Oh God, I thought. Now what am I going to do? Grasshopper says: Be sensible.
What I did, of course, was get into a cab and go to the airport.
But what did I really want?
I got on the plane and sat down in my seat. I took my shoes off. I opened a magazine.
A man sat down next to me. He was tall and darkhaired and slim, and he was wearing Prada trousers.
He had all his hair, and an intelligent, interesting face. He opened a magazine. Forbes.
Now That’s my type, I thought.
God, I was so fickle. I'd left Rory only two hours ago, and already I was thinking about another man.
What was it I wanted? The story.
I wanted the story. I wanted the big, great, inspiring story about an unmarried career woman who goes to London on assignment and meets the man of her dreams and marries him. She gets the big ring and the big house and the adorable children, and she lives happily ever after. But stories are not reality, no matter how much we might wish them so.
And that's not so bad.
Somewhere over Newfoundland, about two hours from JFK, the man next to me finally spoke. "Excuse me," he said. "Sorry for asking, but you look somewhat familiar. Do you mind my asking what it is you do?”
"I'm a writer," I said.
"Ah yes," he said. "I do know who you are. You're that famous single woman who writes about single women and, er ...”
"Sex," I said.
"That’s right," he said. He opened another magazine. He seemed kind of shy.
"Excuse me, " I said. "But you look kind of familiar. Do you mind my asking what it is you do?”
"Oh," he said. "I'm a businessman.”
“I knew that.”
"You did? How?”
"Your choice of reading material," I said.
Well, we did get to talking after that. And we discovered that we had practically the same birthday and had grown up in towns with exactly the same name—Glastonbury—although his Glastonbury was in England, and mine was in Connecticut.
"Well," he said, "it's not enough on which to base a relationship, but it's a good beginning. Would you like to have dinner tonight?”
We did have dinner that night. And eventually, one thing did lead to another. And now all I can say is that my friends are very happy for me, and my mother has been bugging me nonstop about flower arrangements.
But that, of course, is another story.