Harper's Rules (12 page)

Dress up for the interview even if you know it's a casual work environment. It shows respect, confidence, and attitude. It covers your weaknesses.

I was deciding from a text, without even seeing what Peter was going to wear, that this was not going to work out.

So now that I knew I was wearing jeans, I chose a plain white silk blouse that buttoned in front and a tweed jacket that made me look hot in an academic way. Now, the
tough call. On a first date, there is always the question of cleavage. I left the top two buttons unbuttoned in an attempt to punish Peter for his text messages, and then I looked to see if my breasts, not crazy large but full, and long a trademark advantage, had sagged. Breast implants have become so common nowadays that now I feel like a company who has lost its patent rights and is now competing with copycats and cheap imitators.

My Blackberry beeped. Peter again.

“Do you want me to pick you up?”

Oh no. I need to be able to bail if things go to hell in a hurry. I replied that I would meet him there.

Another beep.

“Is there parking on the street or do you have to pay the valet?”

I found myself wondering what I would do when the check came. I have made more money in a year than Peter will make in four or five as a personal trainer, so I should probably insist on paying, or at least pay half. And yet, I am resentful. I am. the. girl. I expect him to pay. Is that awful? Fine, I'm awful then, so why am I going?

Send a top candidate to a top company and they will love each other. Send a top candidate to a crummy company and the company will hate him/her. Send a crummy candidate to a crummy company and they love each other. People and companies are not created equal and must be matched accordingly.

I'm starting to think I am a top candidate and Peter is a crummy company.

So why don't I cancel? I need more ammunition.

Harper said he had information on Peter that I should know before I went on the date. I couldn't call Harper and ask him; I couldn't give him that satisfaction. But I could find out for myself.

What I love about Google is its fairness. If I were looking for a black dress for a party and I searched Google, and Jennifer Lopez, sitting in the presidential suite of the Palm Beach Ritz Carlton, put in the same search string, we would both get the same results.

I searched under Peter's full name. Then the gym . . . certified personal trainers . . . the government's “most wanted” list . . . registered sex offenders. In a momentary lapse of blind hope, I searched for Mensa membership. Then the blogs . . . Not a single entry having anything to do with Peter. Google sucks!

When I am stressed or fear an outcome, my mind drifts. When I couldn't find out anything about Peter, I started running Google searches on Harper. I found the usual stuff: his company's website propaganda, a
Wall Street Journal
interview Harper had
done a year or so ago, his profile under the gaudy title of “40 under 40, The Top Corporate Headhunters in America.”

Then I saw the search result from
Connecticut Magazine
. The Scott home was featured, well over a year ago, as one of “New England's finest homes.” When I pulled up the link, there was a picture of Harper and his wife, Maggie. Even with the poor quality of the computer reproduction, she was exquisite. She is not only a size four after having a child, but she has curves and angles just where you are supposed to. She was too beautiful to hate.

I Googled Maggie. MBA from the University of Chicago . . . Columbia under-grad and law school—two graduate degrees! She worked as an immigration lawyer in the city for three years and gave it up to do social service work. She was named to MACY (the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Youth) in Manhattan. Okay, I take it back, nobody is too beautiful to hate. I'm going on my date.

I was about to exit my browser when I noticed one more entry about her MACY commitment, and that's when I saw it: “Margaret Carlson-Scott says new membership drive . . .”

It was the only entry where she had hyphenated her name. Now why would she do that? Why now? I went back over the other entries. Nope. No hyphen, just Maggie or Margaret Scott.

The only two times in my life I had to deal with the “to hyphenate or not to hyphenate” dilemma were 1) when I got married to Donald and 2) when I divorced him. For me, as a professional salesperson who was established in my niche, the decision was easy, since my maiden name was hard to pronounce and even harder to spell. I wanted my contacts to recognize me.

So why is Maggie suddenly using it? All I could think of was Wallace telling me Harper had “been through a lot” recently. I was instantly convinced that Harper was separated or divorced. For all I knew, Harper was the villain and she had caught him red handed. Maybe Harper is a terrible and distant dad.

No, no way. Harper softens visibly whenever he mentions Jess; she is his world. But how would I know? Harper puts a wall up; he makes you feel like you are on intimate terms, but it's a one-way street. He is intimate with you; you are never intimate with him.

Stop it, Casey. You have a date with a perfectly nice guy.

I used to make Donald promise me we would never become one of the married couples we would see in nice restaurants all the time. The scary ones were those who had simply become so tired of each other that conversation and entertainment were beside the point, which was to get out of the house and not have to cook.

But as I walked into the restaurant to meet Peter, I longed to be one of those couples. At least they didn't have butterflies in their stomachs, didn't stare at themselves in the mirror from every conceivable angle, didn't shave in long-neglected areas—just in case.

I saw him at the adjacent bar. He gave me a nervous smile and attempted a hapless sort of wave. I suddenly realized why I liked him. It wasn't the hard body or the full lips or the thick, black hair and olive skin—Peter was melancholy. But . . . after propping Donald up for so long, why did I want someone fragile?

Peter stood up and reached out his arms, signaling an embrace and sparing me the agony of choice, and whispered “so glad you're here” into my ear as he pulled back.

I pride myself on taking control at the beginning of a date with a witty remark or a wry observation, but I had nothing. I wondered if I had a goofy smile on my face. I have been many things to please men, but I draw the line at a goofy smile.

There were two glasses of wine at the bar.

“Cakebread Merlot. I'm not even going to pretend to know the year. But that's what you like, right?”

“Um, okay, yes. I do. How do you know that?”

“I notice you talk to Janet at the gym. She is tight with Nina, who teaches the Body Attack. She put me in touch with Hannah, who told me she has been your drinking buddy long enough to know and recommended Cakebread Merlot.”

