First Sight (17 page)

“The guy is such an asshole, such a zero.” Jade continued her perennial list of complaints about Zack.

“Come on, Jadie. Don’t be so tough on him. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just not a genius. Look, he’s an actor and a model, a pretty face with a great body, that’s why she likes him. What do you expect?”

“I’d like to see her with a man with brains and a heart, and maybe even balls. She needs a mensch, and he’s just not.”

David smiled at the Yiddish expression. Although Jade’s origins were Asian, she had picked up a lot of Jewish expressions when she worked on Seventh Avenue in New York, where Timmie had met and hired her. She loved saying they were in the “schmatta” business, the rag trade. David always said Jade knew more Yiddish than his grandmother, who had grown up in Pasadena and married an Episcopalian. But he knew what Jade meant by a “mensch.” She wanted Timmie to be with a man who had spine, heart, integrity, and guts. Zack didn’t fit the bill, but David thought he was harmless, and Timmie had few illusions about him, if any, although he and Jade both agreed that Zack was out for what he could get. He wanted publicity and social and professional opportunities, and was always hitting Timmie up to be seen with him in places where his association with her, personal or otherwise, would do him some good. His ambitions on that score were fairly up-front. But Timmie protected herself well. She knew the type.

“At least he doesn’t hit her up for money, or try to get her to set him up in business.” They both knew the last one had. He had wanted Timmie to finance an art gallery for him, so he could sell his own art. She had gracefully bowed out, and spent the next year and a half alone, until Zack came along.

At first Zack had been funny, charming, handsome, and showered her with flowers and small gifts until she’d finally agreed to go out with him, and now they’d been a weekend item for nearly five months. If this relationship followed the course of her others, both David and Jade knew it wouldn’t last for long. Sooner or later he’d push his luck, become too obvious in his manipulations, put too much pressure on her, or cheat on her with someone else, and she would quietly move on, unless he did first. They had none of the real glue that held people together, the deep respect, the understanding, the solid building of a foundation that would support them through good times and storms. All they had was fun sometimes. She no longer wanted to count on anyone but herself.

“I don’t know why she can’t find a real one, someone her own age, whose life is more like hers and who’s worthy of her.” None of her entourage thought much of Zack.

“Come on,” David said, finishing the pickles that had come with his pastrami, and reaching for one of hers. He always ate her pickles, in exchange for some of his chips. It was their standard trade. “We’d all like to find that. So would I. Who has time? We work fifteen-to-twenty-hour days, put out forest fires, travel all over the world. Shit, I haven’t had a girlfriend in two years, and the minute I meet someone, Timmie sends me to Malaysia for a month, or I wind up in New York solving problems for our ad agency, and then I’m running around Paris and Milan, chasing models with their tits exposed on and off runways, and helping them do their hair. And I’m straight, for chrissake. What ‘equal’ woman is going to put up with that? They want me around to take them out to dinner on Friday night, and go skiing with them on weekends. I haven’t been skiing since I left college, although I made reservations at Tahoe six times last year, and had to cancel every time. I haven’t had a vacation in three years. And Timmie works ten times harder than either of us. What guy is going to put up with that? The guys she should be with have their own female Zacks, for exactly the same reasons. A pretty face, a great body, and a hassle-free weekend when they have time. I think it just looks worse when it’s a guy. We’re not shocked when we see women like that. If Timmie were a man, and Zack were a woman, I don’t think it would bother you at all.”

“Yes, it would,” Jade persisted. “She’s so much better than that. You know it too. I just don’t like what Zack stands for, and the fact that he’s totally out for himself. I didn’t ask her, but I’ll bet you my Christmas bonus, he didn’t even call her in Paris when she was sick. He wasn’t around when she got home. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.” David didn’t disagree, as he watched Jade eat his chips.

“It’s the nature of the beast. None of us has a shot at meeting great people when you work as hard as this. Real people want more than we have to give. I don’t have the time or the energy, and I’m thirty-two years old. Just how much do you think Timmie has to give a man in her life? She knows it, I know it, so do you. Maybe that’s why you wound up with a married guy for ten years. A real one would have expected to see you more than once a week, when he could sneak out.” He had hit a nerve, and Jade was silent for a minute, thinking about it, and then shook her head.

