AT A TABLE up front near the windows facing Astor, Scott’s date said, “My name’s Anne with an e, but my friends call me Annie.”
Scott had met her on Tinder—yep, super heroes were dating online, too, nowadays. How else was a busy single dad supposed make a connection in the big city? Scott had liked Anne’s pics—she looked hip, in a not-trying-too-hard kind of way, with dark hair, short bangs, big, trendy glasses from Warby Parker—and they seemed to be at a similar place in life. She was recently divorced, had a twelve-year-old son—two years younger than Scott’s daughter Cassie—and she had written in her profile that she was looking for “something light, yet meaningful,” which pretty much summed up Scott’s idea of the perfect relationship. It had been a few months since Scott’s last relationship—with Regina, the manic-depressive hypnotherapist—had ended, and now he was getting back out there, trying to meet some new people.
Scott was happy that Anne had a strong resemblance to her photos, which wasn’t always the case with Internet dating. Since his divorce, Scott had gone on dates with women who’d claimed to be around his age, but turned out to be older than his mother. Things took a sharp turn for the worse when Anne spent the first ten minutes of the date taking about her bad divorce and how much she hated her ex-husband, and the next ten minutes going on about the businesses she was planning to go into “someday”—jewelry design, real estate, Reiki—and of course how she wanted to write a memoir of her divorce because she had “so many crazy stories to tell.” Currently, despite all of her grand plans, she didn’t seem to be doing much of anything— well, except hating her ex.
Scott had barely said anything about himself. He was trying to come up with a good excuse to get away, but she was only halfway through her iced coffee. He thought it would be rude to make some excuse and leave now, but it would be so easy. He had his Ant-Man suit on under his clothes, which gave him the perfect date-going-bad escape hatch: He could activate the suit’s Pym Particles and poof, practically disappear.
“Okay, biggest fears,” she said.
“Excuse me?” Scott asked.
“What’s your biggest fear?” she said. “Go first.”
Scott didn’t feel like playing this game—he just wanted to get home, hang with his daughter. But at least they weren’t talking about Anne’s divorce anymore.
“Hmm, that’s a tough one,” he said. “I guess you don’t want to hear the obvious ones like death, nuclear holocausts, alien invasions.”
“Are you afraid of those things?”
Scott smiled, but she remained serious. Apparently, she didn’t get sarcasm—strike two. He took a big sip of his coffee, hoping it would encourage her to drink hers faster, but her coffee was stuck at the same level like a clogged hourglass.
“Then what are you afraid of?” she asked.
“Okay, failing,” Scott said. “I’m afraid of failing.”
“Ooh, good one,” she said. “Like those dreams you have when you’re in high school and there’s a big test and you’re afraid of failing. I hate those.”
“I was thinking about it more psychologically,” Scott said. “Like failing as a man, failing as a father.”
“Oh,” she said, and then, brightening: “You wanna hear my biggest fear?”
“Go for it,” Scott said.
“My biggest fear is that the next guy I marry will be exactly like my ex.”
So much for not talking about her divorce anymore.
“Really?” Scott asked. “That’s your biggest fear?”
“You mentioned psychology,” she said. “Well, I believe people fall back into old patterns. Date the same people, make the same mistakes again and again. I mean, take you, for instance. What do I know about you? I know your name’s Scott, you have a daughter, and you’re kind of cute, but what do I really know? You know what I mean? You could be hiding something, some dark secret. I mean nobody tells everybody everything on the first date, right? So there could be, I don’t know, like some big bombshell, a deal-breaker, that you tell me about on date five—and by that time I’m getting in deep, emotionally involved, and kicking myself for not realizing it sooner. Red flags, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m afraid I won’t pick up on the red flags. What about you?”
Scott was distracted. Kind of cute? What’s up with that? He said, “I’m sorry, what was the question?”
“What’s your darkest secret?” Anne asked.
Had that been her question?
