The Hypothetical Girl (4 page)

“I think I read something about some guy traveling in Senegal who was abducted last year, near Kolda,” Lenore said.

“You are joking,” said Myra. “Tell me you don’t think that’s funny.”

“What if it’s your limerick guy?”

The question settled in Myra’s gut like a stone. What if? Myra thought about this possibility all the way back to Connecticut on the train.

The woolly mammoth fossilized in her heart had been awakened and was trumpeting around. It was smashing things. It was making a big mess.

For the entire next week, she couldn’t sleep. What if Louis was rotting in some Senegalese terror camp? She had to know. She couldn’t sleep. In fact, she had stooped to the level of nightly Excedrin PMs. It was a problem. She tried to switch to valerian root tea, but the stuff didn’t even touch her insomnia.

Finally, she decided to write to Louis. It wouldn’t be stalker-y if she wrote to him one last time (he need never know about the screen saver thing, which had long been replaced by a stock photo of a sunset). This is what she wrote:

Two weeks later, she did hear back from Louis. It was the last time she heard from him.

M
iko was an Icelandic yak farmer who was thirty-one years old and in possession of a small fortune.

Misty was twenty-three, an aspiring poet and model who lived in New York City and Beverly Hills, who’d had a small part as an extra in
Dude, Where’s My Car?
You may recall her as the girl with the long blonde hair, long blonde legs—long blonde everything, in fact—who walks by right after the opening credits.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young yak farmer, in possession of a large yak fortune, should be in pursuit of a wife,” Misty said to her friend Blanche, with whom she was discussing her recent online dalliances.

“Say what?” said Blanche.

“That is an adaptation from
Pride and Prejudice
,” Misty said.

“Oh,” said Blanche. “Well, I guess I just think Iceland is sorta far away.”

“But that is exactly what makes it exciting,” Misty said.

Several of Misty’s friends from college, including Blanche, had recently gotten married and pregnant, and she had been experiencing some anxiety about it. She felt, for lack of a better phrase, left behind, as they all hung out at the Laundromat, folding adorable baby outfits, talking about what, exactly, might be the best brands of pacifiers, strollers, or teething rings. A cool Icelandic dude who likes nature and animals might be just the ticket, she thought, coming across Miko’s profile on Matchhearts.com. He would be exotic enough to impress her friends, who, after college, had all so promptly given birth. The luckiest of them had married actors, writers, online game designers, or Wall Street guys. They gave their babies the most interesting names, like Thesis, Harmony, and Theorem. It was as if these babies had been brought into the world to figure out something big, like math or the way to write opera. In a world with such ambitious baby-making going on, it felt quite pathetic to be babyless, not to mention husbandless. Miko would be exotic enough to be cute. He would not be a wimp. How could a farmer of yaks be a wimp? He would be sweet and grateful to meet an actor-poet girl like herself who lived in New York City.

This was what Misty thought about late at night, after several apple martinis and a long walk home across Manhattan’s west side. She lived in a walk-up, above an
S&M parlor, and she didn’t like to get home too late because she risked encountering the bloodied patrons, heading for home. If she got there before eleven it would still be all quiet on the western front, as her best friend, Yoni, liked to say. He called her place the western front because it was really far west on the island of Manhattan, near the Meatpacking District, which Yoni, who was gay, seemed to think was a funny name, for reasons she did not truly comprehend but was afraid to ask about, as it might reveal her naiveté.

Miko seemed utterly exotic, in a refreshing way. Refreshing like Fresca, like the first snow of the year, like Icees. Just his name, Miko, was refreshing. She had never met a Miko.

Miko, for his part, was excited to meet a girl who had been in a Hollywood movie, in any capacity at all. He had seen
Dude, Where’s My Car?
and thought it was very funny. He thought he recalled that girl in the opening scene, but he would have to get the movie again off Net-flix and really look for her.

For the record, Miko did not really live in Iceland. Neither was he a yak farmer. It was just something he tried out to see if it would attract girls, which it obviously had. Call it a whim.

All of this was before the recent hullabaloo with the Icelandic volcano, when all the flights in Europe were grounded, when the whole world had seemed to come to a screeching halt, all because of ash.

“What do you mean, you have never heard of Eyjafjallajökull?” Misty asked. “It is right there on your continent. At least I think you live on a continent, or is it a very large island?”

“It is an island, for the record, but it is very big and not everyone knows the name of every single volcano on it.”

“But isn’t Eyjafjallajökull very large? And potentially dangerous?” They were talking on the phone at this point, in addition to e-mailing and texting, and Misty was sort of proud she had learned how to pronounce the name of the volcano, and she had learned it specifically to impress Miko. Yet here he didn’t even know where it was.

Whether because of or despite their exotic identities, there was some suspicion on the part of each of these two young people, about the claims of the other. Even though there had been no explosion in their lives, let’s just say they had each been burned.

“I am a yak farmer. Ask me something—in fact ANYTHING—about yaks and I will answer. I do not know much about volcanoes.”

“Okay, what do yaks eat?” Misty ventured.

“They eat grass. Hay. Twigs. Stuff that grows,” Miko answered. “Now tell me again which is you in that movie?”
Why
did she insist on talking about obscure volcanoes?

Misty was annoyed. Why did he insist on talking about her role in
Dude, Where’s My Car?

For the record, Misty had not really been in that movie. She just wrote that in her profile to attract interest, which it obviously had.

“So watchya wearing?” Miko asked.

“Nothing,” Misty replied. “What are you wearing?”

“Not much more.”

“That’s nice. Okay, I have to go now,” she said.

For some reason she felt annoyed. This was not the cool, exotic foreign-man experience she signed up for. He barely had an accent. And the accent he did have was like someone she once knew from Cleveland.