“That’s not what it was about for me with Stanley. I loved him. He lied to me. Worse yet, he lied to himself. He kept promising me he’d get out of his marriage. He didn’t, and then his wife got sick. Both his daughters became bulimic and wound up on antidepressants when he said he wanted a divorce. His father had open-heart surgery, and his son went to rehab for a year. His business went to shit. Everything went wrong, and it still is. One of his daughters is on drugs, and now his wife has cervical cancer and had a hysterectomy. They’ve all been living in hospitals for the past ten years, and he kept asking me to wait for one crisis after another. How the hell could I compete with that? Maybe if I’d stuck it out … I don’t know …” She still got tears in her eyes when she thought about it. She had nearly committed suicide over him the last time he’d told her he couldn’t leave his family and his wife. Her latest shrink had finally helped her get out. Even she knew she had to by then, to save her own skin and sanity. Ten years was long enough. And David had agreed. As much as he believed Stan loved her, he was never going to get out. But he also knew what he’d have been getting with Jade, and David suspected it hadn’t been enough for him. She said she wanted a husband and babies, but she also wanted a career. Stanley wanted a full-time wife, and stayed with the one he had.

“So when are we going to get you on the Internet?” David sat back in his desk chair with a grin, changing the subject from the ever-painful topic of Stanley. Jade had been bitter ever since, and was always ready and willing to launch on a tirade about the evils of married men. According to her, one woman in a million got the guy in the end, the rest wasted years of their lives, and missed all the opportunities to meet the right guy while they lavished their time on a man who was never going to leave his wife.

“I’m ready when you are,” she said about the Internet with a nervous smile, and then she frowned. “How do we know they’re not married, and lying about being single?” She trusted no one now, although Stanley had never lied to her about that. He hadn’t even promised for certain that he’d get out. He had just said he’d try. And she had been willing to take the risk. She’d forgotten that part over the years. But she was no longer willing to take that chance, which David thought was wise.

“You just have to check them out, and trust your instincts. That’s all any of us can do. You can run a check on him later, if it makes you feel better. You can hire a PI. Some people do. But at least Internet dating broadens the pool.” She glanced at her watch in answer to what he had just said.

“Okay. Show me.” She pointed at his computer with a mischievous grin. She was ready. The time was now.

“Now? Are you serious?” David looked a little shocked.

“Yes, I am. Timmie won’t be back till five o’clock, and she won’t care. We cleared her desk before she left. I have three letters she doesn’t need me to do till tomorrow. Okay, Maestro, introduce me to Internet dating. What the hell, it can’t be any worse than what I dig up on my own. If I get fixed up on another blind date with a lemon, I may throw up.”

He smiled as he turned to his computer and brought one of the better-known matchmaking services up on his screen. It was the one he had previously used, although he hadn’t bothered to use it in about a year, for all the reasons he had mentioned over lunch. Mostly, no time. He had actually corresponded with a woman he had met through the personals section in the Harvard alumni magazine. She had just graduated from business school, and lived in San Francisco. They had met once, but as he put it after they met, she was “too granola” for him, although the smartest girl he’d ever met. She had moved to Berkeley shortly after that, had written to him, and said she was now in a committed relationship with a woman. Clearly, she had not been his destiny, nor he hers. He had written her back and wished her the best of luck, and had been too busy to think about it, or pursue others since. He was in no rush to find a relationship, although he wanted to get married and have kids eventually. He preferred the Jewish Internet dating service, because in his heart of hearts, he wanted to meet a nice Jewish girl. But he chose a service with a broader client base for Jade, and asked her several specific questions about age preference, and geographical location.

“What do you mean?” She looked momentarily confused. The process seemed exciting, but still somewhat scary to her. “Like what city?”

“More specific,” David said as he waited to type it in. “How close to where you live? How wide a radius? Same city, same zip code, ten miles from where you live, five, one? Same state? Anywhere in the country? Major cities?”

“Shit, I don’t know. What about the Greater L.A. area? Is that too broad?” The possibilities appeared to be endless. She was more interested in educational background and profession. She admitted to being a job snob, and had gone to U.C. Berkeley herself.

“That’s up to you. I like same zip code, because I’m lazy about sitting around in gridlock on the freeway, and I don’t want to spend an hour picking up a date. But I’m not exactly committed to the project either. I just do it to keep my hand in, so I don’t forget how to date. And I haven’t done it in a while.”

