Chapter 7

      Jon had a problem. He told Tracie everything, or almost everything, which was good. But looking like an idiot and a goofball and a pathetic excuse for a man was not so good. He needed her empathy and advice, but he was afraid of her pity. So, usually, he made a joke of his pain. Now Jon raised his hands and clasped them over his head. “The undefeated world champion with the worst social life in America …”

      “Well, with Mother’s Day, it would be—”

      “No. It was the disasters previous to Mother’s Day that hurt.”

      Tracie raised her eyebrows and scrunched up her eyes in an exaggerated move of remembrance. She was really cute when she did it. “Oh God! I’m so sorry! I forgot! The look-see didn’t work out?” Tracie sighed. “What about the big date?”

      Molly returned with coffee and poured it out for Tracie, then shook her head and left. Tracie leaned across the booth and lowered her voice. “What happened? What went wrong with the look-see?” Her face assumed a look of horror. “You didn’t wear that plaid jacket, did you?”

      “No,” he assured her. “I wore my blue blazer.”

      Tracie, her mouth by now full of coffee, almost did a spit take. “You wore a blazer for a look-see?”

      “Yeah, I—”

      “Never get dressed up for a look-see. The whole point is to appear casual.” Tracie sighed with frustration at him, not for the first time. “So … what happened?”

      “Well, I walked into the bar; she waved. She was attractive in a skinny, redheaded way. So I went over to her and gave her the flowers …”

      “You brought flowers?” Tracie cried, her hands flapping in exasperation. “God, that stinks of desperation.”

      “Maybe that’s why it lasted eleven minutes. We’d hardly begun to talk when she said she’d left clothes in the dryer and didn’t want them to wrinkle.”

      “That’s a new wrinkle in lame excuses,” Tracie told him. They both let the horror of it sink in for a few moments. Then, as always, Tracie brightened. Jon was certain her optimism was genetic. “Oh, forget about it. I’m sure she wasn’t a natural redhead anyway. The drapes never match the rug.” Jon managed a grin and Tracie grinned back. “So what about Saturday night? You know, the date with that woman you work with? The one you yearn for with the lust of a thousand pubescent boys. What’s-her-name?”

      “Sam. Samantha,” Jon reminded her. For a moment, he wondered why he always knew every friend and boyfriend of hers by given, middle, and nicknames but she … He sighed. “Actually, it was worse,” he admitted.

      “How could it possibly be worse than an eleven-minute look-see?”

      “Well, for one thing, I was meeting her outside. For another, it was raining. And for a third, she never showed.”

      Tracie’s lower lip dropped in real surprise. Then she exaggerated it, just to cover. “She totally stood you up? She wasn’t just late? I mean, you waited long enough?”

      “Two hours.”

      “Oh, Jon! You stood in the rain for two hours?”

      “Yeah. I didn’t mind that as much as the fact that I have to see her tomorrow at work.”

      “Ouch!” Tracie winced, his upcoming humiliation on her face, then tried to recover. “At least tell me she called and left a message with a plausible lie,” she begged.

      “Neither. No message at home, work, not even an E-mail. And I’d left messages for her on all three.”

      Tracie grimaced. Jon flushed, embarrassed again. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said.

      Jon got defensive. “Well, what should I have done?”

      Tracie narrowed her eyes. “It reminds me of the Dorothy Parker line: ‘“Shut up,” he explained.’”

      “But how else could she know I was waiting?”

      “Like she needed to? You weren’t humiliated enough already?”

      Now she was irritated with him. Jon saw something in her face that looked too much like pity. “Well. What else could I do?”

      Before Tracie could answer, Molly returned to their table, obviously drawn by bits of the conversation she’d overheard. “Find girls who want to date you? An older woman, perhaps,” Molly suggested as she batted her eyes at him. Tracie didn’t even look up but Jon managed a wan smile. “Oh, I guess that’s a dumb idea. But then I didn’t go to college.” She whisked their empty plates away and sashayed back to the kitchen.

      Tracie sighed. “Okay, Jon, you win. Your weekend was worse. I think that’s eighty-three consecutive weeks. A new world record.” She scribbled on a Post-it pad she pulled from her purse and stuck it on Jon’s shirt. It had a blue ribbon drawn on it.

      “Great. Winner of the Losers.”

      Tracie stopped to consider him for a moment. “You know, it’s not all your fault. Women tend to gravitate to … trouble. Men who are … challenges. You know, on Friday, my friend Laura arrived …”

      “Laura? She finally came? Will I at last get to meet Laura?” Jon had been hearing about Laura for years.

      “Sure, but the point is, she’s come to stay with me since she broke up with Peter. She’s nuts about him, but Laura calls him an IPPy—”

      “And that would be?”

      “An Intimacy-Phobic Prick. So I think maybe women prefer pricks until they give up on them.”

      “It’s not fair; I try so hard.”

      “To be a prick?”

      “No. Not to—”

      “I know. That was a joke. But see, maybe that’s the point: You try too hard and you’re … too nice.”

      “How can you be too nice?”

      “Jon, you’re already too nice. You’re too considerate. I mean, look at the data. Today, you visited your mom and all wicked stepmothers. You’re too nice.”

      “That’s ridiculous,” Jon told her.

      “I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Tracie agreed. “It doesn’t even make sense to us. And I don’t think we like to suffer. But I know we hate to be bored. Take Phil, for example: He fascinates me. He keeps my life so interesting.”

      “He’s a bass player, for God’s sake,” Jon said, totally exasperated. “Dumber than dirt. And self-involved.