The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (20 page)

Who the hell cares!

Do not cry. Do not ruin your makeup! Andrew Sharp betrayed you. He is not the man you married. He is not the man you loved. He is a lying bastard.

I’d been repeating those words over and over and over these past two weeks. And FindAMate.com had become like a drug. Lonely? There were hundreds—thousands!—of profiles to read, thousands of men whom you could potentially meet. Feeling unattractive? There were thousands of men who could look at your photo and find you beautiful and exciting.

And instead of feeling awful about my marriage, I felt hopeful. I felt hopeful about the future.

You can get pregnant through your early forties. Can. Maybe…

My sister had her first baby at forty-one….

And now there was every chance I could meet some great new man, have a whirlwind courtship, and find love. Real love. That was what I wanted. Not a fling. Not some guy to make me feel good. I wanted the real thing.

“You don’t think it’s too soon?” I’d asked Kristina. “Shouldn’t I be taking yoga or going to Machu Picchu or something?”

Kristina snorted. “You don’t need to find yourself, Ally. You need to get laid, and good. You need to find what you’re looking for. You already know who you are.”

She was right. I was aware that I was moving a little quickly, but what was I supposed to do? Mope in my father’s living room? Veg and watch Sarah’s belly grow?

Instead, I had eight dates. With eight potential new loves.

How exciting it all sounded! I’d spoken briefly to all eight men by telephone. I’d actually spoken to twelve men, but four sounded like such duds that I’d nipped them in the bud.

I pulled out my Palm and clicked on
Thursday, 7:00 p.m.
and double-checked that my seven o’clock date’s name was indeed Jeffrey and not Rick, who I thought was my nine-thirty. When you scheduled eight dates for as many days, you tended to mess up the names. Yes, Jeffrey was up first.

He was first for a reason. He was a doctor and also separated. We’d e-mailed back and forth a few times, long, flirty, honest e-mails about what we did for a living, our marital status (which I’d come clean on after he spoke openly about his separation), how hard it was and how wonderful it would be to sit across from an attractive person and feel hopeful. We’d connected.

Last night, I’d dreamed that Jeffrey was delivering our baby. In the dream, he’d morphed into an OB/GYN, my new husband and the father of our six-pound, eight-ounce bundle of joy. I’d woken up smiling, despite Sarah’s snores and Zoe’s ridiculous sunrise yoga routine.

There was indeed something about having eight dates set up in a week’s time that made a person feel proactive. Last night, with tonight’s date waiting in the wings, I’d been actually happy. That Andrew hadn’t called to beg me back barely registered. That I was sharing a room with my sisters barely registered. That I was subjected to yet another question from Giselle about rosebud arrangements barely registered.

I was moving my life forward. I’d been wronged, and I was taking charge! Full of action. Not sitting around crying. Not feeling sorry for myself. I wanted love and a baby, and I was taking good steps toward my goals.

I’d thrown out
How To Spice Up Your Marriage
and bought
How To Find a Good Man: A Three-Month Plan.
During those moments when images of Andrew’s ass rising and lowering came to mind, I’d repeat a mantra from
How To Find a Good Man
and feel comforted.

Number one on the list of what a good man didn’t do: cheat.

Number one on my list of hot prospects: the hot doctor whose wife had cheated on
him.
Her excuse, Jeffrey had told me during our hour-long conversation, was that he was never home and she’d been driven to cheat with a friend of his. One of the reasons why he was so glad to hear I was a corporate attorney was because I clearly understood a sixty-hour work week. We’d shared horror stories. We’d laughed. We’d connected. I couldn’t wait to meet him.

And if for some strange reason Jeffrey didn’t work out, there were seven more where he came from.

My dating itinerary for the week:

Thursday: 7:00 p.m.: Jeffrey. 35. Doctor (surgeon). Upper West Side. 6' 2'', 190. Dark brown hair. Hazel eyes. Would recognize him by his scrubs. (All right, he could change for a date, for God’s sake, but what did I know about doctors and their clothing? Maybe they all ran around in scrubs.) Enjoyed tennis, ethnic food, antiquing and football.

Friday: 9:30 p.m.: Rick. 39. Stockbroker. Upper East Side. 6',200. Wavy blond hair. Blue eyes. Writing a novel for the past ten years.

