Men Seeking Women Read online

  “Good, I’m glad you feel that way. So let’s say goodbye and get it over with.”

  He was a little taken aback. These conversations usually went on for hours, while the wild dogs howled on the docks outside. They were an essential part of his bedtime ritual. “Well, okay, then. Sure. Let’s do that.”

  “Goodbye, Danny. Don’t get eaten.”

  “I’ll invite you to the ribbon-cutting.”

  There was a pause. “No, I don’t think so.”

  I don’t think so. He gave her a week, then two, but to his great surprise she kept her word and didn’t call. She didn’t answer his phone messages, either, or his e-mails. And then, after he had sent a particularly exasperated little missive beginning WHAT’S A MAN GOTTA DO THESE DAYS TO GET SOME CLOSURE?, his e-mails started bouncing back undelivered. She had changed her e-mail address.

  Nevertheless, he refused to accept the possibility that the relationship was not merely ending but truly ended until a conversation with a mutual friend by the name of Vikram Saraswathy. A devoted gossip, Saraswathy had been an excellent back-channel source of information about Clarissa ever since the breakup had begun, almost six months earlier. On this particular occasion, however, Danny had called not because of Clarissa, but because Saraswathy was a civil engineer, and there seemed to be some trouble with the new lock the city had installed on the canal. “It’s not flushing,” said Danny. “The water isn’t moving.”

  “What happens?” asked Saraswathy.

  “It just sits there, bubbling.”

  As luck would have it, Danny happened to be seated in an inch of the stuff at that very moment, the phone pincered between ear and shoulder while he struggled to disassemble a clogged bilge pump on the floor of the boat.

  “Did they say what the problem with the lock was?” asked Saraswathy.

  “Something about the tides and currents. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Hey, I do bridges. Canals are a whole different thing.”

  “If they can’t get that lock working, I’m fucked,” said Danny. He poked a screwdriver into the black sludge at the bottom of the valve. “Do you know something about bilge pumps at least? I think I’ve got a seepage problem here on the boat.”

  “Leakage?” asked Saraswathy, sounding alarmed.

  “Seepage.” This was an important distinction for Danny: leakage was bad; seepage was okay as long as the pumps worked.

  “Don’t know much about seepage, I’m afraid.”

  “Then I assume you haven’t heard anything from Clarissa, either.”

  But Saraswathy had heard from her, just the other night, as it turned out. Clarissa, he told Danny, had started dating again—cyberdating.

  Danny felt a distinct pressure rising in his chest, and his laughter was forced. “What, a chat room?” he crowed. “You know, I feel sorry for her, I really do.”

  “Not a chat room, a dating service.”

  “Poor woman.”

  “She says she’s getting a lot of hits.”

  Hits. It flashed across Danny’s mental landscape like a comet that these hits were men. “Women have no feelings.”

  It took him most of the night to get the pump working and the water out of the cabin, and when he came on deck for air it was light out—a weak, acidic white light that stung his eyes. The wildlife—human and otherwise—had all gone to burrow by then, and the wharves were empty of movement except for a single plastic bag driven around and around by the wind. Pre-postbreakup had had its charms; it was ugly and circular and exhausting, but it was also interesting, even exciting. It was a transitional phase, and thus offered all the fun of travel without the bother of actually leaving and going somewhere. He didn’t have to miss Clarissa because he spoke to her all the time.

  But postbreakup was the real thing; it was arrival, and suddenly Danny didn’t like where he had arrived: the splintered docks; the stretch of cracked paving littered with broken glass; the trash piled against the security fence; the windowless factory building he couldn’t afford to pull down; the new canal lock that didn’t work. Post was the blue car seat the winos had set in the tall weeds, surrounded by empty liquor bottles and Chinese takeout containers. Post was the trashcan fire slowly burning itself out, cinders spiraling upward. Post was the used condoms that littered the ground, and the rainbow sheen of oil that rode the surface of the canal, and the smell of diesel fuel when the wind shifted north, and the whoosh-whoosh of early morning traffic on the Gowanus Expressway off to the right, suspended high above the empty streets.

