Five

MY ex-husband surprised me. I wasn’t the global coffee hunter, he was. The man had trekked across Africa more times than I’d been to Brooklyn.

“You’re the one who taught me the term,” I told him.

“But you put ubuntu into practice more than anyone I know—outside of the Nguni, anyway.”

Esther threw up her hands. “So what does it mean?”

“It means humanity,” I said.

“More than that . . .” Matt leaned forward. “Ubuntu is a deep-seated belief that humanity is something we owe to one another. How I act toward you is what defines me. Not what I have or what I wear—but how I treat you, how I interact with you.”

“In Africa, it’s also about sharing,” I pointed out. “Generosity of spirit and community. An awareness that we’re all interconnected.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “And that’s why I actually like the dating apps—” He sat back, put his hands behind his head, and grinned. “I can connect with much more ease and frequency.”

Esther snorted. “Too bad everyone swiping doesn’t believe in ubuntu!”

“Forget humanity,” Dante griped. “I’d settle for simple civility. Some of these girls are so arrogant. Right to your face, they start ticking off every single thing that’s ‘wrong’ with you! Like you offended them by showing up and being less than their ideal. And then there’s the potential danger of the instant hookup.”

I frowned. “Danger?”

Dante nodded. “I swiped right on this one girl. She had a great smile and was lots of fun from the start—bubbly, flirty, totally into me. She asked to come back to my place, and I thought I was about to have the greatest night. We started kissing, and then . . .”

Matt’s eyes widened. “And then?”

“She broke off the kiss and ran down a price list.”

“A what?!” I was certain I’d misheard him, but he repeated—

“A price list.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, waving his hand. “That’s happened to me.”

Esther faced Dante. “So what did you do, Baldini? Bite the bullet and pay for it?”

“I told her to leave. That’s when she freaked out and threatened me. Said if I didn’t pay, she’d have her pimp work me over.”

“I hope you called the police!” I said.

Dante shrugged. “At first I didn’t want to—the situation was totally embarrassing. So I tried to reason with her, told her to leave or I’d call the cops. She had a kind of tantrum, kicked the furniture, damaged a painting I was working on . . . so I finally phoned 911. That’s when she ran.” He shook his head. “I thought it was going to be the best night. It was the worst.”

Esther tapped her chin. “You know what, Baldini? I think you just gave me the subject of our next poetry slam.”

“What? How I dodged a pimp beatdown?”

“No! Hookup Horrors. You know, Dating App Disasters.”

Dante grunted. “Yeah, I can see it. Catfishing for Fun and Profit.”

“Catfishing?” I frowned. “I don’t suppose you’re talking about the thing you do with a pole near a well-stocked river.”

“Catfishing is luring someone into a relationship using a fake identity.”

The confounded look on my face spurred Esther into gleefully defining an entire list of terms from the dating app culture. There was—

Breadcrumbing: “When you send flirty messages (crumbs) to keep a person interested without committing to an actual date—the digital age’s version of leading someone on.”

Ghosting: “You end a relationship not by telling the person up front but by killing all contact. You ignore their texts and voice mails, block them from your social media pages, and expect them to ‘get the hint.’”

Benching: “From the sports term, meaning being put on the bench. When a current love interest keeps texting and flirting with you to keep you around, just in case other ‘better’ prospects don’t pan out.”

More terms ensued: Catch and Release, Cushioning, Haunting, Love Bombing, Slow Fade, and Thot, aka “That hoe over there.”

“Goodness.” I shuddered. “We’ve come a long way from ubuntu!”

Shaking my head, I studied Matt, hoping he’d learned something from this conversation, but after decades tramping through the most dangerous coffee-growing regions of the world, he didn’t scare so easily. Instead, he looked distracted and was fidgeting in place—not unlike an addict who needed his fix.

“You know, Matt, after what happened to Richard Crest, you might consider giving swipe-right dating a rest for a while.”

“Richard Crest?!” Matt cried. “How could you imply I have anything in common with that walking, talking asshole of a human being?”

“I only meant—”

“Mr. Boss is right.” Esther shook her finger at me. “He’s nothing like Crest. Last week the guy crushed an NYU grad student at the coffee bar, left the poor girl trembling and in tears. She was in such bad shape, Nancy brought her upstairs to calm her down.”

“You saw this?”

Esther nodded. “Another time, he left a date so upset she threw her latte at his back.”

“You hear that, Clare?” Matt pressed. “That’s not me. I love women. All women. I treat them with respect and affection. The women I meet walk away on a cloud!”

“I know you have a good heart,” I said. “But from what I’ve seen, you’re swiping your screen like mad. You’re tearing through women.”

“I’m not tearing through women any more than they’re tearing through me! I use swipe-to-meet apps, sure—to meet like-minded, sophisticated ladies of legal age who want to hook up, have a good time, and move on.”

“And that sort of casual date makes you feel good?”

“It makes us both feel good. None of the women I’ve met has ever complained, and plenty want a repeat performance. He leaned back and crossed his arms. If I’m not mistaken, one of them is in this very room . . .”

“Oh, please!” I said and changed the subject. (Matt had many shortcomings, and I knew from experience “performance” wasn’t one of them, but his prowess in the bedroom wasn’t the point.) “What do you even talk about on a Cinder date?”

“Food, wine, movies, our drinks, the waiter’s mustache. It doesn’t matter because the conversations never last long.”

“And afterward?”

“We kiss good-bye and go on with our lives.”

“No sharing of thoughts? No baring of souls? No intimacy?”

“Intimacy?” Matt laughed. “They don’t want to know I’m twice divorced or live in a warehouse on the crap end of Brooklyn any more than I want to know about their skinflint boss or their backstabbing coworkers. That’s not why we connected.”

“Connected?” What a word! “How can two people truly connect without intimacy? Be honest, Matt, with your second marriage over, isn’t this swipe-to-meet obsession your way of coping with loneliness?”

“Not everyone is looking for intimacy, Clare. People can enjoy one another’s company without getting too personal, too invasive. Whether you like it or not, Cyndi Lauper’s ’80s manifesto is still true. Sometimes girls just wanna have fun. I’m happy to help them.”

“And if you’re not alone, you’re not lonely, right?”

“Give it up, Sigmund, it is what it is.”

I noticed he was still fidgeting. I crossed my arms. “You’re just dying to check your phone, aren’t you?”

Matt opened his mouth, but the sound I heard didn’t come from him. The voice was female, and it came from the street outside.

A young woman was screaming.