My Favorite Midlife Crisis (5 page)

“Beautiful on the surface. But dig down and it was all a big lie. Thank you anyway, but my plate is full. God knows, I have enough on it with my father and trying to revive the Clinic. The boys call twice a week. And I have my work. I love my work.” There it was. My life. All wrapped up in a pretty package. So what if on lonely Saturday nights I felt that what it contained was a little dull. Dull was better than something sharp enough to carve your heart out.

I sighed. “I’ll admit it might be nice to have someone to read the Sunday
Times
with. Catch a movie with. No commitment. Nobody’s heart on the line. But really, I’m good the way things are.”

“Well, good isn’t good enough for me.” Fleur spun around at her condo door and twirled the key on its ring before inserting it into the lock. “Follow me and I’ll show you my key to the future, I’ll show you…” she shrugged her eyebrows à la Groucho, “The Plan.”

***

Fleur had crammed into her study a new four-drawer file cabinet containing hanging files with tabs that read “Internet,” “Personals,” “Matchmaker,” “Clubs and Interest Groups,” and “Networking” which she flourished as if she were displaying a diamond necklace.

“My strategies. But that’s down the line. Everything begins with this.” She withdrew five stapled pages marked “Business Plan.” I leafed through, from Feasibility Study to Implementation Milestones, as she explained each component.

“Right now I’m researching Internet dating. You know, like Lovingmatch.com.”

Well, I didn’t know really. But I was willing to learn.

On a purely theoretical basis, that is.
It’s okay for you, Fleur
, I thought. But me? Not on my dead Barnard-educated ass.

Which was absurd. This was a brave new world. We needed to be brave new women.

“All it takes is filling out a profile and a $40 member fee. Are you game?” Fleur stared at me hopefully as I paged through the downloaded application for Lovingmatch.com. My application for medical school had been less complicated, but then I was only trying to qualify for mastering endometrial surgery, not hooking up with some DWM who likes long walks on moonlit beaches and Barry Manilow concerts.

“You want me to go on Lovingmatch.com?”

“Well, pardon me if it’s beneath you,” Fleur responded, suddenly haughty and looking very much like that Gilbert Stuart portrait of her umpteenth-great-grandmother hanging over her sofa.

“It’s not that. Look, if something comes along, I won’t turn it down. But I’m not going after it. That’s not my style.”

Fleur’s eyes shot evil darts. “Your call. In any event,” she pulled up a folder thick with pages, “I know you’re exceedingly busy.” There was a tang to her tone that might have been sarcasm. “But in your spare time, on the toilet or whatever, I’d be really grateful if you’d review The Plan and tell me if I’ve left anything out. Make suggestions.”

I was swamped with work. Chart reviews. Grant applications for the Clinic. But I nodded.

“And will you at least come with me to GlamourGal Photo tomorrow?”

Now that sounded like a hoot. “The one in the mall with the women all sexy, pouty, and peach-colored like a
Playboy
centerfold? Of course I’ll go with you. I’ll even call Kat to see if she wants to come.” I was eager to make amends, prove myself, be a friend.

Anything but go on Lovingmatch.com.

***

An hour later, Ethan Greenfield’s voice answered Kat’s phone. She really needed to change that answering machine message. Ethan had made Kat a widow when he took the full force of ten tons of steel piping rolling off a flatbed truck in front of him on I-95. It was very disconcerting to hear his voice from the grave talk about being unavailable and promise to get back to me.

“Have a peaceful day!” Ethan said genially.
You too, Ethan,
I thought.
Wherever you are. And tell Kat to call me.

When she did, I invited her to join us the next day for the photo session.

“Sure. But if I’m a few minutes late, start without me.” Small pause. “I’m having brunch with Lee at 10:30. Four hours should be enough time to eat an omelette.”

“Lee? Lee, the sculptor? The forty-year-old very good- looking sculptor?”

“Well, he prefers to be called a construction artist,” Kat said. “And he’s forty-three.”