  If they didn’t get that lock working, post might well be forever.

  Sleep was out of the question. He went inside, booted up his laptop, located the dating service Saraswathy had mentioned—Seriousingles.com—and found Clarissa’s page. But before he had a chance to read the essay she had posted there, the photograph stopped him cold. It was familiar, very familiar: not only had it been taken on a vacation he remembered all too well—on the beach in Hawaii—but he had once been the other half. She had cut him out.

  He had been cut out, he had been made invisible, and like all invisible people, he knew deep in his bones that only the cruelest, bloodiest revenge would make him visible again. He fought against this knowledge, reminding himself how wasteful vengeance is, how it inevitably ricochets back on the vengeful, but all his philosophizing was to no avail. When you decide on revenge, the old saying goes, dig two graves. How convenient, thought Danny, looking around the cabin, I’m already living in one.

  It was not until late that afternoon, however, lying in his bunk and listening to the back-and-forth creak of the hawsers, that he realized he had the perfect plan of action for an invisible man. He would visit Clarissa’s dating page again, and this time he would read her little essay—no, not simply read, but study, analyze, memorize, until he knew her male ideal by heart. And then he would become that ideal. He would invent a new name and a new life, and disguised like that would correspond with her until she believed that the absurd fantasy man he had created to her specs was not only real but wonderful, kind, loving, and good—for good, spoken with extreme emphasis while crinkling up her eyes, was Clarissa’s highest praise for people. Indeed, when the word good finally appeared in one of her e-mails, Danny would know that the time had come: he would suggest that they meet for dinner. You can guess the rest: Mr. Perfection would not show up for that dinner, but Danny Price would, and with a stunning new woman on his arm (even if he had to hire her, which seemed likely). As luck and a big tip would have it, they would be seated at the table next to Clarissa’s.

  This might not seem like much as revenge goes, especially compared to what people do to each other in places such as Sierre Leone or the Balkans. But it gave Danny great pleasure to imagine that dinner. My God, Clarissa, is that you? he would ask, and then give a completely unembarrassed laugh, meaning I’m okay with this, totally okay, because I’ve moved on in my life. Oh, yes, I’m sorry, let me introduce you to Consuela/Tiffany/Saffron/Ming. We’re engaged! I can hardly believe it myself, everything happened so fast! Saffron, show her the ring (gigantic, rented). He would catch Clarissa’s eye for a moment, and then slowly look her up and down in a way that would both note and forgive each wrinkle and sag. We had some good times, though, didn’t we, Clarissa? he would say. Thank God everything turned out for the best. And then he would glance at the two place settings on her table, and ask in his sweetest voice: Dining alone?

  Danny could have stayed in bed the rest of the day, tweaking the details of this scene, dwelling on the way Clarissa stared at Consuela, her pained smile when she saw the ring, her choked congratulations—but there was far too much to do. By the end of business hours he had gotten a new e-mail address and membership in Seriousingles, and by dinnertime he had downloaded her page and printed out her essay. After a cold can of franks and beans—the hot plate had gotten soaked in the flood—he started giving her male ideal the kind of attention he normally reserved for contracts and blueprints.


  The experience was shocking. Clarissa’s essay opened with a preamble about love, trust, honesty, and commitment, then segued into a lengthy discourse on the need for roots. There was an almost mystical paragraph on something called “a sense of what’s really important in life,” which seemed to connect back to a short reminiscence about Thanksgiving and her grandmother’s pumpkin pie. There was a paragraph about living in harmony with nature, and another about love of the simple pleasures. Sunsets were mentioned in this last category, as were falling leaves, the smell of coffee in the morning, trick or treat, yard sales, the Sunday Times, and driving in the rain. The clause about motherhood and children came near the end, but from the wording it seemed to be a deal breaker.

