“How is the margarita?” Jake asks me. “I’m more of a vodka guy.”
Vodka. Interesting. “Good,” I tell him. I cock my head to the side. “Spicy.”
Jake laughs. “Are you trying to make me uncomfortable? Kendra told me you do that sometimes.”
“No,” I say. “Am I?”
He looks at me. “A little bit, yes.” He clears his throat. He seems to straighten an invisible tie. “But it’s not bad.”
Jake and I were introduced through my colleague Kendra. Or my ex-colleague. I work for a famous producer, someone you’ve never heard of who has made every movie you have. Irina is her name. Kendra was the old me.
“I think you should meet my friend Jake. He’s thirty-five, newly single—but not in a rebound way—and works in entertainment,” Kendra told me over lunch at the Grove. The outdoor shopping mall in Los Angeles looks like a Hallmark set twelve months a year. There’s a Santa train at Christmas, a giant bunny at Easter, and aGilmore Girlsgazebo the whole year through. There are always twinkle lights and a fountain that’s flow is set to Sinatra songs. What started as a joke—“Want to have lunch at the Grove?”—had quickly become tradition. We both loved the Cheesecake Factory.
“Actor?” I asked.
“Television exec.”
“Boring.”
“Stable,” Kendra said. She lifted a fry into her mouth. “Nice-looking, too.”
“That means unattractive.”
“No, it doesn’t. Nice-looking could mean hot.”
“It could mean cute; I’m willing to give you that much. It definitely doesn’t mean hot.”
“You don’t want to marry someone hot, anyway.”
I figured if it was meant to be, time would soon tell.
“Sure,” I said. “OK. Set it up.”
It’s not that I do not want to get married or even that I do not want to get serious with someone, it’s just that it’s not up to me. Something else has always called the shots in my life—call it the universe, fate, the comedic force of timing. But my life isn’t like other people’s. I have a different set of rules to live by.
Jake orders a margarita, too, and we get chips and guacamole for the table; the “crab” cakes, made with hearts of palm; anorder of mushroom fajitas; and a rice bowl that comes with an overwhelming amount of cilantro that does not appear to be destemmed.
“You think we should get the grapefruit ceviche?” Jake asks.
“Let’s skip it,” I say. “Grapefruit’s not my thing.”
Once Marcus the waiter leaves, Jake takes out a notebook.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I have this weird thing I do where I have to write down every time I see someone wearing Doc Martens.”
“You’re kidding.”
Jake shakes his head, bent over the notebook. “I’m not. It started in college as a kind of joke and then just continued.”
“Any kind of Doc Martens?”
Jake looks up at me, stone-serious. “It has to be the black boots.”
I spit out my margarita. Some combination of lime juice and tequila flies out of my mouth and toward his face. I can see the drops fly—slow-motion molecules. My eyes go wide. I put a hand over my mouth.
“I am so sorry.”
He wipes some liquid from under his eye with his pointer finger. “I deserved it. It is admittedly a very strange thing to do.”
