So I said, could you please take a break from Pokémon Go to perhaps do your job?” Lynne says, while Teresa and I make meaningful eye contact. The past hour has consisted of essentially a monologue about everything that annoys Lynne about people in her company. Teresa and I haven’t gotten a word in edgewise, not that we need to, since neither of us would have any idea about any of the people she is referring to. Of the three of us, Lynne was always the really big talker, never shy about telling someone their story was annoying or making snoring noises while someone else was saying something she found boring. Teresa was plenty chatty, but never seemed to mind when Lynne interrupted or talked over her. I was always the good listener: my vocabulary of ums, mm-hms, oh nos, and of courses were well matched with my full cadre of head nods, shakes, brow furrows, and shoulder shrugs. When Teresa and I were alone, we were fairly evenly matched, especially since she was always good at asking people questions about themselves. But when the three of us were together, Lynne definitely took the conversational lead. Although I don’t remember it being quite this egregious. It’s like we could be anyone; we are just sitting here to be the vessels to receive her endless verbiage.
“Wow,” Teresa sneaks in while Lynne takes a sip of wine.
“That’s a lot,” I say.
“Right? Seriously, these damnable Millennials are going to be the death of me. I told the rest of the partners, if they insist on bringing in all of these baby-faced interns, then part of the program should be to be sure they tell them to speak when spoken to, and do the job so I don’t have to babysit. This is work. This is a j-o-b. You need a participation trophy and a twenty-four-hour Snapchat news cycle about your life and what kale-based products you ate for lunch? Go be a barista. Mama Lynne does not have time. Do the work, people, do it right so I don’t have to come back after you and clean up your mess.”
On and on she goes. This intern accidentally copied a client on a snarky e-mail that was supposed to remain internal. That partner dresses like she thinks she is Linda Evans on Dynasty. This client is an idiot, that one is a misogynist, the other one might be a closet racist. Lynne went to her first condo association meeting and is clearly going to have to run for president next year if anything is going to happen. I check my watch.
“Um, Lynne, I have to go let the dog out,” I say, unable to sit any longer.
“Oh, yeah, I should get back to the boys, didn’t realize how late it’s gotten,” Teresa says, standing up along with me. “Do you need help cleaning up before we go?”
“Nah, I got this. Thanks for coming over to christen the place.”
“Our pleasure. Congrats, sweetie. Enjoy it,” Teresa says, pulling on her coat.
“Really a great place, Lynne, so happy for you,” I say, and we hug and Teresa and I walk out and down the hall to the elevator.
“Holy crap,” I say when the doors close.
“Yeah,” Teresa says. “She was really wound up.”
“I know she was always a talker, but that was weird and manic.”
“I dunno, maybe she’s just nervous. She’s only been back a short time, and she only came back because she was hitting a ceiling at her L.A. firm and she had an iron-clad nonpoach clause, so she couldn’t leave them and open her own shop, even though her clients loved her. She’s in a new company, and now she’s purchased a new home, which makes it all real. I guess it is a bit overwhelming for her.”
“I guess,” I say.
The elevator opens on the ground level, and we walk outside to go to our cars. Teresa gives me a hug. “I hope your date tomorrow night is really wonderful. Will you call me this weekend and tell me how it goes?”
I smile, thinking that actually, I hope my date is really wonderful too. “Yeah, I will, I promise.”
“Okay. Drive safe. And, El?”
“Yeah?”
“She’s still our Lynne.”
I sort of know what she means. “Yeah. She is.”
Nine
This is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten,” Shawn says, finishing his first bite of lamb and immediately cutting me a piece and offering it across the table to me on his fork. I take it, reveling in the perfectly cooked, medium-rare, juicy meat.
“Yeah, well, wait till you try this . . .” I put a piece of my duck breast on my fork, being sure to get him some of the braised beluga lentils on top for a perfect bite. He accepts the mouthful and rolls his eyes happily. “I know, right?”
“Damn.”
We are at Brindille, enjoying a spectacular French meal. And I really do mean enjoying. After a week of fairly constant communication, I was somewhat less nervous than I thought I would be for tonight. I mean, I was still a little agitated, but I managed to get myself dressed and made up without Marcy’s help or gifted pharmaceuticals. Shawn picked me up in a huge black Uber car, looking even more handsome than I remembered him in a pair of well-fitting dark jeans, a deep eggplant shirt, and a black cashmere sport coat with a jaunty gray and black herringbone pocket square. He came to the door to fetch me, immediately complimented me on my brunetteness with a wink, and kissed me on the cheek before offering his arm and escorting me to the car. He asked if Brindille was okay—he figured French was a safe bet since I had lived in the country—and I admitted that I’d wanted to try it for ages.
“You know,” he says, “we are really doing a job on the little ones tonight . . . veal, lamb, duckling, bunny . . .”
This makes me laugh. “It is a terrible thing, but the cuter the protein, the more delicious I find it!”
“I’m just so delighted to be with a woman who will eat.”
“Well, you’ll never get an argument with me. I’ve never been able to feign a birdlike appetite. As I’m sure is not a shock.”
This is true. Even in my limited dating experience, I was not the girl who ordered light fare while on dates. Food is just too important to me, and it was always the thing Teresa and I both thought so weird about Lynne. She is super picky about her food in general, will eat some meat, but not on the bone, so she usually just gets fish or boneless chicken breasts, and always orders things with sauces on the side or no oil or limited salt, and almost always will send things back at least once. On dates, she would order salads with lemon and no oil and then push them around her plate. Teresa and I are both eaters, and our philosophy was always that while we didn’t use dates as a place to pig out, at least we ate like normal people.
“Not a shock, just a very welcome observation. I love good food, and frankly, I hadn’t ever thought it was important as a quality in a date, but then . . .”
“You went out with someone who thought food was fuel?”
“Exactly! The worst. The ones who wish . . .”
“There was just a pill to take!” we say in perfect unison, and laugh. I take a sip of the rich wine, smooth with a hint of red fruits and a smell like old leather.
“Yeah. These days the whole food thing is just a Pandora’s box,” I say, remembering Ethan and his gluten-free vegan admission and how it completely shut me down where he was concerned.
“Exactly! Between people’s sensitivities and preferences and the diet fad of the moment . . . it used to be that politics and religion were the hot-button issues. I’ll be honest, I haven’t really dated that much since my divorce, but now I feel like it is the first thing I should ask a woman . . . because I’m too old to manage someone’s food neuroses. I mean, if you are allergic to something medically, no worries. If you have some preferences? Not a big deal, we all do. But some of this stuff these days? I’d take a Tea Party Republican Christian Scientist if she’ll just eat gluten and bacon.”
“I know, the whole paleo or raw diet or juice cleansing . . . Food shouldn’t be hard. It should be a celebration.”