I read it through a couple of times and deleted the second-to-last sentence—there, now I’d done everything I could to distance myself from the drooling ogre bro vibes I didn’t want to emit. The response came two days later, days mercifully packed at the firm—I was developing a set of construction drawings for what eventually became a facade in Park Slope. So the mystery woman wasn’t even humming in my subconscious when a reply showed up in my inbox.
Greg—
I’ve never posted on Craigslist before, not even to sell a couch or anything. And I did it on a whim the other day, not expecting a response, let alone one so kind. So thank you. I keep rereading it and smiling. Hmm, so many things I could say next, but I’ll start with a question: What were you reading?
Edie
I wrote back that night, answering and returning the question. She wrote the evening after that. We asked the typical questions. Senior at NYU. (So much younger than I’d thought.) Living in Bushwick in one of those insufferable dormlike self-contained hipster havens. Born and raised in New York, which explained that phlegmatic expression earned from a lifetime of discovering things before everyone else. I learned her verbal tics, the lilt of her sentences and the subtlety of her wit. I found her on Facebook and stared and stared and stared at the tiny blurry profile photo I could access, too stubborn to send her a friend request. I couldn’t mentally call up an image of her, just a sharp sense of attraction. Which almost never happens to me. What good is a photographic memory if the cap’s on right when you need it most?
I told my friend Lexy the story, leaving out the bit about the woman being an undergrad. I knew she’d react with the appropriate amount of awe and delight and excited clapping. I’ve known Lexy since college, one of those truly platonic friendships that way too many women insist can’t exist. Sitting at a picnic table on the back porch of a barbecue joint, wearing a coat and pretending it was a warmer spring day than the thermometer indicated, she actually flung a rib down at one point to throw her hands over her mouth. I knew she’d just love it.
“You guys are gonna get maaaried,” she sang when I’d finished.
“Dude, she hasn’t made any mention of actually meeting up in person, and it’s been over a month. I’m beginning to think she’s in a full body cast or something.”
“Or that you’re writing back and forth with someone who just happened to be in the deli and observed the whole thing and is doing this to fill a certain emptiness in his or her life.”
Jesus, that hadn’t even occurred to me. That’s the thing about Lexy. She’s getting her Ph.D. in American history and will just extrapolate the shit out of something you thought you had figured out.
“You think I should ask her out?”
“Uh, yeah. She’s probably wondering why you haven’t tried to see her yet. Actually, if she was smart, she’d think you were the fat, lonely impersonator.”
One end of Lexy’s chartreuse scarf kept sliding off her neck and down across her boobs. I was waiting for it to land in her pile of sauce.
Lexy was right—it was weird. The intimacy was fading from the email exchange, and now I had no choice but to ask her out, which of course would sound creepy or awkward no matter how I phrased it because I’d already waited so damn long. I asked Edie to call me. She wrote back with her number instead. I dialed it right after work one day, settling into a bench in Central Park among a row of peacoat-swaddled locals.
It rang once. Twice. Someone with a clipboard was making his way down the line, asking for money for some kind of project.
She picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?”
It was nice to hear a real hello, the way we used to answer the phone before we always knew who was calling. Her voice was huskier than I’d imagined.
“Hi! It’s Greg.”
She said “Oh, hi!” just as I continued to speak, and then I stopped, and then we both listened to silence for a second.
“How are you?” I lumbered on.
“I’m good! Just got off the subway. Sorry if I sound out of breath. How are you?”
“I’m fine! Thanks. I’m…sitting in the park, actually.”