Hopes to save a small part of the world.
She can’t understand why, but she’s had over fifty responses. Totally unexpected. A landslide of possible dating material. As it turns out, she appeals to a hell of a lot more people than she would have ever imagined. Maybe they picture her as a modern-day Joan of Arc, a fighter with a heart of gold who likes to take long walks and is great in bed. Unfortunately, most of the guys who write to her seem like jerks. One who might have been a possibility wrote that he, too, always wanted to save the world and they were clearly kindred spirits. He had been to Africa with the Peace Corps and now worked for a church group. When Shelby called him he was so serious and kindhearted she rescued him by hanging up on him. She wasn’t the girl for him. She’d only make him miserable.
There was only one other respondent who appealed to Shelby, and she didn’t ruin it by talking to him on the phone. His email had made her laugh, so they’d arranged to have dinner. But now the time has come for reality, and Shelby finds herself hoping he won’t show. They use code names at this service. She is Darklady, a totally stupid name chosen on a sleepless night. What was she thinking? Was she supposed to sound sexy? Exotic? Like a sci-fi fan? It’s a persona her seventeen-year-old self would have chosen. Her date is Youonlylivetwice, moronic but nonthreatening. They’d messaged back and forth—only a line or two at a time. He’d written, Don’t think I’m a James Bond fan. I forgot that was a Bond title when I picked my handle. That’s when she’d started liking him.
Who says handle? she’d written back. What are you, a teapot?
Let’s not discuss drugs via the internet, he’d quipped. Tea. Pot. Seems like you have a one-track mind.
She was smoking weed when she read his response, and for a moment she felt like she’d actually found her soul mate and he could somehow intuit her true essence, as if things like that ever happened. Still, there was something about this one that made her feel he was a possibility. His turn of a phrase. His love of the New York Mets, which meant a penchant for losers. His low expectations. I just want to be happy, he told her.
Have you ever cheated on a girlfriend? she wrote when she felt she knew him well enough to ask a personal question.
Never would. Never could.
Everyone has a bottom line, and this is Shelby’s. She’d cheated on someone and she’d been cheated on, and she didn’t know which was worse.
I don’t believe in cheating, he’d written. It would be like shooting Bambi. Who can shoot Bambi and feel okay with himself?
Bambi is a story, she’d written back, moved by the reference.
Bambi is a cultural signpost for morality.
What do you believe in?
Live and let die, he’d written. Somehow the code name didn’t seem as moronic.
Do we or don’t we? she’d typed when the time came for them to meet. A month had passed since their initial contact.
Oh we do, he’d written. How could I lose you when I haven’t even found you?
So she’s up to this part, the sweating hands, the black dress, the I should have never done this moment. The meeting place is a Chinese restaurant on Mott Street, a more upscale sort of place than the ones Shelby usually frequents. Tablecloths, cocktails. His choice. And yet he’s late.
“I’m waiting for someone,” Shelby says when the waiter hovers near, clearly annoyed that she’s taking up table space without ordering anything. He has started tapping his pen on his order pad and muttering. “He’s late,” Shelby tells him. “There’s traffic.”
The waiter shrugs. “Maybe he’s not coming.”
Shelby feels flushed. “Fine. I’ll have a beer. Tsingtao.”
The waiter looks at her with pity.
“And an order of pork dumplings. Steamed, not fried. And brown rice.”
“For two or one?”
The waiter’s tone makes her want to announce that she doesn’t plan on leaving a tip. Shelby glares at him. “For two.”
If her date doesn’t show the waiter will know she’s a ghost and she’ll have to eat two orders of dumplings by herself.
A light rain is falling and outside the street is slick. It will be hard to get a cab on a night like this. About as hard as it is to trust anyone in this world. Shelby begins on the dumplings as soon as they’re delivered. She eats like a starving person. Her mouth is full when she looks up to see her date in the doorway, dripping rain, wearing a tan trench coat, shoving a hand through his long, bedraggled hair. Of course, Shelby thinks as he gazes around the room for his date. This is the way it happens. This is what I deserve. The man in the doorway is her old boyfriend Ben Mink.