Miko hung up the phone. His name was actually Mark. He was pissed. This Misty was not the person she had represented herself as. An actress who played an extra in the first scene of
Dude, Where’s My Car?
should be up for at least a tad of phone sex.

A week later Misty, bored, wrote to “Miko” again. “Hi, how is it going? How are the yaks?”

“I am a police officer in Akron,” he wrote back. “Like some yak farmer is going to have access to the Internet. What are you, stupid?” He was sick of this crap.

“Oh really, officer? Well, you should get a ticket for lying.”

“What about you? Tell me you didn’t lie. I rented
Dude, Where’s My Car?
There is no blonde in the opening scene.”

“Touché,” she typed.

“So who are you, then?”

“A waitress on Pier 17.”

“Where is that?”

“New York City.”

“Really? That is kinda cool.”

“Hardly,” she wrote.

She flicked off her computer.

T
wo weeks later, Mark got an instant message from Misty. Utterly lonely one night, she wrote to him again. “Actually, I do like men in uniforms. Send a picture?”

A picture of a handsome cop zinged onto her screen.

“Cute!”

“And do I get to see one of you?”

An adorable woman in a waitress uniform appeared in a flash.

“Very pretty.”

“So are you going to arrest me, officer, for lying?”

“Not if you bring me some dessert, waitress. But it better be sweet.”

In this manner they flirted for two nights, waitress and police officer, apron and badge, dessert tray and handcuffs. Instant messages flinging through the ether, practically singeing their screens.

Alas, Mark was not a police officer. He was a veteran, who had been paralyzed from the waist down by an explosive device in Afghanistan. He lived with his parents in Duluth.

Alas, not only was Misty not a poet and actress, but she was also not a waitress. She was the caretaker of her
twin sister, Mandy, who had severe Down syndrome. She lived in a teensy apartment that had belonged to their grandparents. Although she had been an English major at NYU, she now spent her days wiping up spilled drinks, spoon-feeding her sister, and changing her Depends. Once a week she got a person from “care-giver respite” to watch Mandy so she could go out and get drunk with Yoni or hang out with Blanche and the girls she knew from the Laundromat on the corner. She was a fag hag. That is what her girlfriends called her. She was a laundry chick. That was Yoni’s name for her. Whatever she was, it was distinctly unglamorous. Even less glamorous than a waitress. Which is pretty bad, when you think about it.

Her days were long and tedious, and sometimes even a little gross. Her sister would toss her food onto the floor. She would pull Mandy’s hair at times. Caring for her was a thankless task she did because she felt it was
the right thing to do
.

The sound of the chime on her laptop, signaling an instant message from Mark, would interrupt these long days. It sounded like the opening note of a symphony, the sound of another life calling, of options, of the reversal of her rather cumbersome credit card debt. It was the sound of planets whizzing around in distant solar systems. And even though she knew it wasn’t real, it somehow still recalled an image of a man in some icy expanse, herding yaks.

The buzz of Mark’s iPhone, on receiving Misty’s instant message, would often jolt him from a nap he was taking in a corner of his parents’ living room, with the television droning away in the background, some talk show or soap opera his mother liked to leave on while she did her housework. So she wasn’t an actress or a waitress or whatever; the buzz of his phone with her name appearing on the screen was still the sound that he thought sunshine would make if it made a sound. It was the sound that feet made, walking across a room. The sound of walking itself. Of movement. Of
before
.

And sometimes, still, even though he knew it wasn’t so, it was the sound of a blonde, leggy actress, walking across the credit screen of
Dude, Where’s My Car?
Walking confidently and with a sexy waggle, toward the edge of the screen, to a place where he could see her perfectly. Where somehow, amazingly, she could also see him.

T
he Happily Ever After sat on a shelf and stared down at Alana. It had made itself quite at home right there in her kitchen, on the little shelf above the sink.

It sat there smugly, in that family portrait of her sister Brianna, brother-in-law Peter, and their 2.5 kids (little Megan still in the oven then), all smiling, in some forest somewhere, doing happy, foresty things. Things that necessitated bungee cords and really good hiking boots purchased from the L.L.Bean catalog.

Every time she cooked a dish, it smirked at her a bit.

She saw the Happily Ever After in the grocery store, too. Couples with their babies strapped on in very cool Swedish baby carriers, consulting about avocado condition or debating, so seriously, like delegates at a UN convention: asparagus or brussels sprouts? Pine nuts or almonds?

She prickled at the warmth of it; you could feel it even down the aisle. The Happily Ever After had its own internal combustion engine. You could probably warm yourself just by sitting next to it on a cold day, or even tan a bit. It was so incredible how it seemed wholly devoid of angst. Faces flushed with that joy that comes from having to worry only about which flavor of yogurt to try or whether to have a gluten-free breakfast or indulge in a few carbs. That love thing completely taken care of.

Although she felt fairly content in life—she was grateful for the independence and creativity that her lucrative work designing websites afforded her and really loved the Saturday-afternoon yoga class she taught at the health club—Alana couldn’t help thinking it might be nice to have a Happily Ever After of her own. And, for the first time in years, there was some real potential on the horizon, since she’d met Max.

Max appeared quite debonair on his Compassion atesingles.com webpage. In a recognizable brand of very good cycling gear, on a road beside the ocean, he stood astride his top-notch racing bicycle, a soft breeze rippling his slightly long, slightly disheveled black hair. He was fit and strong-looking, yet he had a face that appeared warm and inviting, a face that you wanted to fold into your life like an egg white, make a part of the whole cake of you. And he seemed so willing to provide
a Happily Ever After for her. After all, it was he who found her!