  Danny found a damp, pulpy notebook and began scribbling notes, trying to make sense of what he had just read. The nostalgia for country life was puzzling in a woman who grew up in Detroit and lived in Brooklyn, but so was the worship of simplicity. Clarissa worked in PR. Her glasses were large and rectangular. She chain-smoked Marlboro Lights and ate salad with her fingers while standing at the kitchen sink—that was her idea of dinner. She carried not one but two cell phones at all times.

  Danny was tempted to dismiss the essay as an escapist fantasy, not to be taken seriously. What kept him working, however, as night deepened and the alley cats yowled outside, was the part at the very end about “a truly uninhibited man, unafraid of his own sensual nature.” As he read this, steel bands seemed to wrap themselves around his head, ratcheting tighter, tighter, tighter, each time he took a breath. There will be none of that, he growled. No blindfolds, no incense, no bong hits, no feather boa, and no strawberry love oil.

  By midnight, his own page was up.

  Angus Green, Danny’s fictive creation, was a potter who lived in a converted barn in Vermont. Much more important, he was a carefully crafted amalgam of every quality Clarissa claimed to value most in a man—what Danny listed in his notebook as the Four S’s: Serious, Sensitive, Sensuous, and Centered. Angus grew organic vegetables in his garden. He taught yoga part-time in town. His house smelled wonderfully of wood smoke. He had bunches of rosemary drying in a basket in his kitchen, bottles of olive oil lined up on the counter. He had Whitman and Lao-tzu on the nightstand in his bedroom. He worried about nuclear proliferation and global warming. He baked his own bread. He wrote poetry. He was skilled at massage. Danny despised him.

  And so, sitting on his bunk with his laptop on his knees, Danny began to type out his first message:

  Dear Clarissa,

  I came across your page and had to tell you how deeply moved I was. I, too, have had the kind of reawakening you mention.

  Good, thought Danny, stopping to read the line over. I can see him there, typing very earnestly at a rolltop desk: denim work shirt, ponytail, beard. Large hands, square shoulders, sensitive face. Mug of herbal tea.

  As I write this, I look out my bedroom window into my meadow and my apple orchard. But just seven years ago I was a stockbroker in New York, and the view from my window was an airshaft. At night I fell asleep to CNBC, and the first thing I did when I opened my eyes in the morning was switch to Market Watch. All I cared about was the direction of the market, the cut of my suit, and the trajectory of my career.

  Yes, he’s been there, he knows where she’s coming from!

  It’s not that I was shallow and vain, Clarissa—though I was those things—it was that I was so unhappy. If you’re interested, I can tell you more about how I got back in touch with myself. The point I want to make here is that you shouldn’t give up. The kind of life you are looking for is out there, and so is the right kind of guy.

  Meaning, not the poor trusting fool you were with for almost five years, the one you left to rot on a toxic canal.

  I am a potter now. There is no greater feeling than being up to your elbows in clay, making something beautiful that is also useful.

  As opposed to selling everything you own in order to clean up urban blight, stimulate the local economy, and improve the city in which you live.

  When I am working on the wheel, I feel that I understand my place in the world, and my reason for being. I am at the center of my universe, totally at peace.

  Do you even say “working on the wheel”? Well, she won’t know, either.

  And yes, I have learned to take pleasure in the little things: chopping wood, pressing my own apple cider, skating on the pond in winter, cooking. Believe me, there is nothing like the smell of baking bread filling the house on a bright Sunday morning, as the light streams in the kitchen window. I like to take a couple of fresh loaves to my neighbors down the road. Neighborhood—a sense of community—is everything here.

  Danny was interrupted just then by a familiar scratching at the hatch—river rats, trying to get in. They swarmed over the deck at night, chewing on whatever they could find. He had once made the mistake of going outside with a broom to shoo them away and had come back with a gnawed stick and a new sense of humility. He was now careful to lock himself in before dark, stuffing rags—which the rats pulled out and ate—under the door. He checked the .22 beside his bunk and went back to typing.

  A family of rabbits just passed by my door—I wish you could have seen. We have deer, elk, and moose, too. Nature has restored me to myself, Clarissa. The birch woods are my church, and the long walks I take in them a form of prayer. You can see the face of God in a fallen leaf, in the sunset, in the flight of the sparrow, in the laughter of children.

