I SHOW HER MY PHONE, and we argue over which questions to choose. We definitely don’t have time for all thirty-six. She wants to ixnay the four minutes of soulfully staring into each other’s eyes, but that’s not happening. The eye thing is my ace in the hole. All my ex-girlfriends (okay, one of my ex-girlfriends—okay, I’ve only ever had one girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend) have liked my eyes a lot. Grace (the aforementioned singular in the extreme ex-girlfriend) said they looked like gemstones, specifically smoky quartz (jewelry making was her hobby). We were making out in her room when she first said it, and she stopped midsession to get an example for me.
Anyway, my eyes are like quartz (the smoky kind) and girls (at least one) dig it.
The questions fall into three categories, each more personal than the previous. Natasha wants to stick with the least personal ones from the first category, but I ixnay that as well.
From category #1 (least intimate) we choose:
#1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
#2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
#7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
From category #2 (medium intimacy):
#17. What is your most treasured memory?
#24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
From category #3 (most intimate):
#25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling…”
#29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
#34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
#35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
We end up with ten questions, because Natasha thinks that for number twenty-four we should talk about our relationship with both our mother and father.
“How come mothers are always the ones most blamed for screwing up children? Fathers screw kids up perfectly well.” She says it like someone with firsthand experience.
She checks the time on her phone again. “I should go,” she says, pushing her chair back and standing too quickly. The table wobbles. Some of her coffee splashes out.
“Shit. Shit,” she says. It’s kind of an overreaction. I really want to ask about the appointment and her father, but I know better than to ask right now.
I get up, grab some napkins, and clean up the spill.
The look she gives me is somewhere between gratitude and exasperation.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” she says.
I watch as she navigates around the line of coffee-starved people to go outside. Probably I shouldn’t stare at her legs, but they’re great (the third-greatest pair I’ve ever seen). I want to touch them almost as much as I want to keep talking to her (maybe a little more), but there are no circumstances under which she would let me do that.
Either she’s trying to shake me loose, or we are in a speed-walking competition that I’m unaware of. She dashes between a couple of slow walkers and skirts along the outside of sidewalk scaffolding to avoid having to slow down for people.
Maybe I should give up. I don’t know why I haven’t yet. The universe is clearly trying to save me from myself. I bet if I looked for signs about parting ways, I would find them.
“Where are we heading?” I ask her when we come to a stop at a crosswalk. The haircut I’m supposed to be getting is going to have to wait. I’m pretty sure they let people with long hair go to college.
“I am heading uptown to my appointment and you are tagging along with me.”
“Yes, I am,” I say, ignoring her not-at-all-subtle emphasizing.
We cross the street and walk along quietly for a few minutes. The morning settles into itself. A few stores have propped open their doors. The weather’s too cold for air-conditioning and too hot for closed doors. I’m sure my dad’s done the same thing at our store.
We pass the extraordinarily well lit and extremely crowded window display of an electronics store. Every item in the display is tagged with a red ON SALE! sticker. There are hundreds of these stores all over the city. I can’t understand how they stay in business.
“Who even shops in these?” I wonder out loud.
“People who like to haggle,” she says.
Half a block later we pass another, virtually identical store and we both laugh.
I take out my phone. “So. You ready for these questions?”
“You are relentless,” she says, not looking at me.
“Persistent,” I correct her.
She slows down and looks over at me. “Do you really think asking me deep, philosophical questions is going to make us fall in love?” She puts air quotes (oh, how I dislike air quotes) around deep and philosophical and fall in love.
“Think of it as an experiment,” I say. “What’d you say before about the scientific method?”
This gets me a small smile.
“Scientists shouldn’t experiment on themselves,” she counters.
“Not even for the greater good?” I ask. “For furthering mankind’s knowledge of itself?”
That gets me a big laugh.