Postcards From Last Summer (37 page)

“You know,” Lindsay said, “your grandmother was a social pioneer. Grandma Mitzy must have truly loved William to break the rules of social convention, fighting so many obstacles.”

Tara took a deep breath as images swirled in her mind: her mother's tear-streaked face, Grandma Mitzy's ample-bosomed hugs and her Willy, the soldier in the photographs with the million-watt smile. “My Willy. She never stopped talking about him. I just didn't know who the hell she meant, and no one would fill me in.”

“But now you know.” Elle popped up suddenly. “There is a certain level of resolution in all this, don't you think?”

“Yes,” Tara said definitively. “The truth is empowering.”

“Hold that thought—it'll make a perfect fortune cookie,” Elle said, jumping up as the doorbell rang. “That's our food.”

Over lemon chicken and moo shoo pork, they talked about plans for the last weeks of summer. Tara hadn't let herself think that far ahead, and now, realizing that the bar would come and go, she entertained Elle's invitation to spend two uninterrupted weeks at Elle's place in the Hamptons.

“You deserve the break,” Lindsay said, “and that house is magical. I've been working away in the attic this summer, and it's very conducive to writing. I feel a certain spirit there . . . I guess I feel free.”

“I could use some of that,” Tara said.

They were about to open their fortune cookies when the doorbell rang again. Lindsay went to answer it and returned with her brother Steve behind her, his necktie hanging from the open collar of his white dress shirt.

“Hey.” His smile made her knees feel weak. “I heard what happened.”

Tara shot a look at Lindsay, who shrugged. “So I called him. Who knew my bossy brother would ever be the perfect remedy?”

Steve opened his arms and Tara went to him, pressing her face to his chest as tears welled in her eyes and spilled onto his white shirt. His arms felt secure and solid around her, a safe place to be. So many secrets flying out of Pandora's box today.

“How did you know?” she asked Lindsay.

“Would finding your lingerie in the washing machine at the Brooklyn house be the tip-off ?” Lindsay suggested.

“You didn't!” Tara laughed through her tears.

“Maybe not, but I figured it out. You two always did have that chemistry going.”

“Yeah, but you always made it so hard, Linds,” Steve said, stroking Tara's hair away from her face. “Every time I'd try to make my move, you were all over me, the pesky little sister, trying to get the details.”

“That's so not true!” Lindsay shrieked, then laughed. “Okay, maybe it is.”

Steve rubbed Tara's back, soothing between her shoulder blades. “I'm so sorry you had to go through this today. What can I say? Parents suck.”

“Our mother is a saint!” Lindsay said.

“Yeah, yeah, St. Mary Grace, but Dad drank his way into an early grave.” Steve rested his chin on the top of Tara's head, holding her close. “Maybe you were too young to remember, Linds, but I can't recall the old man without a can of beer in his hands. When he got sick the doctor told him to stop, but I don't think he knew how to cope without alcohol. He couldn't stop.” Steve shrugged. “Shit happens. No family is perfect.”

“I'll say!” Elle boosted herself onto the kitchen counter. “I've got a mother who's continually trying to lose herself in the desperate blight of some exotic land and a father who's trying to relive his second youth by sleeping with his students. No skeletons in our closet—my parents just put it all out there for everyone to see. So obvious.”

Elle tried to make it sound comical, but Tara sensed the underlying pain she'd suffered, trying to make sense of her parents' behavior, trying to survive without the family support she needed.

“But we're the lucky ones,” Tara said quietly. “Everyone has their issues. But we've got good friends to help us survive the scandals and heartbreaks.”

“Words of wisdom, Grasshopper,” Elle said as she cracked open a fortune cookie and flattened the slip of paper. “ ‘Your friends will help you survive.' ” She grinned knowingly. “And your lucky numbers are 3, 7, 25, and 30!”

I
n the concrete jungle plentiful with descendants of the XY tribe, Elle was ready to stop issuing the tribal mating call and abandon the hunt. “I am getting onto PerfectPair.com and telling them to discontinue my account,” Elle said. She had dialed up Lindsay to give her moral support as she dragged herself down the street toward a café holding a Perfect Pair “Event”—a speed-dating session, during which each hunter would have a mere ten minutes to make a love connection with potential prey before moving onto another ten-minute date. “If this doesn't work, I swear, I'm pulling the plug.”

“Why are you even going to this?” Lindsay asked.

“Because I think, in principle, this procedure might work for me. My problem is that as soon as I meet someone, I
do
know in the first ten minutes whether there's chemistry there, whether the guy is worth pursuing. So, usually, ten minutes into the date, I'm done with him and ready to go home, change into my sweats, and dive into a pint of Ben and Jerry's in front of some
Friends
reruns.”

