See Jane Date

by Melissa Senate

  “Yes, I know I can, Jaaane.” She leaned back and toyed with her pearl necklace. “Because if I can’t, you just might find something very embarrassing revealed about yourself.”

  What was this, high school? “Like what?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  “Like that you’re in love with Jeremy Black. I’m sure he and everyone else would find that just adorable—and more than a little pathetic.”

  This wasn’t high school. This was a soap opera. “First of all, Morgan, you’re dead wrong. I most certainly do not have feelings for Jeremy. And second of all, I have a boyfriend.” Well, I almost had a boyfriend. I had a second date tonight with the guy who was sure to become my boyfriend.

  “Whatever,” Morgan said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t drool over Jeremy. I’ve seen you stare at him like you’re in love. You can’t even look him in the eye. It’s so obvious.”

  “Well, if it’s so obvious, then I guess everyone already knows about my supposed love for Jeremy. So I don’t have anything to worry about, now do I?” That comeback was an A+. It was the kind of thing you usually could only wish you’d said when you were kicking yourself late at night, torturing yourself over how you lost the conversational war.

  “Oh, I think you do,” Morgan said. “I think Williaaam would get a big kick out of it. Gwen too. Plus all the guys in production. They might even feel sorry for you. Take your high-profile project away. After all, who could expect you to concentrate on your work when you’re suffering from unrequited love for your supervisor’s supervisor?”

  I’d have to think of a snappy comeback to that one when I was torturing myself tonight instead of sleeping. Was she kidding with this stuff?

  She was kidding, right?

  “If you’re discreet about me, I’ll be discreet about you.” And with that, Morgan snatched her letter from my hand and galloped out of my office.

  Jeremy’s face floated into my mind, his sooty lashes blinking over his Caribbean eyes in the usual slow motion. I hadn’t thought about him in days. I’d been fantasizing daily about Jeremy Black for five years, ever since Max and I broke up. Yet two and a half days had passed without the thought of his lips and fingers passing once through my mind. The only guy I could think about was Timothy.

  Ha. Morgan was too late. My drooling days were over. I didn’t have anything to worry about. If I didn’t have so much to do, I’d go tell her too.

  I checked my e-mail, hoping the Gnat had dashed me off a message explaining herself for blowing me off yesterday and not returning my phone calls. Her revised version of Chapter One was good, but it still needed a few tweaks before I could condense it for the Marie Claire excerpt. This just figured. The Gnat was nowhere to be found at exactly the moment I needed her to harass me with her voice and presence. She hadn’t returned my phone calls from yesterday or today. And Jeremy expected the excerpt, polished and perfect, on his desk Friday morning.

  No e-mails from the Gnat. There was one from Eloise though. Don’t worry about me okay? I’m really, really, really happy.—E

  That was three reallys too many for a declaration of happiness. Eloise had looked anything but happy as we walked home from the diner last night. And she’d looked anything but happy as we rode the M31 bus to work this morning. Eloise had spent the ride staring at her diamond and staring out the window. She’d asked me not to mention the engagement to Amanda before Friday; she wanted to tell her in person at the Flirt Night Roundtable.

  I punched Natasha’s telephone number into my phone; her voice mail floated over the speaker. “Hi, it’s Natasha! So sorry I missed your call. Leave a message at the beep. Bye!” I left message number five. Where was she? What was she doing that she couldn’t return repeated phone calls from her Very Important Editor? Maybe Mr. Houseboat had flown in early from “the Coast.” Maybe they were having sex all over New York City. Like under the low-sweeping trees in the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park, or in the elevators in Bloomingdale’s or in the back of a taxi. Or—

  “So did Natasha explain why she didn’t show up yesterday?”

  I turned to find Jeremy filling up the doorway to my office, a thick manuscript against his chest.

  “Morgan mentioned you’re having trouble reaching her,” he added.

  That little bitch. So this was her way of letting me know she meant business.

  “Oh, um, I’ve spoken to Natasha,” I said to the light switch. Maybe I did have something to worry about. I still couldn’t look Jeremy in the eye, new guy to obsess over or not. “Everything’s fine. She got so into writing that she lost track of time and didn’t want to be interrupted from the creative process. Celebrities!”

