Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger (18 page)

“Nope. No point in messing with perfection.”

She went back into the dressing room to change and I felt a pang of jealousy. It was an ugly feeling to inject into such a nice exchange, but it was hard not to. Love seems like such a simple thing to ask for. Such a basic right. It takes no skill, no experience, no money, no education, nothing—it can happen to anyone.

But it doesn’t happen to everyone.

Even though everyone, deep down, wants it.

Anyway, I do.

*   *   *

It was still light out when I left the shop at seven to go to the Short Stops meeting. As I stepped onto the sidewalk, I noticed a guy tacking a
FOR
SALE
sign onto the building across the street. It used to be a bar, but they’d lost their liquor license and it had been vacant for almost a year, which had made for blissful silence at night. When I saw the sign going up, up went my guard.

This was just more evidence that the rest of the world was moving on while I was not. Or at least while I was resisting. Despite the fact that I felt somewhat disheartened by this knowledge, it did reinforce my determination to take tonight as an opportunity to get out of my head.

I was really sick of being in my head.

I was even more sick of
Burke
being in my head.

For a moment I entertained the crazy idea of getting Frank to go with me. He’d always had that protector thing going and this was not a situation I was comfortable walking into alone. But I didn’t think it was appropriate to bring a date to a dating service, so, of course, I opted against that.

Half an hour later, I parked in the freshly painted parking lot of the Golden Mile strip mall and headed for the bar. With every step, I felt more and more apprehensive. According to the rules, I’d spend six minutes each with ten men, then write down those I was interested in seeing again. If any of the ones I put down also put my name down, Short Stops would get us in touch with each other.

But I’d been raised to be polite to a fault—no, seriously, to a
fault
, my life was
full
of unnecessary guilt because of it—and since I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be interested in anyone, I was already worried about hurting people’s feelings.

Not that I was assuming everyone was going to want me. But what if even just one did? How insulting it would be to find that I hadn’t written him down as well.

Of course, the alternative was to write everyone’s name down and end up hearing way too much from people I thought way too little of.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Don’t you dare wimp out
, I heard Glenn’s voice saying in my head.
You’re just looking for a convenient excuse to stay in your tiny world and die alone except for a bunch of cats.

That was true. True, true, true.

My original objective was still sound. I was getting out of town for a bit. In a couple of hours I would be on my way back to the familiar safety of my own home. No harm, no foul.

This was a good thing.

Fortified with new optimism, I took long, confident strides to the door and pulled it open.

Hello, everyone! I’m here!

As soon as I walked into the dingy room, my optimism seeped out like water from a half-filled broken glass. There were a lot of women there. A lot of women. And about three men, none of whom looked, how shall I say it, like candidates.

Not even
possible
candidates.

“Name?”

I jerked my attention to a pert little blonde who was wearing a pert little mock-baseball outfit, with shorts so tiny that I could almost see her uterus.

“Quinn Barton.”

She looked down at the clipboard she was holding, mouthing the names as she went along, until she got to mine and checked it off. Then she took a whistle from around her neck and blew a shrill note right through my brain. Then she shouted my name to the room, like it was a debutante ball, and said to me, in a normal tone, “You can take a seat at table four.” She pointed to a table across the room with a piece of printer paper that had a 4 on it. It was flanked, unsurprisingly, by tables 3 and 5.

With a heavy heart, I went and sat down, feeling like a nervous third-grader on the first day of school.

At exactly eight o’clock the blonde blew her whistle for the hundred and fourth time and pranced into the middle of the room. “Hello, everybody!” she trilled. “I’m Judy. Welcome to Short Stops!”

There was an awkward muttering of vague responses from around the room, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“All of you gentlemen picked a number from my hat on your way in.” She tipped her baseball cap. “Next time I blow this whistle, you will go to the lady seated at the table with your number on it. You will have six minutes to chat before I blow the whistle again and you move on to the next number. Any questions?”

There was dead silence.

“Good!” She blew the whistle and we were off.

