I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (27 page)

“I work in publishing,” I said. “We should get your book published here.”

That was the clincher, as I knew it would be.

“Do you want to meet for coffee later or dinner sometime this week?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Can we meet this week?”

It was the third week in August, and every one of my friends was away. I could not have been more available socially or romantically.

“My schedule is flexible,” I said coyly, and handed him my card.

Lachlan read my name. “You’re Italian?
Parli italiano?
” he said, then he launched into such fluent Italian that I had a hard time keeping up. When he spoke, he took on the look
and manner of an Italian. There was some real serendipity at work as each moment of our encounter revealed a new commonality.
Not only was Lachlan an adorable Brit; he could transform himself into a rather appealing Italian. Meeting him on a street
corner, while walking home from the dentist in the last lonely days of summer, was nothing short of a miracle.

In our brief conversation, I learned that Lachlan was from Edinburgh but had spent many years in Italy, where he taught English
to Italians. He was in the States for the summer, subletting an apartment in Williamsburg with Steve, an American friend he
knew from London. Lachlan was dog-sitting for Steve’s sister in her big house in Boerum Hill. The dog’s name was Goose, but
I mistook it for Gus for the next four months, although that would hardly prove to be my biggest mistake in those months.

I checked my e-mail the second I got home. No word from Lachlan yet, but I knew I would hear from him soon. I made lunch with
the supplies I had picked up and some of the ripe summer tomatoes and basil I’d bought at the farmer’s market that takes place
every Saturday just steps from my apartment. By August, those stalls are bursting with beautiful red, yellow, and orange peppers,
big shiny purple eggplants, fragrant bunches of basil, gorgeous ripe tomatoes—it is a cook’s playground, and I had no one
to cook for.

By the time I was done eating, an e-mail had arrived from Lachlan. He sent his phone number and asked me to call. When we
spoke, he wanted to meet right away. He was going to a reading at four; it was now two, could we meet at three? I didn’t want
to rush, so I suggested we meet for a drink after the reading.

Lachlan agreed to that while expressing concern about missing the evening meal. “It will be dinnertime,” he said. “I have
some Barilla pasta; you could come here and I could cook for us.”

I liked the way his mind worked, but I wasn’t so sure about going to a stranger’s house to eat a lesser brand of pasta. For
De Cecco, I might have considered it, but Barilla, which costs ninty-nine cents a pound at my supermarket, reeked of seediness.

Lachlan’s attitude was familiar when he called that evening. The reading was disappointing, the audience questions uninspired.
After ten minutes or so spent discussing our options, we made a plan to meet at the corner where we’d met earlier that day;
from there we’d find a place to grab a beer. I took the bus from Park Slope for our rendezvous and wondered along the way
why there’d been no Scotsmen waiting for me on Boerum Hill street corners during the decade and a half I lived there.

Lachlan arrived just as I did; he seemed delighted when he saw me, smiling as if happily astonished at how pretty I was. At
least, that was what I decided. He kept turning to look at my face as we walked side by side. I had cleaned up considerably
since earlier in the day and was looking my date best in an Esprit sundress with an African print I had bought many years
before for a date with a guy who dumped me the very night I debuted the dress. Nevertheless, it is one that garners a good
deal of compliments, which leads me to conclude that that guy was a fool; the dress is short with a low back and a high front.
It says sexy, but only in a whisper.

I slid in right next to Lachlan on the banquette, rather than across from him, when we sat down at Robin des Bois, a French
bistro with thrift shop decor. I have no idea why I did this. I suppose the fact that he was in town for only a couple of
weeks gave me the sense of having nothing to lose. We were talking books—Lachlan was reading
The Tipping Point;
I viewed this choice as banal but was willing to let it slide, he being a foreigner. I proudly announced that I was reading
The Elementary Particles.
I thought this novel, by Michel Houellebecq, the bad boy of contemporary French literature, would lend me a worldly and sexually
daring air, but Lachlan dismissed Houellebecq out of hand, saying: “His novels depict a cold world.”

