Free Love and Miss Communication by Elyssa Friedland Page A

that,” she hedged.
    “I doubt it,” he said. “I went to Arizona State with Annie’s brother, Jordan.”
    Evie flushed even more.
    “There’s another orthodontist in Manhattan named Michael Jones. He went to Penn,” Mike said. “We always get calls at my office from patients looking for him. Evie, did you Google me?” He didn’t sign the credit card statement that was placed in front of him. Evie wondered if he was backing out of paying for the date.
    Her only viable option was denial.
    “No, no. I must just be getting confused. You know what? My friend was talking about Penn today. I’m just all mixed up from the rum in this drink. So we’ll get together in two weeks?” Evie asked without making eye contact.
    “I’ll be in touch,” Mike said in a tone that could best be described as noncommittal. He signed the bill and stood up abruptly.
    “Nice to meet you,” he said and did the unthinkable—put out his hand. When they first met, he kissed her on the cheek. Now all he wanted was a handshake. Evie had never been on a date that capsized so quickly.
    Back home in her apartment, sprawled out in bed with a Seinfeld rerun in the background, Evie replayed the night. She was embarrassed about what happened, even though in her heart she believed Googling a date was routine and necessary due diligence for dating in the digital age. It wasn’t lost on her that generations of people prior had met and lived happily ever after without giving each other web colonoscopies before the first date. But things were different now. So much information was available online that it was irresponsible not to use it. Still, being outed as a Googler was another story. And that was how Evie knew she would not be hearing from Mike Jones again.
    At least it was no great loss.
    Evie stacked up everyone she met against Jack, creating Venn diagrams in her mind to assess areas of overlap. It wasn’t that she never met men that matched, even surpassed, Jack in attractiveness, humor, and intelligence. But that je ne sais quoi factor, that “something extra,” that part of the diagram was tougher for other men to fill.
    During their time together Jack opened two more restaurants—Paris Spice, a formal French-Asian fusion restaurant on the Upper East Side, and a high-end dessert lounge in Tribeca called Eye Candy. Before Jack, she knew little to nothing about restaurants beyond where Time Out New York said she should eat and what new cuisines the New York Times announced had merged in the fusion craze. But soon she was talking “front-of-house” and “table turns” with restaurateurs and critics at culinary events and openings.
    When she was on dates with guys who worked in finance, ubiquitousin Manhattan, she wasn’t impressed by talk of currency hedging and derivative patents. Evie worked on those same deals, and they didn’t interest her on a date any more than they did at work. Her mother once intimated that Evie liked Jack because he was a known entity—a desirable plus-one at dinner parties. But he wasn’t even really famous. He was only a household name among the rarefied circle in New York with enough disposable income to justify a twenty-three-dollar slice of cheesecake (the menu did claim the crust had actual gold flecks in it). For Evie, of course Jack was much more than a name to drop, though she never tired of the way diners looked at him in awe when he would emerge from the kitchen in his uniform. Besides being handsome and successful, Jack was self-made, ambitious, and passionate about his profession. He was the whole package. What Evie couldn’t readily say to her friends, and what she was even too embarrassed to say to Fran, was that she was also the complete package. They matched.
    Begrudgingly, she reached for her computer to send Annie an e-mail thanking her for the setup. She assumed Mike would tell Annie about the Google snafu, but there was nothing she could do about that. She simply said that she really