The lunchtime speed-dating was moderated by Kyra “my online name is Hot
₄
U!” and she screened everyone who tried to get into the seating area of the café, checking their Perfect Pair member status and pointing to the rules sketched on the cafe's chalkboard:

NO REAL NAMES—GO BY YOUR ONLINE NAME
.

 

Elle, or rather “CinderElle” was checked in and sent to a small table for two and instructed to make a little nameplate for herself with a piece of paper, since the gentlemen would do the “speeding” from table to table. “We used to give the women name tags,” Kyra explained, “but then too many gals felt the men were talking to their boobs.”

As she settled in, Elle couldn't help but notice the bevy of bucks gathered at the coffee bar, shimmying and nickering like horses at the starting gate. Her overall impression was testosterone and a few questionable hairdos. Oh, well. Five dates in fifty minutes. At least it would be quick.

Bachelor number one . . .

PuppyLove wore a permanent scowl and a toupee that was so poofy, Elle found it hard to tear her eyes away from the upward swirl of dark brown fiber.

“Are you looking for someone to love?” he asked with a pitiful expression.

“Well, actually, no,” Elle began to respond, wanting to tell him that she had abandoned silly romantic notions of finding a soul mate or that one star-crossed lover in her path, that she was really looking for a good male friend whom she could be a friend to and share the Sunday crossword puzzle with and, well, of course, have some fun with in bed.

“My quest, CinderElle, is to find a soul mate,” he went on, interrupting her answer. “I have been pursuing her for many years now, and we're talking about active pursuit. I'm a five-year veteran with Perfect Pair, but I won't give up. Romantic fulfillment doesn't come to quitters!” he railed with such passion, Elle had to check if his wig stayed intact.

“Well, then I guess that explains Billy Joel and Christie,” she said with a grin.

PuppyLove squinted curiously. “Maybe. But as I was saying, CinderElle, I've spent a long time searching, and, admittedly, I don't feel that magic between you and me, but if you have any friends who might be interested . . .”

Ding! Next?

With the squarish jaw of a boxer and a toothpaste commercial smile, Vanilla Matt was immediately engaging.

“You look like my kind of girl, CinderElle,” he said, checking her out from under lazy eyelids.

She flashed him a little smile, wondering if his “Vanilla name” came from his creamy skin and white-blond hair.

“Do you like to eat?” Vanilla Matt asked.

“Sure, and I'm not picky.” Was this a dinner invitation? He was sort of cute. “I like Italian, Middle-eastern, Thai, Brazilian—”

“No, not food.” He shot a naughty look over his shoulder and leaned over the table. “I mean, do you like to
eat.”
He shot his tongue out and licked his chops like a dog.

Next!

LowMoJo, the bass guitar player in a punk band, didn't have much to say, and Elle was hard-pressed to make conversation because she kept hearing Vanilla Matt behind her say, “Yeah, but do you like to
eat?”

Ding!

The fourth contender, Apple Jack, seemed like a nice enough guy, a nurse, he said, but he'd been so smitten by someone else he just met that he kept turning back and calling out comments to the other girl, a big-jewelry type, with half a dozen links of fat bead around her neck, matched with big button earrings.

“Now, Apple Jack,” Kyra called out, patrolling the aisles like a schoolteacher, “remember the rules.”

“Sorry,” he told Elle.

“That's okay,” she told him, secretly envying that he'd made a connection.

Ding!

By number five, Elle had lost patience. “Listen”—she checked his name tag—“Wally O, I've got to be honest. You're probably Mr. Wonderful, but my tolerance for chitchat ran out about thirty minutes ago.”

He laughed. “Tell me about it. I'd leave but I'm afraid Sr. Kyra will send me to the principal's office.”

They laughed together, then he leaned back casually, making Elle feel relaxed. “Okay, I'm not really here. Let's say I'm tossing the dice at the tables in Monte Carlo. I'm wearing a tux, and you look stunning in a Dior gown.”

Actually, he was wearing a black Tommy Bahama brushed-silk shirt that hinted of tropical pleasures and dark tiki huts.

“Monte Carlo is overrated,” Elle said, “but I do like the Dior gown.”

“You've been there? I'm impressed. I've been anchored here for years. The family business. It's all fallen on my shoulders now, as my sisters want to be married with children.”

“How many sisters do you have?”

“Seems like dozens—or maybe that's just the nieces and nephews.”

A big family. Elle's heart swelled.

“And how about you?” he asked. “Where's your head right now, if you didn't have to be here?”

“East.”

“The Atlantic? You mean Europe?”

“Eastern Long Island—the Hamptons,” she said. “I've got a place there, and there's nothing like spending your summer on the beach.”

“The salt air, sandpipers. The cool smack of a wave on your sunburn.”

“You sound like a beach boy.”

“Hyannis Port. My family has a place there.”

Elle's eyes narrowed. Could it be? Was he from the famous clan? “It's a long drive from here.”

He nodded. “You have to go by seaplane.”

Ding!