“Let’s stick with Greater L.A.,” she said, feeling as though she were ordering from Groceries Express, which was how she got her food delivered. She ordered it by phone from the office, and had her doorman put it in her fridge when it arrived. The world was set up for busy people who no longer had time to attend to the menial tasks of life, between demanding jobs, travel, weekend projects, and whatever time was left over spent at the gym.

After typing in what she wanted, along with an age range of thirty-five to fifty-two, a series of photographs came up, almost like a menu, and David motioned to her to bring her chair closer so she could check out what was on his screen. There were long rows of photographs of men, some funny-looking, some handsome, and some in between, with descriptions they had written of themselves. Some sounded embarrassingly stupid, to the point of being absurd. “Hot Sexy Dad” made Jade groan as David explained that some of their answers and descriptions were formulated by checking off a box. When she liked one of the photos and brief descriptions, they pulled up a more detailed profile, which stated their religious preference, sexual habits, previous marital history, number of children, what sports they spent time doing, whether or not they had tattoos or piercings, and what they were looking for in a woman. Some wanted the same religion, Olympic-class athletic prowess, or made reference to sexual fantasies. They mentioned their professions, and some referred to salary range, again selected by clicking a box, if one chose to, and educational background. And then they wrote a brief paragraph about themselves, most of which made Jade wince. But there were six she liked from what she’d seen. They looked nice, sounded sane, had decent jobs and educations, two were divorced with young kids, which wasn’t her preference but was acceptable to her, and all six said they were looking for a professional woman in her age range, liked to travel, were looking for committed relationships, and said they wanted to marry eventually and have kids. One said he preferred Asian women, which she considered a yellow flag but not a red one, in case he had illusions about finding someone submissive. One had even graduated from Berkeley the same year she had, but his photograph didn’t look familiar, and with a student body of nearly forty thousand at U.C. Berkeley, that was hardly surprising. He was an architect and lived in Beverly Hills.

“What’s wrong with all these people that they can’t find dates?” Jade asked David, looking suspicious, and he laughed at her.

“Who was it who said any club that would have me, I wouldn’t want to belong to? It was either Woody Allen, or Mark Twain, I think. Look, they’re all in the same boat we are. We work our asses off, don’t have time, are sick of the weirdos our friends fix us up with, we don’t have relatives who fix us up with their friends’ sons or daughters, and if we do, we wish they wouldn’t. What do I know? This seems to work for a lot of people. It’s worth a shot. I’ve hit a couple of lemons when I tried it, but most of the women I met through Internet dating were actually very nice. One or two of them might have been serious options, I just didn’t have the time, or the inclination to get serious. But I had a nice time with the women I went out with. You follow the rules. You contact them through their box on the Internet, you don’t give them your home address or phone number, or even the office at first. You meet in a public place a few times, you feel them out, follow your instincts, and don’t put yourself in any scary or potentially dangerous situations. And you see how it shakes out. What have you got to lose?”

“Not much, I guess,” Jade said, still unsure, but definitely intrigued. Enough so to check it out.

“Do you want to write to any of the six guys? You can do that on my account. But if you want to do this seriously, you need to put your own picture and profile up. You can do it in a protected way, where only the people you want to give it to can check it out. You don’t have to put your photo up on the main lists. So do you want to write to these guys?”

She nodded, looking pensive. So far, from his description, she liked the architect best. He said he was divorced, had been married for six years, and had no kids. He lived in Beverly Hills. His passion was European literature and art, which she had majored in at school. And his favorite cities were Paris, Venice, and New York, which hit two out of three for her. It definitely narrowed the field. Far more than her friends had been able to do. His favorite weekends were skiing, camping, theater, movies, or cooking with the woman he went out with, or even for her if she couldn’t cook, which Jade said was a good thing. Her culinary skills were limited to Cup A Soup and Top Ramen or salads she brought home from Safeway. And Hostess Twinkies when no one was looking. She always kept one in her desk for emergencies, along with a bag of M&Ms, when she didn’t have time to eat. Health food, as she called it. All six men sounded interesting to her, and she slid her chair over closer to David, and answered each of them with a brief message about herself. She realized that she had to subscribe to the dating service herself, and open her own account, in order to provide them with a profile and pictures, but she wanted to see what kind of responses she got before she did.