Over pints of Stella Artois, Lachlan told me he had studied philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, then dropped out of
a PhD program at the London School of Economics. A small Scottish entity issued his first and theretofore only published novel
shortly after that. For most of the past twenty-some-odd years, he lived in Italy, though I also gathered from our conversation
that he had spent a year or two in Prague and an unspecified amount of time in Paris. The year before he came to the States,
he was living in Edinburgh. He had never lived in Spain but was thinking about it.

Lachlan broke into Italian for part of our conversation; it just so happens that my Italian improves as I drink. By the second
beer I was quasi-fluent, and Lachlan was holding my hand. By the third I didn’t have to speak anymore, we were kissing.

Our hands remained joined on the short walk to the place where he was staying. We were going there to smoke: me a cigarette,
Lachlan pot. Goose inhabited a very nice brownstone. We walked into a giant parlor encompassing the living room and kitchen.
On the counter dividing the two spaces was a basket full of fruit and vegetables, but there was no time to partake of the
produce. Lachlan led me right downstairs to the bedroom, where he kept his smoking apparatus—a practical, no-frills pipe made
from a plastic takeout container covered with foil that had tiny pinholes punched into one side. He placed a pinch of dope
over the holes, lit it, and inhaled from a larger hole on the other side. Not exactly suave, but Lachlan was more cute and
elflike than dashing. There was nothing he could do that would turn me off. When he made a move to exhale smoke from his mouth
to mine, it was so alluring that I couldn’t resist.

Lachlan lit votive candles that lined the dresser and nightstand. He put a homemade CD in the small boom box on the dresser.
Electronica came pouring out—booming beats and the occasional chant. Lachlan announced his erotic game plan with a flourish,
and though the sound track is not what I would have chosen, every other decision he made was spot on. The music and sex played
in a continual loop until we broke for a snack.

Lachlan was a cook. But at this point he revealed his originality only in bed and with American breakfast cereals. He poured
himself a bowl of raisin bran, added a few extra tablespoons of raisins, a bunch of almonds, some walnuts, and a shot or two
of honey, then poured milk over the concoction. I took my cereal plain with milk. We ate standing at the kitchen counter.

“Did I pick you up or did you pick me up?” I asked.

“I think it was mutual,” Lachlan replied.

We talked for a while longer, then I wanted to go home. I’m comfortable doing lots of things with strangers—sleeping isn’t
one of them. But Lachlan insisted I stay, so I stayed. When we woke up, somehow on the other side of the bed, I was less unnerved
than I thought I’d be. In fact, I was surprised at how at ease I was, until Lachlan asked me if I had ever been married.

I’m always taken aback when I get that question. My first reaction is that I’m too young to have been married, though in actuality
I’m old enough to have been married and have seven children and maybe even a divorce or two under my belt. I am aware that
my amazement is merely a film covering countless difficult feelings of failure and confusion over the matter.

I gave my stock answer, one that I hope masks my stirring emotions and probably fails:

“No, I haven’t gotten around to that yet.”

“Who was your last boyfriend?”

“Can’t this just happen in a vacuum?” I asked.

“Nothing ever does,” Lachlan replied.

I asked Lachlan how old he was (forty-six). I told him how old I was (forty). Lachlan’s last girlfriend was an Australian
painter (I’m imagining twenty-eight). That seemed so cool and exotic (and young). I felt bland (and old).

“I would like to see you again,” he said. I agreed, suggesting I accompany him to Steely Dan. Lachlan had only one ticket
and didn’t want to buy another. If I got just one for me, we wouldn’t be sitting together, so I bought two more and figured
we’d find someone we could sell Lachlan’s to before the show. Not that the money made any difference; this summer, which began
with me dating a dreary fellow not worth mentioning, was becoming lovely beyond my wildest imaginings—that was worth any number
of Steely Dan tickets.

We got out of bed, and Lachlan made coffee. He toasted Pepperidge Farm whole-wheat bread and buttered it with salty butter
for me. It could not have been more delicious if it had been an omelet oozing with Beluga caviar and crème fraîche. We hung
out for a while, chatting and drinking coffee—since my boss was away for the month, I was in even less of a rush than usual
to get to the office. When eleven rolled around, I started to consider showing my face.

