When my sister, Tammy, suggested I join Tinder, I’d asked if I could join “Been-der” instead. Her laughter had a sad little pinch to it.
The supply in the dating market had deteriorated the older I became. I knew women peaked in their forties, which was good because my thirties had gone to waste. But I didn’t count on it. I had come to terms with and hung on to my solitude. Except, occasionally, I did need a warm masculine body in bed next to me, on me, inside me. But it couldn’t be just anyone.
Life had taught me to be pragmatic, not romantic. I had a checklist for that, too, and preferred being alone to being with someone who didn’t check at least eighty percent of it.
The only thing I regretted was giving up on the idea of having kids with someone. On my thirty-ninth birthday, I had decided that, by forty-two, I’d try to have a baby alone.
There was still time. Until then, I detoured the playgrounds I passed during my morning jogs.
Thedingof an incoming text message made me jump.
An address in San Francisco was followed by, “Angelo’s place. Meet you there tomorrow.”
I replied with a thumbs-up then booked a hotel for the overnight trip.
6
Angelo
“Why?” I grabbedthe neck of the guitar I was working on when Jerry told me. “Is there something specific that—”
“They don’t disclose why. They just want to make sure that you’re really married.”
“But we’re not.” I looked at my apartment as if looking for evidence of that fact. The night sky in the window was illuminated by a million stars.
“We have almost everything—the utility bills, taxes, address, everything—and we’ll prepare the rest. June will arrive the day before, and we’ll go over everything. My lawyer will escort you to the interview.”
“Will you be there?”
“No. I can’t be there, and I don’twantto be there.”
Me neither.
“Is that the interview where they separate us and interrogate?” I smoothed my hand over the alder body of the Fender, caressing it like a holy artifact, a sort of prayer.
“No, what you have now is the simpler one, where they mostly go over the documentation. If you pass this one, you won’t get to the Stokes interview. You don’t want to get there. That’s the fraud unit.”
If?
“How much time do we have to prepare? When is it?”
Jerry cleared his throat.
“Jerry?”
“Monday.”
There was no point in asking which Monday. Obviously, the one that was just thirty-six hours away.
I wiped my face with both hands and took a deep breath. “And we onlynowhear of this? If we fai—”
“You’re not going to fail! It’s not an option!” Jerry might have tried to sound resolute, but it came out a bit panicky. That was good because it forced me to regain my grip.
“Okay, so …” My mind ran a million miles a minute. I was pretty used to miles, feet, and inches in parallel to the metric system, which was a good sign. But I still weighed things in kilograms and grams rather than pounds and ounces, and measured temperatures automatically in Celsius.
“Since they can easily find out I still live here, we’ll tell them I’m partly living here because of business. It’s also partly true,” I said as resolutely as Jerry had tried to sound, minus the panicked high pitch his voice had carried. “She’ll come here tomorrow morning to prepare for the interview, we’ll learn what each other’s place looks like. We don’t have time for me to see hers, so tell her to take pictures and send them to me. We’ll align on basic living arrangements, like sides of the bed and things like that, in case they do ask about it at this stage.”
“Right.” Jerry sounded relieved that someone else had taken charge. “You can count on June. Except for you, she has everything she needs for this.”
