When You're Expecting Something Else (14 page)

As soon as I get home from my hike, I immediately update my dating profile and add hiking and wine tasting to my list of activities. Thinking back to some dating advice from Anne, my new mentor and coach, I’ve decided to change my approach. Rather than waiting for random men to select me, I’ll do the selecting. “More proactive,” Anne advised. Before getting started I check my messages. Surprisingly, four new men have selected me. I can’t help the dizzying excitement that floods me. During my short absence, I’ve become popular!

 
I gather Isabella onto my lap, petting her enthusiastically while I sort. I add two of the new profiles to my overflowing in basket, the other two go in with the fatal drag and drops. This so exciting! I know in my heart of hearts that it’s superficial richness, but I can’t help the rushing sense of euphoria.

Fortunately, before the thrill goes to my head, the creepy image of Sal the snake sneaks though the gray matter of my brain. The effect slaps me back to my senses. Flashing caution signs replace the image of the serpent, reminding me that I’ll probably have to meet a lot of frogs before finding my one special prince. I laugh out loud, and Isabella casts me a quizzical glance. “Let the frog shopping begin,” I tell her.
 

I fix a simple supper of tuna fish and pickles, separating out the tuna juice for Isabella who meows like crazy to thank me, while I mull over my options. Then, after I eat and clear away my sandwich crumbs, I send out my first proactive inquiry. I’ve selected a good-looking man named Stan who says he is five-feet-ten inches tall, forty years old, and works as a free-lance investigative reporter and writer. He describes himself as someone who
works hard, plays hard.
Among his activities he’s included both hiking and wine tasting; says he’s looking for a serious-minded, attractive woman in my age range for a long-term romantic relationship that could lead to marriage and children. Oh-oh, I’m falling in love already.

By the time I’ve watched some TV, talked to my sister Serena on the phone, have taken a long soak in my bubble bath, brushed my teeth, and cozened up in my favorite pajamas, I have an email reply back from Stan. He wants to meet for lunch tomorrow, suggests a Thai Restaurant in Santa Row Shopping Center, and says he loves my attractive photo. I zip off a message accepting his invitation, and with newfound hope and excitement in my heart, I retreat to my bedroom where I try to read something serious, but find my imagination and fantasies have already derailed my common sense.

Just before dozing off, my cell phone rings, startling me, filling me with dread. I’m not used to late night phone calls since I’m new here and don’t really know many people. Glancing at the caller ID screen, I’m surprised to see the name Jared Wise.

“Hi, Jared,” I say breathlessly, only to hear a long silence from my caller.

“Hello? hello..
 
name ... found… phone… bushes… Stanford…” the words come in broken snatches all but promising a dropped call. Then, surprisingly, a better connection while I’m yelling, “Please, don’t hang up.”

He explains his name is Garth and he’s just found Jared’s cell phone. “I was riding my bike to my dorm room at Stanford. Actually, it’d gotten dark and I was fiddling with my headlamp when I fell off my bike. I found this phone just lying there on the ground where I landed. I turned it on and saw it was juiced, so I just redialed the last number called thinking I might be able to locate the owner to give it back.” He explains the exact location to me. I remember that Jared had called my cell phone when we were returning my car to my carport the morning of the accident.

I gush my thanks to him and explain about my accident with Jared on that same street. “Oh thank you so much. Jared’s still recovering, but I can bring him his phone. When can we meet?”

We make arrangements for me to meet him in the morning on campus.

“The school year is over. I just finished finals and I’m packing up, going home to Baltimore tomorrow night,” he explains.
 

“Great luck,” I say to Isabella as I close up my phone.

*****

“Oh, God, Jared… I had no idea.” Bradley Lawton’s sad dark eyes looked compassionately down at his broken friend whose pale, listless body lay pressed against the mattress, looking like a ghost of his former self, his head propped against three freshly fluffed pillows. Bradley raked his fingers through his dark wavy hair trying to think of something else to say, or something to do. His raking fingers then clutched into a fist and found his mouth, covering it just in time to prevent the strange, strangled pressure forming inside his throat from erupting. Gaining control, he asked, “Can you talk to me? Wake up, Jared.” His hoarse voice sounded distant and pleading.

Jared’s eyes fluttered briefly and his hand made a tiny rumple under the sheet, but Jared was drugged to the world and unable to respond to the sound of his friend’s voice, a sound he’d been waiting to hear.

Not knowing what else to do, Bradley paced in front of Jared’s bed. He looked around the room filled with medical equipment and humming sounds. He wandered over to the dresser where prescription pill bottles were lined up in a row. He didn’t know much about medicine, but he picked the brown plastic bottles up, examining one after another, recognizing the names of some; the pain pills, anti-anxieties, antibiotics, vitamins, calcium, sleeping pills and sedatives. Others he’d never heard of before. Then he saw a familiar name: Dr. Mark Matthews, the neurologist. Mark Matthews, who was
 
Bradley Lawton’s friend and golf buddy, was Jared’s attending neurologist.