I would not be diverted. “Katrina, you are having a certified date. Yay for you. But why brunch? Why didn’t he ask you out for tonight? He’s not married, is he? Married men don’t do Saturday night.”

“He’s not married and he did ask me out for tonight. I told him I had other plans. I don’t really have any but it seemed so date-y, you know, Saturday night. I’m having second thoughts now that I’m actually on the brink. I’m not sure I’m ready for this dating business.”

“Kat, Ethan’s been dead for a year and a half. If not now, when? Now listen, don’t order onion soup with the gooey cheese. And no fettuccini. You don’t want to battle fettuccini on a first date. And no sushi, promise me. Because you have to cram a whole piece into your mouth and it makes you look like a blowfish.”

“It’s brunch, Gwyn. Do I have your approval for a mushroom omelette?”

“Perfect.”

Chapter 5

That evening I attended a dinner party at the home of my accountant Lenny Shapiro and his wife Faith. Lenny and I go back thirty-three years, before his comb-over and my cellulite. Stan retained him when we were young and then, about the time he started sending back wine in restaurants, dumped him for some arrogant kid from a large Episcopalian accounting firm.

After Stan dumped
me,
I rehired Lenny to oversee my assets. Our relationship had never been more than “sign on the dotted line, please,” though since my divorce maybe he’d added an extra dollop of gallantry for the poor maiden set adrift in the stormy sea of singlehood, but never anything sexual.

So at the party, when Lenny started rubbing my back as he discussed the deteriorating situation in the Middle East and then when his hands slid below my waist to cop a quick feel of my behind, I mean, really, if all this was intended as a political statement, it whizzed by me.

“Jesus, Lenny.” I spun on my heel to dislodge him and nearly crashed into Faith Shapiro who had popped in unexpectedly with a tray of miniature knishes and caught the tail end of the episode. She sent a withering look in her husband’s direction, gripped my shoulder with hands of steel, and steered me out of the living room.

“How tall are you?” She stopped midway and backed off, assessing. I am a shiksa for goddsakes with a German mother of Wagnerian proportions.

“Last time I was measured, five nine,” I said.

“And I used to be five three. You’re five seven. But if you wear three-inch heels you’ll be five ten and that’ll be perfect. The guy I had in mind—”

“What guy?” Were we in a new soap opera? I was still trying to figure out whether I was going to remove my assets from Lenny’s surveillance first thing Monday morning or wait until after tax season.

“His name is Jeff Feldmacher. Not Jewish,” in a whisper. “A retired ballplayer with the Orioles, but very smart. Would I fix you up with a dummy?”

“Are you fixing me up?”

“That’s the idea.” And the light dawned. Get me hitched and I would no longer lure certified public accountants into acts of wild sexual abandon.

“He’s very rich, an entrepreneur. I don’t know what business, but he does very well.
Verrry
well. Handsome. With hair. Also, he’s tall.”

“Yeah, I figured. How tall?”

“Six six, I think. So you’ll wear high heels and be up to his shoulder, which is nice. I’ll give him your number.”
For which act of kindness, you are to keep your ass to yourself
was the unspoken addendum. Sold.

My first fix-up in months and the guy had hair. Not bad. For a start.

***

“I can’t go through with this,” Fleur muttered. It was Sunday afternoon and she had spectacularly fallen off the diet wagon at Giuseppe’s Gelato, a tool of the devil conveniently located in the center of the Harbor Mall. Over a triple dip of pistachio, hazelnut, and
stracciatella,
she gazed at me balefully. “I mean, this putting your picture on the Internet—it runs counter to everything I was brought up to believe. Ladies do not compete for men. Ladies do not put themselves on display. Ladies do not divulge their personal history to people they haven’t even met. Their innermost needs and desires. Ladies—”

“Ladies went out with Bess Truman and white gloves,” I interrupted through my own satanic mouthful of rum raisin. “You cannot observe your grandmother’s niceties if you want to be successful with The Plan. We’re not talking hand-to-hand combat for the last man on earth. We’re talking tastefully admitting a select stratum of highly eligible men into the email version of your parlor.”