  Risky, starting in on religion, but Danny judged this safely ecumenical stuff, indicative of a general spirituality, and the line about children was good. Besides, Clarissa had no religion at all and would be impressed.

  I was particularly touched by the things you wrote about family. I have six brothers and sisters, and I know how rooted a big family makes you feel. I want that in my life.

  Perfect: Clarissa was an only child. Danny typed a little more about centeredness and a sense of values, appended the name Angus Green, and clicked the SEND button.

  Revenge seemed to be good for Danny. He slept deeply and woke suffused with a feeling of peace and possibility. It had occurred to him while still semiconscious that the problems with the lock could be traced back to Clarissa—that his entanglement with her had been holding the marina project back in some indefinable way. If he could only inflict full punishment on her—crush and humiliate her, as she had crushed and humiliated him—he would be able to move on. The lock would start working, financing would come through, the bilge pumps on the houseboat would keep pumping, and his jeans would finally dry. It was a happy thought.

  He decided to celebrate this insight with breakfast al fresco—coffee and a roll on deck. This had to be done with great caution, however, because of the seagulls. The seagulls that prowled the canal were different from their brethren elsewhere, in much the same way that the dogs, cats, and rats were different—tougher, mostly, and with a taste for gratuitous cruelty. He had been attacked once in the early days, over a paper napkin, and still bore the scar on his hand. So he ate quickly now, hunkered low in an aluminum deckchair, his eyes scanning the sky. For that reason he didn’t see the little boy walking up the gangplank.

  “What you looking for?” asked the boy, following his gaze.

  “Jesus, don’t you knock?” asked Danny. He had been startled.

  The boy looked around the deck skeptically. “Where?” He was eight or nine, probably, on the runty side, and extremely dirty.

  “Who are you, anyway?” asked Danny.

  “Carlos.”

  “Carlos, does your mother know you’re here?”

  That was the signal: Carlos began poking around the deck with great interest, as if he had missed the question. He yanked on a bumper, stepped on one of the hawsers, pressed his face to a porthole. Danny watched, sipping the last of his coffee. The boy was in jeans and a turtleneck, but there was something of the ancient nomad about him. Maybe it was the equipment he carried: a long stick in one hand, some kind of
slingshot in his back pocket, a GI Joe without arms tucked upside down in his belt like a prisoner. He seemed to have everything he needed.

  “You live here?” asked Carlos.

  “I do.”

  “My sister says you’re crazy.”

  “I’m an investor. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the dogs?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Danny looked at the boy, and the boy looked at Danny, and in that instant they read the truth in each other’s face: Yes, they were afraid of the dogs. No, it didn’t matter.

  “There’s treasure in there,” said Carlos, by way of explanation, and then gestured toward the old factory—Danny’s factory.

  Finally, thought Danny, somebody with brains. He got up from his chair and wiped the crumbs from his lap, giving the sky one last scan for incoming gulls. “Carlos, do you want a soda before you go home?”

  Down in the cabin, the boy went through much the same routine as up top, touching everything, turning on and off whatever appliances still worked. Within minutes, his dark palm prints were everywhere, even the ceiling. Nevertheless, he managed to work his way through two bottles of Coke, a Slim Jim, and a bowl of Froot Loops. While Carlos ate his cereal, Danny unfurled the blueprints for the marina and showed him what he was planning: the docks, the condos, the little park with the gazebo and the Chinese lanterns. The boy’s eyes took it all in. His questions were sharp—how many apartments, how many boats? How would people get there? Danny showed him the garage and the ferry slip. Carlos nodded, crunching Froot Loops. “What you need,” he said, “is a place for the helicopters.”

  Danny’s eyes narrowed. “Why is that?”

  “In the future everybody will go by helicopter.”

  And so Danny showed him the helipad he had placed out by the lock. “You have a feeling for this, Carlos. There are men five times your age who don’t get it. My own girlfriend doesn’t get it.” Didn’t get it, he corrected himself mentally. Past tense.