I Wanted to Warn You
Wow. Get in line so you can stand beside her. Order a muffin.
Damn: a dude.
They’re shaking hands. An internet date.
For a relationship to work, you’ve got to commit to never going back to Africa. (Mike)
They sit at a table near mine.
I cannot write with this woman radiating behind me.
But you don’t have any equity. (Dad)
Not writing.
She’s getting a refill alone. Get up. Get up.
I stand by the trashcan, stirring half-and-half into my coffee, though my coffee does not need half-and-half.
“Where’s the trashcan?” the woman says to April, one of the baristas.
“I’m guarding it,” I say.
Step aside. Smile. It was poor comedy. But there was nothing else to work with.
We sit again, she with the dude.
Maybe if you keep dating crazy women it means you want to be with a crazy woman. (Dad)
Not writing.
Your wish list is too long. (Seth)
There they go up the street together.
You date women who aren’t your equal. (Andrew)
Writing.
I want you to spit on the ground every time you say that other woman’s name. You owe me three spits. (Ofir)
Forty minutes later: a tap on my shoulder.
April says, “There’s a call for you in the office.”
“I know this may sound a little odd, but I’m the woman you made the joke to about the trashcan.”
What’s amazing to me is that you’re still hopeful. (Ofir)
Drinks at a bar with her somewhere near 4th Street.
Forgotten rose petals from Ericksen’s wedding in the pockets of my black overcoat.
Dropping them at her feet as we head toward my apartment.
I don’t believe that’s all the women you’ve slept with. (Erin)
“If we have sex,” she says, “I may start crying.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I may cum within a minute, start crying, and go completely dry.”
“Are you okay?”
“I wanted to warn you. If that happens, just keep going.”
Already? She’s sobbing.
Who could go on?
A Thousand Umbrellas
At my apartment for nothing but kissing, Marissa removed from her body a jewelry-store’s worth of bracelets and rings plus a watch, which I noticed as they clanked onto the bedside table but forgot until she was in a cab. My attempts to set up a handoff somewhere on a sidewalk failed, predictably. Needing closure on what was barely a fling, I carried them in a plastic bag to her apartment on the Upper West Side.
Inside her door sat a bin jammed with what seemed a thousand umbrellas.
“Why so many?”
Marissa was blonde, affectionate, perfumed.
“Everyone asks me that. My mother and father always bring me umbrellas as gifts, and I never lose them.”
She made my drink in the kitchen, out of view, then sat beside me on the couch and said, “So I got tired of dating investment bankers. You make a date for nine o’clock and the guy texts, ‘Hey, I’m swamped here at the office. Can we do ten?’ Then another text comes in, ‘Listen, I really have to get this document out. Can we push back to eleven? Really sorry about this.’ Then, a while later, ‘So, I can definitely do a drink at midnight. Is that too late?’ Anyway, I meet this guy at a party one night, investment banker, and he asks what day I want to meet up. I say, ‘Thursday.’ He says, ‘Great, I’ll see you then.’ Thursday comes and he’s prompt. I ask him about his day. ‘I got up a little late, then went into the office and checked email. Then went down to the gym and played a little racquetball and took a long lunch and got back to the office and did a little work and now I’m here with you.’ We meet again the next week. I ask him about his day. ‘I did some work at home and then took a long walk because it was so nice out and then did a few hours of work at the office and here I am.’ So I say, ‘What investment bank did you say you worked for again?’ He says, ‘Madoff.’ He invited me to the Christmas party. That was right before it all went down. I knew there was something wrong with that company.”
Marissa mixed us another drink and leaned in, said, “I was on the bus in San Francisco, around Market Street. And there’s a guy staring at me. My first thought was that something was going to happen with this guy. The bus stops and the person beside me gets up and the man moves into the empty seat and says, ‘You look really familiar. Have you lived here long?’ I say, ‘No, I just moved from San Francisco.’”
I (David) said, “You mean Boston.” Her story was set in San Francisco.
“Of course,” said Marissa. “I told him I’d just moved from Boston. And he says, ‘Really? So did I. What neighborhood?’ ‘Oak Cliffs.’ He says, ‘No! That’s amazing. So did I. What street did you live on?’ ‘Highland.’ ‘You’re kidding? What street number?’ ‘40.’ This is too much. I lived at 41.’ We stare at each other. He says, ‘We really should get together. I’ll pick up some food and cook for you. I live up Telegraph hill.’
“When I get to his apartment, he insists I take off my shoes. He makes me dinner and that’s fine and we’re drinking cocktails and he starts to get a little drunk. I go into the bathroom. There’s a strange list on the wall of New Year’s resolutions. One that throws me off is the last one: ‘Don’t forget to pray.’ He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would pray. I go back into the living room and he’s at the table and I’m trying to figure out how to leave and I stand looking at a framed photograph on the wall. And he says, ‘Oh, do you like photographs.’ I tell him I do, of course. He brings out a box of photos and sets them on the table and removes the lid. The first one is in Boston. His grandfather or something.
“He says, ‘Keep going.’
“I hold up a photograph, ‘Wow, that’s my building. You really did live next door to me.’ I put the photograph aside and pick up another one and I say, ‘This is—that’s me coming out of the laundromat where I washed my clothes. That’s really—and here’s another one of me sitting on a park bench and talking to my mothe—’”
She caught herself, not finishing the word.
“I’m terrified. I sit down and fill his glass. I figure if I can get him even drunker, I can get out of there. Pretty soon he’s having trouble holding up his head. When he goes to the bathroom, I run out into the street without my shoes.”
And I walked out of Marissa’s apartment with mine, after a kiss to smooth the departure.
