Free Instant Love by Jami Attenberg Page B

won’t go into the details of my work except to tell you that if you’re a male between the ages of eighteen and thirty and you’ve ever peed in a cup, well, let’s just say I’m
involved
.) He e-mailed me daily after the interview, ostensibly for follow-up questions, but soon enough he was sending me links of interest, followed by queries about my life, until finally he asked me out.
    And now here he was, continuing his quest, a seemingly unstoppable force in the game of Getting to Know You, hurling questions about my childhood (no pets, one divorce), reading interests (Science fiction, mainly. Yes, I know, why
am
I single?), and taste in music (A former indie rocker, now retired. I still get that ringing in my ears every so often, which triggers memories of cool Budweiser drafts in plastic cups and irresistible curly haired men who wear faded T-shirts that always have back stories and who never call when they say they will, and I almost miss it. Then my chest heaves with the poison of a hundred imaginary cigarettes smoked in quick succession over the course of the night, and I smell something sour and urine-soaked, mixed with bleach, and I remember squatting above toilet seats; and then I don’t miss it at all).
    At the end of the hour, I apologized for having to leave, but Jesus and my choice of Veal or Chicken Marsala awaited me. I apologized also for not learning anything about him. He had focused the entire conversation on me. Sly. He asked me out again, and I agreed. He rose when I did and, pint in hand (I noticed he had two and was well into his third in an hour, but he didn’t act any different, probably because of his size), escorted me to the door.
    “M’lady,” he said, and bowed slightly, then laughed.
    I laughed, too. He made me nervous. “Sir,” I responded.
    If I hadn’t, he would have been miserable.
     
     
    IN BETWEEN the first and the second date I thought about Gareth a lot, even though I didn’t know very much about him at all. I bought two of his Camilla books at lunch one day and read them in the small park in front of the lab. There was a seal from a national children’s advocacy group on the cover of each colorful, oversized volume, declaring it an award-winning series, ideal for ages five to seven.
    The books depicted the adventures of Camilla, a spunky young giraffe who had a longer neck than anyone else in her family. This got her into trouble sometimes: while she could see what the birds were doing in the highest trees, she often missed what was going on right below her nose. The first book involved Camilla feeling ostracized because of her height, while the second book was a morality tale about sticking your nose—or your neck, in this case—where it didn’t belong.
    While none of it was groundbreaking material (And how could it be? There are no new lessons left to teach children), I found endearing the heartwarming exchange between Camilla and her love interest, Otto, the roly-poly zebra who has had a crush on her since the day they met. (“No matter that you are taller than I, we both will always see the same blue skies,” he declares at the end of the first book.)
    I closed the book, then laid it next to me on the bench, running my hands along the smooth cover. I imagined Gareth and Maggie and Robert and me all out to dinner somewhere. He would laugh at all my jokes, especially the ones at Robert’s expense, the ones Robert never gets and Maggie chooses to ignore. I wondered if he would put his arm around me when I shivered.
    That was as far as I got. That was as far as I could ever get.
     
     
    THE NEXT TIME we met it was a Wednesday, and we had dinner downtown near his apartment. “They know me there,” he said. “I’m a regular.” Regular what?
    It was an Italian place, wedged in between a tiny whiskey bar and an upscale Korean restaurant. The walls were made of brick, the floor laid with shiny wood embedded with scratches, and the ceiling shone with thin strands