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: : : —DENNIS, SAYS ANITA, —DENNIS IS, well, he's Dennis. I probably should have steered you away from that one.
—Mmm, says Lydia. She frowns down at her latte, pokes a stirrer into its depths.
—He's not a bad guy, exactly, says Anita. — I mean, he and I go way back, I've known him forever, and I love him, I do, he's just—how can I put this?—he's not exactly reliable.
—Yeah, says Lydia. —I figured that out, thanks.
—I mean, I thought it was cool that the two of you got together, I like you, I like him, and, who knows, maybe you're the one? The one who could settle him down a little? I thought maybe that was—possible?
—Whatever, says Lydia. —It's over. So if we could just—stop talking about it—?
—It's probably for the best that it ended between you guys, Anita says. —I mean, I don't think of Dennis as being exactly husband material.
—I'm not even looking for a husband, Lydia says. —Just someone to spend some time with. That's all I want.
Anita nods sympathetically. —That's the right approach, she says. —If you go out there looking—like kind of wedding-crazed—guys can sense that.
—I'm not— Lydia begins. Her thoughts seem tangled together; she feels like she can't quite make herself clear. She aborts the whole attempt and takes a sip of her drink, then starts off on a different branch of the tree:
—I don't even know where to go meet guys anymore.
—There's that new guy over in Legal—
—No, Lydia says. —No more coworkers. For God's sake. I can barely even go over to Legal because of Julius.
—Oh, right, says Anita.
—I don't want to be known as like the girl who fucked her way through the entire Legal Department.
—Some cute boys over there, Anita says, mock-enticingly.
—Forget it, Lydia says. —But, I mean, outside of work—I mean, it's just hard to find the time. I'm here forty hours a week; plus lunch it's forty-five; commute's another half-hour each way so that's fifty hours of my week just gone. I maybe have enough energy to go to a bar after work—but the bar scene—ugh, God, I did that for a while and just the assholes that you meet—
—Tell me about it.
—I couldn't even bring myself to go home with any of them, not even to just get laid, that's how bad it was.
—What about these shows that you go to? The experimental music thing or whatever it is? You've talked to me about it before, and frankly it doesn't sound like the sort of thing that's going to attract a lot of girls. There's got to be loads of guys who would be thrilled to go out with a girl who was into that sort of thing.
—I guess, says Lydia. —It's just been a long time since I've been out to a show.
She takes a minute to try to figure out why this might be. Part of it is just winter. It's still cold every day, even now in mid-March (outside the Starbucks, snow is whirling) and so once she gets home and changes into her sweatpants and curls up on the couch under the fuzzy blanket it's really hard for her to work up the zeal to head out again. And it's not like she can just get up, throw on her coat, and go. She has to pick out a whole outfit, wash her face, do her makeup—doing that kind of stuff was fun when she lived with Paul, she enjoyed showing off her choices to him, she enjoyed the praise he'd give her, she'd leave the house feeling sexy. Even Marvin—as much as she'd feel skeeved by the way he looked at her sometimes, if she's to be completely honest she'd have to admit that his attention was at least a sign that she looked good. Lately she picks out an outfit and she can't tell if she looks cute or just disgusting; she'll switch into another one and have the same exact problem. And after all this effort, what's the payoff? More often than not, nothing. She goes to the show, it's dark, it's smoky, she stands there by herself and feels like nobody notices her.
It's true that the guys who are into this sort of music are often pretty quiet guys, nervous, not exactly the sort who are going to be great at going up to a woman and starting a conversation. She thinks about Thomas; he was kind of like that. (Sometimes she wonders why she ever broke up with him. The details of the breakup are all mixed up in her head with September 11th stuff, the evacuation and all that; she's not at all certain she was in the right frame of mind to make a decision like that at that time. And everyone she's dated since has been so much worse. Sometimes she comes upon his name in her address book and thinks about giving him a call.)
—Well, Anita says, —you want to find a guy, you have to put yourself out there.
—Yeah, thanks, I know, says Lydia, a little pissier than she'd intended.
—I'm just saying, says Anita.
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