The Hypothetical Girl (3 page)

“Chloe,” the man said, looking suddenly, surprisingly debonair and attractive despite the milky eye and bowler, the gold chain, the shirt that desperately needed buttoning. He looked good at that moment in a sort of downtrodden, been-there-and-done-that-and-seen-the-world way, like a Tom Waits–ish character, who had been down on his luck but survived the wiser. And the bowler was daring really, when you thought about it. “Is that you?”

She nodded and he found himself enjoying the unpretentious way she did so, and her hair, with its wildness, was somehow appealing. The gauzy shirt alluring. “Pull into Starbucks,” he said, signaling to the next corner. “Let’s talk.”

Chloe felt her heart start up, a drum kit that had been turned off all summer, flicked suddenly on.

A breeze from the rolled-down window grazed her arm as she followed Ivan’s truck into the parking lot. It smelled like burning leaves and mulch, the last scents of a dying summer. The smell of happy backyards where families were raking up, making piles for their children
to jump in, which the children would then do with a certain palpable abandon, roaring with laughter. That beautiful thing children do before they realize other people might be watching, and they tone it down, pare it back, and begin to become the people they will be in the world as adults. All the while the animals look on, wondering how they do it, and why.

A
fter two months of exchanging pleasantries, of back-and-forth flirting, of this and that–ing, zig and zagging, chit and chatting online, Myra suggested Louis and she meet.

“I am getting ready for midterms,” he wrote back (he was a college professor). “Bad timing.”

Okay, truth: It stung a little, to have put one’s heart out there and to have had it slapped back by some college scheduling protocol. But Myra did not give up easily.

Louis was intriguing. He had climbed trees in Sri Lanka and had spent a good deal of time on an elephant preserve. He had sent some pictures of himself hanging upside down from a branch over an elephant’s head.

“You are jungley,” she had written.

“I am jungley,” he wrote back.

Much of their correspondence had taken the form of limericks:

“But ‘humble’ doesn’t actually rhyme with ‘dumbo,’ ” he said.

“Picky, picky,” she replied.

Then he wrote one to her:

“Bent? My humor is bent? Are you saying you don’t like my jokes?”

“No,” he replied, “I couldn’t think of anything else to rhyme with ‘Kent.’ ”

“How about ‘went,’ ‘lent,’ ‘rent,’ or for that matter, ‘elephant,’ which would be a slant rhyme, of course.”

“What is a slant rhyme?”

“A half rhyme, an off rhyme.”

“Sounds like a cheating rhyme to me,” he said.

Sometimes, late at night, their limerick texts had taken a more serious turn. They had written passionately
about what they looked for in love, and in another person.

“What is it you seek, Louis? Love, lust, friendship, other?”

“Love is lovely,” he wrote back; “lust can get sticky but is ultimately worth it; friendship can be community-building; and other, hmmm … I guess I would like to meet someone who can cook. More. Than. Spaghetti.”

Apparently Louis’s ex had made nothing but spaghetti.

“I cook,” wrote Myra. “It just so happens I cook very well.”

“What do you cook?”

“I cook brisket, Moroccan lamb stew, shrimp Alfredo, and Thai, I cook Thai. I have several recipes. Like chicken satay.”

“You make chicken satay?” he texted. “I may have to marry you.”

“Okay,” she wrote back. “I accept.”

Louis had just returned from a three-week trek in the Golden Triangle region, where he had gone white-water rafting and smoked opium with a village chief.

“Why is it everyone I know who has been trekking in Thailand has smoked opium with a village chief?” Myra asked.

“Oh, it is part of the standard trek package,” Louis replied. Louis was funny.

When Louis declined the invitation to have lunch somewhere, Myra decided to confront his reticence with another limerick.

“Okay,” Louis wrote, “that was a stretch.”

“What? The rhymes? Or don’t you like girls?”

“No, I am pretty sure I like girls. The whole jewelry trope.”

“I know,” Myra wrote back. “I was at a loss for words.”

“A good time NOT to write a limerick.”

“Says he of ‘bent’ humor.”

“Touché.”

“Okay, we are even, but I still think we should have lunch,” Myra wrote.

“Send me some pictures,” he texted, quite out of the blue.

“I sent you pictures,” she wrote.

“But they are just head shots …”

“Louis, are you asking me to send you nude pix?”

“NO, just something that shows you, the real you.”

Myra was stumped. She had sent him pictures. But he wanted more, so she sent more. She sent him one of her rowing her kayak and one of her standing in front of her kayak.

With the photos she sent him another limerick.

Immediately came his response—just one word, but oh such an important one:

“More?”

“Yes, more, like lunch.”

“You are cute,” he wrote. “I think you are pretty.”

“And I think you are cute too. I will be honest, I am smitten.”

“Smitten?”

“Smitten.”

