I was sitting at a sushi bar staring at my empty bowl of miso soup and my empty plate of tuna rolls trying to clear my brain. I was in a fog while everyone else was obviously there with dates or big parties having a quality Friday night.
I was alone. I had been visiting a friend in the hospital after an unplanned, medically necessary hysterectomy at 34. In one big swoop, she had fallen apart in my arms, just hours before, claiming that without her uterus she had ceased being a woman, lost all chances to ever have children and, therefore, wiped out any chance of ever finding a man who would love her.
When life shit like this happens, my friends call me because I'm the clown. I don't tell her that with time things are going to get better. I don't tell her anything at all. I listen, and then somehow I manage to make her laugh. Unlike her mother who nitpicks or her sister with the four kids who thinks she's helping her by talking about adoption, or the nice guy she met at the market. She's got me. I have no idea if I'll help or hurt when I'm around her, but I think that the biggest healing power of me being around is mostly because people know that no matter what happens to them, I will always be a bigger mess than they will.
Anyway, I was sitting at the sushi bar when my phone rang. I blinked at the caller ID for four rings, not believing what the computer chip was telling me. It was Lover. I hadn't spoken to him in six months. Our last night together had been soft and wonderful. It had seemed more on track and together than we had ever been. Before we parted, I swear the man looked torn, like he didn't want to go. But for some reason, after that incredible night, he hadn't e-mailed or even acknowledged me. I'm not sure what happened. I just knew that I was sending e-mail into the black hole for several months and not receiving any response at all. I took this as the ultimate signal to leave him alone and did so. Seeing his name now on my phone made my blood run cold. He could only be calling with bad news: someone was dead, someone lost their job, etc. and I'd had just about enough sad that day.
"Hello?" I asked just in case some wire got crossed, and it was actually someone else calling me.
"Why hello there," his tone was warm and happy like the six-month time period hadn't happened. "Where are you right now?" he asked.
"I'm sitting alone at the sushi bar we usually eat in Yorkville," I said. "Why?"
"It's pretty noisy there," he said.
"Do you want me to go outside?"
"No, no, no. That's not necessary."
"Do you need something?" I asked.
"I want you to look around the room and tell me who you find most attractive."
I frowned deeply. I had not had a day where I wanted to play games, and I was ready to just tell him to go to hell. "Lover, what the fuck?"
There was a moment of silence. "Just trust me."
I was angry. I had tried to ignore his absence knowing that I was doing my best not to be needy. But after six months, I had finally accepted that it was over and I had focused on my life. Now I was in town focusing on a friend's struggle. I sighed and looked around the room. You wouldn't think it would be hard at 8 p.m. to find three attractive people in a decent-sized restaurant in Toronto. But I used to play this game on the subway when I was younger and worked in New York City. It is amazingly hard. And when you do pick the people you find attractive, it's because you've watched them long enough to figure out why they're attractive not just because they have a decent face or a nice body.
I mean, there were a lot of beautiful people, but whom would I put at the top of my list just by looking at him or her. That was difficult.
"Okay, there's a couple in a booth in the window of the restaurant. She's around 45 and movie-star fit. She's sitting across from a guy who has to be 10 years younger than he is. And I'm pretty sure he's wondering how high a quarter would bounce if he dropped one on her aerobicized ass."
"Would you sleep with her?" he asked.
"No, she's not my type," I answered flatly. "I just wouldn't mind looking like her, or for that matter at her."
"Find three that are your type."
So, he wasn't just looking for pretty, he was looking for quality. I scanned the room again.
"I can find only one," I said letting out a sigh.
"You're too picky."
"What do you want? I have a vagina, not a penis. My parts are extremely selective."
"Fine, fine, fine. Girls good. Boys shallow. I get it. Describe."
I lower my voice because the person is close enough to hear me. "Single, at the end of the sushi bar. Skinny—"
"What color is her hair?"
"It's not a her; it's a him," I responded. I guess that surprised him because he didn't say anything.
"He's wearing a maroon sweater over a deeper maroon shirt with the collar open. He's got his head down in a book. There's a little crook to his nose and a faint sprinkling of freckles. His hair is a little spiked up and he's got a pair of thin, dark framed glasses on."
"Why do you like him," he asked quietly.
"It's the quiet ones you have to be careful of," I responded joking. Then I added. "I like the warmth of his chocolate brown eyes as he pours over the prose in front of him. It's like he's getting reacquainted with an old friend."
The man looked up from his book, so I averted my eyes back to the notepad I had in front of me where, earlier, I was madly scribbling a list of items to do while I looked after my friend's nearby flat. I wanted to make it perfect for her before she got home.
