THE BRO-MAGNET (15 page)

Sam’s right. Why am I getting myself so worked up? This may not even be a date. Maybe Helen just wants to hang out. Or maybe she’s just, you know, slumming.

There’s a depressing thought.

“So,” Sam says, “where are you going to take her on this date that may or may not really be a date?”

“Oh, Christ.” I groan, remembering that part. “The opera.”

Sam makes a face like she’s smelling dead fish. “
The opera
?”

“I know, right? But now she thinks I’m some kind of like, I don’t know,
opera aficionado
, so I have to go through with it. I guess people like her like the opera. There’s just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know a fucking thing about the opera!”

I think about that, add:

“Or dating D.A.’s.”

I think about that, add:

“If this really even is a date.”

* * *

Google is my friend.

Come to think of it, Google is everyone’s friend these days. Well, except for people who worry that it’s the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. But for the rest of us?

Sam’s standing behind my shoulder as I sit before the computer. She’s swigging from one of my beers that she took from my fridge.

Not that I’m keeping track of these things.

“Google ‘Connecticut’ plus ‘opera’,” Sam advises.

“I know how to google,” I say, feeling miffed.

But it turns out, Google is not my friend.

“Wow,” Sam says. “The Connecticut Opera went out of business in 2009?”

“I know, right? Says here it was in existence for sixty-seven years. I didn’t even know it was there, and now, when I finally have a use for it, it’s gone?”

“What are the odds? If you’d met Helga last year, you wouldn’t be in this mess now. The Connecticut Opera would still be there. You’d think the economic downturn would have been more considerate about your love life. You’d think it could have waited just a few more years before destabilizing the arts.”

“You’re telling me. Great. Now what do I do? She’s expecting the opera.”

“So? Take her to one in New York. It’s more romantic anyway. If it turns out to be a date after all, you’ll be much better situated for it, geographically speaking.”

But ‘New York City’ plus ‘opera’ proves to be just as disappointing.

It’s May now, and it looks like the opera season ended in April.

“Opera has a season?” I’m stunned. “What does opera think it is – baseball?”

“It’s totally crazy,” Sam says. “Who knew?”

“Great. There’s no Connecticut Opera anymore. I’m not even in the right season. Now what?”

“Keep googling. There’s got to be something. Someone somewhere has got to be performing an opera, even if it’s in someplace you’ve never heard of.”

Which is exactly what I finally find. In some dim corner of Connecticut, in a tiny town I never even knew existed, they’re doing
Tosca
the following weekend.

“I’ve heard of
Tosca
,” I say. “I think it’s one of the big ones.”

“Really? You know what it’s about?”

“No, but I can always google later – so I look, you know, informed.”

“You really don’t know anything about opera, do you?”

“Do you? Anyway, what’s there to know? I know that people sing really loud for a few hours, and in the end, someone usually dies.”

“Perfect,” Sam says. “Call her to see if she’s free, then order the tickets.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s not?”

“Well, no. Like, what am I going to talk to her about all night? What am I going to wear?”

“What are you going to
wear
? You sound like a girl!”

“Be that as it may…”

“You wear a tux.”

“I do?”

“Sure. Didn’t you see the pictures on the site for that fancy New York opera house?”

“Yeah, but that’s New York. I don’t think people who go to see no-name opera companies in no-name towns in Connecticut wear tuxes.”

“Trust me, you need a tux. You want to impress the girl, right?”

I sigh. “I suppose.” Then I brighten. “Hey, at least I do have a lot of experience wearing tuxes – you know, from my eight times being Best Man and all.”

“You are
not
going to wear some white and purple monstrosity like the one you wore to Bailey’s wedding.”

“Billy. And the tux wasn’t my fault.
I
didn’t pick that color scheme out.”

“Still.” Sam steps out of the room.

“So,” I call after her, “I ask her if she can go, if she says yes I order the tickets, then I rent the tux. But there’s still that one problem.”

“Hmm…?” I hear Sam rooting around in my kitchen cabinets, looking for snacks to go with her beer.

“What do I talk to her about all night?”