  Jeremy nodded in slow motion. “Well, they pay the bills,” he agreed ever so good-naturedly. “Glad things are going well, Jane. I’ll have the excerpt Friday morning, right?”

  “You bet.”

  I waited until I heard Jeremy start arguing down the hall with Paulette before I punched the Gnat’s number into my phone again. “Hi, Natasha, it’s Jane Gregg again. I just wanted to make sure I got across how urgent it is that you call me back. Hope everything’s okay.”

  Could something be wrong? Had she nicked herself shaving and headed straight for her plastic surgeon’s office in Beverly Hills? Was she under the knife right now?

  Cavalier, huh? That was because I knew exactly what Gnatasha Nutley was doing instead of calling me back and showing up for meetings and tweaking Chapter One and making an associate editor of me. Besides screwing a delivery boy or buying out Manolo Blahniks at Barney’s or meditating, the Gnat was busy making me feel like the invisible Jane Gregg again.

  Ten

  My cute outfit from Banana Republic—pale pink structured shell and pale gray bootleg pants—was absorbing the odor of Indian food as Timothy and I walked down East 6th Street, aka Little India. At least my jacket was spared from smelling like curry. Once again, I’d left it draped over my chair at work in the name of showing a little skin. My sleeveless top was corporate cut, meaning: boat neck. Which ensured no comments could possibly be forthcoming from dates, children or mothers.

  Eloise had called in sick today (Mental Health Day, actually), so she hadn’t been around to help me get ready for big date numero dos. I’d tried to reach her a few times to make sure she was okay, in the Serge sense, but either I hadn’t made it past Screening or she was out, wandering the East River promenade and staring out at the ugly water. Whenever Eloise disappeared, it meant she was thinking and wanted to do it alone.

  Timothy’s presence was so strong. For a second I fantasized that we were married and on our way to dinner with friends or relatives or in-laws. Jane Greggely. The name filled my head and repeated itself over and over. Was my subconscious trying to tell me something? That Timothy Rommely was going to be important in my life? That he—including his name—was my other half?

  Okay, okay. I was getting a little ahead of myself. Per every article, book or piece of advice anyone had ever given me, you were supposed to “just have fun,” “enjoy yourself,” “take it one date and day at a time.” Please. Anyone who ever went on a date with a guy as perfect as Timothy Rommely imagined herself married to him. Perhaps that was why I never fantasized being married to Jeremy. There was no chance of a date.

  “Mmm…” Timothy murmured as he took a deep breath with his face pointed upward. “Does that smell amazing or what?” He’d told me on the phone earlier today that he loved Indian food, loved the tiny, dark, ridiculously cheap restaurants that were crammed into every nook and cranny on the block between First and Second Avenues. There had to be twenty on the south side of the street alone. According to lore, the restaurants supposedly shared one kitchen. “This is the one,” Timothy said. “Little Bombay. It’s supposed to have the best tandoori in New York.”

  Three smiling waiters hovered the moment we entered. The long, narrow restaurant was crowded, despite all the others to choose from on the block. Strands and strands of multicolored lights adorned
the walls and ceilings, as though it were Christmas. An elderly man in a white robe with gold tassels sat cross-legged on a platform in front of the picture window, playing a sitar. Everywhere were couples. Talking, laughing, sharing exotic food, sharing themselves. How good it felt to be one of them.

  Timothy and I spent longer choosing our feast than we probably would spend devouring it. Vegetable samosas, potato-and-peas-stuffed bread, tandoori chicken, Biryani rice, lamb tikka, spinach and cheese in a mysterious sauce. And Indian beer. I loved Indian food, which was another me too for Timothy. An ex-boyfriend of Eloise’s had introduced me to Indian cuisine. It was as though all the bland chicken and boiled vegetables I’d grown up eating had run away from home and gotten a life. I’d never known that food could taste that way. When I ate Indian food, I felt as though I were somewhere exotic and interesting instead of New York City on the Entry-Level Salary Plan. Once I’d tried to convince Aunt Ina to try Indian. She told me she was too old for that kind of nonsense.