A guy named Al lumbered over to me first. That is, I think his name was Al. It could have been Lv, but it was more likely that his name tag was just upside down.

“Hi,” I said, too brightly. I was determined to give this a chance, or at least to be able to report to Glenn that I had. It wasn’t fair to judge on first appearances. Maybe, with a little exercise and electric shock therapy, Al/Lv could be Ryan Reynolds.

He sat down and the wooden chair squeaked under his weight.

“Yeah, hey.” He waved my outstretched hand away. “What’s your name?”

“Quinn. And you’re—”

“My ex-wife’s sister’s name is Gwen.” He patted his greasy-looking Fred Flintstone black hair into place. “She was a hot number. Part of what got me into trouble.”

What could I say to that?

What could I
possibly
say to that?

“So let’s cut to the chase,” Al/Lv said. “I’m looking for someone who’d like to get together and have a little fun in the afternoons. Sound like something you could handle?” He leaned back and I noticed a gold necklace so tight around his neck that it was cutting into his doughy flesh.

“No.” I had to be open-minded and give people a chance, but this was ridiculous.

I was ready to give him a helpful and comprehensive list of the things about him that made his suggestion distasteful, but he didn’t give me a chance.

“Okay.” He stood up and lumbered away, over to the bar, where he made a big show of dipping his meaty paw into the peanuts and then s-l-o-w-l-y chewing, while looking at the next tables.

Humiliation burned in my cheeks. What must people think when they saw this guy wasn’t even able to speak to me for six minutes? At least I had been willing to make small talk before he moved on to the next woman.

Judy’s whistle trilled after what felt like an hour of me sitting there alone, and another man made his way to my table.

This one was nice-looking, in an innocuous sort of way. Sandyblond hair. Grayish eyes. He was a little thin for my tastes, but after Al/Lv, that was less of a liability than it might normally have been.

He put out his hand. “Hi, how are you? I’m Gerard.”

“Hi, Gerard, I’m Quinn.”

“That guy’s a jerk,” he said, sitting down. “He comes to a lot of these things.”

So must you
, I thought,
if you know he does
. He’d tipped his hand, which broke rule number one of hypocrisy. But I tried not to let that prejudice me.

“So tell me what you’re looking for in a man,” Gerard said, looking directly into my eyes. That was good, he got points for eye contact.

Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me to be prepared with answers, and suddenly my mind went blank. I thought back to my college biology unit on attraction. What did women look for in a mate? “Well, first of all, I’m looking for someone in very good health.”

He nodded, understanding. “I’ve been tested.”

“Tested?” What, SATs? Driver’s license?

“You know, for … disease.”

Realization dawned. “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. Although that’s a good point.” Ugh, I sounded interested. “I just meant someone who’s generally healthy. Strong.” I was floundering. I was going to lose another one prematurely because I couldn’t think of a few small things that could constitute “health” in a prospective mate. “No heart disease, no addictions. No alcoholism.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I only drink socially.”

“Good,” I said eagerly, ready to leap on any topic of conversation that would keep him from marching away from me to the bar peanuts. “Do you exercise as well?”

“Can’t you tell?”

No, I couldn’t tell. My guess would have been no, but the fact that he asked made me believe the answer must have been some variation of yes. Badminton? Ping-Pong?

Burke’s muscular physique came to mind.

I dismissed it.

“Obviously?” It came out like a question, but he didn’t seem to notice. I guess it was the right answer. “What about school?” I asked quickly. Move on, move on. “Did you go to college?”

He looked uneasy. “I didn’t like school much as a kid. Don’t get me wrong, I did okay. But does that really matter now?”

This was quickly becoming torturous. “No, probably not.” How long had it been? Weren’t six minutes up yet? It felt like it had been sixty. “So what are your hobbies?”

At last, the pained expression left his face. Actually, he even puffed up a bit. “I like to fly airplanes on the weekends.”

“Oh! Really?”

He gave a cocky nod. “Absolutely.”