At noon, when I arrived at the NoHo offices of
Harper’s Magazine,
evidence of Ginia’s phone calls were all over the place—on my cell phone, on my office voice mail, on my home voice mail.
I took my time getting back to her, taking a few moments to savor the night before for myself.

“On my way home from the dentist I met the most adorable Scotsman you have ever seen. We’re going to have coffee!” I had written
her the minute I walked in the door after it occurred. It was only right for her to be curious about our date. In fact, as
my best friend, she was obligated to care. I would have been disappointed if she didn’t. So I called and told her as much
as I could, hinting at the sex, crowing about Steely Dan.

I assumed I’d see Lachlan before the concert, still two days away. When I was done with my exercise class that evening, there
was a message from him on my cell phone.

“Did you make the bed?” I asked when I returned the call. The sheets were in disarray when I left in the morning. Considering
it unseemly to leave a borrowed house in such chaos, I offered to fix it—this was my neurosis, after all—but Lachlan insisted
that he would take care of it.

“No,” he answered, “I want to mess them up again.”

In under an hour, I was back on the bus.

____

It’s always a little shocking
to see someone you’ve been on a date with (and then some) for the second time. They are never quite how you remembered them.
Lachlan seemed unnerved, moving quickly and jerkily when he greeted me at the door. As this is usually my role in relationships,
I found myself in the unfamiliar position of being the serene one. He took my hand and led me straight to the bedroom, even
though it was only nine-thirty. There he had re-created the previous night’s scene. The candles were lit, and Groove Armada
was blaring from the little boom box on the dresser: “If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air … ,” went “At the River,”
the one familiar tune I heard in those evenings.

Almost in line with the number of times I have prepared elaborate meals for men is the number of times I have been implored
to read book reviews drawn from conveniently stashed (in the drawer near the bed, in the messenger bag that just happened
to come along to the restaurant) folders and envelopes. Yes, Lachlan had brought his over from Edinburgh, and out they came
the next morning. I was to read them in bed before coffee. I find it tough enough to focus on book reviews under ideal circumstances,
while lying on my own couch in the sanctuary of my own apartment on a Sunday afternoon. Post-early-relationship sex, it is
nearly impossible. I attempted to follow a couple of lines, forced a chortle or two, then scrambled to come up with some clever
comment, like, “Ha, funny that he’s buried in a peat bog,” as if I had a clue as to what a peat bog was.

“Can you? Can you really help me with my book?” Lachlan asked.

I racked my brain thinking up literary agents who might take my call. There was an old friend of Ethan’s who played drums
in our band; I could try him. And a chubby guy who never called me again after I took him to see the Magnetic Fields; that
had
to count for a favor. “There are some people I could ask,” I told him.

I had no idea if I could help, but I supposed I would have to try because I was already madly in love with Lachlan.

He took my hands. “I don’t want any of this to get in the way of our friendship.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” I said, well aware that it was, in fact, in the way.

While Lachlan was making my breakfast and giving me the rundown on the novel he was working on, a voice in my head that sounded
a lot like mine said,
This man will never love you.
I told the voice to shut up and went full speed ahead with him to Jones Beach Theater for Steely Dan.

Lachlan had planned to take the train out there, but I put an end to that. We’d borrow my mother’s car and leave in the afternoon
in order to have an hour or two on the beach before the show. I’d take the day off from work to pick up the car in the morning
and squeeze an exercise class in there somewhere, too. I forgot to bring my cell phone with me and returned home to find six
messages from Lachlan in a variety of formats: text, voice mail, he’d even tried to page me.

“Have you eaten?” he asked when I got back to him. “I have lunch for you if you haven’t.” No man has ever “had lunch for me.”
He sounded like my mother, and that wasn’t bad, but I wanted to get on the road. I turned down his offer, and Lachlan upped
the ante with a significantly less maternal request: