She stares at me for a long time, and then I feel something kind of shift in her, like maybe she remembers that she does believe a tiny bit in intuition and fate. Most people do.
“Well,” she says and sighs. “Okay, but I want you to know this is nuts.”
I coach her a little: hang with me, be patient, don’t get upset by any early signs of awkwardness. Sometimes the universe takes a bit of time setting things in motion. Be cool. Don’t worry. I tell her my name is Marnie MacGraw; she says her name is Winnie.
“Oh God,” she says. “Why am I doing this?”
Because, I want to say to her, because the universe has gone to a great deal of difficulty to line all this up for you. Just to recap: It required me coming to the restaurant early to rehearse how to ask Patrick a question so major I didn’t want to do it in our house, and then spilling my red wine just so a woman visiting from Florida, who had once seen some household guru explain how to clean up wine, could jump up and embarrass her son by throwing her white wine on me. And you had to endure thirty text messages from a man who wasn’t going to turn out to be anyone important in your life but was just there to somehow get you to come to this very restaurant at this very time. And if we go even further back, it required me moving to Brooklyn because a man jilted me on our honeymoon, which caused his magical matchmaking great-aunt Blix to be so mad at him that when she died that summer, she left me her brownstone in Park Slope along with all her unfinished matchmaking projects, and that’s where I met and fell in love with Patrick, who lived in the basement and was the least likely person for me to love in the whole world, and who I never would have met in a million years because he hates leaving the house. Do you not see how stunning and miraculous this is? And we haven’t even had to go back to all the eggs and sperms that had to meet up since the beginning of time in order to create the humans that are participating in this little dance of ours.
“You’re doing it because it’s going to be great,” I say, and we walk out into the dining room.
In the dining room, everything has changed, as though the air itself has softened and become more flexible. People are chatting and drinking cocktails. Patrick is there now, sitting at our table, and when he sees me, he smiles and does his signature ironic wink, which always makes my heart speed up. At the table next to him, the guy, Graham, is sitting alone and scrolling through his phone and picking at an enormous salad and quail egg sliders. When I squint, I can see that he still has the sparkles hovering about him that I saw before. I hold up one finger to Patrick: this may take a second. He nods.
“You didn’t tell me the guy’s name,” she whispers.
“I heard his mother call him Graham.”
“His wine-throwing mother?”
“The very one.”
“So, according to you, this may all turn out that I someday have a mother-in-law who’s nuts? Maybe I don’t want that.” But she’s smiling. She’s into it now.
“On the plus side, she does know how to get rid of stains. And she lives in Florida, which is very far away.”
“Oh my God, oh my God. What am I doing?”
“Be cool. It’s showtime.” I intercept Micah as we get closer to the table, and I take him by the elbow and turn my body just so. I want to talk confidentially. I have a whole plan. “Listen, Micah. A favor. Could you move Patrick and me to another table, please? And let this lady sit at our table instead?”
He’s shaking his head no. He has a whole list of people waiting for tables, he says; she has to put her name on the list, can’t make an exception, blah blah blah.
“See?” says Winnie. “This isn’t going to work. Thanks, but I’m just going to go.”
“You stay put,” I tell her. I try to reason with Micah, but he’s not budging.
Patrick comes over then. He puts his arm around my shoulder and leans in and stage whispers, “Why are we having a high-level conference here? Are we contemplating a pitching change? Or overthrowing the government?”
“Marnie is being a little impossible, insisting on rearranging the restaurant.”
“She is quite impossible,” Patrick agrees. “But maybe you needed to have it rearranged, and the universe hadn’t informed you yet.”
“Listen,” says Winnie. “I’m going to leave. You’re all very nice and very weird, but this just isn’t my night.”
“Stay here,” I growl.
Graham now gets up and joins us. “Um. Not to be paranoid, but is this about me, by any chance? And my mother’s bad behavior earlier?”
“Your mother?” says Patrick. “Who are you?”
Both Graham and Winnie turn to look at Patrick, and I see how they slide their eyes away immediately upon realizing that his face isn’t quite what they were expecting. This is why Patrick is an introvert. He was in an awful fire eight years ago or so, and his face is scarred from skin grafts, and his right eye is maybe a little bit crooked. I always have to re-realize how it is that he lives with this every day, with every new encounter—people looking and then flinching. They don’t know how to react to the scars, the pinched, too-shiny skin near one eye, the jawline that’s not quite symmetrical. They are sorry, I know they are. They don’t mean to be cruel, but they’re caught by surprise. They look away. I ache for Patrick every time it happens, and I always want to tell him they don’t mean it, that they can also see the light that shines out from him. That he’s beautiful. Incandescent.
The moment is over quickly. Graham has recovered. “Oh, sorry. I’m Graham Spalding. And my mother threw some wine on your wife before you got here.”
Patrick doesn’t explain that I’m not his wife. Instead he just introduces himself, and then he looks at me. “You have wine on you?”
“It’s better now. Winnie here helped me clean it up.”
Winnie is looking at Graham Spalding very carefully. “And where is your wine-throwing mom now?”
“In an Uber, thank God, on the way to the airport,” he says.
The universe holds its breath . . . one . . . two . . . three . . .
“Maybe,” Graham says, “since there are no tables, you’d like to share mine?”
. . . Aaaaand it exhales. We all go to our rightful places. I can almost feel Blix smiling at me from a spot near the little twinkling fairy lights strung behind the bar.
Now you need to ask him. You’ve got to set this thing in motion, girl.
I swallow, suddenly nervous.
Patrick is watching me and smiling. “Here’s to the James Bond of matchmaking!” he says and lifts his glass. “Another successful exhibition of some of your best tactical maneuvers! This one was kind of epic, suspense-wise. I rate it a ten.”
“You’re too generous. I thought for a while there that Winnie was going to have to come sit with us until Graham noticed how much he needed her. It was a last-minute save.”
He rolls his eyes. “Sure,” he says. “Just do me a favor and let me know if you see anyone else needing to be fixed up before dessert and you need to go sit at another table, okay? Or if M calls you into headquarters, and you have to leave.”
I put my bracelet up near my ear and tilt my head like I’m getting a message. “All clear for now. All the romances in here seem to be intact for the moment.”