Part 5 (1/2)
”Was there s.e.x? Greg, you wh.o.r.e!”
Silence on the other end.
Shoshana groaned. ”Fine. Be that way. I'm listening.”
”Anyway, we're doing whatever, and lo and behold, in her closet are a whole row of her little expensive jeans, all carefully hung on hangers with little clips.”
”What size were they?” She always liked to know what size clothing people wore.
”I don't know, maybe six? Eight? Anyway, don't you find it pretentious?”
”What, that she wears a size eight? Certainly not. She's my new hero, what with the licking of the knife and ordering dessert and all that. I can't wait to meet her.”
”No!” he said, laughing. ”I mean that she hangs up her jeans. I mean, who does that? I feel like it's a talisman of bad things to come.”
”Okay, Greg, seriously, you're not Harry Potter. Don't say 'talisman.' It will turn girls off.”
”Whatever. All I'm saying is that I feel like most nice, normal American girls fold their jeans and put them in a dresser. Anyone who hangs up their jeans probably votes for Nader and litters.”
Shoshana stuck her tongue out at the phone.
”See? This is exactly why we broke up. You are so crazy! You go out with this girl once, and you're coming up with all these wild a.s.sumptions about her. Go out with her again. Let her pick the restaurant. Stop nitpicking every girl you go out with. You're such a mathlete.” Greg had been on the math team in high school, and she'd never let him live it down.
”You know you loved my mathematic self,” Greg teased. ”That's how I got you to sleep with me in the first place.”
”More like I was fifteen and desperate to lose my virginity. Besides, you served up that 'mystery punch' at your parents' house,” Shoshana said, examining her toes. ”I would have slept with anyone after drinking that. I sincerely hope you've come up with better tactics to get laid since then.” She needed a pedicure badly. One big toe's pink polish was chipped.
Greg chortled. ”That's right! I forgot about that. I think it was rum, cranberry juice, and a ground-up lemon peel. I'd just seen c.o.c.ktail and wanted to be Tom Cruise.”
After a few more parting insults, Shoshana hung up with Greg, only after wrestling out a promise he would go on a second date and bring her home a slice of cake from their dessert. With her love life in the c.r.a.pper, she had to rely on friends' dates to bring her home goodies. She made a mental note to work harder on finding a boyfriend.
Shoshana stepped into the shower, letting the steam run over her face to open her pores before exfoliating. She felt weightless under the water. She thought about her friends.h.i.+p with Greg as she rooted through the various bottles of shampoos belonging to her roommates and found her brand, which claimed to use water from a spring in Alaska but was probably actually from the Gowa.n.u.s Ca.n.a.l.
She thought again about her lack of a love life and realized she hadn't had s.e.x in over six months, which was depressing. She wanted a boyfriend, but not badly enough to sleep with random people. She had a JDate account Andrea had signed her up for without asking. And put up a picture of Denise Richards. From a still in Wild Things. Topless. Needless to say, Shoshana had gotten a lot of e-mails to go through and delete.
The truth was, she was having so much fun with her friends that, although she wanted love and romance, it didn't feel all that important. She was twenty-six years old, saw her mother and sister daily, lived with four crazy women, and had a wide network of not just friends, but best friends.
Shoshana knew eventually she'd meet someone great, but she wasn't going out every night to the bars to find Mr. Big. She often wondered if there was something wrong with her; it seemed every other woman she knew had been suckered into the s.e.x and the City mentality: that their lives revolved around meeting a man, settling down in a fabulous apartment, and having adorable babies. She was happy with her life, something she knew people like Alexis Allbright had a hard time wrapping their malnourished brains around. She'd always had this mystical, tingling sensation that she was somehow ... destined to do something interesting and different. That she had a life purpose. It was this glittery future that would swim into her thoughts, when she least expected it. A gut feeling told her this destiny did not have to include a man.
Lately all her dates had been failures, but she wasn't giving up hope just yet. Aggie had taken an attractive picture of her last week to replace the Denise Richards one. She stood on a chair, claiming Shoshana's face looked less wide when shot from up above. Shoshana had worn her favorite three-quarter-length pink plaid dress, outlandishly large diamond hoop earrings down to her shoulders, a matching pink and white plaid scarf in her auburn hair, and red lip gloss. Everyone agreed she'd taken a great photo.
