Even if yesterday turned out to be a bit of a strange twenty-four hours, I’m glad it happened as I am now free to enjoy book club this evening, assure J and A they’ve done their collective part to remake my life, and spend an hour or so discussing ‘The Cure for Modern Life’. I’m about 160 pages into it, thanks mainly to getting so involved in it around 11pm Saturday night I didn’t realize how long I’d been reading until I looked at the clock and noted it was 1:45a.m. Reynelle, the new neighbor across the hall, was just coming in about that time and from the sounds of things, lugging more than a few boxes. I don’t wish moving on anybody. I found Basil already in the bed, and I think I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, dreaming (of course) about a research scientist and Big Pharma. What can I say…you dream what you read for almost three hours before you go to bed.
As I had work scheduled on Sunday evening, I’d only reluctantly agreed to the ‘early matinee and late lunch’ with Evan, J and A’s purported answer to my universe. I met him at the theater and the movie wasn’t terrible. Nothing with George Clooney can ever be terrible. The late lunch was at the European bakery just down the block, the one that used to be just up the road until expansion and construction pushed it down the street. We sat on the patio and talked more than we ate, really, as we’d fairly evenly shared a large popcorn in the theater. Movie theater popcorn is to me what chocolate anything is to the ladies I work with: something you may want, with all your heart, to say no to but are never able to.
I’d like to say it was the most interesting conversation I’d ever had, but I really can’t. Evan was, as the book club ladies promised, quite attractive, quite intelligent, over 6’ tall, divorced amicably with grown kids, settled into his career and old enough to be older than me but not so much older we couldn’t intelligently discuss the Saturday morning cartoons we watched as kids. From one vantage point (just looking at him), Evan appeared to be, as the ladies had presented him to me, ‘absolutely perfect’. With one exception that honestly, if you want to know the truth, ruled him out completely.
“I really don’t like animals,” he admitted when the coffee was served. “Of any kind. I didn’t when I was a kid, and I never had pets growing up.” He must have seen the subtle shift of my expression then, perhaps the way my smile disappeared altogether, because he hastened to add, “I mean, I don’t mind that other people have them, so long as I never have to be around them.”
Which meant, I decided right then, that we were about to prove to be as compatible as the ocean and all its inhabitants and the next major oil spill.
The thought of seeing anyone who would never want to see Basil wasn’t conceivable, as she and I were together 99.8% of the time. By my rough calculations, I’d be somewhere in the neighborhood of 54 when she went to dog heaven, so maybe then. Although I doubted it. In the last nearly twenty years I’ve never been without a dog, and can’t see myself changing in that regard any time soon.
As I said, I had plans to go into the office later, so the ‘date’, as it were, wrapped up pretty quickly and I got the hard part over with when he walked me to my car and asked if he could call me again. I wanted to be polite and I wanted to keep an open mind but I also wanted to be, and had to be, honest.
“I’m kind of a big dog person, Evan,” I said then. “I’m just not sure how comfortable you’d be with that.”
He hastened to assure me that, as he’d said, he didn’t mind dogs just didn’t want to be around them ever and would really enjoy seeing me again. When the dog wasn’t around.
“Basil,” I explained, “is always around.” ‘The Kid Stays In The Picture,’ is what I was thinking, but didn’t want to resort to verbalizing an old line from Hollywood.
I was getting ready for work when J called, as I knew she would. I let her know I appreciated it, really, her efforts and A’s efforts, and Evan really, really was a very nice and certainly a handsome guy, it’s just that I didn’t think, given his stance on Basil, we would be heading for anything other than a derailment if we saw each other again.
“Are you kidding me, Madeleine? Are you seriously telling me you’re going to let your dog decide your love life?”
“I’m just telling you, she’s a big part of my life and it doesn’t make sense for me to cut her out of it to accommodate any other part.”
“We’re talking an animal here, Mad.”
“We’re talking something very key to my world,” I said.
“So if he’d been a dog person, then, you’d see him again?” She was incredulous. “I really can’t believe you.”
“I’m just saying,” I said, “I appreciate the set up, but I’m not interested in seeing anybody who’s anti-dog.”
She repeated again that I was crazy, difficult, and unlike anyone she’d ever met, and I agreed she was probably correct on all counts but at that moment I had to throw a suit on and go to work. We could, I said, continue the discussion at Monday night’s book club if she wanted to, although The Cure for Modern Life was actually so good already, I’d rather discuss that. It was very well written, the characters entirely believable, and the story line pulled you in from the first page and refused to let go at any point.
It was, I said, in an effort to lighten the conversation and probably also just because I had to get the last word in, probably written by someone who had a dog.
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