  The waiter set down a plate of flat, crisp bread and three shallow bowls of different sauces, then poured Taj Mahal beer into two frosty, tall glasses. Timothy lifted his glass and looked me in the eye. “A toast. To the beginning of something good.”

  I clinked, and we smiled the same happy, shy smile. A smile that said there would be a third date. A smile that told me I might be able to ask Timothy to attend Dana’s wedding with me. My heart moved in my chest. Please, please, please, I prayed. Let this work out. Let me have this. Let this guy sit next to me at Dana’s wedding. Let him discuss the latest surgical technologies with the Houseboat Dweller, who’ll be fascinated. Let Natasha eye Timothy appreciatively and whisper, “You really did good, Janey.” Let me dance with Timothy to every slow song in the mini-ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, his dark eyes only on me.

  “So how was work today?” Timothy asked.

  He had no idea how much that banal question meant to me. Max had hated that question. He’d thought it was meaningless small talk, that no one really cared how someone’s day was, and you couldn’t really “get it” anyway, since you weren’t there. Max hadn’t understood the concept of commiseration. Or of having someone to ask in the first place. I hated remembering that Max Reardon wasn’t Mr. Perfection. He’d become exactly that the moment he’d dumped me. And whenever something reminded me that he had some annoying spots, I’d get irritated.

  “A little weird, actually,” I said, sipping the strong beer. “My star writer is missing.”

  Timothy raised one perfect dark eyebrow. “Missing?”

  “She arranged a meeting with me yesterday morning and never showed up,” I explained. “I’ve called her five or six times between yesterday and today, and she hasn’t called me back. She knows we’re on deadline.”

  “Do you think she’s okay?” he asked. “Maybe something happened.”

  “Nah, no chance,” I said. “She leads a charmed life. Nothing bad happens to people like her.”

  Timothy dipped a piece of flatbread into the spiciest of the sauces. “I know the type. I have a cousin like that. He looks like Brad Pitt, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, made his first million on the stock market and he’s not even thirty yet.”

  I laughed. “I have a cousin like that, too. She has a closet full of Chanel and she’s getting married at the Plaza Hotel in two months. Her fiancé made his first million on the Internet.”

  “Another me too,” Timothy said. “How many has that been for us?”

  I was smiling so hard I thought my face would burst. “At least fifty.”

  “And this is only our second date. By the end of the third, there’ll be hundreds. Unless I’m presuming there’ll be a third date.” Charming. Very charming.

  Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom went my heart in my chest. Really fast. “I hope there will be,” I barely managed to whisper.

  “Well there’s our fifty-first me too,” was Timothy’s perfect response. “You know, Jane, I’m surprised you yourself don’t have a fiancé making millions on the Internet.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Are you fishing for compliments?” he asked, dimples popping.

  Huh? My face must have registered my complete innocence because he laughed.

  “Wow. You’re not exactly a diva, are you?”

  The Gnat came to mind. “I wish. Just for twenty minutes I’d like to know what it feels like to look like a supermodel and say and do whatever I want. Have everyone fawn all over me.”

  “I’ll bet it’s not as great as it sounds,” Timothy said, leaning back. “A famous rock star ended up in the emergency room at the hospital last week. He’d swallowed around seventy sleeping pills. Everything he had wasn’t enough to make him feel okay to even be alive. That’s bad. Real bad.”

  Two waiters wheeled a cart full of steaming shallow silver pots in front of our table. Our plates heaped with the most aromatic, colorful food I’d ever seen, Timothy and I dug in.

  “So I was serious, by the way,” Timothy said, his fork poised halfway to his mouth. “I’m really surprised someone hasn’t snatched you up.”

  I felt my cheeks turn pink. I was glad I could blame it on how spicy the food was. I wasn’t exactly used to compliments. Especially not from someone who made funny things happen to my stomach. I wanted to kiss him so bad. For one long kiss from Timothy, I would gladly lean across the table and stain my eighty-seven-dollar Banana Republic structured shell with lamb tikka and creamed spinach in cheese sauce.