If nothing else, JDate provided good material for Fat and Fabulous.
The first guy had been pretty bland, like eating a rice cracker. Date number two had told her that her feet looked beautiful in her open-toe gold sandals and she'd gone home happy, thinking she'd call the guy again, until Greg said he probably had a foot fetish.
The third, last week, was with a man named Asher, a graduate student at Rutgers, who was in the middle of getting his Ph.D. in American Studies.
The first thing she noticed about him when she met him at a small Italian restaurant in the West Village was that his right eye blinked continuously, open and shut, like a traffic light. She later remembered lights that blink meant ”caution,” which she should have paid attention to. He had a flat haircut, like an early Paul McCartney but not nearly as handsome, and when he stood up to shake her hand he was very, very short. Shorter than Greg.
She'd tried to make the most of it. You never knew when Prince Charming might come galloping into your life, perhaps even disguised in wrinkled chinos with too many pockets that looked like they'd been purchased around when the first episode of Melrose Place aired.
”You look just like your picture,” she'd told him, to break the ice. She'd read somewhere it was a common compliment for online daters.
”And you look ... similar,” he said, taking in her 215 pounds. And she'd put her long hair into a bun and everything for this troll of a man. Hmph.
”So, tell me about your Ph.D. program,” she said, after ordering blueberry pancakes and a mimosa. The booth squeaked when he moved and Shoshana had to stifle a laugh. It sounded kind of like a fart.
He glanced furtively around the restaurant. ”Do you think anyone's listening?” he asked.
Shoshana bit her lip. ”What?” Did he mean listening to the fart?
”What about those two men over there? Probably FBI, right?”
She turned to look at two overweight truckers in flannel s.h.i.+rts, their pockets protruding with Marlboro reds.
”Definitely not listening.” She started texting ”SOS” to Andrea underneath the table. Maybe she'd get lucky and her roommate would take the PATH into the city and pick her up with an excuse; Andrea was well practiced at coming up with date-escape strategies.
He grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her close to his face. He messed up her bun. His breath smelled like racc.o.o.n p.o.o.p.
”I'm writing the history of the New Jersey Devil.” He leaned back in the booth, looking extremely satisfied with himself.
”Okay, next time, no talky, no closey,” Shoshana said, as two steaming plates of food were placed before them. She patted her hair back into place.
”Sorry. I just have to keep things hidden from the government. They want to sabotage my dissertation.”
Shoshana burst out laughing. ”I think the government has more important things to do than worry about the Jersey Devil. Besides, it's just an urban legend. You know it's not real, right?” She took a bite of her meal and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Delicious! He started to speak and she cracked one eye open, wis.h.i.+ng he would stop.
He glared at her. ”You know, you sound just like my mother. The Devil is real. I've been following his tracks in the Meadowlands for the last six years.”
She stared at him. ”Well, everyone needs a hobby,” she said at last.
He leaned back in the booth, looking her over head to toe. It appeared he was switching gears.
”Just so you know, I'm totally into you. My mother was a large woman, and I've been attracted to fat girls ever since. You have a lovely pear shape.”
Okay, that was the final straw. Shoshana put down her fork. Gave her food a longing look. It really was a shame to waste it. She gathered up her purse, came around to Asher's side of the table, and leaned over to whisper in his ear.
”Have you ever actually looked at a pear?” she said. ”It starts thin, then it gets fat, and it never gets thin again. It's not a cute fruit.”
And with that she threw her auburn hair over her shoulder and walked to the train.
As she stepped out of the shower, she realized she'd forgotten to tell Greg about the date from h.e.l.l, so she called him back while she towel-dried her hair, which fell in damp waves down her back. She called Greg approximately seventeen times a day.
”Forgot to tell you something,” she said when he answered.
”I was just about to go into the office, you caught me. I realized I forgot to ask you how JDate was going.” Greg was reading her mind as usual.
”You work too hard. Well, since you asked ... after the Jersey Devil, the boring guy who doesn't drink because he doesn't like feeling out of control and still lives with his mom, and foot-fetish man, I did get a very nice note just last week from a nose, ear, and throat doctor who lives on the Upper East Side.”
”So? What's the problem?”