Our Stop(48)

The man was insistent with his eye contact and held Nadia’s gaze. She swallowed, hard. She was a little bit drunk – she’d been so excited about the date that she hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast, so the booze had gone straight to her head. Something in the air shifted. The man stood in front of her, looking, for a beat too long. It snapped Nadia out of her daydream and into the present.

‘Are you waiting for somebody?’ he asked, settling in next to her.

‘I was,’ she said. She cleared her throat, aware that she sounded a little croaky. ‘But they can’t make it,’ she added, louder.

‘And now the lady drinks alone?’

‘And now the lady drinks alone,’ Nadia repeated. Wow. She had slurred that sentence a little – her speech was definitely impaired. She should go home. Or at least eat something.

‘That’s such a shame,’ he said, and Nadia smiled weakly. She could feel his eyes on her, but she wasn’t in the mood. She didn’t want to play cat-and-mouse games with a stranger at a bar – she wanted to mope and feel sorry for herself and lament how terrible all men were because they got your hopes up and then trashed them in the gutter.

‘This might seem very forward of me, but – do you want another drink? I have half an hour before my buddy gets here.’

Nadia looked at him – this man sat beside her, where her date should have been.

‘You’re asking me for a drink?’ she said. ‘Just like that?’

‘Just like what?’

‘You’re gonna sit down next to a woman you don’t know and offer to buy her a drink, like a Nora Ephron movie?’ Nadia wasn’t flirting, but there was a definite recklessness to her. Two drinks and one missed connection was enough to make her feel like she didn’t have to be polite, or coy, or nice. She didn’t have to contort to make herself likeable. She was mad as hell. After two drinks she’d gone from devastated to distraught to angry and now, she realized, she had zero fucks to give. All men were the same, she thought: destined to screw her over. What did she have to lose by entering into battle with this one?

‘I don’t know who that is, but yes. Call it a radical social experiment where one lone man tries to see if it’s possible to meet a woman without the aid of a dating app. Apparently in the olden days that’s how it used to happen, you know. Men and woman would just have a conversation, out, in public, and if they liked that conversation they’d keep having a conversation, until they decided they’d like another conversation on another day, and maybe another one after that. Experimental times.’

‘How do you not know who Nora Ephron is?’ Nadia replied. ‘She defined an era. Our whole generation grew up on her.’

‘I’ll have to educate myself,’ he said.

‘Start with You’ve Got Mail, and once you understand her genius, read Heartburn.’

‘You’ve Got Mail! I’ve heard of that!’

‘I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address …’

‘Pencils? You say that like it’s romantic.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ Nadia said. Was she being charming? She thought she was being acerbic, but the man’s eyes sparkled at her.

‘I’m Eddie,’ he said, reaching out a hand to shake hers.

‘Hello,’ she said.

Eddie smiled. ‘It would be typical for you to tell me your name now,’ he said.

‘Nadia.’

‘And what do you do, Nadia?’

‘I work in artificial intelligence.’

‘Beautiful and clever, I see.’

Nadia raised an eyebrow. ‘My robots have more original pick-up lines than that.’

‘I told you, we’re going old school tonight.’

‘The oldies are the goodies?’

‘The goodies are the goodies,’ he repeated, which didn’t quite make sense, but the way he said it made Nadia nervous. ‘So, same again?’ he pressed, nodding his head towards her empty glass. Nadia shrugged.

‘Sure,’ she said. She surprised herself with her answer.

When the barman delivered two more glasses of wine, he said: ‘Your buddy opened a tab on his card. Do you want me to put these on there? Or do you want to take his card for him and give me a new one, or …?’

Nadia could feel Eddie’s eyes on her. ‘No, no,’ she said, tempting as it was to order a bottle of whatever was most expensive and charge it to the man who had stood her up. She didn’t even know his name! ‘Ah,’ she added. ‘Actually, maybe I could take it for him?’

The barman shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said. He reached back and got the card. Nadia figured at least she could see what name was embossed on it. She took it off the barman. It said D E WEISSMAN – not a name that meant anything to her.

Eddie whipped out his bank card in the time it took Nadia to reach under the bench for her bag. ‘Allow me,’ he said. ‘We’ll start a tab on this one,’ he said to the barman.

Nadia slipped D E Weissman’s card into her bag.

‘Thank you,’ Nadia said, knowing full well she shouldn’t have another drink without eating something – but doing it anyway. She was here, she looked good, and a funny man was interested in her. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to wait with him until his friend came? A little flirting was making her feel good – like she wasn’t wholly repulsive to all of mankind. Yes. She’d stay for half an hour, just for one more, if only to remind herself that she was fine.