“How should I know what you talk to her about?” Sam pokes her head around the corner. “I suck at that sort of thing.”

Great. Looks like I’m on my own with that one.

* * *

I call Helen the next day, she says yes to going to the opera on Saturday night, so after work I find myself at
Maury the Magnificent! Your Place for Tuxedos and All Your Formal Wear!

All those times I’ve been Best Man, the grooms have gotten the tuxes for the wedding party from one of those chain stores. I thought about doing that, but then I thought: Isn’t Helen special? Shouldn’t I get a really special tux for this occasion, like maybe even buy one so it doesn’t have that other-people-probably-had-sex-while-wearing-this-thing feel to it? When I looked in the book, however, the only non-chain tux shop I could find was this one.

And now I’m here and I’m thinking,
This place is so small
. Dusty too. I’m also thinking,
What was I thinking? This is Danbury! How many people in Danbury need to buy a tux – enough to justify a whole privately owned shop?

I’m thinking about leaving, maybe going to the usual place where people like Billy rent them, when a guy comes out of the back room. He’s about as old as Leo from the coffee shop, but hunched over, with a horseshoe of white hair around his pink scalp, steel glasses perched all the way at the tip of his comma-shaped nose, red suspenders holding up his gray slacks, and a measuring tape draped around his neck like a stethoscope.

Too late to back out now.

“You Maury?” I ask.

He spreads his arms. “In the flesh. What can I do for you?”

“I need a tux,” I say.

He studies me in my work clothes: jeans, T-shirt, Mets cap.

“Well, of course you do,” he says in a flat voice, like it’s an observation anyone passing me on the street might make:
See that guy over there? He needs a tux!

“Rent or buy?”

“Buy.”

“Good choice. Good choice.”

He moves to stand behind me, starts measuring my shoulders.

“Every man should own a tux,” he says.

“I know, right? Plus, it’d be great for your business.”

“True.” He bends to measure my inseam. “Special occasion?”

“First date.”

“Oh,” Maury says knowingly, “I know all about those.”

“Well, it may not be a date exactly. That part’s still up in the air.”

“There’s a woman involved?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re renting a tux?”

“Obviously.”

“Where you taking her?”

“The opera.”

“Sure sounds like a date to me. But it’s the off-season.”

“Yeah, I heard that, but I found one anyway.”

“Very nice. Very nice. Which opera?”

“
Tosca
.”

“Good choice. Good choice.”

But then I’m wondering: Is it? When I invited Helen, I forgot to tell her which opera. What if she’s already seen
Tosca
before? Will she be bored?

Since Maury seems to know all about opera, I confess my concerns to him.

“Operas aren’t like movies,” he says. “There aren’t a few hundred new ones made every year. People who go to the opera tend to see the same ones over and over again. It’s not like there’s much difference between one opera and another anyway. People sing. People die. So long as she likes opera, you should be fine.”

He walks over to a display of tuxes. “What were you thinking?” He holds out sleeves of two different tuxes for my consideration. “The Cary Grant or the George Clooney?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Most definitely. With the Cary Grant, you get the shawl collar. Very classy.”

“I guess I’ll take that one.”

“Here.” He hands me the tux. “Go try it on and then I’ll check the length.”

I wonder why he measured me if he’s only going to hand me something off the rack and then check the cuffs later, but I figure it’s his shop. He must know what he’s doing.

I’m almost to the dressing room when I hear a phone ring.

“Better get that,” Maury says. “It’s that time of day.”

“Wife?”

“Girlfriend.”

As I’m pulling the dressing room curtain shut I hear, “Hello?…Sylvia!”

I don’t want to be eavesdropping, so I force myself not to hear. When I come out a few minutes later, Maury’s off the phone.

“Let’s take a look at that fit,” he says. “Hmm…just as I suspected. Everything else is fine, but I think we need to take the cuffs up a half inch, maybe just a quarter, so they break perfectly across the tops of your shoes. Here, let me chalk them.”

As he’s down on the floor near my ankles, chalking, he begins singing softly.

