What the Dog Ate (17 page)

On the plus side, she must have
burned 2,000 calories, taking her aggravation out on the elliptical trainer.
While she sweated white hot anger, she tried to decide if she’d rather the
stock became worthless, so she wouldn’t have to give anything to Dave, or if it
would be better to have the price go through the roof, so she’d still have a
good chunk left over after giving both her rotten ex and Uncle Sam their
respective portions.

When she got home, she checked her
email. There was a message from Russell: “Can’t make our Sunday ride. N and I
decided to drive up to Santa Barbara for the weekend. R.”

Great. What a
fabulous twenty-four hours this has been
.

She didn’t want to be jealous, but
she couldn’t help it.
I wish I had someone who’d whisk me
away for a fun, wild-sex weekend. I like
Santa
Barbara
.

God, I’m
surrounded by nothing but couples now: Kevin and Annie, Russell and Natalia,
even Grandma has Humphrey, and now Helen’s met this Raul person. I don’t
necessarily feel the need to be part of couple, but it’s going to suck being
the only single person
.

She reached for the men she knew
she could always count on, the two there for her in her freezer.

I don’t need a
man. I have ice cream. And I have work to do. A boyfriend would just be a
distraction right now. I need to figure out what kind of business I want to
start. I don’t have time for a man
. If she repeated it often enough,
would she believe it?
I don’t have time for a man. I don’t
have time for a man. I don’t have time for a man
.

She flopped down on the sofa with her
ice cream and her book,
Five Rules for a Dream Career!
The phone rang.

“Are you mad at me?” Helen said.
“Ditching you for a man I hadn’t even told you about?”

