the past half hour, he’d been as perfect a blind date as you could get. Amanda hadn’t been lying when she’d told me he looked something like Greg from Dharma and Greg. Six feet, lanky yet broad shouldered, with a shock of semi-short dark, dark hair and dark, dark eyes. We had similar coloring, actually, except that I was fair skinned and he was more golden. He wore cool black pants and a black T-shirt and black shoes. Way too cool for a doctor, I thought.

  A doctor. This perfect specimen sitting across from me at the bar of a Spanish restaurant, this guy with the sparkling almost-black eyes and irresistible dimple and sweet smile, was a certified M.D. And he hadn’t even brought it up. In fact, we hadn’t even gotten to the subject of our careers. We were still on favorite movies we’d seen recently, favorite books and favorite foods.

  Timothy Rommely didn’t glance around the bar to check out other women. He didn’t belch. He didn’t order cheap carafes of wine. He didn’t treat me as though I weren’t worth his time or energy. Au contraire. Timothy Rommely was gazing at me as though I were a beautiful princess.

  “So, how about we head over to the restaurant? I made reservations at Café des Artistes, if that’s all right.”

  Café des Artistes. Only one of the most romantic restaurants in Manhattan.

  I peered into those dark, dark eyes of his and wondered when he was going to reveal his Fatal Flaw. I was being set up, literally; at any moment, he would either insult me, emit a strange sound from his body, start crying, or run out of the bar. Or, he’d tell me he forgot to mention to Jeff that he’d gotten married last weekend.

  Please, please, please let me have this guy, I prayed to the Fates of the universe. Eloise and Amanda had said you knew. Sometimes you had to wait to find out. But right now, I knew. For the first time since I’d seen the movie Jerry Maguire, a guy had me at “hello.” I’d known right then and there that Timothy Rommely was a keeper.

  The good doctor and I had played phone tag for the past couple of days; eventually he’d left a message asking me to meet him at a new Spanish restaurant downtown at seven-thirty for drinks. I’d liked his voice immediately. There was warmth in his voice, and not a trace of impatience. I’d expected the opposite from a doctor.

  I still had half a glass of sangria. I sipped the sweet, fruit-filled wine, a very pleasant buzz beginning to come over me. I was sure that a half glass of sangria hadn’t relaxed me; my date had.

  “You have really sexy toes,” he said playfully, peeking down at my Jackie Onassis red-hot toenails.

  I had sexy toenails. Who knew there was anything remotely sexy about me? My cheeks turned pink. That earned a delighted small laugh from my date. I had a feeling that if Timothy did notice my uneven hips, he’d find them interesting.

  “So did you grow up in New York?” Timothy asked as he signaled the waiter for our check.

  I nodded. “Queens. Forest Hills.”

  The dimple appeared. “I can’t believe this—another me too! I’m from Bayside.”

  This perfect specimen of manhood had grown up in Bayside, Queens?

  He sipped his sangria. “So are your parents still in Queens, or did they—like mine—move to Florida the minute you graduated from high school?”

  Ah. There it was. The Date Destroyer. There would be no Café des Artistes. He’d suddenly pretend he got beeped and had an emergency at the hospital.

  They’re still in Queens, and in fact, when you propose marriage, my dad will throw us a wedding at the Plaza Hotel. He said he would if he could, honest.

  “I lost my parents,” I said, staring at my sangria glass. I didn’t know where to look. I tried to envision the expression on my face and hoped it wasn’t too unnatural.

  I felt his gaze on me. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t begin to imagine how hard that must be. How old were you? How did it happen?”

  I looked up at Timothy Rommely and fell in love.

  Timothy Rommely had a deep, real laugh, the kind of laugh that told you he really found funny what you just said. I’d been telling him about Posh and my job, and I’d gotten up to Morgan Morgan. He hadn’t gotten past her name.

  “There’s a Morgan Morgan with a similar name and attitude in every job,” Timothy said, that dimple taunting me. “I’ve got one on my rotation—Phillip Phillips the third. He actually has the stupid roman numerals on his hospital ID.”

  The waiter appeared with dinner. Timothy had ordered the mahi-mahi, and I’d ordered the grilled salmon. He forked a piece of mahi-mahi and reached across the table with it to my lips. “Ladies, first.”

