Free The Wedding Beat by Devan Sipher

Which I told him. And he started jumping up and down like he needed Ritalin or something, and shrieking that it was also his favorite. Total BS, right? But then he showed me he was wearing a Shrek watch. Who wears a Shrek watch?” No one I knew. But no one I knew would pursue a woman who continually turned him down.
    “He was so sure of himself and so sure of wanting me,” Amy said, growing pensive. “The way I look at it, Mike found me. He found me over and over. Even though I didn’t know that I was lost.”

Chapter Nine
Fire, Aim, Ready
    “I need to find Melinda,” I said to Gary, whom I called while heading downtown from Starbucks.
    “You need to have sex,” he told me. “Let me clarify that. You need to have sex with someone you can physically touch.”
    I had phoned to get an update on Bernie, but Gary was more interested in critiquing my love life. Or lack thereof.
    “You need to meet people,” he said. “Have you thought about taking a class?”
    “In dating?”
    “No,” he groaned, “in something like wine tasting, where you might meet someone.”
    “I did meet someone,” I said as I crossed Waverly Street. “I met Melinda.” I just wasn’t making much headway in locating her. I had contacted Lonely Planet, and, as I suspected, they didn’t give out personal or personnel information.
    “You’renever going to see that girl again.”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I noticed I was passing NYU’s school of the arts, and I remembered that Melinda had said she was starting a master’s program there. I had about thirty mintues to kill before my next interview. Possibly forty-five if I took a taxi.
    “‘Why do you suppose it is we only feel compelled to chase the ones that run away?’ That’s
Dangerous Liaisons
.” He emphasized the word “dangerous.”
    “I’m going to find her,” I said with new resolve.
    “As Julia Roberts once said, ‘You’re a restraining order waiting to happen.’”
    “Have you talked to Bernie’s doctor?” I changed topics as I turned about-face and dashed toward the school.
    “Not yet,” Gary said, “but I noticed that flights from New York to Fort Lauderdale are on sale. Not that I want to pressure you. Just trying to keep you out of trouble.”
    It was too late for that.
    “You’re asking me to do something in violation of school policy,” said the work-study student manning the desk in the writing department. I had hoped the romantic nature of my mission would convince her to let me peek at the list of first-year master’s students so that I could learn Melinda’s last name, but the grad student’s eyes flared with indignity behind her circular wire-framed glasses.
    “How about if you just confirm there is someone named Melinda currently enrolled?” I asked.
    “That would also be a violation,” she said, tilting her computer screen toward her in a way that seemed intended to guard both its contents and her maidenhood.
    The office was a cramped space with unwieldy furniture,which I suspected had a psychological impact on those who worked there. I kept looking toward the open doorway in the hope of seeing Melinda appear.
    “Could I just get a schedule of classes while I’m here? That’s available online anyway.” I was bluffing.
    “That information is absolutely
not
available online,” she said. She was either a darn good poker player or had a potential future career as a medical-claims adjuster.
    “I’m sure I could find it if I tried,” I said in a friendly, lighthearted way.
    “I doubt it.”
    I wanted to point out that I was a reporter for The Paper, but if I mentioned that, I’d be breaching all kinds of ethical lines. As I considered my options, two undergraduate bohemians in training wearing clashing plaid shirts squeezed their way around me.
    “Do you have any more drop/add slips?” one asked.
    My adversary efficiently distributed Xeroxed forms, and the teenage boys slumped out of the office as a dark-skinned