“
Trousers dragging, slowly dragging through the street/Yes! I’m walking, but I’m walking without feet!
”

“What’s that song?” I ask.

Maury looks up at me, stunned by the gaps in my education. “It’s ‘Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long’, 1932. You don’t know ‘Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long’? It’s a classic, every tailor’s favorite song. And believe you me, you do
not
want to be on a first date walking without feet.”

“I see your point.”

Geez, Maury seems to know a little bit about everything. He’s a regular polymath.

Maybe he knows how to talk to women too.

“So, um,” I say awkwardly, “that was your girlfriend on the phone?”

“One of them,” he says.

Maury’s got more than one girlfriend? He’s a regular stud – the guy really is magnificent!

“Maybe you can help me then,” I say. “How do you talk to women?”

“What do you mean, how? You open your mouth. Words come out. If you’re lucky, they make sense.”

“Yeah, I get that part. But you’ve got more than one girlfriend. What do you talk to women about that makes them want to go out with you more than once?”

“Oh, that’s easy.”

“It is?”

“Sure! You don’t talk. You listen.”

“But how is it a conversation if you don’t say anything?”

“Well, of course you say
something
. You ask them questions, show an interest. Find out what interests them and then just let them talk and talk.” He laughs knowingly. “Believe me, they’ll do it.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Gee, kid, do I have to go on the date for you?”

Ouch.

“Just ask questions. ‘What’s your favorite color?’ ‘Do you really think the Cold War is over?’ ‘Do you like your pizza plain or with pepperoni?’”

“Just ask questions,” I echo, as if making a mental note.

“Really, it doesn’t matter what you ask them, so long as it comes across that you’re soliciting their opinion. Women love to have their opinions solicited. Makes them feel like what they’ve got to say actually matters.”

“Make her feel like what she’s got to say actually matters,” I echo.

“Oh, but be sure to pay attention when she’s talking. There can be hell to pay if you don’t. Some women like to trip you up that way. Like you think they’ve answered your question? You know, maybe you’ve asked what her favorite color is? And she says blue right away, but then she goes on and on and on with details about it. Before you know it, your mind is drifting to other things, she changes her answer to yellow, you totally miss that part, her birthday comes, you give her a blue sweater, think you did great remembering her favorite color. Turns out, the part you didn’t hear was when she amended it to say blue
used
to be her favorite color, until her father was struck and killed by a drunken driver driving a blue car. Before you know it, the relationship’s over. Swear to God.” Maury holds up a hand. “Happened to me once.”

“Wow, that must have been rough.”

“Nah, it wasn’t too bad actually. She used to wear yellow all the time and I could never quite figure it out until the end there. It was like dating a yield sign. I never was crazy about yellow.”

“OK, I think I’m getting this. I not only ask questions but I also listen carefully to all the answers, no matter how long or digressive.”

“Right. Oh, and if you get the woman into bed? Offer to paint her toenails afterward. They really go for that. Tends to seal the deal on a second date.”

Wow, this guy’s a regular font. And I have had practice painting toenails with Sam.

“So that’s how you get through a first date,” I observe. “Ask questions, make her feel like her opinion actually matters, listen to the answers.”

“No, that’s how you get through dating, period.”

I’ve got a burning question that I’ve been wondering about for years. Billy and Drew probably have the answer now, and Big John had it once, but I’ve always worried if I asked any of them, they’d laugh at me. But Maury? Once I pick up my tux later in the week, I’ll probably never see the guy again.

“How,” I ask, “do you get women to make the leap? You know, from being girlfriends to being wives.”

“Now
that
I couldn’t tell you.”

“No?”

“No. Never been married. I can get them all to date me, but none of them have ever wanted to get married. So. What do you think – the classic white silk scarf or the one with the fringe? You can’t wear a tux without a scarf.”

“Do these have names, like the tuxes?”

“Of course. The plain white silk’s the Henry Fonda. The fringe is the Robert Downey Jr.”

“I guess I’ll take the Fonda.”

“Good choice. Good choice. Now for some shoes…”

You feel a winter breeze up and down the knees/

The belt is where the tie belongs…