Silence for two days was followed by the following dispatch from Louis to Myra.

“Okay,” Myra wrote back. “That was clever.”

Her smittenness had gotten quite out of control. She was thinking about Louis pretty much all the time. She woke up and thought about him and then went to work and thought about him. She kept returning to the photo of him hanging from that tree in Sri Lanka. In fact, it seemed a little stalker-y, but she actually made that photograph into her screen saver.

When she came home at night she practiced recipes for Thai fare to prepare for their courtship. She learned how to make a lemongrass soup and several tasty curry dishes.

Then Myra wrote a beautiful love poem. It might have been the most beautiful love poem ever written, she thought. (And Myra was an actual poet. An MFA-degree-carrying, poetry-teaching poet who worked with the Connecticut “Poetry in the Schools” program. She had credentials.) Her love poem had three sections. It was full of winning metaphors and synonyms. It had great images. But most important, it had heart. Real heart.

To send it or not to send it? That was the question. She pondered it all night long, and then finally at 2:00 a.m. she did it. She pushed the button. She sent the poem.

Here is the love poem that Myra sent Louis:

YES, DUDE, A LOVE POEM

So, after she sent this poem, as you might imagine, Myra felt a little vulnerable. It had not been a limerick or anything like a limerick. It was not a poem with a joke in it or a joke with a poem in it. It was a serious real-life love poem. But then he had said he was in love with her, right? Or was he being flip? Three weeks went by.

We repeat here (and italicize) for emphasis:
three weeks
. No return e-mail from Louis.

“Ummm. Hi?” she finally wrote. “Sorry if you hated my poem.”

Still nothing. “Umm, wow, you really hated it.”

Finally, a Louis message appeared in her in-box.

It was this:

“Been busy. Lots of stuff with my job. Going on a quick backpacking trip to Senegal.”

Senegal? Quick? Like really?
she thought.

Finally, stumped beyond stumped, she wrote to her best friend, Lenore (yes, she for whom her kayak had
been named). Lenore was a playwright and poet who lived in Manhattan and the smartest cookie around. She “knew from relationships,” she liked to say, and was a huge yenta, fixing up everyone they knew, successfully, for years.

“Lenore, help,” Myra e-mailed.

“Not the limerick guy still,” Lenore wrote back.

“Yes, that very one. So would you believe it if some guy told you he was going to Senegal?”

“Hmmm, Senegal,” wrote Lenore. “Is he a diplomat?”

“No.”

“Aid worker?”

“No.”

“Does he work for an NGO or for Doctors Without Borders?”

“No,” wrote Myra. “Backpacking.”

“Then no, the answer is no, I would not believe a guy who said he was going to Senegal to go backpacking. I think they might be having a civil war. Or are about to have one. Or just finished one up.”

“That is what I was afraid of.”

“So tell me,” Lenore wrote, “what did you do?”

“Nothing! I sent him a poem.”

“Limerick?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you sent him a sonnet. You must never send a sonnet before the first date.”

“It wasn’t a sonnet.”

“A villanelle, then?”

“Nope.”

“Not a pantoum—please tell me you didn’t send him a pantoum!”

“It wasn’t a pantoum. By the way, I hate pantoums.”

“Me, too. I think everyone hates pantoums.”

“Well it wasn’t a pantoum.”

“So what, then? What did you send him?”

“I sent him a free verse poem. A love poem.”

“Oh, honey,” Lenore wrote. “Not free verse.”

“What?”

“A free verse love poem? Tell me it wasn’t in sections.”

“It was. It had three sections.”

“Kiss of death, babe.”

“Apparently.”

At this point Lenore shared the Rules for Poetry When Dating Online. Clever, short iambic pentameter poems with no more than two verses are okay before the first date, as are haiku, limericks, and tanka. No sonnets, villanelle, or pantoums until at least three dates have gone by successfully. As for free verse love poems, save those for a one-year anniversary, she said.

“Is this like a credo?” Myra asked.

“It’s a doctrine,” Lenore wrote back.

Myra had killed her flirtation with Louis with sectioned free verse. It was sad and because it was sad she had to appropriately mourn it. To do so she spent a week
in bed eating Häagen-Dazs Rum Raisin ice cream, after which she switched to Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

About a year went by and Myra’s affection for Louis cooled. In fact, it had gone extinct, like the woolly mammoths, receding to a small set of bones buried somewhere deep down inside her. Over drinks in Manhattan with Lenore, Myra said yes, she had truly learned her lesson this time.

“The Love Poetry Doctrine is not to be messed with,” Lenore said.

“I get it. Anyway he was a liar. He said he was going backpacking in Senegal. Remember? That was a lie.”

“Wait,” said Lenore. “Senegal?”

“Yes, Senegal …”

One year earlier, Myra had finally Googled “travel” and “Senegal” to learn that: