THREE

By six o’clock that evening I had finished the first coat of Oops paint in the living room. Each wall was a different neutral, earthy tone. I’d cleaned up some of the clutter but had left the furniture in the middle of the floor. Although peace and calm had yet to fill the space, I’d done enough for one day. I’d been listening for signs of Noah downstairs. Except for some blasting of Jimmy Buffet, I hadn’t heard anything. It was a miserable feeling, both yearning for and hating him.

I warmed up my favorite junk food for dinner, a frozen puff-pastry pie filled with spinach and feta, and took a huge slice to my bedroom. I positioned myself cozily in bed and ate my million-calorie dinner while I watched a rerun marathon of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Except for the homosexual thing, that Kyan would make a wonderful boyfriend. I almost cried as he gently and sensitively convinced a straight man to remove his horrendous toupee and reveal his bald head to his family. Even when the cast returned for their second season with terrible new hairdos, I forgave them because they had accomplished their mission of correcting the wrongs, fashion and otherwise, of straight men everywhere.

I’d have given my entire supply of beautifying lotions and potions to have had the forethought to stock my fridge with pastries from the North End. The only other cheer-up food I had were some chocolate-covered Oreos, which, although not Italian delicacies, did momentarily take the edge off my heartache. By ten o’clock, when another newly made-over straight guy had shared his new look with family and friends, I was exhausted. I shut the television off, lay down to go to sleep, and promptly developed a horrible case of insomnia.

I’d gone through bouts of it before. It used to afflict me almost every Sunday before school or work. I’d be awake until four or five in the morning, tossing with nerves and anxiety, sweating, and crying from exhaustion. I’d count the few hours I had left to sleep and worry about how I’d function the next day. Tonight, my mind raced with the fear that I’d live the rest of my life in my zany-colored condo above Noah, alone with my socially challenged cat and an unreliable coffeemaker.

My heart started pounding, and I grew more and more frustrated with myself. Why couldn’t I sleep? Anxiety flooded my brain, memories of mistakes I’d made and fears of mistakes I would undoubtedly make. I remembered the embarrassment I’d felt at the age of seven when my mother had caught me stealing a Snickers bar from a convenience store. I thought of the time in tenth grade when I’d failed a pop quiz in French class, where I usually got As. My teacher had written “Mauvais!” with an accompanying frowning face at the top of my paper. Even the checkout incident at Home Depot!

Then my brain started rehashing memories of relationships and rejections. Like, there was the day I had finally broken up with Sean. He had loved me so intensely, and for whatever reason, I just hadn’t loved him back enough. I had broken up with him three times in the two years we had dated, each time getting back together with him because I hadn’t been able to tolerate the pain of being apart, the anguish I had caused him, and the unhappiness I had caused myself.

We had made plans to move in together, and after avoiding apartment hunting for weeks, I’d gone to see a therapist friend of mine, Debby.

“Look,” she’d pointed out, “Sean has become more like a brother to you than a boyfriend. And you don’t sleep with your brother.” She’d paused. “At least you’re not supposed to.”

Deciding that I didn’t want a life of brotherly love, I called Sean and, in cowardly fashion, ended things on the phone. I hadn’t wanted the burden of seeing his face and watching his heart break.

I pulled the pillow down tightly over my ears, as if I could block out the memory of his angry words. “You’re not doing this to me over the phone. I’m coming over,” Sean had said in a panic. He had raced over to my place, and I hadn’t even had the decency to look at him. Instead, for the twenty minutes he’d been there, I’d kept my face buried in my hands, but I hadn’t been able to stop crying and shaking because I was tearing him apart. I forget most of his words, but I remember hearing him pace across my floor. I’d just kept telling him how sorry I was. He’d punched the wall, walked to me, kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I love you.” Then he’d left quickly, and I’d sobbed on the couch for two hours.

Maybe I should have stayed with Sean, who’d loved me so much, who’d been such a great guy, who’d wanted to marry me and live happily ever after. Why I hadn’t loved him that way, too, I just didn’t know. I replayed the scenario in my head until I couldn’t stand it any longer. When I finally sat up and looked at the clock, it was one in the morning. I tossed myself back down on the bed and spent the next two hours in an insomniac search for comfort: smoothing the sheets, adjusting the pillows, trying to relax and clear my head of everything negative. At three, I gave up, turned on the lights, and went to the computer.

And visited the Back Bay Dates Web site.

Fatigue made me feel as if I’d been chugging cheap beer; it loosened my inhibitions and nudged me in directions I wouldn’t otherwise have turned. Opening the Web page, I could see why people used Back Bay Dates. The site wasn’t filled with idiotic photos of happy couples strolling along a beach flanked by a fabulous sunset. There were no flashing hearts, no bridal bouquets bouncing across the page, no promises of perfect love, no matrimonial guarantees.

On the contrary, everything was professional and streamlined. All right, I did have to fork over $39.95 for the perks of membership, but would I want to date someone who was too cheap to invest so little in a future with me? Of course not. I was worth the money. I was weeding out cheapskates by joining this fee-for-service site rather than one of the free-for-all-freaks sites. So I punched in my credit card number and silently thanked dead Uncle Alan for funding my foray into modern dating. After debating user names for twenty minutes and deciding that there were no cool user names, I settled for GourmetGirl.

I answered approximately three hundred questions regarding my leisure activities, basic physical attributes, and hopes for a partner’s qualities. I struggled over the first thirty questions as I debated the pros and cons of each response. I mean, if I said, “Yes, I am spontaneous and enjoy flying by the seat of my pants,” would I attract a chaotic and untrustworthy man with no sense of commitment? Or would I meet a man who would surprise me with a midnight flight to Rome to dine al fresco at his favorite hidden jewel of a restaurant on pasta made by a cute little old Italian lady who would proclaim us a match made in paradiso? I eventually gave up wrestling with my responses and just clicked my mouse on the multiple-choice answer that seemed most me. I then previewed my profile, posted myself in Women Seeking Men, and set up my Back Bay Dates mailbox. Members could browse one another’s profiles, even search by various categories, and if interested, e-mail the person at a BBD mailbox, all anonymously. I could always back out of this lunacy by ignoring my mailbox or canceling my account.

I had nothing to lose by reading profiles. I checked out dozens of men and discovered that BBD was not the cyber meat market I had imagined. Most of the profiles read like mine: they described relatively normal people looking for love. Some of the men had even included pictures, often images that eliminated some sweet-sounding guys. Even though I was becoming a politically correct and open-minded social work student, I still wanted a hottie.

I finally chose three profiles, none for any particularly good reason except maybe the lack of self-descriptions such as, “I enjoy extreme skateboarding and body piercing for pleasure.” I sent each man a BBD “postcard,” which was the site’s way of letting someone know you were interested in a profile. I had a nasty case of buyer’s remorse after I hit Send, but was so tired that the twinge of doubt didn’t keep me awake.

I woke at ten on Sunday morning to the smell of burning coffee, welcome reassurance that some things in life were dependable. I cracked my front door, listened in the hall for signs of Noah, and then rushed down the stairs to the front hall and stole his New York Times—the least he owed me. I sat at the kitchen table and tentatively looked out my window. No blondes today, I was relieved to note. I sipped my coffee, devoured an egg bagel with lox spread, and started on the Times crossword puzzle.

Somewhere around 28-Across, I was struck by the realization that I’d done something hideous. Oh God! Back Bay Dates. What could I have been thinking? I was not supposed to do anything drastic in my postbreakup state of mind, and there I had gone ahead and joined a freaking dating service. I leaped to the computer and found the site. What was my user name? This was worse than waking up to a wretched hangover and remembering you’ve spent the previous night dancing on a bar counter to “Oh, What a Night” with your skirt yanked up way too high and your bra straps hanging down your arms. I looked around my desk and saw Gourmet-Girl and my password, NoCheapThrills, scrawled on a sheet of paper.

I logged in, and, yes, I had indeed posted myself on Back Bay Dates. Shit. Maybe I could delete my information before anything horrendous happened. I navigated around the page and was just about to cancel my account when I noticed that one message was waiting for me.

No, no, no! I’d been so bleary eyed last night I couldn’t even remember whom I’d written to or what I’d said. I clicked on my mailbox and was terrified to see a message from someone called DinnerDude who had apparently read my message that morning. I groaned and shut my eyes in the superstitious hope that the message would evaporate. I opened my eyes.

Damn. DinnerDude’s message was still there. He thought our foodie user names were pretty funny, a comment that completely ticked me off since I couldn’t stand people who referred to themselves as foodies. He’d read in my profile that I was a “culinary whore,” a phrase he thought was hysterical. I couldn’t have written that, could I? The ill-chosen term implied that plied with the right risotto, I might just rip off my clothes and sprawl across the dinnerware to show my gratitude. My prospective date went on to write that he was thinking of investing in a new restaurant, Essence, and was going there this evening to check it out again and to speak with the owner and the chef. Because I was so into food, would I like to meet him there tonight?

Suddenly, the man sounded interesting! And he apparently had money to fling about in investments. Perhaps what had doomed my previous romantic escapades had been food incompatibility! My relationship failures hadn’t been failures at all, but Mother Nature’s way of preventing the propagation of culinarily challenged people, natural selection aimed at eliminating poor palates from the gene pool. All along, I’d been meant for a man who shared my love of wonderful food. This DinnerDude had great possibilities. We could become the new hot Boston couple who invested together in zillions of spectacular restaurants and were written up in Boston Magazine as the premiere patrons of local eateries. With unusual confidence and positive thinking, I wrote an e-mail agreeing to meet DinnerDude at Essence. I then sent Heather a message saying she ought to start organizing my wedding.

The day planned itself. I had to clean myself up and find something sexy and yet appropriate to wear to dinner. My face was puffy from all of yesterday’s crying and late-night computer activities, and I generally looked pretty disgusting. I called Adrianna and left another pleading message, this time yelling incoherently about e-mail and restaurant dates. Okay, what would my fashionable friend tell me to do first? The solution leaped out at me: free makeover, of course!

I tossed on jeans and a fitted V-neck T-shirt, raced down the fire escape, didn’t even glance at Noah’s window, hopped in the Saturn, and sped down Route 9 to the Chestnut Hill Mall and charged toward the Lancôme counter.

A woman named Dana greeted me and listened while I explained yesterday’s mess in excruciating detail, ending with the heinous reality that I would have to see Noah the Jerk again, and probably soon, and that under no circumstances was he to be allowed to witness me looking so gross. And that I had this blind date tonight and better look damn good. Forty-five minutes later, I left the mall with a bag full of gorgeous products and words of encouragement from Dana.

I arrived home to find a gigantic bag outside my side door. I’d never left anything at Noah’s, so it couldn’t be the traditional returning of items belonging to an ex. I read the card taped to the bag: “Chloe, I’m not sure what is going on, but I can tell you’re having a wild weekend. Sorry I haven’t been able to call. I’m working the rest of today, but we’ll talk tomorrow. Thought you might need something special to wear … for an Internet date?!? Love, Adrianna.”

I took the bag inside, ripped it open, and pulled out the ultimate beautiful dress: straight cut, midcalf length, low across the chest, with thin straps over the shoulders. This stunner was made of some luxuriously silky material in a deep periwinkle blue. I looked at the label sewn in the back and smiled. Adrianna, it read. I knew she’d been slaving over this dress for weeks now: I’d suffered being stuck with pins the numerous times she’d had me model it for her. Ade had been working on a few designs that she hoped to sell to her posh hair clientele, and I’d been secretly coveting this creation during all those fitting sessions. The dress was perfect for the restaurant tonight—fancy but not too formal, sexy but not slutty. She’d even given me matching heels that tied around the ankle, and a pair of sheer nylons. I loved my best friend. I called her cell phone, poured out praise for the dress and thanks for her generosity, and said we’d talk the next day.

I checked my Back Bay Dates mailbox and found a note from my mystery man to confirm our plans for tonight and to tell me his name, which was Eric. The service had advised against sharing any identifying information until we were comfortable, and it said to meet in a public place. Eric didn’t give a last name but did go on to write that he had blond hair, was six feet tall, and would meet me at our table, which would be reserved under his first name. I wrote back that my name was Chloe and that I was five-five, had red hair, and looked forward to meeting him.

I puttered around the house for the rest of the afternoon: tidying and organizing, moving furniture, and paving the way for a new life of order and simplicity. Any woman who cleans her house before a date has the secret hope that the man she’s going out with will return with her to her spotless abode. According to some women, though, if you prepare for intimate encounters by shaving your legs, cleaning the apartment, and buying condoms, then absolutely nothing will happen; to guarantee a hot night of passion, you need hairy legs, a messy house, and faith in the rhythm method. Screw that. Clean-shaven neat freaks on the pill have sex, too. But my messy, half-painted walls might even things out in my favor. God, I’d love to have someone’s car parked behind mine all night. That would stick it to Noah. Not that I was in the habit of one-night stands with strange men. Still, I could make a sacrifice this one time if it meant causing Noah any unpleasantness whatsoever.

A full two and a half hours before I was to meet Eric, I began my preparations. I yanked down all my hair supplies for a repeat of yesterday’s marathon styling session and then hopped in the shower to scrub and douse myself with all my products. I even shaved about seven times. Clean and buffed, I turned off the faucet and wrapped my hair in a towel.

I have never understood the policy on applying lotion after a shower. On the one hand, you’re supposed to apply lotion to damp skin immediately after showering, and on the other hand, you’re forbidden to apply lotion after shaving because it can irritate the skin. Risking irritation, I slathered on gobs of Sweet Pea Lotion and even rubbed a little in places that a first date theoretically shouldn’t get near. When my hair was finally flatironed and the front clipped back, I dove into the Lancôme bag, spread my glorious cosmetics across the sink, and followed Dana’s application instructions precisely.

Finally, the blue dress and matching shoes. Since I’d been the model for the dress, it fit perfectly and showed off all the right places. I did look pretty good, I had to admit. I sauntered out the back door and down the stairs, off to meet this blond Adonis named Eric who would whisk me off in a romantic whirlwind.

I ran smack into Noah, who was outside watering his puny little plants.

“Hey, gorgeous.” He flashed a hungry smile at me. “Where are you going all dressed up?” As though I could possibly be dolled up for any reason other than to please him. The nerve. I paused on the landing and with a great sense of superiority announced, “First of all, it’s none of your concern. And second, I really don’t want anything to do with you.”

As I stepped past him, he looked at me in some confusion. One of his harem not drooling over him? “All right …” he said slowly, drawing out the words to give himself time to regain his composure. He smiled flirtatiously, as though I were joking.

“Noah, I’m not an imbecile,” I said calmly. “I started my day yesterday by looking out my window to see a blonde tart emerging from your apartment.” Why did I say tart? Who says that? What am I all of a sudden, British?

But Noah’s face fell. Caught.

“Christ, Noah, do you think I don’t have feelings, that it wouldn’t be weird for me? Did you forget that I live upstairs?” I asked cooly.

“Chloe, I’m sorry you saw that, but I did tell you I didn’t want a girlfriend, and you seemed to be okay with that. I guess I should’ve known you’d get hurt.” Pig.

Before he could elaborate on his supposed sympathy for my wounded feelings, I cut him off and nailed him with a lecture on considerate behavior. “You know, I don’t care what you said to me. You don’t get to feel okay about behaving badly because of a technicality. I know you said all the necessary things, but you also acted like you were dating me, like you were interested in me. I don’t care so much about you in particular. What I care about is how little respect you’ve shown for me. I mean, honestly, it’s just rude to parade other women around in front of me. I take responsibility for my part in setting myself up for something like this, but you need to take responsibility, too. You’ve been all cuddly and cute with me, which, in the human world, indicates interest and a certain level of caring. You have an obligation to be careful with people, and you didn’t do that.”

“I’m sorry you see it that way, Chloe,” was his lame response.

“I’m sorry it is that way.” Feeling pretty damn smart, I pivoted sharply and strutted sexily down the steps. Unfortunately, I managed to weaken my first-class moralizing when I reached my car, looked up to see Noah back at work on his plants, and shouted moronically, “You’re no Tom Hanks, you know!”

“Are you sure you—?” started Noah, and I could see he was trying not to laugh.

Dammit, I meant to say Tom Cruise. Although, now that I thought about it, Tom Cruise had turned into a raving lunatic. I’d spent my formative years with Tom Cruise behaving like a normal, gorgeous celebrity and still couldn’t wrap my brain around the new nutjob he’d become.

“Yes,” I stammered. “Tom Hanks. A man known for his upstanding morality and loyalty. He’s been with the same woman for years. Mr. Cruise, on the other hand, ditched his wife, ran off with Penelope, and had a Scientology-laced manic phase in which he jumped on Oprah’s couch and hooked up with Katie Holmes after seeing her supposed work on Dawson’s Creek! Mr. Tom Hanks is a well-behaved citizen with ethics. And you, Noah Bishop, are no Tom Hanks!” Hoping I’d recovered, I ended with, “And I’m going on a date!”

I opened the car door.

“You watch Oprah?” he called down after me.

“Shut up!”

I replayed my talk with Noah on the way to Essence. All in all, not disastrous, minus the severely fouled up Tom Hanks part.

I reached the South End and by the grace of some parking angel managed to find a space. Because it was Labor Day weekend, half of Boston was on the Cape, but I chose to see the parking availability as a good omen. If so, it foretold only short-term luck. What’s more, the good luck was strictly mine and certainly not my blind date’s.