"Do you want to talk with him?"
"Not really."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want what I think of him in my head to be ruined by the reality."
There were no actual lines to read between there. I was being completely reflective of our own situation. It was all aggressive aggravation. But Lover didn't bite the line.
"Are you done with your dinner?" he asked.
"Yes, they're just really slow in giving me back my credit card," I said.
"Great, when you get it back. Get up and leave something obvious behind," he said.
"Why?"
"Just, trust me."
I signed the credit card receipt and packed up my notebook, but left a leather journal of short stories I was working on about Lover on the bar. If it got lost, I was going to consider this my cleansing ritual. I had pretended to be looking for things in my bag and left it behind.
When I was out the door, I finally said to him: "Done. But unless you have something to tell me about the last six months, that's the last instruction I'm taking from you."
"Maybe it is. But I want you to call me if whatever you left at the counter gets returned to you."
I was angry, when I didn't feel I had a right to be. He wasn't my boyfriend. He wasn't my spouse. I climbed up the stairs from the restaurant and started walking down the block. I stopped at the street corner waiting for the backlog of cars that were cruising by checking out the outdoor seating to see if anyone famous was there this weekend.
There was a Ferrari, a BMW, a Mercedes, a Z350... really flashy cars. I was obsessing in my head over Lover when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned around to see the man from the sushi bar. He held my leather journal in his hand, but I could tell he had opened it because the tie to keep it closed was flapping around freely. He was taller than I had imagined, around six feet. His arms and legs were long and thin, but had nicely squared shoulders.
"Excuse me," he said smiling. "You left this behind."
Great, he was freaking Irish, accent and everything. I could feel my pulse pick up. "Oh, uh, thank you," I stammered pretending to be surprised. I took the journal from him and closed the tie. "You opened it," I declared softly.
"I swear it wasn't me. The waitress did it, but I offered to run and try to catch you," he offered. "But, I'd be lying if I said that when she handed it to me I didn't flip through it and read 10-15 seconds of it."
I blushed.
"I'm so sorry," he offered. "I just -- my head was expecting to find a name somewhere in case I couldn't find you. But all I found was, what I'm guessing, is fiction."
I turned beet red.
"Or maybe you're just more exploratory than your peaceful demeanor would have me believe," he said lifting his eyebrows, smiling sheepishly and rubbing his right hand on the back of his neck as he considered that the brief tidbit of what he read might be true.
"Which one did you spend your few seconds on," I asked.
"A scene in a church," he replied.
I shut my eyes and shook my head. "Well, thank you for returning it to me."
He smiled this amazing smile at me. "Are you walking this way?" he asked pointing across the street.
"Yes," I said wondering where this was going.
"It's getting late. Why don't I walk you?" he asked.
I looked into his eyes cautiously. It was something Lover would have offered and I still had no idea what was happening here. But he seemed genuine, so I said yes.
On the 10-minute walk to the apartment, we talked about his history. He had moved to Toronto at 15 with his mother after his father had died. His grandparents had immigrated here a long time ago, but his mother had returned to Ireland when she had married. I just let him talk. It was a nice change of pace. With my spouse and with Lover, I was always the one who babbled.
When we got to the building, I stopped walking. "This is me," I said.
He looked up at the front door and exclaimed, "I have a co-worker who lives in this building. She's a brilliant woman, just brilliant."
"My friend Erin had surgery, so I'm watching her cat for a few days until her mother feels comfortable not staying at the hotel near the hospital."
"Erin McLaughlin?" he asked surprised. When you meet a person, you understand that their name is Irish. But you really don't have it click until an Irish person pronounces it. I swear my nipples perked up. I wanted to make him say it over and over again.
"That's my friend," I said beaming.
"You're kidding," he said. "Small world. I was here for a Christmas party last year. I hope the surgery is nothing serious. I'm an editorial director in her office, so I work with her in finance periodically -- mostly when I'm in trouble for not sticking to my budget."
I laughed. I could see Erin knocking on doors at the large publishing company bitching at people about expense reports. It was so her thing. We used to joke when she sold ads for our college newspaper that she'd enjoy it if we got her some leather gloves and a baseball bat when she went after businesses that were behind in their ad payments.
When I made eye contact with him, I swear he was waiting for me to make a move. And truth be told, I had too many boys on my hands as it was. But this one seemed pretty fabulous. So I decided to share some of my wealth, if possible.
"Do me a favor, will you? She'll be back to work in a month or so. Take her some flowers. Take her to lunch. Just, do something out of the ordinary for her, will you?"