“Well, I hope she was buddy enough to tell you I'm not that particular, especially when it comes to dating.”

“Oh.” Peter became eight years old in an instant.

“No, I don't mean I'm not particular about who I date, I . . . Okay, let's go with this: I love the wine, Peter, and it was very thoughtful. Thanks.”

“Cheers.” He appeared to be back to his age and happy. I'm dating Tom Hanks in
Big
.

Just when I thought I would go off-script with Peter, he reached into his surprisingly high-quality black cashmere sports jacket, set off with jeans and grey pullover, held up his cell phone, and shut it off.

“Now that you're here, I have no need for this for the night.”

This was a gallant gesture, a way of showing me I had his complete attention. But while I would never go into an interview with my cell phone on, this was a first date. And a cell phone is how a girl gets out of a disaster, the dating equivalent of pepper spray.

But Peter put his phone down on the bar, completing his gesture, and rested it near mine. I had to either match Peter or lose face. I decided to lose face. I have a good feeling about this guy, but I have been wrong before. (After all, he claimed he had no jacket!) I left my phone on.

If Harper was right about the symmetry between interviewing and dating, and since I had just killed on my interview, I merely needed to remember his rules for first meetings.

We all like to talk about ourselves.
Be truly present and really listening.
Don't bring up negatives, and don't talk about your ex (spouse or job).

This shouldn't be difficult. I knew little about Peter, so I thought I'd start with his family. But I never got the chance. Peter took a Budweiser-sized sip of Cakebread and launched in.

“You wouldn't be a rebound.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I know everyone always says that rebounds never work out. And I did, full disclosure, go through a really horrible breakup, but the point is I have had a few dates since, and so, technically, this wouldn't be a rebound.”

“Okay,” I said, in the voice I used when the guy in Union Square tells me I need to prepare for Judgment Day.

“Although my friends, Hank and Debbie, they were like, total rebound, like they met two days after the people they broke up with moved out, and that was two years ago, and they have a baby and are completely happy, and so who knows, right? So rebounds don't scare me, and kids don't scare me either. Do you want kids?”

“Peter, when you turned off your phone, did you turn off your filter?”

“My filter?”

“Yes, you have to have a filter. You, in one fell swoop, broke every rule of what not to talk about on first dates. Maybe Harper's right; there really is a market out there.”

“Who's Harper?”

“Doesn't matter. Peter, we don't even have our table yet. We should be deciding on tap water or sparkling, discussing food allergies. You can't ask me if I want kids.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding somberly. “I'm going to check on our table.”

“Good.”

He got halfway to the hostess and turned around. He stood in front of me for a moment and then placed his hand on my neck and kissed me. It was a really good kiss.

“I don't have food allergies,” he said.

I shrugged. “I've got nothing against kids. In the abstract.”

Know your objective. The objective is to be asked back for a second interview or for another date.

At that moment, I would have told you a second date was a lock, an engagement a foregone conclusion, and a twenty-fifth anniversary party thrown at the home of our most successful child a distinct possibility. But the rush I felt after Peter kissed me was about to be tempered. Hannah had suggested lunch for just this reason. “Even if he's got game, you can't expect him to have three hours of game!” she said. She was right. From the moment we sat down, we began to unravel.

At first I was tolerant. Peter asked me about my work and when I told him I was on severance, he had no clue what that meant. When I explained, he shook his head and said, “I'd be scared out of my mind if I was unemployed.”

He isn't dumb, Casey. He's just not from your world, that's all.

But before I could change the subject, Peter told me the only other person he knew in sales was his friend Artie, who sold cars. Peter said he could never be “pushy or aggressive, trying to talk someone into paying for options they don't need and stuff. But hey,” he said, “Artie makes good money.”

I should have reached for the cell phone, but the ugly side of me was making her way from my brain to my lips.

“How much money does Artie make?”

“He said he made over a hundred grand one year. Not last year but one year.”

“I've averaged between 220 and 350K a year for the last five years. I'm not pushy or manipulative. Ever hear of ROI?”

Peter sadly shook his head.

“Didn't think so.” I needed to either stop talking or leave. The waitress rescued me by noticing our empty glasses.

“Would you like to order some wine?”

“Sure. We were having the Cakebread Merlot,” Peter said.

“You might want to consider the Sonoma since you're having the lamb, or if you'd prefer, I can send over the sommelier.”

“Okay,” Peter said brightly, “we'll have the Sommelier. Is that a red?”

The waitress looked at me helplessly, and I said the Sonoma was fine. My sister would not be surprised by the evening so far. “When you date men with money, you try and compete with them, which turns them off,” she says, “and when you date men who don't make a lot of money, you claim they're boring or not smart, when really you just don't respect them.”

“I feel like I'm maybe trying too hard,” Peter said. “Sorry.”

Peter looked forlorn, so I tried to regroup.

“So let me tell you about the love of my life,” I began, “my source of daily and unconditional love: Starbucks, my Maine Coon cat.”

I have several stock Starbucks stories that are adorable even to the non–cat lover. Not many people realize how large Maine Coons can get (males up to twenty-eight pounds, females up to eighteen), how beautiful and regal they become, how affectionate and smart they are, and how long they live (up to twenty-four years if kept inside religiously). I started one of my stock, can't-miss, Starbucks-wins-in-the-end stories.

“I'm allergic to cats. Most of them, anyway. Dogs too. But I hear there are medications I could take.”

Okay, check please. And I'll take the Sonoma to go. While I would have probably pretended my phone was on vibrate and claimed that I heard it go off, it actually did go off. I dug in my purse and told Peter I was sorry, but I had to take this.

“You don't even know who it is yet,” he said brusquely.

True, and it was rude and obvious of me—and I didn't care. I pulled out the phone and had to fight not to smile. It was Harper.