Around the World in 80 Dates (30 page)

Will was very much the boy next door; tall with floppy, light brown hair, he looked a little warm in his thick blue cords and long-sleeved shirt. But he was good company, chatty and obviously pleased to see someone from home. As soon as he'd spotted me, he'd rushed over, given me an awkward hug, then bombarded me with questions about album releases, soccer results, and the progress of the repairs to the Central Line on the London Underground.

When moving overseas, there is a transition point at which the enthusiasm and excitement of being somewhere new has worn off but the routine sense of comfort and familiarity with your new home has yet to kick in. The result is homesickness, and Will was clearly at that point. I tried to answer all his questions as we walked along the peaceful, tree-lined path to the Meiji Jingu shrine.

The building was a faithful reconstruction of the prized Shinto shrine, simple but imposing, built here with dedication and reverence in 1920, then destroyed by incendiary bombs during World War II. Monks in deep green robes and tall black headdresses sat in the shrine's inner courtyard. Although they sat perfectly still, their eyes sternly followed the white-robed acolytes humbly sweeping the ground between them and the altar.

Although Will wasn't my type, he was a nice man and it was a charming date. Quite literally, actually—we were both fascinated and tickled to see the stalls outside the shrine selling charms and offerings. They were extremely specific and covered everything from health and happiness to passing your driving test, having a good visit to the dentist, and getting a university scholarship. As a little offering to Fate, I bought one of the many charms dedicated to meeting your Soul Mate and was intrigued to see they were far more expensive than all of the others. It would seem that even in the more spiritual world, falling in love was big business.

 

I was already asleep when Garry got back from the arena that night, but at breakfast the next morning we had a chance to catch up. “How did it all go yesterday?” Garry asked in a tone that seemed—to me, at least—to indicate concern for my well-being rather than anxiety over my fidelity. “Was everything okay?”

I told him all about it: how frustrating the underground had been; how I'd been saved from aimless wanderings by a cheerleading doctor; how interesting the shrine had been; and how Will was like a million people I knew from home.

Without dwelling too much on the date, we talked on, about Garry's day and the progress they were making over at the arena.

“You know,” he said, grabbing a bottle of water and dropping it into his bag, “it looks like we'll have all of tomorrow off. What have you got planned? If you like, we can go exploring.” A smile blossomed on my face, then just as quickly froze and died.

Tomorrow I had a date with Rob.

The thing was, after this week I didn't know when I'd see Garry again. If he had a day free, I wanted to spend it with him. But at the same time, I was here to date and committed to doing it thoroughly and to the best of my ability.

And, of course, there were Rob's feelings to consider, too. Even though we hadn't had much contact, I still felt a great sense of responsibility toward him. I couldn't drop a date because I'd got a better offer from my boyfriend (not for the first time, I wondered if
anyone
knew what the rules were in this situation). But if I said all of this to Garry, I knew his response would be:
“Baby, you've gotta go on the date: It's what you're here to do.”
And that would be our only day gone.

Oh, this was tricky. What to do?

Garry gave me a ticket so I could go to the basketball game that night; then he left for the arena and I for our room.

In the lobby, I jumped into one of the lifts just as the doors were closing. As I tumbled in, I belatedly realized that the lift was already full of people. And not just
any
people: It didn't take me long to recognize that I had inadvertently crashed in and was now
going up
with the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team.

Although I'd seen some of
the wives
around the spa, it was the first time I'd actually seen any of the players. And they were really quite a sight, like long ladders of muscle, propped up against the lift's interior. I wasn't sure what the protocol was, so I didn't introduce myself, just stood quietly as they discussed their training session. It was surreal, being stuck in a lift with a group of seven-foot athletes. I looked up instinctively as they conversed in the air a foot above my head, and it was like gazing up into the muscular branches of a forest of bench-pressing oak trees. And when they did complicated handshakes and talked in completely incomprehensible slang, I felt myself getting smaller and smaller.

“We're not in Essex anymore, Toto,”
I observed to myself sagely.

Up in our room, I sat distractedly on the toilet and wondered what I should do. I didn't actually need to go to the toilet, but it had a thermostatically controlled, five-setting heated seat, and after all the walking around yesterday the hot seat on my aching thigh muscles was bliss.

These bathrooms were the Rolls-Royce of the peeing world. If the hotel had charged for each of the facilities the toilet offered, like, say, the minibar or the pay-per-view TV, it would have made a fortune. In addition to the hot seat, it sported two bidet-esque water jets, both with fully adjustable water pressure and temperature settings. There was also a hot-air fan (for drying), an air extractor, an air freshener, and a panel with built-in sound effects including that of a toilet flushing and waves crashing on a shore (both presumably to cover the sound of what you'd shortly be needing the air freshener for).

But unfortunately, all the fluffing, flushing, and freshening didn't seem to be helping today, so I decided to call Rob and take it from there. He was in a meeting when I rang, so I left a message on his voice mail explaining my situation.

The phone rang virtually the second I hung up. Snatching up the receiver, I found not Rob but Garry on the end of the line. “Hey,” he said busily, “just wanted to check you're okay to get out to the arena tonight.”

“Ummm, yes, there's a bus going from here,” I told him a little distractedly.

“Cool,” he replied, “and if you're up for it, we'll go out with the boys after the game tonight. I'm definitely not working tomorrow, so we'll be able to stay up late tonight and sleep in tomorrow.”

Okay, now I really had to sort this out.