Saturday: 12:00 p.m.: Ralph (which according to him was pronounced Rafe, à la Ralph Fiennes. And according to him and his picture, he looked a bit like Ralph Fiennes too). Lived on Long Island and owned a restaurant in Chelsea. Enjoyed gourmet cooking, mountain climbing and “all New York City had to offer.”(Just about every guy’s profile said that.)

Saturday: 6:00 p.m. Bill. 41. Bergen County, New Jersey. Divorced. Bought and sold companies. 5' 11'', 190. Dark hair, slightly receding. Dark brown eyes. Considered very handsome. Enjoyed working out, good conversation and was looking for a woman who knew what she wanted. (I did! I did!)

Monday: 7:00 p.m. Ted. 40. West Village. Divorced. Lawyer. 6' 1'', 200. Light brown hair. Blue eyes. Scandinavian look. Enjoyed films, restaurants, being in love.

Tuesday: 7:00 p.m. Mark.32 (my only younger man—not that he knew that). Upper West Side. Curly dark hair. Dark eyes. Often compared to a cute Al Pacino. Loved Central Park, extreme sports, running.

Wednesday: 7:00 p.m. Jonathan. 37. Hudson Valley. Tall, dark and handsome. Investment banker. Reddish hair, blue eyes. Looked a bit like Kenneth Brannagh. Owned a gallery in Soho.

Thursday: 9:30 p.m. Rafael. 36. Hot, hot, hot.

I smiled. And then I glanced at my watch and frowned. Jeffrey was now fifteen minutes late. I was sitting on an uncomfortable stool in the Oyster Bar of Grand Central Station, albeit a stool that managed to show off my legs the way a table would not. I looked around the huge restaurant. No sign of a tall, handsome man in scrubs.

He was now twenty minutes—

Ooh la la.

A
very,
and I underline
very,
good-looking man in green scrubs rushed in and surveyed the bar, where I was sitting. Mmm-mmm! Jeffrey was everything his profile and his picture promised he’d be.

I smiled and tried to catch his eye. He glanced at me for half a second, then resumed his perusal of the people sitting at the bar. Looking a bit confused, he eyed a cute redhead who was sitting alone, but her long hair must have assured him that she wasn’t his date because he immediately began his sweep of the bar. There were only three women sitting alone—two redheads and a brunette senior citizen. Why was he having so much trouble finding me?

When he eyed me again, now with the same confusion, I waved at him.

He rushed over. He had the most amazing green eyes. With flecks of gold. Long, dark, silky eyelashes. “You’re not Ally, are you?”

“The very same,” I said in my best Kim Cattrall-Samantha Jones voice.

He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked a bit miffed.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Didn’t your profile say you were twenty-nine?” he asked.

Oh. I almost forgot about that.

“And?” I asked, holding any edge from my voice or expression.

Don’t get angry. Maybe he’s about to pay you a compliment.

“Honey, if you’re twenty-nine…” And then he shot me one of those
Don’t bullshit the best bullshit artist there ever was
looks.

Asswipe!

But you
did
shave a few years off your age in your profile, I reminded myself.

“I’ve always enjoyed the beach a little too much,” I said, again in my best Samantha Jones voice and accompanying smile. “The sun is a killer on the skin. But I don’t have to tell you that, Doctor.”

He didn’t return the smile. “C’mon, honestly. You’re what—thirty-five, thirty-six?”

“I’m twenty-nine!” I snapped.

“Look, honey, you’re the one who lied on your profile. Shaved off a few years, sent in a younger photo. Happens all the time. The problem is that when you lie, you’re wasting someone else’s valuable time. And as a doctor, I don’t have time to waste. I’d expect a lawyer to understand that, but I’m sure you lied about that too. What are you, a manicurist or something?”

Jerk! But my nails
did
look good. “Satisfy my curiosity for a moment, will you,
Doctor?
Let’s say I am thirty-five or thirty-six, which I’m
not—
” and that was true for another month “—so what? You liked my photo, you liked my e-mails, you liked me on the phone.
You’re
thirty-six. What, you can’t handle a woman your own age?”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, lady, I just got out of a bad marriage—or did you forget that from our telephone conversation? I’m not looking to jump into another one so fast. So if I meet someone and it gets serious, I want to date for a couple of years, then get married, then start a family. You’d be too old for that.”

I gasped. Literally.

