“You’ll get other chances,” Lynn said.
“Not like this one. This felt … unique.” Alan shook his head. “Things aren’t going so well for me right now. And it doesn’t help that I’ve spent all my money on precious and semiprecious stones.”
Roland said, “No one understands better than I the urge to leave a little something behind. But Alan, I left paper clips, buttons, and pennies, not diamonds, sapphires, and opals!”
Alan shrugged. “I’m less cheap.”
“Better cheap than whine about it afterward,” Roland snapped.
“Yes,” elucidated Victoria, “one of the disadvantages of being a supergenerous person like you, Alan, is that if your gifts happen not to be appreciated, your suffering and loss are greater.”
“And plus, you didn’t have to leave the precious stones behind!” Roland said to Alan.
“I didn’t have someone to pick up after me like you do, Roland.”
No one spoke.
Alan finally added, “Oh, I don’t even care about being broke. I don’t know why I mentioned it. I’m just sorry I let that unique romantic opportunity slip through my fingers.”
“I’m sure it was unique,” Ray said. “But each one is unique.”
“Perhaps,” said Alan. “But this one felt more unique.”
The days were passing monotonously for Alan. He was depressed and lonely. It didn’t help that removing his chair had left a hole in his living room, a void which Pancake, Bugsy, Toto, and Fuzz-fuzz were only partly able to fill. Alan had trouble getting used to that hole. It kept reminding him of the special opportunity he had failed to grab. He decided he would buy a new chair, another white chair, to plug up the hole and help him stop thinking of the girl he could have met. But he wasn’t sure the new chair would do much good, because in his heart, he’d know it was not the same chair.
He told himself he’d pull through this bad period. The pets were a help. And he was forcing himself to go out more, meet new people. He would turn his life around. He had done it before; he believed he could do it again. There was a new beading class he had his eye on and was keen on taking. If he never found an ideal mate, or even a vaguely adequate mate, he could still be happy. If he worked at building a rich and fulfilling life for himself, happiness would come eventually, even if a soulmate didn’t.
One late afternoon, his doorman buzzed him. “There’s a woman down here who wants to see you.”
“Who is it?”
“She says you don’t know her, but that she has something for you.”
He took the elevator down, not wanting to let any strange woman into his apartment.
In the lobby stood the pretty girl who had taken his chair.
Approaching her, he said, softly, “You have my white elephant.”
She smiled, looking puzzled. “No, your driver’s license. It was in the cushions of your chair. I wasn’t sure how long ago you lost it and if you had already gotten a new one. I didn’t know if I should even bother giving it back to you.”
“Yes, you should. They card me incessantly.”
She laughed, handed him his license.
Looking down thoughtfully, he murmured, mostly to himself, “Sometimes, when you lose something, you find something more precious.” Suddenly worried he had sounded corny, he said, “I lost my chair, but I found my precious driver’s license.” He looked up at her. “Listen, I’d love to get occasional reports on my chair. Can I give you my number?”
She laughed. “Sure. I’ll just give you my card.” She took a business card out of her handbag. “I’ll write my home number on it. I don’t always do that, because I’ve had problems with stalkers.”
Flustered and off-balance, Alan chuckled. While she wrote her number on her card, he tried to think of what a normal, healthy, average man would answer.
Finally, he said, “Don’t worry, I gave up stalking long ago.”
She looked at him with a startled air and laughed.
They had dinner and drinks twice that week. He was carded each time and showed his driver’s license.
Soon, he got to see his chair again. He got to sit in it. And do other wonderful things in it. And see his soulmate sitting in it. And see her sitting on him sitting in it. And him on her, in it. And him in her. And them in it.
THE END
(for the faint of heart, do not read further)
Seventeen
“I met the girl of my dreams, my soulmate,” Alan told Lynn, Roland, and Ray.
“Tell us,” Ray said.
“I don’t know how to put it, in order to do it justice.”
“Just blurt it out any which way,” Lynn said.
“Very well. I was lost. And she returned me to myself.”
“Nice,” said Roland. “Could you be a little more concrete? We were concrete.”
“She found me in the folds of what I had discarded.”
“A little less poetic, please. More specific?”
“Just like your soulmate, Roland, she returned to me what I had lost.”
Ray, Roland, Lynn, and even Patricia were eager to meet Alan’s new girlfriend, Ruth. So they decided to have another dinner. “For a change,” Lynn insisted on arranging a catered dinner at her gallery.
When the others arrived, they noticed Lynn’s walls were bare again. Tactfully, no one commented on it.
They sat at a round table that was bull’s-eyed by a magnificent bouquet of creamy roses brought by Lynn’s florist soulmate. He was seated next to her, and Roland’s translator soulmate was seated next to him. While they waited for Alan’s to arrive, they asked him various questions about her, including what she did for a living.
“I don’t know,” Alan said.
“Didn’t you ask her?”
“Yes, I did, but she’s being evasive. That’s the one thing that bugs me about her. She’s hiding her profession from me.”
“Ah, yes, that must be bothersome,” Ray said.
“Actually, I’d be grateful if one of you could get it out of her during this meal.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have a profession. Maybe she doesn’t work,” Ray said.
“Yes, she does,” Alan said. “She’s often mentioning having to go to work or being exhausted from work. But she seems to work at irregular times.”
“Does she like your rat?” Roland asked.
“Yes.”
“That could be a clue.”
“To what?”
“Her profession. You once said that women who have guns are likely to like rats. So what other types of women are likely to like rats? Perhaps women in gutsy, gritty professions. Maybe she’s a cop, like Lynn’s mom. Or a garbage collector, like Lynn’s dad.”
The Translator turned to Lynn and said, “That’s what your parents do? That’s so cool.”
At that moment, Alan’s girlfriend Ruth arrived.
Everyone at the table, except Alan, was stunned.
Finally, Lynn said softly, “Alan, she’s practically a supermodel.”
“I know, she’s very pretty.” Alan smiled fondly, stroking Ruth’s arm.
They all lowered their eyes, embarrassed.
Ruth kissed him on the lips and said, “Sorry I’m late.”
“Alan, she’s not hiding her profession from you,” Roland said, through clenched teeth.
Alan looked at him indignantly. “First of all I told you about that in confidence, and second of all, what the hell are you talking about?”
“She’s just not telling. She’s not hiding it. She couldn’t hide it if she wanted to,” Ray said.
“Alan, literally, she’s practically a supermodel. She’s a very famous model, practically a supermodel,” Lynn said.
Alan still seemed to take this as some sort of compliment.
Lynn shook her head and vigorously started flipping through an Elle magazine she had in her bag.