That’s what you were told.
It’s after work, 7:30, which is an early night for leaving work when all is said and done. In the month and a half since you started at Bank of America, you have earned a reputation as a grind, a work grind, so you have changed your shoes, combed your hair, put on a touch of eyeliner, a bit of blush, and unbuttoned one button to reveal the top of your laciest bra. It all feels phony, like putting peanut butter on the lever of a mousetrap as bait, but Eleanor, the girl closest to your age and experience at Bank of America, has coached you, even made you sign up for a dating site—Come on, Heather, don’t be ridiculous, you need to get out and about, it’s not a big deal, everyone is online, it doesn’t mean you are some sort of dating failure—and now you are putting into practice what you are expected to do.
You pause after stepping through the door, carefully moving a little aside to let other people pass by. It’s Friday night, the start of the weekend, and the bar, Ernie’s, is awash with young energy. It’s a scene, a meet and mingle, and you suppose you fit in here, you are the correct demographic, but it doesn’t feel as festive in the bottom of your gut. A loud roar goes up at the east end of the bar; someone has done something at the center of a group of guys, and people clap and shout, and a hat of some sort goes into the air.
A text comes in on your phone.
Running late, Gary says. B riht there.
So now what?
And can he spell? Or is that text code? A typing mistake?
The bar is jammed, but you forge ahead and look for seats, but nothing is open. This is supposed to be fun, you remember. This is why you work, so you will have money to go out and meet guys in crowded rooms. Something like that. But that is cynical thinking, and Amy and Constance have hectored you about negativity, telling you it is not right to turn into a lemony pill after being jilted by He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. You agree, sort of, but can’t always help it. So when a pair of seats opens up off to the west end of the bar, a couple heading out, you force yourself to see it as a good omen, a propitious sign.
Before you can save the second seat, however, another woman, your age, your look more or less, slides in, and it is everything you can do to hold on to your own seat. You swing your butt up onto the seat and hang your purse over the back, and you twist around so you can watch the door. Casually, though. You don’t want to appear too eager, a golden retriever jumping on the house door as his provider gets out of the car in the driveway, so you decide to turn back and try to catch the bartender’s eye, but he is down at the other end watching whatever it was that made everyone shout a moment before.
You turn back to check the door, and you see Gary.
It has to be Gary. You know it’s Gary by the look, the glance around the bar, the way he stands. You’ve been told he is into working out, and it seems true; his body is solid and tight, and he has an athlete’s bounce when he catches your eye and makes his way over to you, his finger poked to his chest, then to you, then back to his chest.
“You must be Gary,” you say. “Eleanor’s friend, right?”
“Heather,” he says, but before he speaks another word, his phone goes off, and he holds up a finger and smiles.
“Okay, okay, yes,” he says into the phone, smiles at you again, then nods at something the other person has said.
Which is okay, because it gives you a chance to examine him. He’s not bad, not precisely your type, but not bad. He’s a little suit-y, a little corporate New York, a little man on the go, man about town, man pretty in love with himself. He is blond, though his hair is thinning, has already pulled back from his forehead—He’s a fivehead, Amy would say—and he is clean shaven, with a thick chin that reminds you of an ice cream paddle. His suit is good, blue with pinstripes, and his tie is a bit too attention seeking, a boner tie, Amy would call it, bright blue and slightly iridescent. He smiles again at you, raises his eyebrows to say he is sorry, then makes a drinking motion with his hand to indicate the bartender has appeared behind you.
“Club soda for me,” Gary says to the bartender, then returns his attention back to the phone.
“I’ll have a white wine,” you say, then realize how pathetic and clichéd that sounds, so you switch it to a Stella Artois.
“Sorry,” Gary says when the bartender walks away.
He slides his phone into his jacket pocket and leans over to kiss your cheek.
“So you’re at Bank of America?” he asks.
“Yes, I am. Just started this fall. And you’re an attorney?”
“Guilty, Your Honor.”
“Contracts?”
“Well, for now. I’m trying to work my way into sports contracts. I’d like to be an agent.”
“Oh, cool.”
Your drinks arrive.
And you are already not into this guy. And you are pretty sure he is not into you.
Call it chemistry. Or lack of chemistry.
“Cheers!” you say, toasting.
“Cheers. Sorry to let you drink alone, but I’m training. Trying to avoid carbs.”
“No worries.”
“I’m doing an endurance thing. Do you know about them? These mega-endurance things? You run, you go through mud, go over obstacles … it’s awesome.”
“Do you compete in teams?”
“On this one, yeah, but not always.”
It’s loud. Everything he says is just on the edge of too garbled to hear. You have to cock your head and keep an ear, like a small microphone, pointed in his direction.
“So what did Eleanor say about me?” he asks.
“She said you were a nice guy.”
“Nice isn’t very exciting.”
You take a second sip of beer. You don’t mind letting him stew on the possibility that he is not exciting. In tiny pulses, you realize you don’t particularly like him. At all. Then his phone goes off, and he plucks it out of his jacket again, holding up his finger to promise he will be only a moment.
As he talks on the phone, obviously setting things up for later with someone cooler, more attractive, more interesting, you compare him to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and it doesn’t work. It’s no comparison. Jack was bigger, for one thing, and more at ease, worldlier, more natural, much cuter. No, not cuter, you think, just much handsomer. This guy, this Gary, is like an ersatz Jack, a faux Jack, and you take a pull on your beer and wonder how you can get out of here politely. You need to be on a train out to New Jersey for the long weekend, the Columbus Day weekend, but if things had gone well, really well, you suppose you could have postponed that a day.
But Gary solves the situation for you.
“So I don’t beat around the bush,” he says when he finishes on the phone. “You’re not digging me, are you?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“It’s not working on this end, anyway,” he says, smiling. “I don’t get that we’re into the same things.”