  He’d surprised me. My lips parted and he slid the mahi-mahi into my mouth. His eyes were on my lips. My eyes were on his lips. “Mmm,” I murmured. “That is so good.”

  I forked a piece of salmon and held it up to his lips.

  “Ladies first,” he reminded me, flashing that dimple.

  His expression darkened just slightly as he watched me slip the salmon into my mouth. I closed my eyes for a second, savoring the perfect flavor and texture. “Incredible.”

  And then we dug in, eating, drinking, talking, laughing, sharing bites. Timothy Rommely had graduated—barely—from Princeton. He’d been premed, but he’d really wanted to be a rock star, well, a star rock bassist. His band had been named Anatomy; all the guys were premed and headed for different medical schools, so Anatomy had broken up. He’d gone to med school in New England, and now was doing his residency at New York Hospital, which was on the Upper East Side.

  “I’ve got my own personal William—” He paused. “What was his last name, again. Something funny…”

  “Remke,” I said.

  He snapped his fingers and laughed. “William Remke. That’s it. The William Remke of New York Hospital is an Attending named Mark Lashman. Intimidates the hell out of everyone. Yesterday, one of my fellow residents got his head bitten off for asking a question thirty seconds before he was allowed to.”

  “How did you know you wanted to be a doctor?” I asked him, sipping one of the best glasses of red wine I’d ever had. “Was it because of Sardine?” Timothy had told me that his only personal experience with loss had been the death of his beloved dog, a Border collie named Sardine. He’d had the dog since he was three years old, a Christmas present from his parents. He and his older brother had been at summer camp in the Catskills when Sardine had been hit by a car. Timothy was fourteen, his brother twelve. They’d been summoned to the camp office in the middle of a regular, average day, in the middle of lunch, which meant that something bad had happened. His parents had driven up to tell the boys about Sardine face-to-face.

  Timothy nodded. “You’re probably wondering why I didn’t become a vet. That had always been the plan, actually. But when my brother heard about Sardine, he ran off into the woods, and no one could get him to talk for two weeks. It was really weird. We had to leave camp. After that, I’d planned to become a psychiatrist, but when I started my internship, I found myself more interested in internal medicine. So here I am.”

  Here he was indeed. “So what made your brother start talking?” I asked, spooning the tastiest, softest rice I’d ever had into my mouth.

  Timothy smiled. “My dad promised my broth
er and me he’d help us build a tree house with separate small rooms for the both of us. That was going to be our summer project. And we built it, but we forgot to leave an opening for the doors. My brother was the one who’d told us there was no way to get in. He hasn’t shut up since.”

  I laughed, and so did Timothy. We smiled at each other. I suddenly wanted to tell him everything, about my last day with my father, about the Plaza and the ballroom and my wedding and the guy I was supposed to find. But I couldn’t. That you didn’t tell a guy no matter how connected you felt to him.

  “Dessert?” asked the waitress as she wheeled a cart piled high with the most exquisite sugary creations I’d ever seen.

  Timothy leaned close. “I know an amazing dessert place in the Village.”

  Our date was going on its third round. Drinks, then dinner and now dessert. And perhaps afterward, a long walk. I couldn’t imagine leaving Timothy’s company. At the end of the night, when it was time to say goodbye, someone was going to have pry me away with a crowbar. Or pinch me. Because this had to be dream.

  As Timothy and I walked north along the East River promenade, even the ugly Triborough Bridge managed to appear romantic. The Roosevelt Island tram was swinging its way high above our heads toward the little island between us and Queens. We moved out of the way of a pack of nighttime joggers wearing reflective socks. A few couples walked slowly in each direction.

  And now I was one of them. I was one of the couples that I used to look wistfully at, wishing I could be walking hand in hand down the street, down the promenade, in the park, wherever.

  Timothy and I weren’t holding hands, of course. Not yet, anyway. I suddenly wished I had telepathy. I wanted to know what he was thinking—of me, of our date, of whether he wanted to see me again.

  The couple in front of us had lit cigarettes; we were hit full in the face with the heavy stink of exhaled smoke. Timothy grimaced and waved it away. All I could do was smile. I wasn’t a smoker. Not anymore. And not once had I twitched tonight.