He sighs. “Who knows? Who remembers? Write down no. Nobody I’ve met so far looks like their profile picture.”
“Did she ask you any questions about yourself?”
“Not a one.”
“Okay. I’ll skip the rest. Overall scale of one to ten?”
“Um, one point five. It was a bust. We drank a beer, she tossed her hair, told me how immoral football is, and then my phone rang, and I ducked out. End of story.” I can tell by his breathing that he’s working out while we talk. Judd doesn’t waste time merely talking on the phone; he’s always doing lunges or squats at the same time. “Okay,” he says. “Your turn.”
“Awful. Black hole of despair. Bad haircut, didn’t ask even one question about my life. Works for a big firm, blah blah blah, frets about cybercrime, married twice before, griped about how men can’t be themselves with women anymore. More or less your typical troglodyte.”
“This dating scene sucks,” he says, huffing and puffing. “Let’s go to the diner.”
It’s always about the diner for Judd.
“Luckily or unluckily,” I say, “there are three other guys who want to meet me for coffee. I’ve said no to two of them—but one of them looks promising. A firefighter who started a fund for kids whose parents died in 9/11. I might marry him just for that.”
“Nice. Now diner, diner, diner.”
“No, no, no. Mr. Swanky and I are comfortable, and besides, he doesn’t want me to go out, do you, Mr. Swanky G. Pug?” I lean over and pet his soft little ears, and he stretches out and I swear he smiles at me.
“Mr. Swanky can’t express his opinion, and even if he could, luckily for everyone concerned, he’s an understanding and forgiving dog who wants you to live your best life,” Judd says. “Come on. Meet me in the stairwell in five minutes. I have something important to tell you.”
“You can’t just tell me now?”
“I cannot.”
“Oh God. Is this going to be heavy? Like, you’re moving out or something?”
“I’ve had one of my major thinks. An epiphany.”
“Always a dangerous thing. Okay. I’ll meet you in seven minutes, not five. But I have to warn you I don’t have any makeup on, and I’m not changing out of my leggings and T-shirt.”
“And how is this different from any other night?” he says. “When have I seen you with makeup, is the real question. I figured you’d thrown it all out by now.”
“I save it for dates. Seeing all the bottles lined up on my counter gives me hope.”
“This is exactly what we need to talk about.”
“The bottles on my counter?”
“No. Hope.”
Judd Kovac has been my good friend for thirty-one years. We met on our first day of kindergarten back in Pemberton, New Hampshire, when the teacher, Mrs. Spencer, sat me down next to him on the rug at circle time. Fifteen minutes later she separated us because we couldn’t stop talking. I think he was bragging about how loudly he could burp. Turns out that was the beginning of a lifelong conversation on that topic.
It doesn’t even matter at this point that we don’t have all that much in common, besides the fact that we both escaped our family farms in New Hampshire and moved to Manhattan. Now that we’re in our midthirties, we live two floors apart on the Upper West Side. Due to the mysteries of rent-stabilization rules in New York City, we are both in illegal, but affordable, sublets that could be reclaimed at any moment by the lawful tenants who live elsewhere. (Don’t ask; it’s complicated.) We’ve become true New Yorkers, toasting periodically (usually me) to the fact that we narrowly escaped the fate of farm life that our parents tried to foist upon us. Every now and then one of us (usually him) will get nostalgic and start idealizing the simple pastoral life we left behind, the one containing lots of cows and goats. But that’s generally only when the subway is down.
And in case you’re wondering—and I know you are—outside of one disastrous, experimental make-out session when we were fourteen, our relationship has never gone down the rabbit hole of romance.
We are not each other’s types, that’s why. He goes for women who could have appeared on America’s Next Top Model, whereas I . . . well, I just can’t make myself care enough to go to all that trouble. I barely put on mascara for work, and even then I smudge it half the time. Also, I hate wearing high heels on my off hours, and I refuse to wear any outfit that requires a special bra. (I have exactly one saggy, flesh-colored bra, and when that one loses the last of its elastic—well, that’s when I’ll consider going and buying another.)
As for him, he’s a great guy, but he doesn’t have a lot of nuance to him. He likes problems a person can fix, like weight gain. Bloat. Signing up for gym memberships. And he can’t stand still—he’s always doing boxing moves or bouncing up and down on his toes. Also, I hate to mention it, but he doesn’t separate the whites from the darks when he does laundry, so his clothes are always a little dingy. And he thinks that Meryl Streep is overrated. Meryl Freaking Streep!
But I suspect we’re in one of those friendships that might last for life.
I saw him through the tragic moment when his high school girlfriend, Karla Kristensen, (aka The Love of His Life) married someone else, and he comforted me with Toaster Strudel and cream puffs (big deal for a gym guy) through the demise of my short-lived marriage to Steve Hanover, even though he didn’t approve of either of those foods or of Steve Hanover (aka The Love of My Life).
Also, after all these years, I appreciate that he doesn’t tease me about the fact that I am terrified of heights, bees, haunted houses, thunderstorms, and the possibility of snakes coming up through the toilet bowl—and I pretend not to see that he’s crying in movies that have to do with dogs dying.
Anyway.
We’d both been pretty much living the single life in New York City for years, basically hanging out together because, frankly, we were still hung up on our previous relationships . . . and then a year ago, we were at our third wedding reception in two months, when Judd suddenly turned to me and said, “You know something? I’m sick of this. What we’re doing with our lives is bullshit. We need to get back out there and meet people for real.”
I looked down at my patent leather Jimmy Choo Wedding Reception High Heels, bought under duress. “And by people, I’m assuming you’re referring to—?”
He looked me in the eye. “Yeah. Our future spouses. I’m thinking this is our year to meet them. We’re going to get serious about getting serious. You in?”
Well, of course I was. I’d been bumbling around year after year since my divorce, not really finding anybody who would play the part of Husband in my fantasies about marriage. Ever since Steve Hanover took what I used to call my heart and stomped on it, I’ve lost a bit of my mojo. I’m mostly content to come home, strip off my glamorous work clothes, scrub off my mascara, put on leggings, and sit down at the kitchen table and make myself work on the novel that I’ve been writing off and on for five years now. The novel that makes me feel I’m more than simply The Person Who Attends Other People’s Weddings and Then Goes Home to Listen to Her Eggs Drying Up.