Free Til the Real Thing Comes Along by Iris Rainer Dart Page B

guy,” Eddie Levy reminded her when he got back from lunch alone. “So I
     gave him your number.”
    Hobie called her that night, and they met for an early dinner in a restaurant that was halfway between their houses.
    “You’re great,” he kept saying. “I mean, you’re so terrific. What I mean to say is”—and then he sang, full out, with no self-consciousness
     and in a very pleasant voice—“In this world, of ordinary people, extraordinary people, I’m glad there is you.” She smiled.
     Maybe Hobie was okay. Heordered a nice French red wine and they talked. They’d both been poor as children. They both thought they’d picked show business
     as a way to escape drab childhoods. “Small world, isn’t it?” Hobart sang. He knew the lyrics from every song imaginable. He
     fit them into whatever they were talking about, and sang them into the conversation. It was sweet Once he looked long into
     her eyes and said, “When we have a baby, let’s name him Irwin. I always liked the name Irwin.” There was something endearing
     about that.
    After the third glass of wine he told her that when he was very young he’d been a loser on
Name That Tune.
The original
Name That Tune,
where you had to run up and pull a bell cord before the other contestant in order to win the right to answer. Though he’d
     been certain that the song was “Sailor Boys Have Talked to Me in English,” he tripped on the way to the bell cord, and his
     opponent, an elderly kindergarten teacher, beat him to the bell. “Sailor Boys,” screamed the schoolteacher, jumping up and
     down as the mortified Hobie lay on the cold studio floor. The old lady won. He’d never told that to anyone, he said to R.J.,
     who put a conciliatory hand over his to soothe him. He took her hand and kissed it and said, “Thank you.” After the fourth
     glass of wine he admitted that the
Name That Tune
story was a lie.
    He called her five times after that night. Every time he did she turned down his offer of dinner. He was too crazy. Certifiably
meshugge.
    “Go have dinner with him,” Eddie Levy said to her before the meeting started on Monday. “Because every time you turn him down
     he calls
me.”
    “You
have dinner with him,” she answered.
    “Me? What are you? Crazy?”
    “Hey, Eddie. It’s just dinner. You don’t have to marry the guy,” she said, and stood to get him to leave her office. But when
     Hobie called her for the sixth time, he caught her on an off night and she accepted.
    “Let’s tell each other things about ourselves that are really intimate,” he said to her over the salad.
    I’m a comedy writer, R.J. thought. I should be able to get out of this one.
    “You first” was all she could think of.
    “I like to live dangerously,” he said, and then dranksome more wine. She knew he was going to tell her some story, so she didn’t say a word.
    “When I was in my teens I used to go down to the Lower East Side to score a nickel bag of dope. And after I had it hidden
     inside my coat, I’d purposely walk past a policeman, just to feel my heart beat, thinking he might catch me and it would ruin
     my whole life.”
    Oy vey
, she thought. Why did I agree to see him again? She could see in his eyes that he knew she thought his story was nothing,
     and that he was going to try again.
    “I go out with a lot of women, and each time I meet a new one I always tell her I want to have a baby with her and what we
     should name the baby. Then I try and remember which woman goes with which baby name, without screwing up. Like you’re Irwin.
     Right?”
    The next time he called her she lied and told him she was seeing someone else very seriously and it wouldn’t be fair to the
     new guy. It was another few months after that, that she accepted the fix-up from Dinah. With the psychiatrist from Robert’s
     building. She met him at a sushi restaurant on Pico Boulevard. He was gorgeous. There was no doubt about that. Tall and blond
     and tan with