As I put the phone back in the cradle, the voice mail light started flashing. I punched in the code: Rob had called. Could I either ring him back in the next few minutes or email him, as he was in meetings the rest of the afternoon. “I've been thinking about the date tomorrow,” he continued in the message. “There's an incredible fish market called Tsukiji-shijo, it handles the seafood sales to most of the restaurants in the country. It's an early start but absolutely worth it: I thought we could meet at, say 5:15 a.m., then have a sushi breakfast afterward. Let me know if that suits.”

What was it with men, that the dates always seemed to include boats or raw fish?

But more to the point, I'd just managed to arrange a very late night out drinking, immediately followed by a very early morning eating raw fish. It would be full-on, no question, but that was my fault for not coming clean with Garry.

But there was one more twist. “Oh, and as for Garry,” Rob continued in a winding-up-the-message voice, “why not just bring him along?”

I looked at the phone in amazement.

Bring Garry on our date? How would that work? Was Rob serious? Did he really think that was a good idea?

I shook my head and blinked hard as if trying to dislodge something blocking my logic circuits. No, it was still there. I sat in front of my laptop for about half an hour trying to compose my response. I had no idea if Garry would want to come along or not. He was certainly a huge fan of Japanese food; a fish market and sushi breakfast was definitely his thing (in fact, far more so than mine, probably). But would he agree? I sighed heavily as I typed:

I then went to the hotel gym and ran on the treadmill like a woman possessed for the rest of the afternoon.

 

Just before I left for the game, I checked my emails and Rob had got back to me with the details of our rendezvous:

Well, so far so good. And with that, I picked up my coat and my ticket: After a day of jumping through hoops, I was glad to now have the distraction of watching a group of men shooting them instead.

 

When I arrived at the game, I didn't see Garry or any of the crew, as they were in the broadcast truck behind the arena. But both JR and Bobby waved to me during the break from their camera positions courtside.

I loved watching the game; it was easy to follow and the enthusiasm of the crowd was infectious. I was lucky—my seat was next to Mimi and Missy, wives of the team doctors, friendly and funny women who had been going to the games together for years. They knew all the rules and all the players and they entertainingly explained everything that happened on court.

The Sonics won, and later, back at the hotel, I joined Garry and the crew for drinks. The broadcast had gone well and everyone was boisterous and upbeat, chatting animatedly and drinking steadily.

Suddenly it was well after 3 a.m. and I was quite tipsy. Garry put his arm around me. “Ready for bed?” he asked. I'd had a lovely evening and I couldn't wait to see the next game, plus the guys were all so much fun to be with.

But I still hadn't got around to telling Garry about the date that was, in fact, happening two hours from now.

Back in our room, as we stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing our teeth, I knew I had no choice but to bite the (minty) bullet. “Garry…” I started.

“Ummm?” he replied sleepily through a mouthful of toothpaste.

“Garry…” I said, spitting out the toothpaste and going for it. “I know I should have told you earlier…” Garry continued to brush his teeth, but raised one eyebrow quizzically. “You see, the thing is…” I continued, “…I actually had a date lined up for later today, but when you said you'd be free, I really wanted to spend the day with you.”

Garry had stopped brushing his teeth. I looked at the clock on the wall: 3:45 a.m. I had to meet Rob in an hour and a half.

I spat it out. “So I rang Rob—he's my Date—and he's invited me to look around a fish market and go for a sushi breakfast afterward…” Words tumbled out of my mouth; Garry frowned in concentration. “…and he said why don't you come too?”

There was a brief delay as Garry made sense of the sentences I'd just rattled out. He smiled unexpectedly, then laughed. “That's really funny,” he said, apparently genuinely amused at the prospect of coming on a date with me…and my Date. “There's never a dull moment with you, is there?”

I smiled weakly; if Garry was okay about this, I didn't want to change that by saying the wrong thing.

“Sure, I'd love to come,” he said with a broad grin. “In fact, it sounds like fun. But let's go to bed now, huh, I'm pooped.”

Ahh, I'd forgotten one vital piece of information. I looked up at the clock again: 4 a.m. “Right,” I said with a
the show must go on
smile. “That's good, I'm so pleased you want to come. But here's the thing…we have to meet him in an hour and fifteen minutes….”

Garry's smile gently fell from his face like a balloon deflating after a party. “An hour and fifteen minutes…?” he repeated incredulously. I grimaced and rolled my eyes, spreading my hands feebly as if suggesting
who would have thought it?

He looked at me carefully, as if trying to decide whether to waste any more of the very small amount of time we had left asking why I was only telling him this now, then deciding against it. “Okay,” he said. “Half an hour's sleep, then we'll get a cab.” I nodded meekly and we went to bed.

 

A little over an hour and twenty minutes later, I was running down the steps of Shintomi-cho station, ten minutes late for meeting
Rob (Date #63).
He'd said in his email we'd have no problem spotting each other and he was right: In a sea of Japanese, we were the only Westerners. We towered over them, just like the basketball players had towered over me in the elevator yesterday.

Rob was a little shorter than me, with close-cropped brown hair and pale skin, and I immediately had a good feeling about him. He looked relaxed and cheerful, not at all worried about the tandem date.

He looked up, smiled, and started walking over, as he saw me fighting my way down the stairs that the crowds of disembarking commuters were all surging up. We met at the bottom of the steps and gave each other a big hug. “Is Garry not with you?” Rob asked. I shook my head. Rob frowned.