“Um, wow, that’s a tough one,” Scott said. He had a suit under his clothes that gave him the ability to shrink to the size of an ant while gaining superhuman strength. That qualified as a pretty big secret.
“Come on,” she said. “I know when a man has secrets. You definitely have a past. I can see it in your eyes.”
Oh no—she wasn’t a psychic, was she? After a fling with Emma Frost from the X-Men last year, he’d made a pact with himself: no more mutants, and no more out-there, new-age women. He wanted someone normal, with no drama. Good luck with that in New York, right?
“Okay, I can tell I’m making you uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ll phrase it a different way. What are you hiding? What’s your biggest regret?”
This was easy—his past life of crime. Lately, he’d been doing a good job putting that troubled part of his past behind him, trying to redeem himself by fighting the good fight. But he still felt guilty about some of the things he had done when he was younger, and he preferred not to dredge up those memories—especially on first dates.
“Um, how about you go first on that one?” Scott asked.
“Okay,” she said. “I once stole money from a homeless guy.”
“You’re kidding me,” Scott said, trying to imagine this neurotic downtown mom stealing money from a guy on the street. For the first time in the date, he was intrigued.
“Nope,” she said. “I’m serious. It happened in Amherst—you know, where UMass is? That’s where I went to college. Anyway, I was drunk with my friends, and one of them dared me to take a dollar out of the guy’s cup. So I did it and ran away and felt incredibly guilty. I looked for the guy the next day, but I couldn’t find him. I thought I’d see him eventually—but, nope, I never saw him again. I still carry the dollar with me wherever I go, just in case I run into him.”
“Wow, that’s, um, really unusual,” Scott said.
“How about you?”
“Nope, never mugged a homeless guy. I hope to check that one off my bucket list someday.”
She didn’t laugh or even smile. Sarcasm definitely wasn’t her forte. Strike three.
She asked, “Have you ever stolen anything?”
There were times in life when honesty wasn’t an option.
So he went with, “Hasn’t everybody?”
“Not everybody,” she said. “I’m sure, like, Mother Theresa never stole anything.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Scott said. “When she was six years old there was probably a cookie jar with a cookie she wasn’t supposed to eat inside it, and I bet she ate it.”
“Cookies don’t count,” Anne said.
“I think stealing cookies should definitely be countable.” Scott smiled. “Can I be honest with you about something?”
“I love honesty,” she said.
Of course she did. Everybody loves honesty until they hear something they don’t want to hear.
“I don’t think this date’s going very well,” he said.
“You don’t?” She seemed hurt.
“Come on,” he said. “You don’t honestly think this is working, do you?”
“Well,” she said. “I’m not really sure.”
“You can’t connect with somebody if you’re looking for red flags from the get-go. Connections just happen.”
“You’re right. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I always do that, get too pushy. I mean not always and not too. It’s not that being a little pushy is good, either. I don’t know what I mean. I don’t go out on a lot of dates—I guess that’s the problem. Actually I haven’t gone out on any dates at all since my divorce, so maybe that’s part of the—”
“Totally understandable,” Scott said. “Also, I’d suggest not talking about your divorce so much. I mean not upfront. To be honest, it’s kind of a turnoff.”
“I do talk about my divorce a lot, don’t I?” she said. “I just said it again. I don’t know why I do that. I mean, I’m totally over my divorce. I just did it again. Oh my god, I can’t stop. I messed up the whole date, didn’t I? It’s just nervous energy. I’m on Xanax. I know that means I should be less neurotic, but normally I’m even more neurotic than this. That’s what my ex used to say. Oh my god, I just did it again. Can we start over?”
“Fine,” Scott said. “Let’s start over.”
“My name’s Anne with an e but my friends call me Annie.”
Scott laughed.
“See,” he said. “Now that was natural.”
Maybe she’d been right about her nervous energy getting the best of her, because now she seemed much calmer. They started to have an actual conversation. They shared stories about their kids, talked about movies and plays they’d seen lately, art exhibits they’d checked out. Scott wasn’t monitoring the level of her coffee anymore—he was having a good time.