On seeing Mark’s name, Bradley relaxed. He stopped pacing and returned to Jared’s bedside. “Your in good hands buddy. Don’t worry about a thing,” he said, feeling relieved, positive that he was right. Maybe he’d be able to sleep tonight after all. Tomorrow he’d call Mark and let him know that he was Jared’s closest friend, and hear first hand how Jared was progressing.

*****

Morning comes all too soon. All the fresh air from hiking yesterday must have worn me out. I hustle through my shower, anxious to meet Garth, anxious to get hold of Jared’s cell phone, though I don’t know why. I don’t know any of his people, it’s out of my hands, and Jared probably still can’t talk much. Still, I feel like progress is being made.

I pour coffee into my red, insulated, non-spill cup and dash out the door to my Honda. I brush a scant bit of makeup across my cheeks at the first red light, and finish with lipstick at the next. Garth is waiting for me right where he said he’d be, under a tree in the designated quad.
 
He hands me Jared’s phone, we exchange a few brief words about the weather, what a glorious day, and my morning mission is done.

My lunch date? Now that’s another story. I only have about forty-five minutes from collecting Jared’s phone at Stanford until I need to meet Stan at the Thai Restaurant in San Jose, not enough time to take the cell phone over to Jared until later. By the time I find my way to Santana Row, park my car, dash into the restroom to brush my hair and refresh my makeup, it’s time.

Wow! It’s all I can say. Stan stands strong. He looks like one of those body builders with muscles flexed on top of muscles. Of course, unlike body builder’s posing in stretchy shorts and tank tops, Stan wears regular clothes, jeans with a pale blue short-sleeved polo shirt pulled so tight across his bilateral biceps it looks like the fabric might tear, and pulling more tight fabric across his wide, rippled chest. You can see the ripples through the cloth.
Arms that long to hold me
, I croon silently, remembering that he’s clearly stated that he definitely wants love and marriage with children.

I have never eaten Thai food before, but I’m embarrassed to say so to Stan. Everyone I’ve met since moving here seems so worldly and wise, while I have never even been out of the country. I don’t even own a passport. So, I order something I think might be simple called Chicken Pad Thai with tamarind. He orders Pad Thai with shrimp.

“I see you’re a woman who knows what she likes,” he says for an opening line.
 

I try to think of something to say, but I feel like a sinner caught in a lie. I begin to stutter, but quickly opt for full disclosure. “Actually, I’ve never eaten Thai food before,” I confess. He seems surprised, but drops the subject.

“So, tell me about yourself,” he says, an open ended question, and I’m not sure where to begin or what’s important to him.

“Well, I’m new to the area. I’m a nurse and will be starting my new job next week at Pacific West Hospital. So far, there’s not much more to say about that. I think I’m going to like working there. I’m already making some friends with other nurses I met when I was hospitalized after the accident.” I realize my blunder as soon as I say it. I really didn’t want to talk about that.

Stan picks it right up. “An accident? Were you driving alone?”

It’s not easy knowing how much to tell a stranger, and I’ve never been good with secrets, so I tell him everything. Well, almost everything. I just blurt it all out in a rush, my broken engagement, my lost dreams, running away to San Jose, and getting into a car accident on my first date with Jared. At least I stop before I admit that my date with Jared began in the evening and lasted overnight with me so drunk I didn’t even know whether or not we’d had sex.

Stan folds his arms on the table and stares at me through kind blue eyes. His blonde hair fringes his eyebrows. His face is tan, his skin clear and unblemished. I can’t believe how good-looking he is, and how easy he is to talk to. And, he’s really, really kind. “Sounds like you’ve been through a lot. That’s nice of you to take care of the guy’s cat, too. Isabella?”

“Yes, Isabella. I’ve actually fallen quite in love with her,” I say, embarrassed that I’ve actually said
quite
in love. I’m feeling stupid and tongue-tied. I try to shift the focus to him. “Enough about me. Your turn, tell me about you.”

Our food comes just as he begins. Between bites of the most flavorful chicken and noodles I’ve ever tasted, we pass information, tidbits about ourselves, back and forth. He’s a skilled conversationalist, and I realize it’s because he interviews people to write about for his work. He tells me he’s actually writing a book as well as doing some investigative reporting, the book being a special project funded by federal grant money to uncover Medicare fraud throughout the southwestern United States.

“That’s interesting! Are you finding much, yet? I’ve always worked in a hospital environment and have never seen anything suspicious at all. Do you think much fraud actually goes on?” My questions tumble on top of each other. I’m fascinated by his work.

“You’d be surprised,” he says, then launches into all the different ways fraud can occur. It sounds sinister and evil, but I’m sure nothing much like that ever happens in the world I know. It’s intriguing to me that anything like that goes on at all.

All too soon, our meeting date is over. I can’t believe how much I’ve enjoyed talking with Stan. Now I feel awkward, wondering what happens next, happy that he didn’t morph into a snake, or any other undesirable critter, and desperately hoping he likes me as much as I like him. He walks me out of the restaurant and to my car where he surprises me with a brief, appropriate hug, planting the brush of a kiss on my cheek.