LITMIR.BIZ

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for the rest of us if Jade, the Über-Single Girl, was having trouble getting to date number two?

      Understanding all too well the frustration that followed such blow-offs, I offered the one thing every woman who has been left hanging by a man always needs: anger. “Clearly he’s an asshole.”

      “Hmm.”

      “Or gay. Or mentally deficient. I mean, what kind of moron goes out with a beautiful, intelligent girl like you and then neglects to pick up the phone, even just to tell her he’s happy she’s alive and he had the opportunity to spend a few hours in her presence?”

      “He probably couldn’t handle the fact that I beat him in two out of three games of pool.”

      “Wimp.”

      There were a few moments of silence, while we ruminated over the question of how Ted Terrific had taken a turn for the worse.

      “Maybe I was too aggressive,” Jade offered.

      “You’re kidding, right? Jade, I’m sure you did nothing—”

      “I did invite him up. I mean, not to sleep with him or anything. But I’d just gotten the new Jamiroquai CD, and I knew he was into the same kind of music, so…”

      “Did he come up?”

      “No. He said he had to get up early. Gave me this killer kiss in front of my building, then took off. It just doesn’t make sense. The whole night, right down to that kiss, was amazing. We had drinks, shot pool and talked like we’d known each other all our lives. We liked the same music, hated the same clubs. I couldn’t believe how well we clicked. How much we had in common. And the chemistry…forget about it! I wish he had come up, so at least we could have had sex before he disappeared. I’m sure it would have been nothing less than incredible.”

      In truth, I was stumped, but concluded that maybe we had just assumed things all wrong. “Maybe he’ll still call. What night did you guys go out?”

      “Last Saturday. As in the weekend before last. Granted, I did leave town on Thursday to go on a shoot for the weekend, but he didn’t know that. I came home on Sunday morning to no message.”

      It didn’t look good. One week, okay. But to go to week two without even a quick hello-had-a-great-time-wish-I-could-see-you-again-when-I’m-less-busy call, was not a good sign. He was history. “Maybe he got hit by the Second Avenue bus. Doesn’t it run right past your gym? He could have been coming out late, after a workout, and wham-o.”

      “Yeah. If he’s lucky.”

      I knew we would never truly find an answer. Why He Didn’t Call was one of the great mysteries of single life. A life, I realized, I was now reluctantly a part of.

      Confession: Marriage—any marriage—is beginning to look good.

      As if the idea of newly tackling single life wasn’t exhausting enough, the next day at work I was forced to take on the facade of one of the Happily Coupled-Off when Rebecca dropped by my cubicle to regale me with tales of her romance-filled evening with her boyfriend, Nash. “He just seems different lately,” she said with a glimmer of excitement in her eyes. “More committed.” Then she went on to tell me about the great little French restaurant on the Upper East Side where they’d had dinner the night before. “Maybe if you and Derrick ever venture uptown,” she added, “we could all go to dinner there together sometime.” To which I responded, with what I hoped was a convincing smile, that maybe we would, all the while knowing that it would be a miracle if Derrick ever ventured to the East Coast again, never mind the Upper East Side.

      By the time I dragged myself home that evening, I was convinced that the key to life was finding someone—anyone—who would stick around long enough for you to lure him to the altar. Someone stable and reliable like Nash. Or better still, Richard.

      As if to punctuate this realization, my father called. Though he had managed to drown a good portion of his life in Johnnie Walker Black, there was no denying that my father had been a good catch in his day. By age thirty, he had worked his way to the top of a financial investment firm. Even when he’d asked my mother to marry him at the tender age of twenty-five, he was making a respectable salary and had “upwardly mobile” stamped all over him. Life had been pretty cozy growing up in our sprawling Garden City home. It was no wonder it took my mother twenty years to realize her husband loved no one and nothing more than the bottom of a bottle.

      “Hi, Dad,” I said, “how are you?” This question was still asked with some trepidation, despite the fact that it had been over a year ago that my father’s second wife, Deirdre, had dragged him off to the rehab center for the third time in their twelve-year marriage. It amazed me that Deirdre, who hadn’t realized what she was getting into when she’d married him, didn’t leave him at that point, despite his big house and fancy landscaping. But maybe she had made the right choice. After all, he had managed to stay sober since that last incident, and passing the one-year mark constituted a new record for him. Still, none of us quite trusted that he wouldn’t fall off the wagon again.

      “I’m fine, fine. Finally got that settlement on that toaster oven that exploded on us,” he said, satisfaction in his voice.

      The end of my father’s drinking career did have one side effect: He had become extremely litigious. Ever since he’d made his first attempt to go off the bottle a few years back, he’d begun suing anyone he believed had slighted him—whether it was his firm, which forced him into early retirement three years ago without (according to my father) sufficient compensation, or this most recent episode, in which his toaster oven allegedly burst into flames unbidden. It only took a little research for my father to find out the model had been recalled six months earlier.

      “How’s my little girl?” he asked now. “Make your first million yet?”

      “You’ll have to count on Shaun for that, Dad.” At twenty-nine, my baby brother was making more money annually at the dot.com he’d gone to work for three years earlier than I’d ever hoped to make in my four years combined at Bridal Best.

      He laughed. “I don’t know, Em. You might still be in the running, with that good noggin of yours. How’s what’s-his-name?”

      Despite the fact that I had been with Derrick for two years, my father always made a point of not remembering his name. And though I knew it would give my father great delight to know I was no longer dating a dog-walking, bartending “bum” (my father never did buy into Derrick’s claim that he was in the service of a higher cause and thus couldn’t chain himself to a real profession), I could not seem to tear myself from the path of lies I had only begun to traverse. “He’s okay,” I replied. “Did I tell you he sold his screenplay?”

      No matter what had happened between Derrick and me, somehow I still felt the need to defend him to my father as a perfectly suitable and upwardly mobile sort of boyfriend. It all seemed silly now, but here I was babbling on about how many opportunities would open up for Derrick now that he had his foot in the door. I neglected to mention that the rest of his body had followed that foot to L.A.

      “Hmm,” my father responded, distracted. This was the part of the conversation where he usually tuned out, probably to contemplate how his daughter would survive if she married a man who had no hope of a pension plan. “How’s that Alyssa doing?” he said now. “Still dating that lawyer?”

      As my father had been handing most of his own pension over to the attorneys he hired for his various lawsuits, he had developed a new respect for this particular breed of boyfriend material. “Yes, they are still together. I imagine they’ll eventually get married, though Richard is so focused on trying to make partner, he probably won’t pop the question until after that happens.”

      “That’s what I like to hear,” my father replied.

      “Jade’s doing great, too,” I continued. “One of the layouts she worked on last year just won an award.”

      “Oh, yeah?” he replied. Then he laughed. “That Jade. She al ways was an artsy one. I

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