“Well, I was kind of like that in high school,” I said.
“You jumped off a building?”
“No. People thought I didn’t have anything. Then I wrote a book of poetry that people liked. Gee, do I have something or not?”
We changed the subject. He asked me if I would like to go “on a run” with him that weekend, to scour the flea markets and antique stores for extraordinary stuff. I said no, but when he asked if I would like to have dinner with him again, I accepted.
The restaurant he chose for our second dinner was elegant and quiet. A couple in early middle age sat next to us, handling their cutlery with the careful, vaguely grateful manner of people unused to eating in restaurants. The man was like a happy animal in his suit. The woman’s hair flared up and her loud, finicky skirt flared out.
Kenneth fussed over the wine menu. His forehead sweated faintly in the light. “So,” he said, “there has been one other person I’ve been on a date with besides you—it was a year ago, when I first started the divorce. It’s a story I think would interest you.”
The woman next to us kept stiffly brushing imaginary crumbs from her skirt. She had a brittle, wounded sweetness that the man seemed very solicitous of.
“I was really anxious because I knew I didn’t want to be in the marriage anymore, but I was afraid that I couldn’t find anyone else. I looked around; there was nothing.”
“But there’s a ton of single women who want—”
“You always hear that, but really, there aren’t.” He ordered our wine. He spread his napkin in his lap and made an expansive reach for the bread. “My friends asked me, well, who did I want to meet? And I said, ‘Uma Thurman.’”
“Really.”
“And you know, like magic, that’s who I met! Well, not really Uma, but a twenty-four-year-old model who looks just like her!”
He had met this extraordinary young woman at a gallery opening. Her pale-blond hair was piled upon her head. Her loose, cream-colored pant legs wafted with her stroll. She wore white open-toed sandals, and her toenails were painted pink. She frowned at a piece of sculpture and toyed with the raised mole on the back of her perfect neck. “Oh,” said someone. “That’s Zoe. She’s either an actress who’s trying to model or the other way around.”
Kenneth secured an introduction; with a graceful grimace, she told him that, although she supported herself as a model, she wanted to be an actress, and that she was studying to be a lawyer too. He thought he felt her gently score his palm with her fingernail as she slowly withdrew her hand from his grasp.
She joined Kenneth at a small dinner party, and at the end of the evening, she allowed him to drive her home. He invited her to go out on a run with him, and she said yes.
“It wasn’t just that she was beautiful,” said Kenneth. “She’s an aristocrat—quite literally, from Poland. She speaks six languages. She can converse intelligently on virtually any subject. And she’s got flawless manners. If she needed some salt at dinner she wouldn’t just ask you to pass it. She’d say, ‘Excuse me, do you mind if I ask for the salt?’ Or if she had to go to the bathroom she’d say, ‘Please, do you mind if I use the bathroom?’ Everything was special with her. I took her to the same restaurant we went to. The waiters went crazy over her.”
The man at the next table glanced at Kenneth and then at me. He saw me notice his glance.
Zoe had told him on their first date that she liked to have friendships with “old men” because she knew that they wouldn’t “come on” to her. He had found this remark irksome, but it didn’t matter; just to be in her presence made him feel reverent and sensitive. They went on run after rapturous run, and he bought her carloads of stuff.
“Being with her was like nothing else,” he said. “It was like having a beautiful Cartier watch on your wrist.”
I wondered if he was trying to disgust me. I wondered if I had any right to be disgusted. The bald spot on his head appeared oblivious and vulnerable in the overhead light. The woman seated next to me sighed restlessly.
But then, he went on, he began to notice subtle character flaws. Once, when they were out on a stuff run, she asked him if he thought she should get breast implants. “It shocked me,” he said, “because I thought she didn’t take that modeling stuff seriously. I thought she wanted something more genuine. I told her that, and she didn’t really have an answer.”
It only got worse. They went to a dinner party and, on being introduced to “a European has-been director,” Zoe virtually dropped Kenneth and spent the evening fawning on the director. On another occasion, he was sure he saw her trade lewd winks with some absurd boy. Then, when they went to an art opening, she abruptly canceled their dinner afterward because someone she had just met had invited her to a screening. When he complained, she got snippy. “I decided I wasn’t going to see her again until she called me and apologized,” he said. “And she never did, so . . . like Phil put it, Cartier watches don’t hurt your feelings.”
“Cartier watches don’t have feelings, either,” I said. “Please, would you mind if I—excuse me—go to the bathroom?”
I sulked in the rest room, loathing Kenneth. My loathing was grating and frustrating. It made me feel like a small animal trapped in a maze as part of a science experiment. I thought about how everybody tried so hard and how it never worked. I thought of the woman at the next table brushing at imaginary crumbs. I remembered my mother standing in front of a mirror, trying to pull her short jacket down over her protruding abdomen, her face anxious and sad. I remembered the way Frederick had first looked at me, as if beholding an object that ideally filled a perpetually empty place. I remembered how I had touched him in quite the same spirit, except that my touch had been even more peremptory than his look. I pictured Kenneth pulling a comb out of his pocket and putting it back, over and over again. My loathing depressed me. It seemed arrogant and stupid.
I returned to the table. The people sitting next to us had gone, leaving a dainty wreckage of cutlery and waste. Kenneth looked diminished and sad, picking at his fancy dinner. He looked up mournfully. “You think I’m an asshole, don’t you?” he said.
“No,” I said. “No.” I sat down. “I just—”
“I told you that story because I thought you would like it. Believe me, I know I made a fool of myself over that girl. I learned my lesson. I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“I do. I mean, I understand.” My tone was obnoxiously kind and judicial. “I can fall for superficial things. Sometimes I wish every-thing could be like a pop song, like fine, like white sugar. But it just doesn’t work that way. And besides, that Cartier watch thing was a bit much.”
“But what I meant was that she was like magic. I mean, since I met her, I open the passenger door for every woman who gets into my car. It’s a tiny thing, but things like that create a sense of dignity and—”
“It’s just that pop song thing. Also, how come you like her exaggerated manners and you don’t like it that she wants fake boobs?”
We ate our food and discussed the complex allure of the artificial. He said he didn’t think his attraction to Zoe was entirely false, because he’d respected her law studies and her desire to excel mentally. I said I thought that was just another objectification, and he seemed to consider this. We were beginning to be excited by each other. The waiters enjoyed our excitement. When we finished eating, they brought us small, festive balls of cotton candy on cardboard sticks for free.