Flying Solo(16)

“Did he give you the ring and get down on one knee and say ‘Laurie Sassalyn, will you do me the honor of agreeing to be my wife so we can make appropriate progress or whatever?’?”

“No, but I’m not sure he wasn’t thinking it.”

“How romantic.”

“Anyway, a few months before the wedding, we were registering for gifts. The wedding was supposed to be in August, and this was February, because apparently people need months to buy you a present even when you tell them exactly what you want. I found the whole thing sort of mortifying, like I was making a list of demands, but I know it’s what’s done.”

“Well, when Becca and I got married, we got a giant green dish that I never stopped calling ‘the golf trophy,’ so don’t knock the registry.”

“You don’t even play golf. Or do you now?”

“Of course not, come on. I’m divorced, by the way.”

“I heard.”

“Right, because your mother has Facebook.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. Continue.”

“We were at one of those big stores, I forget what it was called, Homes-N-Things or whatever. And we were walking around with those little guns. These scanners you aim at stuff, and it goes beep, and it’s added to your registry. We beeped a Vitamix, some really nice linens, some regular stuff like a salad bowl or whatever. And then he wanted this waffle maker.” She looked over at Nick, and he was looking at her with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“Nothing. Are you kidding? I love this story so far. I’m riveted. Five stars. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

She laughed. “Okay. Anyway, he wanted this waffle maker. But not just any waffle maker. It was called the WaffleSmart, I think. It came with these metal plates that swapped out, so you could make waffles with different designs on them. I think it had a flower and maybe a rabbit and a map of the United States. You could buy add-ons, you know, Darth Vader waffles, Ohio State waffles, Red Sox waffles.”

“If this turns into a story where you called off your wedding over Red Sox waffles, you are going to be a New England legend.”

“I wish it were that exciting,” she said. “Anyway. Removable plates, all these different settings. You could make your waffle crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. You could make it lightly toasted, or extra crusty, and I think there were settings for whole grain and gluten free, as if the waffle knows the difference.”

“That’s what makes it smart.”

“Oh, no. What made it smart was that there was an app. There was an app that you installed on your phone that would set the timer for the correct cycle. Then it would alert you when your waffles were done. So this whole thing is built on the assumption that making waffles is an operation you need to be able to monitor remotely. Who is ever that busy when they’re making waffles? Other than somebody working the brunch shift at a hotel buffet?”

“It seems excessive.”

“Can you guess what the app was called?”

He tilted his head. “I’m going to go with…GoWaff.”

“That’s impressively terrible and, in that sense, pretty close. It was called Waffle Me.”

He shook his head firmly. “I don’t like that at all.”

“No.”

Nick considered all this, then rested his coffee cup on the arm of his chair. “I’m not going to lie, I tend to burn waffles, so this might have won me over, too.”

“I’m not done, though. When your waffle is done, it sings ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.’ If you don’t like that, you can change it to ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ or—this is the truth—the world’s squarest version of ‘La Cucaracha.’ And the icing on the cake is that this thing costs 350 dollars. I am not making that up, it is a waffle maker that costs 350 dollars. He wants to put it on our registry and tell people that we want them to buy it for us. He wants us to say to our friends, ‘We are the kind of people who would like you to spend 350 dollars on a waffle maker that plays “La Cucaracha.”?’?”

Nick sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “That is a man who really respects the most important meal of the day.”

“Oh, no. That’s the genius part. Chris doesn’t eat breakfast. If I made coffee, he’d drink coffee and maybe eat a PowerBar. If I didn’t make coffee, he’d just eat the PowerBar. But he doesn’t eat breakfast.”

“Did you bring that up? I bet you did.”

“Oh, I did. Right there in Homes-N-Stuff.”

“I think it was Homes-N-Things.”

“Whichever. I also asked him where he was going to put it, since he had moved into my house and we were pretty much out of cabinet space between the actual dishes and the food dehydrator he had bought himself and then used to make jerky a total of two—as in ‘one, two’—times.”

“How was the jerky?”

“Wretched. It tasted like wet cigarettes. We could have used it to repel raccoons. And now he wanted us to find space for a 350-dollar waffle maker that sings show tunes and sounds like a Cinco de Mayo office party at a law firm. Do you hear my voice? I’m getting loud all over again.”

“I’m enjoying it.”

“Anyway, even though I didn’t call it off for another few months, I’m pretty sure that was when I knew it wasn’t going to work out. He kept saying that he wanted to use it to make brunch, which we never ate, or to entertain, which we never did. It was like he was describing some life, but not our life.” Laurie tried to take the tension out of her voice. “I know this sounds ridiculous as an explanation for breaking my engagement.”