Sam was a romantic, yes, but he was also a software engineer, and since he was better at the latter, he played to his strengths. For two weeks straight, he worked obsessively on an algorithm that figured out who you really were. It ignored the form you filled out yourself in favor of reading your spending reports and bank statements and e-mails. It read your chat histories and text messages, your posts and status updates. It read your blog and what you posted on other people’s blogs. It looked at what you bought online, what you read online, what you studiously avoided online. It ignored who you said you were and who you said you wanted in favor of who you really were and who you really wanted. Sam mixed the ancient traditions of the matchmakers plus the truths users revealed but did not admit about themselves combined with the power of modern data processors and made the algorithm that changed the dating world. He cracked the code to your heart.
His teammates were impressed. Jamie was pleased. But BB was thrilled with the algorithm, especially once he saw the proof of concept demos and how incredibly, unbelievably well it would work.
“We’ll get you down to just one date!” BB enthused. “That’s all it will take. Talk about killer apps!”
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
The next step for Sam, of course, was to try it himself. He wanted to know if it worked. He wanted to prove that it worked. But mostly, he wanted it to work. He wanted it to search the world and point, to reach down like the finger of God and say, “Her.” How good was this algorithm? First time out, it set Sam up with Meredith Maxwell. She worked next door. In the marketing department. Of Sam’s own company. For their first date, they met for lunch in the cafeteria at work. She was leaning against the doorframe grinning at him when he got off the elevator, grinning helplessly himself.
“Meredith Maxwell,” she said, shaking Sam’s hand. “My friends mostly call me Max.”
“Not Merde?” Sam asked, incredulous, appalled with himself, even as he was doing so. Who made a joke like that—pretentious, scatological, and French—as a first impression? Sam was awkward and off-putting and a little gross.
Incredibly, Meredith Maxwell laughed. “Je crois que tu es le premier.”
It was as if a miracle had occurred. She thought it was funny. She thought Sam was funny. But it wasn’t a miracle. It was computer science.
“So where did you learn French?” Sam recovered after they were seated in an out-of-the-way corner with their cafeteria trays.
“I spent a year abroad in college in Bruges. I also learned Flemish.”
“That must come in handy,” said Sam.
“Less than you’d think. The only people I speak Flemish to are my dogs.”
“You have dogs?”
“Snowy and Milou.”
“You named your dogs after a Belgian comic book.”
“Well, a Belgian comic book and its English translation,” said Meredith Maxwell.
Sam was wildly impressed with himself. Though she’d offered nothing in her dating profile about the names of her dogs and Sam nothing of his childhood obsession with Tintin, somehow he’d written an algorithm that knew anyway. He was some kind of genius. Meredith Maxwell, meanwhile, was beautiful and funny and evidently smart, thirty-four years old (Sam liked older women, even if they were only seven months older), a world traveler, a polyglot, a dog lover, an enjoyer of cafeteria-style strawberry ice cream, and possessor of skin that smelled like the sea.
“This was fun,” said Meredith as they bused their trays. But she didn’t sound sure.
“Should we do it again?” said Sam.
“Maybe off campus?” Sam observed that this was not a no but was also not an of-course-don’t-be-absurd-yes. Was this thing not as good as he thought? Was it good on paper (well, in code) but not in fact? Or more appalling still: was she his perfect match, the one soul in all the world who fit with his, the boiling down of all humanity to his Platonic partner … and she liked him sort of okay? He scrambled to think up impressive first dates. Was he insane? The cafeteria at work wasn’t a good first impression. This one shouldn’t count. He needed a do-over. “Let’s go somewhere special for dinner.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“Um … Canlis? Campagne? Rover’s?” Sam named expensive restaurants aimlessly. He’d never been to any of them. “We could take the Clipper over to Victoria? Canada’s very romantic.”
“Boats make me throw up,” she said.
“That restaurant at the top of the Space Needle?”
“Do you like baseball?” she said.
Sam stopped breathing. Was this a trick question? “I like baseball.”
“How about dinner at the ballpark? Saturday night? Hot dogs and a game? Might be more fun.”
The ball game was fun. So was dinner out, somewhat more casual than Sam had suggested in the first place but still what passed for fancy in Seattle. So was the play Meredith picked out for them to see and her interrogation of him afterward, which was like an English exam but with more pressure (the stakes being higher, after all). So was the Korean horror film at the three-dollar movies, and so was the day hike at Hurricane Ridge. But it still hadn’t clicked right away. Or maybe it was the opposite.
“I can’t help but notice,” Meredith observed after all-day hiking, after separate showers and towel-dried hair and red wine and candles and carryout Thai on the floor of her living room, “that you haven’t kissed me yet.”
“I haven’t?” said Sam.
“Nope.”
“What a strange oversight. Why, do you think?”
“Could be you don’t like me,” Meredith suggested.
“I don’t think that’s it,” said Sam.
“Could be you like me but think I’m hideous.”
“I don’t think that’s it either,” said Sam, scooting a little closer toward her across the floor.
“Could be that you’re a lousy computer programmer and this algorithm doesn’t work and we’re totally mismatched, a crappy couple, star-crossed, ill-fated, with no chemistry.”
“I am a brilliant computer programmer,” said Sam.
“Maybe you’re scared,” said Meredith.
“Of what?”
“Rejection.”
“Not much chance of that. Maybe you’re scared.”
“Me?” she said.
“Yes you,” said Sam, scooting a little bit closer still. “Maybe you’re too scared to kiss me. Maybe you’re lily-livered.”
“What does that even mean?” she said. “Like your liver is flowery? Like a little girl? Like all the toxins it filters out of your blood are flora?”
“It’s from humors. You know, bile, blood, phlegm,” Sam murmured romantically. “You lack enough to color your liver, so it’s all white and pale and cowardly, hanging out down there in your digestive tract talking you out of kissing me.”
“You know a lot of things, Sam,” she said.
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked, coming upright. He’d been leaning so far toward her, eyes half-closed, he felt almost dizzy. Or maybe that wasn’t why.
She considered. “I do like my men smart, but perhaps the less talk of phlegm right before our first kiss, the better.”