  “I did have a serious boyfriend, but it ended a few years ago.”

  Timothy cut a piece of stuffed bread for both of us. “Broke his heart, huh?”

  “Other way around,” I said, staring at a raisin in my Biryani rice.

  “Fool,” he said with a smile.

  Wasn’t it amazing that you could actually feel your eyes twinkle?

  “So what about you?” I asked. “An available good-looking doctor? Unheard-of.”

  “I’ve had a few serious relationships,” Timothy said as the waiter refilled our water glasses, “but nothing worked out. Moving to Rhode Island for med school killed a serious college romance, and then med school itself killed another one, and since I’ve been a resident, I haven’t had a girlfriend. I’d need someone who’s just as busy as I am, someone totally dedicated to her career. Like you. Jeff told me you’re known for working around the clock.”

  I sent Amanda a silent thank-you over the airwaves. “You have to, if you want to get anywhere. I’m dying to get promoted. This project I’m working on now—the one the missing writer isn’t writing at the moment—everything’s riding on it. Everything.”

  “Like what?” he asked, spooning spinach from the pot onto his rice.

  “Like a raise. Like a more impressive title. Like recognition for the six years I’ve been working my butt off. Associate editor means you’re out of the assistant trap. I can’t wait to get that word out of my life.”

  “Does that mean you won’t assist me in finishing the chicken tikka?” Timothy asked, waving a fork-speared piece of red chicken in front of my lips.

  This had to be a dream. Like on that old TV show Dallas that my mom and Aunt Ina had been addicted to. Any second I’d wake up and smell the chicken tikka and realize that perfect guys and perfect dates didn’t exist for me. But unless this was a very long dream, an hour and a half had passed since Timothy had picked me up in front of Posh. And he and I were still here.

  “No. No. And no. But thank you,” Timothy told me as he handed the concession clerk at the Union Square movie theater a ten-dollar bill for the Value-Combo: a huge bucket of popcorn and the biggest plastic container of Pepsi I’d ever seen in my life. His change was a quarter.

  He’d refused to let me contribute to the check at Little Bombay or for the movie tickets or popcorn and soda. Aunt Ina would like that. So would Dana. I’d never admit it, but secretly I was more than a little pleased at his respect for the traditional date. According to polls in Mademoiselle and Glamour, only sli
ghtly more than half the women under thirty-five expected the guy to pay for at least the first date. The whole subject made me feel queasy. In this day and age of paternity leave and women CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, the idea that a guy should pay for dates was bizarre. So why was “Did he pay?” so many women’s first question after a date?

  Bucket of popcorn in my arms, tub of Pepsi in Timothy’s, we waited in the ticket holders’ line inside the huge, multilevel movie theater. I couldn’t help but notice how perfect we were for each other height-wise. With one effortless tilt of my head I could lean it on his shoulder. Timothy and I had agreed on a movie in twelve seconds flat. Turned out we were me too over Arnold Schwarzenegger also.

  “I’m so sick of this!” hissed the young woman in front of us.

  The tall guy in the backward baseball cap standing next to her peered around with an embarrassed look on his face. “Debbie, this isn’t the time or the—”

  “Oh, really?” Debbie snapped, her hands on her hips. “What is the time or the place? It’s never the time or the place with you, Rob.”

  Timothy and I looked at each other and smiled. A couples fight in line was more entertaining than any movie could ever be.

  “Debbie, can we just see a movie and enjoy ourselves?” Rob asked with the same weariness I often heard in my uncle Charlie’s voice.

  “No, we cannot,” Debbie replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “I want an answer now. Are we moving in together or not?”

  Rob turned red. Timothy and I both glanced down at the floor. Suddenly our front-row seats to Debbie and Rob’s intimate fight were a little too close. This was getting serious.

  “Deb, we’re in a movie theater! Gimme a break.”

  “I’ll give her to five,” I whispered to Timothy. He looked at me quizzically. “One, two, three—”