“No. Yes. But I’d forgive you if
you took me out to lunch and told me every last detail.”

~~~

And that was how Maggie found
herself several days later on the “women’s side” of the private dining room of
Giuseppe’s Italian restaurant, about to take part in her first round of speed
dating. Helen had been holding out on her. Sneaking off to speed dating
sessions, embarrassed to admit she was going; but, she told Maggie, the third
time was the charm and she’d met Raul (whose name she liked to pronounce with a
roll of the R and a throaty growl). After margaritas with their lunch, Helen
had made Maggie promise she’d give it a try, at least once.
I shouldn’t have had that marg. If I’d been stone sober, I’d
never have agreed to this. And so much for my no-time-for-a-man theory
.
But Helen had insisted there was always time for a man, or at least time to
“enjoy the ride.”

So here Maggie sat, in her new
jeans, sandals and a soft emerald-colored short sleeved sweater that Helen
helped pick out saying it brought out the green flecks in her brown eyes,
wanting to get this the hell over with so she could go home.

Maggie decided the one consolation
was that most of the others appeared as uncomfortable as she felt. Men and
women of various shapes and sizes filled the chairs pulled to either side of
the room. (The sexes had been asked not to fraternize prior to the official
start.) In the center of the room stood twelve tables, in a large circle, and
their moderator for the evening.

Betsy, a curvy mid-forties-ish
woman wearing a satiny hot-pink shell under a black polyester suit, fussed over
each table: pushing the white vase with the lone daisy a few centimeters to the
left on this table, squaring the tablecloth on that one.

While most everyone had their eyes
on Betsy, Maggie glanced at the other women. She thought back to the online
registration form that read “for ages thirty-five through fifty.”
Wow, if that one’s under fifty, she’s seen some hard mileage.
Smoker?
The woman, with a face cross-hatched like parched earth, wore a
leopard print wrap-dress and her hair teased up to a height that reminded
Maggie of some of the wilder ’80s New Wave bands.
Wonder
whatever happened to Flock of Seagulls?
Two other women, who’d come in
together, and were apparently going clubbing if this didn’t pan out, sported
silky, low-cut halter tops, hoop earrings large enough to pass a fist through,
and lots of smoky eye makeup.
Not that there’s anything
wrong with that look. Don’t be mean. Anyway, the type of guy who’s attracted to
that look is not the man for me
. She smelled the chemical cocktail of
their perfume and hairspray from four chairs down. It overpowered the odor of
sautéed garlic that permeated every other corner of the restaurant.

Then Maggie did a quick inventory
of the men:
No. No. No... God no. Maybe. No. Eh? Maybe...
Hello, what’s this? No. NO
. The most interesting one had thick salt and
pepper hair and charcoal slacks with a pale blue dress shirt unbuttoned at the
neck. Mr. Maybe #1 wore khakis and a chambray shirt, while Mr. Maybe #2 looked
shy and had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, accompanied by a simple
T-shirt and beat-up tan cowboy boots. Maggie’d always had a weakness for men
who could pull off the cowboy look in the “big city.”

Maggie turned back toward Betsy,
whose head swiveled from the door, to her watch, to her clipboard for the third
time.

“We’re waiting for one other
gentleman,” Betsy said. “But it is getting a bit late.”

The dating was supposed to begin at
7:30. It was now 7:45. Maggie had calculated that with a dozen people at ten
minutes each, she’d be home and in her PJs by 9:45, cuddled up with her dog and
her copy of
Entrepreneur
that had arrived that
afternoon. This late gentleman was screwing up her plan.

“Let’s start without him,” said a
dark haired man in a maroon shirt that shone with each pose he struck. As some
of the others murmured their assent, Maggie heard him mock-whisper to a man
with a bad comb-over next to him: “More ladies for the rest of us that way,
eh?”

“OK, everyone,” Betsy motioned for
them to gather around. Her perma-smile never wavered. “I want to go over the
rules. The women take the outer seats,” she pointed to the seats like a flight
attendant pointing out exit rows, “and the gentlemen will draw a number from my
bowl.” She paused and held the bowl aloft in a move Maggie found disturbingly
reminiscent of a priest with the chalice. “The numbers match the chairs, so
that’s where you’ll start. When the bell sounds after each ten minute interval,
the men will move one seat to the left. Since we’re one man short,
unfortunately each lady will have one turn where she’ll just have to wait, OK?”

The women found seats while the men
selected numbers. The man with the comb-over came to her table, and Maggie
noticed what appeared to be mustard stain on his wide, brown tie.

She tried to introduce herself
while the others took their seats, but he shushed her.

“We’re supposed to wait for the
timer,” he said and twisted in his seat toward where Betsy sat off to one side.

Wow, this guy’s
even more of a rule nut than I am
.

When Betsy called out, “OK, begin,”
he turned back to Maggie.

“I’m Maggie.” She tried to sound
excited about handing out this information a second time.

“Hi Maddie. I’m Dennis,” he said in
a flat tone.

“No, it’s Maggie.”

“Oh, sorry... Maggie. Uh, what do
you do, Maggie?”

“I’m an accountant.”

He sat up straighter. Dennis was an
accountant as well. He told her about an article he’d been reading and launched
into his thoughts on globalization of the markets and the virtues of GAAP
versus international reporting standards. Maggie hadn’t come here expecting to
discuss Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. She could barely work up any