“I’m thirty-four,” I snapped. “I’m plenty young to have a child. Two or three if I want! So fuck you.”

“You’ll never get the chance,” he snapped back and walked out.

“You’re thirty-four?” the woman a seat over asked me. “You look a little older. I swear by Botox. Really, you have to try it.”

“You’re not my type,” Rick said with his mouth full the moment I introduced myself. He finished chewing. “I hope you don’t mind my honesty. And I hope you don’t mind that I ordered something to eat,” he added, swiping a chicken shish kabob into dipping sauce. He had sauce on his chin. “You
were
a little late.”

After the nightmare in Technicolor I experienced yesterday with Jeffrey, I’d decided to take the upper hand and arrive ten minutes past the meeting time.

Apparently, arrival time had little to do with upper hands.

“I’m not your type?” I repeated.
“What?”

“Want a piece of chicken?” he asked, gesturing at the plate before him. Now he had sauce on his fingers. “You’re a little too type A.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I only said hello. How the hell can you tell what type I am?”

“How you phrased that last question is a dead giveaway. But I can tell just by how you look—the suit, the too-severe hairstyle. You’re type A.”

Moron. Although, technically, he was right.

“We spoke for twenty minutes on the phone a few days ago and we spoke again last night. Couldn’t you tell my
type
from our conversation?”

“You didn’t sound type A on the phone,” he said. “You sounded nervous. I liked that.”

“Oh, so you like nervous women,” I said. “Makes you feel more like a man, is that it, you wuss?”

“Look, I was just being honest. If you’re going to be like that, maybe we should just cut this short.”

Good idea, prick.

Next.

The trouble was, I was afraid of Next. My first foray into dating was about as bad as it got, which, then again, might not be such a bad thing, since it could only get better.

Right?

I stared at the little alarm clock on my bedside table. It was 4:00 a.m.

Maybe if you didn’t lie off the bat, Ally. Maybe if you approached dating honestly. Dr. Jeffrey might have been a jerk, but he had reason to be upset. How would you have liked it if a bald, overweight insurance salesman had shown up and said,
Well, you wouldn’t have liked me as I am so I said I was a tall, dark and handsome doctor.

Oy.

But I didn’t want to be thirty-five if the men I wanted wanted a twenty-one-year-old.

Did you want a man who wanted a twenty-one-year-old?

What I wanted was some sleep!

I was now wearing a tight, colorful Betsey Johnson dress with a flouncy hem. My hair was slightly windblown to avoid the “severe” look, and my lipstick was sheer and glossy.

I didn’t look like a lawyer. I looked like a good-time girl.

I didn’t look like anyone in the Candle Café restaurant on a Saturday at noon, but that was okay. I had a hot date.

Thanks to jerks one and two, I’d decided to go with something a little less aggressive, a little more feminine. Even though I was about to confess that I was about to turn thirty-five, I felt twenty-nine. I looked twenty-nine.

Ralph had a star next to his name in my Palm. And he earned another when he sat down across from me at my table, on time. Over fresh-made vegetable juice, which I’d never had before in my life, we discussed: Where we grew up. How many siblings we had. Last book read. The violence of
The Sopranos.

And then he looked at his watch. A Cartier, I noticed.

“Oh, man, is it one o’clock already?” he said. “I’m meeting a friend.”

I’d spent almost three hundred dollars on a dress, eaten some sort of vegan appetizer at the juice bar (I hadn’t realized the Candle Café was a vegetarian restaurant), had the kind of conversation you might with a stranger in an elevator and then been dismissed after an hour?

It wasn’t because I wasn’t twenty-nine, which hadn’t even come up.

“Ralph, I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but I’m new at this dating thing, and I’m just trying to figure out why some dates are, well, duds. Can you enlighten me a little bit? Why are you cutting this short?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” he said. “No chemistry, I guess.”

“Ah, that makes sense. No chemistry. Can’t place blame for that.”

He gnawed his lower lip. “And, well, you did make fun of the menu. I’m a vegetarian, and I’m not militant or anything, but that sort of bothered me. And you did sort of ask me a lot of questions, like you were interviewing me to be your husband.”

Asswipe!

“I would hardly be interested in you for the position of husband,” I said. “We just met.”

“Well, that’s how you came across. Look, I have to go. It was nice meeting you. Good luck! Take care!” And then he hightailed it out of the restaurant.