“So what are the love songs really about?”
“Easy,” I say. “Lust.”
“And marriage?”
“Well, lust fades, and then there are children to raise and bills to pay. At some point it just becomes friendship with mutual self-interest for the benefit of society and the next generation.” The song ends just as I finish talking. For a moment all we can hear are glasses clinking and milk frothing.
“Huh,” he says, considering.
“You say that a lot,” I say.
“I could not disagree with you more.” He adjusts his ponytail without letting his hair fall into his face.
Observable Fact: I want to see his hair fall into his face.
The more I talk to him, the cuter he gets. I even like his earnestness, despite the fact that I usually hate earnestness. The sexy ponytail may be addling my brain. It’s just hair, I tell myself. Its function is to keep the head warm and protect it against ultraviolet radiation. There’s nothing inherently sexy about it.
“What are we talking about again?” he asks.
I say science at the same time that he says love, and we both laugh.
“What are the ingredients?” he prompts me again.
“Mutual self-interest and socioeconomic compatibility.”
“Do you even have a soul?”
“No such thing as a soul,” I say.
He laughs at me as if I’m kidding. “Well,” he says after he realizes that I’m not kidding, “My ingredients are friendship, intimacy, moral compatibility, physical attraction, and the X factor.”
“What’s the X factor?”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We already have it.”
“Good to know,” I say, laughing. “I’m still not going to fall in love with you.”
“Give me today.” He’s suddenly serious.
“It’s not a challenge, Daniel.”
He just stares at me with those bright brown eyes, waiting for an answer.
“You can have one hour,” I say.
He frowns. “Only an hour? What happens then? Do you turn into a pumpkin?”
“I have an appointment and then I have to go home.”
“What’s the appointment?” he asks.
Instead of answering, I look around the café. A barista calls out a string of orders. Someone laughs. Someone else stumbles.
I stir my coffee unnecessarily again. “I’m not going to tell you,” I say.
“Okay,” he says, unfazed.
He’s made up his mind about what he wants, and what he wants is me. I get the feeling he can be determined and patient. I almost admire him for it. But he doesn’t know what I know. I’ll be a resident of another country tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll be gone from here.
I SHOW HER MY PHONE, and we argue over which questions to choose. We definitely don’t have time for all thirty-six. She wants to ixnay the four minutes of soulfully staring into each other’s eyes, but that’s not happening. The eye thing is my ace in the hole. All my ex-girlfriends (okay, one of my ex-girlfriends—okay, I’ve only ever had one girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend) have liked my eyes a lot. Grace (the aforementioned singular in the extreme ex-girlfriend) said they looked like gemstones, specifically smoky quartz (jewelry making was her hobby). We were making out in her room when she first said it, and she stopped midsession to get an example for me.
Anyway, my eyes are like quartz (the smoky kind) and girls (at least one) dig it.
The questions fall into three categories, each more personal than the previous. Natasha wants to stick with the least personal ones from the first category, but I ixnay that as well.
From category #1 (least intimate) we choose:
#1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
#2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
#7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
From category #2 (medium intimacy):
#17. What is your most treasured memory?
#24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
From category #3 (most intimate):
#25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling…”
#29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
#34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
#35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
We end up with ten questions, because Natasha thinks that for number twenty-four we should talk about our relationship with both our mother and father.
“How come mothers are always the ones most blamed for screwing up children? Fathers screw kids up perfectly well.” She says it like someone with firsthand experience.
She checks the time on her phone again. “I should go,” she says, pushing her chair back and standing too quickly. The table wobbles. Some of her coffee splashes out.
“Shit. Shit,” she says. It’s kind of an overreaction. I really want to ask about the appointment and her father, but I know better than to ask right now.
I get up, grab some napkins, and clean up the spill.
The look she gives me is somewhere between gratitude and exasperation.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” she says.
I watch as she navigates around the line of coffee-starved people to go outside. Probably I shouldn’t stare at her legs, but they’re great (the third-greatest pair I’ve ever seen). I want to touch them almost as much as I want to keep talking to her (maybe a little more), but there are no circumstances under which she would let me do that.