excitement about GAAP at the office, let alone care to discuss it outside of
work. She tried to sway the conversation in another direction, but he was a pit
bull of public accounting and wouldn’t let go.

She was expecting him to pull out a
PowerPoint presentation of his ideas and wishing there were Generally Accepted
Dating Principles people were held to, when the bell finally rang.

“It was great talking to you, Maddie.”
He pumped her hand as he stood to move on. Maggie, fully aware she’d barely
said a dozen words, nodded her head and turned to Mr. Maybe #2, Mr. Cowboy
Boots, moving toward her table.

“How do you do, Ma’am?” He held out
his hand to her. “My name’s Floyd.”

“You can call me Maggie.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He nodded. The ma’aming
continued throughout their conversation. He was very polite, but nothing like
being called ma’am over and over to make you feel old and undesirable.

Shiny-maroon-shirt man sauntered to
her table next. After about fifteen seconds of introductions, he asked her what
she did to keep herself in such “fine shape.”

“I ride my bike, and do weights and
yoga.”

“Ooohhh. Yoga.” He said it as if
she’d said pole dancing. “I bet you’re very flex-i-ble.” He raised one eyebrow
and rolled the last word in his mouth like a piece of hard candy.

Ewwwww
.
She longed for the previous few minutes when she’d felt undesirable. Maggie
tried to steer him to a safer topic. “So, what do you do for a living?”

“I own a bar.” Maggie wondered if
he meant a strip club. “You?” he asked.

“I’m an accountant.” There was a
safe answer; nothing sexy about being an accountant.

“You can audit me any time,” he
leaned in, crossed his arms on the table and stared at her.

She leaned back as far as possible
and pretended to misunderstand. She launched into a long explanation of
auditors actually being quite different from accountants that she was sure
could cool any man’s ardor. Sure enough, in no time at all, he leaned back in
his own chair, craned to check the official clock, and looked ahead to examine
the woman at the next table.

There was the bell.
Thank God
. The man with salt and pepper hair moved to her
table.

Mr. Interesting, whose name was
Robert, asked if she was the one he’d seen pull into the parking lot in a brand
new convertible BMW.

“No, that wasn’t me. I drive a
white Honda Civic.”

“That’s my car right there,” he
said. He pointed across the room and out the window. “The red one.” There, in
the row of cars, was a red BMW, shiny as a brand new fire engine.

“It’s nice.”

“She’s a beauty.” He spent the rest
of the time trying to regale her with the merits of German automotive
engineering. Finally the blessed bell sounded again.

The next guy, Jamie, exhausted her.
Where Floyd had called her “Ma’am,” Jamie called her “dude.” He drummed his
fingers on the table, rocked in his chair, and jumped from topic to topic:
energy drinks and which one got him the most “amped,” his “idiot” boss, the
“totally bogus” price of gas, his ex, mountain biking, and how iguanas made the
best pets “by
far
, dude.” It was like conversing
with a pinball machine.

Most of the rest of the men were a
blur. One man in torn jeans might have invited her to go outside and get
stoned, although she wasn’t certain since smoking a “blunt” was not a term
she’d ever heard before. She declined as graciously as possible. One knocked
over his wine glass, and a drop landed on her sweater. She had to put up a
block with her hand as he targeted her breast with his napkin. The rest of them
were nice enough, but there was no spark, no sizzle, no chemistry of any kind.
Her Bunsen burner was stone cold. Her Petri dish inert.

She welcomed her turn for the
ten-minute break when it came. She looked around. Some couples desperately
grasped at gossamer conversational threads.
You never
realize how long ten minutes is until you’re stuck talking to someone you have
nothing in common with. If we were dogs, we’d just sniff each others’ butts and
move on. Efficient, I suppose... but if that was the only option, I guess I’d
pick the speed dating any day
.

A few couples appeared to hit it
off. Dennis-the-Accounting-Menace seemed interested in Ms. Leopard Dress. One
of the big-earring ladies was in an intimate
tête-à-tête
with Maroon Shirt Man, and her friend exuded the necessary enthusiasm as Beemer
Bob pointed out his little red pride and joy.

Maggie only had one more man left,
Mr. Maybe #1 in the chambray shirt. Ready to give up and go home, she still
felt a glimmer of hope as the bell rang and he walked to her table.

He was a dentist. He had perfect
teeth.

“Oh, my brother-in-law’s a
dentist,” she flashed her own pearly-whites back at him.

Either he was appalled by her
smile, or he’d come for business, not pleasure, since he whipped out his card.
“You’ve got a slight chip there in your front tooth.” This was news to her. “I
could fix it in a jiff. And I’ve got a new whitening system in. You might want
to check it out.”

She spent the rest of the time
talking with her hand half over her mouth, then went home, intent on further
staining her teeth with large amounts of red wine.

On the way home, she fantasized
about how much better it would be if finding a new man was like getting a dog.
You could go online and research the type you wanted. Would you prefer one
who’ll be a couch-potato with you? Or one that would fit into an active
life-style? Toy or worker? Purebred or mutt? More influenced by scent or sight?
Guard or companion?

I’ll take an
active, worker mutt who’s more into scent to be my companion, please
.

With her spec’s nailed down, she’d
go to the Hu
man
Society website and search for an
appealing picture. She’d go meet him and if they hit it off, bring him home.
And he’d be grateful and love her for saving him from a life spent alone in a
cage. And he’d be loyal and never stray.