“Well, it seems like we got off to a rusty start,” he said, “but can I be honest with you about something else?”
“Oh no, not again,” she said.
“I’m really starting to like you,” he said.
She blushed a little and said, “That’s sweet.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. Wow, talk about going from zero to sixty. This date had gone from life support to one of the best dates Scott had been on since he’d split with his ex. He was already thinking about their next meeting—he would suggest that they get together again later this week. Maybe he’d take her out to his favorite tapas place in the West Village.
Then Scott noticed the ant crawling along the table near their interlocked hands. He wasn’t surprised. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, ants were attracted to him when he had on his Ant-Man suit, even when he wasn’t shrunk down. And lately ants came over to him even when he left the suit home, locked in a safe. He wasn’t sure how or why the ants wanted to be around him. Perhaps it was because he’d been exposed to so many Pym Particles—the main component in the shrinking gas that allowed him to become Ant-Man—that the gas had had a permanent effect on him. Or maybe the ants simply were able to sense an ant-friendly nature in Scott’s essence. Scott was continually amazed by the intelligence of the tiny insects. He didn’t get why society as a whole scorned ants, associated them with filth and infestations, and considered them an overall nuisance.
Anne noticed the ant, grimaced, and said, “Oh my god, this is so disgusting! Starbucks is a huge corporation; they should have standards.” Then she took a napkin and raised her hand to squash it.
Scott grabbed her wrist before she could kill the ant and said, “Don’t ever do that.”
“What?” Anne sounded confused.
“Knowingly kill an ant,” Scott said. “I mean, it’s one thing if you step on one on the street by accident—some tragedies can’t be avoided—but when you do it on purpose, it’s like murder.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”
“Let go of me, please.”
Scott let go of her wrist. Well, so much for this being a great date.
Scott knew that his reaction had to seem bizarre to her, even crazy, but he couldn’t help asking, “What do you have against ants?”
“Excuse me?”
“You were about to murder that ant,” he said.
“Murder?”
“Kill, extinguish—however you want to put it.”
“It’s just an ant.”
“Is that what you’d say if I went up to your dog or your cat and tried to kill it? It’s just a cat? It’s just a dog?”
“Please tell me this is a joke,” she said.
Scott, more upset now, said, “So you were lying on your profile when you said you love animals and believe in—how did you put it? Oh right, ‘kindness to others.’ This is how you express kindness? I mean, stealing the dollar from the homeless guy—okay, you were a drunk college kid. But now you’re an adult, a mother. What’s your excuse this time?”
“If this is a joke, it’s not funny,” she said.
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“Making such a big deal about some stupid ant.”
“Ants are not stupid!”
Now all of Starbucks was their audience.
“They’re not?”
“Ants have bigger brains, proportionally to their weight, than humans.”
Scott didn’t know whether this was true, but he’d said it with assurance.
“A lot of good that does them,” Anne said. “Who cares about ants?”
“I’d rather read a memoir of an ant than a memoir of your divorce,” Scott said.
People in the coffee bar were looking over, wondering what the fuss was about. Now there were a few more ants crawling on the table. They had sensed the tension and possible danger, and were coming to help Scott and their fellow ant.
Anne noticed the ants, too, and stood up, putting on her jacket. She said, “You have serious problems, you know that?”
“You almost murder an innocent ant, and I have problems?”
“An innocent ant? That’s it—I’ve had it. This is officially the worst date ever.”
“You got that right.”
“I’m going home.”
“Yeah, well, don’t kill any ants there, either.”
She was about to leave, but then she turned back toward Scott. “See? I was right about patterns,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you so much for revealing your true self on date number one. Saved me a lot of time.”
She was rushing toward the exit.
“Never hurt an ant again.”
“Freak!” she shouted.
“Assassin!” he shouted back.