Marilee, for instance, had typed in that her most profound political ambition was to one day computerize the voting process in America based on the positive concept of what people wanted and not what they did not want or were afraid of. She added (parenthetically) that she had no patience for people who harbored antidemocratic thoughts.
“In my ideal system,” she told Martin that evening, “people would be voting for what they had in common, not what they hated or feared about each other.”
Martin considered it his greatest personal accomplishment that he had run a half marathon every other week for one year, four years earlier. He did not, could not, mention that he was a dark brown man, descendant of a long line of slaves and sharecroppers from the Mississippi Delta. Marilee was surprised that a black man had filled out the People for People form she’d read. But she decided to go through with the date because of the caveat clause in the PFP e-contract.
PFP was the go-between for first dates and electronically queried the participants within a week of the rendezvous. If it was reported that either party had not shown up, or left before the date actually started, a mark was put in the offender’s file. If any member of PFP got three such marks, he or she was deleted from the service.
The week before, Marilee had been scheduled to meet a man named Joseph Exeter. Joe was a portly man, and Marilee quite small in comparison. Joe’s breathing was loud, and from time to time, a not very pleasant odor wafted from his side of the table at the Midtown sushi bar. When their second drink had not dimmed her olfactory awareness of Exeter, Marilee excused herself to go to the restroom and never returned.
So she would have to sit through this date, because PFP was the best dating service that she’d encountered since her divorce from Paris DeGeorgio, a latent conservative and an outright thief.
Martin Hull was the opposite of both Marilee’s last date and first husband. He was two inches shorter and maybe five pounds lighter than Marilee, who was five seven and 135 pounds. She worked out every day for an hour and a half, so her few extra pounds looked good in the step-class mirror.
“But I thought you were a plastic surgeon,” she said, in response to his pontificating on the contrasting qualities of the human brain.
“That’s my day job,” he said with a smile. His grin, Marilee thought, was both goofy and sincere. “But the neurological sciences are my passion.”
“Why didn’t you become a brain surgeon then?”
“That would be like an abstract artist becoming a house painter.”
“Really?” Marilee said. “I thought that that kind of surgery was the very top of the field.”
“Not really,” Martin said, crinkling his nose and exposing the gap between upper his teeth. “Surgeons all specialize. Cut, cut, cut — that’s their whole life. That’s the way they get so proficient. They do the same procedures day in and day out — thousands of them; might as well be working on a production line.”
“At five million dollars a year,” Marilee added.
“Yeah, I guess. But, you know, I’d need a lot more money than that if I had to do the same thing every day for the rest of my life.”
“Except for sex, food, and good music,” Marilee said. Martin’s size and goofy demeanor gave her the courage to say what was on her mind.
He smiled, half-nodded, and looked down, saying, “I meant one’s working life.”
Marilee felt a twitch in her chest and wondered what kind of sex partner a small, shy man like this might be.
“So you said that you’re divorced,” Martin prompted.
“Paris DeGeorgio,” she replied, nodding out every other syllable.
“Sounds like a good name for a clothes designer.”
“That wasn’t his birth name. He was born Anastazy Kozubal.”
“Polish, huh?”
“You knew that? Everyone else ends up asking me where the name comes from. The first guess is almost always Russia.”
“That’s because of Anastazy,” Martin said. “Makes it sound like a tsarina. I like to study those parts of language that make humanity a culture as well as a species. The brain, you know.”
“I had a business selling Mexican wheat to various South and Central American nations,” Marilee said.
“Mexican wheat?”
“There are some large farms in the southern highlands. I organized them over the Internet and made a two-percent profit. It was going pretty good, until one day I found out that Paris was skimming my profits and donating to this group called the New Redeemers...”
“California archconservatives, right?” Martin asked.
“Only,” Marilee continued, “he had made a kickback deal with the treasurer and was salting half the money away in a Jamaican bank.”
“Wow.”
“Are you ready to order?” a tall waiter in a bright green three-piece suit asked.
Martin gestured for Marilee to go first. It was at that moment she decided to take him home.
2
“That was amazing,” she said in her own bed, lying next to Martin Hull, a man she had met only six hours before.
“Yeah,” Martin said, unable to suppress his toothful grin.
“I never had a man pay such close attention to my body.”
“Well, you know,” Martin said shyly, “when you’re a little guy with no hidden talents you have to learn to work harder.”
“I’m still trying to catch my breath.”
“Want me to get you some water?” he asked.
“Is that the doctor talking?”
“You know, I liked your idea about online voting,” he said. “The negative side of democracy is that people usually vote either for their pocketbooks or against what they’re afraid of.”
“I’m sorry I said that stuff about brain surgeons,” she said then, feeling that she should be nice to the plain little man with the magic kisses. “I’m sure plastic surgeons do good work too.”
“I do a lot of community-service stuff,” he agreed. “You know... reconstructive work for those that can’t afford it.”
“Like harelips?”
“Or old scars... even regrettable tattoos,” he said. “It would be cool if you could vote at home every night. Just turn your smart TV to the political choices channel and make your mark.”
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“What?”
“Every time I ask about you, you say one thing and then turn the subject back to me. Is that one of the ways you try harder?”
“I guess it is. I mean, I know that people like talking about themselves, and there’s not much I have to say.”
“You seem interested in the brain.”
“Yeah, but whenever I start talking about it, people always point out that I’m a plastic surgeon.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Marilee said.
“It’s OK. You’re right. I should be more, um, revealing.”
“You said you were married once?”
“To Sonora Simonson,” he said, sitting up with the words.
“That’s an odd name.”
“Yeah. Her mother named her but never said why she chose it. They’d never been to Mexico, and no one in the entire family spoke Spanish. I asked them all one Christmas.”
“Why did you two split?”
“I was conferring with an intestinal-tract expert, Philip Landries. He’d come to our apartment quite often. Sonora made dinner for us whenever he stayed late. One day I came home and found a note from her saying that she was out with a girlfriend at a movie. Philip was supposed to drop by, but he didn’t. Sonora didn’t come home, and Philip was gone for good. I got a letter from them nineteen months later. He’d gotten a job in Amsterdam and asked her to go with him.”