“They must have gone really heavy on the rum in your gelato.” Fleur scraped the bottom of her paper cup with her plastic spoon. “But what the hell, it’s worth an afternoon, right?”

Suddenly Kat appeared, shimmering like an angel in diaphanous gray silk and twinkling silver jewelry.

“Well, you’re early,” I greeted her cheerfully. “How did you know where to find us?”

“Just an educated guess,” she said, sinking into a plastic and chrome chair. “It was this or Sharper Image, and this involves calories.”

“Get yourself a gelato and we’ll talk about your date.”

“No gelato, thanks. I’m stuffed to the gills. Why was I so sure this guy was a vegetarian? There you go. Linear thinking. He is an artist, ergo he is a vegetarian. He had bacon and sausage with his cheese omelette.”

“My kind of man,” Fleur said. “Lee the Sculptor.”

“Please stop referring to him as Lee the Sculptor. You make him sound like Ivan the Terrible or Vlad the Impaler or—”

“The date,” I prompted, licking my lips with anticipation. I was only dating vicariously these days.

“I told you this was not a date. It was just two people interested in art talking about it. Besides, he’s much too young for me.”

“An eleven-year difference. When you’re ninety-one, he’ll be eighty. No big deal.” I wasn’t going to allow Kat to lose steam over a mere chronological detail.

“Oh please,” Kat grabbed my spoon and swiped a mound of rum raisin
.
“This person wasn’t alive when Frida Kahlo died. We are lifetimes apart.”

“He’s probably dynamite in bed.”

“He probably wants kids. He’s never had kids.”

“Well, it’s not a biologic impossibility. There’s in vitro. Surrogate mothers. The science is rapidly advancing. Soon Medicare will be covering obstetrics.”

“Don’t be absurd, I am not having kids at my age. I did it when I was supposed to. I wouldn’t even consider a long-term relationship with a man young enough to be my son.”

“Only in West Virginia,” Fleur said.

“And I will probably not go out with him again if he asks me.”

All of us heard the probably, and two of us traded smiles.

“Okay,” Fleur said, raising her enormous bulk to standing. She was glorious in full height. Like the
Titanic
before the iceberg hit. “Enough of your problems, Kat. My turn to make an ass of myself. Who wants to watch?”

We all did.

The receptionist at GlamourGal Photo was maybe seventeen years old and what my sons would have called “hot” in a skimpy halter top that should only be worn over young, sprightly boobs, a belly-button ring visible because her jeans were slung to her slim hips, and four-inch platforms upon which she rocked with apparent boredom.

She and Fleur gave each other the once-over. Fleur said, “I have a two fifteen. Talbot. You’re going to make me beautiful, are you not?”

The receptionist answered seriously, “Gavin’s good. He’ll do the best he can.”

I watched Fleur’s shoulders sink.

Gavin worked with her for more than an hour. He draped her like a Greek goddess in a swathe of champagne-colored satin revealing just a hint of cleavage, he turned up her collar to slenderize her neck, he brought out the red feather boa which Fleur snaked around her shoulders like Mae West (“I’m molting here”). He posed her head-on, three-quarters “to bring out your angles,” and from the back with her head twisted around for a come-hither look.

He laid out the digital proofs for us to select from. “You look perfect. A little bit DAR, a little bit rock and roll. We’re going for seductive but not someone who looks as if she might eat her young.”

Fleur examined the proofs with a scowl. “I look like a water buffalo with this fat hanging under my neck.”

“Honey, forget your neck. With that smile, do you really think anyone will look at your neck?”

Right on, Gavin.
He managed to elicit a tighter version of the dazzling smile Fleur produced for the camera. Fleur chose three poses and handed over her Visa card to the receptionist who said robotically, “I hope you have enjoyed your GlamourGal Photo session. Would you like to apply for our GG Discount card that entitles you to five years of studio sittings at 10 percent off?”