medium-expensive neo-Cuban restaurant with the kind of desserts that have names evocative of Catholicism:
sinful chocolate torte, pure vanilla ice cream with virgin peach coulis
. It’s the optimum implementation of the specs.
I arrive a couple minutes late, figuring she’ll be a couple minutes later. The bar’s your standard fake dive, decorated with big forties-style signs advertising discontinued brands of soda and cigarettes. There’s only a dozen people here, in three or four platonic after-work groups. I recognize the bartender, Freya: I had a semi-flirty conversation with her once about how she’s named for a Norse goddess. A name like Freya is a gift passed down through the decades from a girl’s parents to any guy who wants to flirt with her, as long as he’s reasonably up on world mythology.
“What’s new with you?” she asks as she pulls my beer.
I scan my brain for some piece of news that might be interesting to a near-stranger. “I got a dog last week,” I tell her, which works perfectly—prompts some obvious follow-up questions, portrays me as both masculine and nurturing—apart from the fact that it’s not true.
“Neat,” she says. “What kind of dog?” and we’re off. The lying sharpens my wits, and I feel ready to deal with any situation, outsmart any adversary, until Maya walks in and smiles at me, at which point I’m gripped by the fear that I’m about to get thrown out of the bar for being underage.
I greet her without attempting any physical contact, because the available physical-contact greetings at this point are a handshake, an air-kiss, and an upper-body hug, and none of those is a good way to start a date. Instead I pull out a barstool for her, a display of chivalry that I pretend to pretend is ironic. Maya orders a gin and tonic, the same drink she asked me to fix her at the party the night we met.Her subtle invocation of that night makes me feel like we have a history, and I smile in recognition before it occurs to me that it’s probably what she always drinks. Freya, who is a professional, fades discreetly away after pouring, which is a relief, because it would be problematic if the dog thing came up.
“So are you coming straight from work?” I ask her.
“Yeah, I just got done,” she says. For three long seconds it seems as though neither of us will think of anything else to say and we will finish our drinks in silence and then go home. “How about you? Do you have a regular schedule, or are you writing your own ticket now?”
“I make my own hours, pretty much,” I say. I don’t go into what those hours are filled with. Since the sale I have been learning how much dead time a day can hold. At some point I’m going to have to tell her about being rich, but I don’t know when: too soon and I’m showing off, too late and I’m hiding something.
I want to ask her a question she hasn’t been asked a million times before—otherwise she goes straight to her prepared answer and the two of you are just acting out a script. But obviously you can’t ask her a job-interview question like
In a fight between a bear and a shark in a neutral, jellylike medium, who would win
? because then she’ll think you’re a dork.
“So what’s the best story you’ve ever written?” I ask. It works: she stops and thinks about it, and there’s a public answer and a private answer, which is always good. She tells me about the story she won awards for, the one she sends to magazine editors when she pitches them—a two-month investigation into the shady dealings surrounding a lucrative waterfront development contract, involving the ambitious son of a casual-footwear magnate, a mayoral aide, and the aide’s partner, who was running for DA. (Even I was vaguely aware of this when it broke: there were headlines in the
Chronicle
, and people lost their jobs.) But then she tells me about the story that meant the most to her, the one that she remembers when she getsdiscouraged: a
sinful chocolate torte, pure vanilla ice cream with virgin peach coulis
. It’s the optimum implementation of the specs.
I arrive a couple minutes late, figuring she’ll be a couple minutes later. The bar’s your standard fake dive, decorated with big forties-style signs advertising discontinued brands of soda and cigarettes. There’s only a dozen people here, in three or four platonic after-work groups. I recognize the bartender, Freya: I had a semi-flirty conversation with her once about how she’s named for a Norse goddess. A name like Freya is a gift passed down through the decades from a girl’s parents to any guy who wants to flirt with her, as long as he’s reasonably up on world mythology.
“What’s new with you?” she asks as she pulls my beer.
I scan my brain for some piece of news that might be interesting to a near-stranger. “I got a dog last week,” I tell her, which works perfectly—prompts some obvious follow-up questions, portrays me as both masculine and nurturing—apart from the fact that it’s not true.
“Neat,” she says. “What kind of dog?” and we’re off. The lying sharpens my wits, and I feel ready to deal with any situation, outsmart any adversary, until Maya walks in and smiles at me, at which point I’m gripped by the fear that I’m about to get thrown out of the bar for being underage.
I greet her without attempting any physical contact, because the available physical-contact greetings at this point are a handshake, an air-kiss, and an upper-body hug, and none of those is a good way to start a date. Instead I pull out a barstool for her, a display of chivalry that I pretend to pretend is ironic. Maya orders a gin and tonic, the same drink she asked me to fix her at the party the night we met.Her subtle invocation of that night makes me feel like we have a history, and I smile in recognition before it occurs to me that it’s probably what she always drinks. Freya, who is a professional, fades discreetly away after pouring, which is a relief, because it would be problematic if the dog thing came up.
“So are you coming straight from work?” I ask her.
“Yeah, I just got done,” she says. For three long seconds it seems as though neither of us will think of anything else to say and we will finish our drinks in silence and then go home. “How about you? Do you have a regular schedule, or are you writing your own ticket now?”
“I make my own hours, pretty much,” I say. I don’t go into what those hours are filled with. Since the sale I have been learning how much dead time a day can hold. At some point I’m going to have to tell her about being rich, but I don’t know when: too soon and I’m showing off, too late and I’m hiding something.
I want to ask her a question she hasn’t been asked a million times before—otherwise she goes straight to her prepared answer and the two of you are just acting out a script. But obviously you can’t ask her a job-interview question like
In a fight between a bear and a shark in a neutral, jellylike medium, who would win
? because then she’ll think you’re a dork.
“So what’s the best story you’ve ever written?” I ask. It works: she stops and thinks about it, and there’s a public answer and a private answer, which is always good. She tells me about the story she won awards for, the one she sends to magazine editors when she pitches them—a two-month investigation into the shady dealings surrounding a lucrative waterfront development contract, involving the ambitious son of a casual-footwear magnate, a mayoral aide, and the aide’s partner, who was running for DA. (Even I was vaguely aware of this when it broke: there were headlines in the
Chronicle
, and people lost their jobs.) But then she tells me about the story that meant the most to her, the one that she remembers when she getsdiscouraged: a
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