Wishing for Wonderful (Serendipity #3)(4)
“Didn’t I see you at the Starbucks over on Second Avenue?” he asks.
She nods. “I stop there every morning. It’s close to where I work.”
“And…” he gives her a sexy little smile, “where’s that?”
“The Big Book Barn, on Seventeenth.” She tilts her head, looks directly into his eyes for thirty seconds and then turns back to the keys in her hand. Perfect. An invitation sprinkled with a touch of shyness. This is how it’s supposed to happen.
He asks if she likes Italian food and tells her about Antonio’s.
“The Veal Parmigiana is unbelievable,” he says. “The place isn’t much to look at from the outside, but inside it’s like an Italian trattoria. There’s this little courtyard where they have outdoor dining…”
“Sounds charming,” she says, looking up again.
He can sense the way she’s eyeing him, so he asks if she’d like to have dinner this coming Saturday.
She, of course, answers yes.
Now I’m doing a happy dance, thinking my Lindsay troubles are over. But after four dates—excellent dates, dates with wine, music and dancing—she stops returning his calls because of a musician she met on the subway.
When Lindsay started gushing about how much she was in love with that musician, I was sorely tempted to have her step into a pothole and break an ankle. Nothing serious, mind you, but enough to keep her at home so she could have some thinking-it-over time. She was definitely in need of it, because she was way off track. That musician was scheduled to marry the New York Philharmonic’s second violinist and move to Paris.
The breakup was inevitable, but it didn’t happen immediately. It never does. Lindsay and the musician spent seven months together. Seven months of arguments and apologies, more arguments and more apologies, until one evening he stomped out never to return again. Even though that relationship was not of my making, I had to feel for the girl.
Love is the most complex of all emotions. Hate is clean and uncomplicated, but love will turn you inside out and when it goes awry you’re left wondering what you did wrong. You always blame yourself even though the only wrong you’ve done is to give your heart to someone who was not part of your plan. The musician was never part of Lindsay’s plan, but that didn’t ease the pain of his leaving.
After the musician there was a banker, a wannabe model, a dentist and a handsome lad who walked dogs for a living. None of them were part of Lindsay’s plan, and they all went the way of the musician. The banker and dentist she simply tired of, and the dog-walker moved away because the landlord raised his rent and he could no longer afford to live in Manhattan.
With Phillip, the wannabe model, Lindsay convinced herself that she was fully and completely in love. Yes, she knew Phillip was haphazard, but she told herself that he would eventually settle down. In time, he would give up thoughts of being a model and find a job suited to his talents. He would one day ask her to marry him and she, of course, would answer yes. She remembered how she’d let herself be goaded into argument after argument with the musician, and she was determined not to let that happen again. When Phillip showed up hours late with an excuse so lame that a steel brace couldn’t make it stand, she accepted it. When he swiveled his head to turn and look at women with short skirts or cascading cleavage, she chalked it up to nothing more than harmless ogling. Then one day he left his cell phone on the desk and a text message from Krystal popped up. Only then could she see the foolishness of her ways.
“How could you?” she screamed.
“She means nothing to me,” he pleaded. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’ve slept with this girl, that’s obvious!”
“One time. It was a one-time thing.”
“A one-time thing?” She picked up a bookend and heaved it across the room. “Get out, and don’t even think about coming back!”
In the time it took for him to ride the elevator down three floors and cross the small lobby, his modeling portfolio, the framed picture he’d given her and the gym bag he kept in the apartment had landed on 23rd street.
Phillip was just the last in a long string of romantic disasters. Men like him are what they are, and Lindsay was foolish to think otherwise. I can say for a fact she was never in love with the man, but try telling her that. Her friend Amanda even warned her.
“Lindsay,” Amanda said, “Phillip is nothing more than a gift box, gorgeous on the outside but totally empty inside.”
Lindsay of course didn’t listen, which came as no surprise. As I’ve told you, the girl is an incurable romantic. If she would have backed off and let me handle things, she’d now be celebrating her second anniversary on a Mediterranean cruise ship instead of sitting in a third-floor apartment painting her toenails.
Everything happens for a reason. If humans could accept that, my job would be so much easier. After Lindsay hurled all of the never-to-be-seen-again model’s belongings out the window, she broke into huge shuddering sobs and telephoned Amanda. The breakup was slated to happen anyway, but the timing was my doing. Since Lindsay had shown no interest in Christopher from 7B, he’d been reassigned to Amanda. That night Christopher was leaving the building as Amanda was coming in. When the plan works, that’s all it takes—a chance meeting, a fleeting glance and POW! Love happens.