I wouldn’t have taken him for a pilot. That required intelligence, didn’t it? Maybe Gerard, whom I would never ever go on a date with, was a cosmic reminder that sometimes people had unexpected talents or depth. “I’ve never really understood aeronautics myself. Every time I’m in a plane I wonder how it’s staying up.”

He nodded, but in way that almost seemed bored to me. “It’s important to understand that in order to fly them, that’s for sure.”

Well, I hadn’t said I wanted to
fly
them. “So what do you fly, like the little twin-engine things, or bigger commercial aircraft?”

“Rubber band.”

I laughed. I had to hand that one to him, one point for sense of humor.

Except he didn’t laugh. “I belong to the Tri-State Model Airplane Club. We meet every Saturday afternoon over in Penstock.”

“You’re serious?”

Clearly he took umbrage. “You think it’s a joke?”

“No! It’s just … that’s interesting.” Maybe it took intelligence to make model airplanes too. I mean, it was an achievement to get anything to fly, wasn’t it?

I can’t really remember the rest of the conversation, since it went on in about the same direction until Judy blew her whistle. It might have been my imagination, but I could swear Gerard looked relieved as he moved on to table five.

The few guys after were so generic that I cannot even remember enough detail to describe them. Suffice it to say, not only were they not
attractive
, they weren’t even as interesting as Al/Lv and Gerard. They were so ceaselessly monotone and dull that my mind ran a steady movie of Burke. Burke when I first met him. Burke when he first kissed me. Burke in bed. Burke throwing hay.

Burke Burke Burke
, to the point where I just wanted to get up and leave so I could put on the radio in my car and think about the road signs I was passing instead of obscuring these dull faces with memories of Burke Morrison’s.

When Aaron came to my table, I wondered how I’d missed him before, since I felt like I’d spent more time looking around the room than gazing into the eyes of the man in front of me. But I hadn’t noticed Aaron before. He was tall, with dark hair and warm brown eyes. Very nice-looking.

My inner Glenn shifted with curiosity.

In retrospect, that was my first warning.

“Hi,” he said, sort of shyly.

“Hey.”

He waited for a moment until I indicated he should sit down.

Points for politeness.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked, in the winking manner of one sharing the same horrible experience.

His eyes met mine. “Honestly?”

We laughed.

A couple minutes of conversation flowed effortlessly and we laughed about the difficulty of putting yourself out there for people to judge. I was vaguely aware that I was laughing a little too loud, but I wanted everyone—not just the men there, but everyone—to know that I was more charming than Al/Lv and Gerard might have them believe.

“So. What are you looking for in a woman?” I asked, after we commiserated for a few minutes. That might have sounded like more interest than I wanted to convey, but it seemed like an appropriate question, given the circumstances.

Besides, I wanted to know the answer. Just out of curiosity.

“I guess I’m looking for—” He stopped and let out a breath, like he’d been holding it. “Quinn, can I tell you the truth?”

“Of course!”

“I’m here to try to find a date for my family reunion in two weeks.”

The turning wheels on the train of thought in my head started to slow down. Something weird was coming, I just knew it. Were there no normal guys left at all? Anywhere? “Why do you need a date for your family reunion?” I asked.

He put his face in his hands for a moment, then looked me square in the eye. “Because my grandmother’s going to be there and she doesn’t know about me.”

I waited for him to continue with what I knew was coming.

“She doesn’t know I’m gay.”

Judy blew the whistle.

By the end of the night, I had decided to become a nun. But thinking about the other women there, and how so many faces had gone from nervous hope to discouragement, I figured their best prospects were Mark, who referred to himself as “Marko” and who had a little bit of toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, but who otherwise appeared to be sane; and Aaron, who was gay but who might be persuaded to hang out some in exchange for a date to his family reunion.

I left the blank index card Judy gave me—shaped like a big baseball—by the door when I left.

Maybe they could use it for the next event.

*   *   *

“I’m never going to have sex again,” I complained to Glenn after work the next night. “There are no really attractive men out there. None. Your plan
totally
backfired. I’m ready to hide in my room and never come out again.”