Not to appear desperate, but Elle wanted to reach across the table and manacle his wrists.

“We're supposed to stop talking and scram,” Wally O said, casting a look at the moderator. “But I feel like I could talk to you the rest of the afternoon.” Watching cautiously for the speed-dating police, he pressed a business card into Elle's hand. “Let's cut through the Web site crap. Call me.”

Elle clasped her hand over the card, a song in her heart thrumming happily as Wally O nodded again, then stepped into the line of people exiting the café.

A card . . . defying authority . . . she liked this guy.

And suddenly, though everyone was out the door and heading back to work, or, perhaps in Vanilla Matt's case, off to find quick “eats,” Elle strolled out of the café with renewed hope.

She had Wally O's business card. At last, a solid prospect for Lindsay's Labor Day party.

 

As soon as Elle returned to the office, she set up her laptop and looked up Wally O's profile on PerfectPair.com. Lindsay's party wasn't until next week, but she just wanted to fill out some of the other details of this amazing man. Besides, she'd been assigned the odious task of removing old files from the cranky dinosaur of a computer in Judd Siegel's basement office, and she needed something to distract her from the smell of must and boredom.

Odd, but she didn't see him listed. She tried to check a few different ways, then called the number on the card. A recording told her the number was no longer in service.

“What do you think?” she asked Lindsay. “Is he a party crasher?”

“A Perfect Pair crasher!” Lindsay said with a giggle.

“Hey, it's not funny. He was the only guy there who was worth talking to.”

“Probably because he totally fabricated his life. I mean, the whole Kennedy inference. Oh, Elle, I never did think that speed dating was a good idea. Just something about it, something I read . . .”

“I can't believe it, and I don't want to believe it.” He'd been so real. He'd looked her in the eye and asked her to call him. “You know what? I'm going to call Perfect Pair and ask them to help me find him. After all, what am I paying them for?”

Just then Judd came down the stairs. “How's it going?” he asked, ignoring that she was on the phone.

She lifted her chin from the phone. “Slow but steady. There's a bunch of floppies with downloaded stuff on the table upstairs.” Hopefully, that would get rid of him so that she could focus on more urgent matters, like finding Wally O.

“And you know what else?” she told Lindsay. “How the hell did he get past Killer Kyra?”

“I don't know, but how could a member of the Web site disappear like that?”

“Well, I am going to make him reappear. I've tracked down some rare, difficult items in my production career. A clapping walrus. A Model T Ford. I can find him. And then I'll invite him to your Labor Day party. How's that?”

Judd coughed from the other end of the room.
Oh, just go play with your old computer files,
she thought, willing him away.

“Elle, you've got to see this,” Lindsay's voice sounded reluctant. “I just found something online about speed-dating event crashers. Serial speed daters . . . It says: ‘men who appear at open dating events and portray themselves as the perfect match. One local impersonator has hit ten cafés in the past three months, usually claiming to be the descendant of British royalty or a Kennedy.' Hold on, I'm forwarding this article to you.”

“Oh, no! What kind of loser goes around copping a ten-minute date?” Elle sank back in disappointment and embarrassment.

“A ten-minute man?” Lindsay joked.

“Oh, no . . .”

“Sorry, I don't mean to make fun of your predicament. Listen, I've got to run. Copy deadline beckons, but don't feel bad. I'm not going to have a date for the Hamptons party, either.”

It was the law of converse good wishes that whenever someone told Elle not to feel bad, she felt worse. She flipped her phone closed and pulled her knees to her chest, and huddled on the crappy old desk chair, feeling crushed.

There was no Wally O Kennedy.

She didn't have a date for the party.

She would be there with her game smile on, that toothy grin of a desperate single woman. And after the party she would adopt a dozen cats and let the gray streak in her hair grow out—Spinster Elle.

“Is there a problem?” His voice interrupted her pity party.

She felt tears welling in her eyes, so she didn't turn to face him. “No.”

“It's about this Web site thing, isn't it? The love match online?”

She shot a glance and noticed that he was standing by the PerfectPair.com screen on her laptop, which she'd left on. Dumb, Elle. Stupid, stupid. All these years she'd managed to stay under his radar, the perfect employee because she never had issues, never needed attention. And now she'd blown it all in one afternoon.

“Look,” he said, “so the synthetic dating didn't work out for you.”

“It's more than that,” she said. “It's about my failure as a person to find a single person on this planet with whom I am compatible.” Maybe her parents were right to send her thousands of miles away from them. She was hopeless.

“Whoa.” She heard him edging closer behind her. “Aren't you being a little hard on yourself? I mean, you may have failed, but no one ever said that all that romance crap is a requirement for peaceful fulfillment on the planet.”

“I'm not talking about romance, but you wouldn't understand. It's a girl thing.” She couldn't believe they were talking about this. Judd was not an employer to notice that the office was on fire, let alone that an employee was having a problem.