Photo by Clotee Pridgen Allochuku

FIRST INSTALLMENT

The maître d had misunderstood him. Peter wasn’t annoyed she’d already come and gone before he’d even made it to the restaurant; it was that she’d left and was coming back. That she’d allowed him a blissful moment where the burden of performance had been lifted, as if he’d unshouldered the weighted jogging vest his mother had bought him hoping he’d finally “get serious” about being over forty. Gone was any hope of an idyllic near future: alone in his apartment out of his pants, wallowing in buffalo wings and cowardice, rummaging the DVR backlog for his favorite extreme reality shows, the kind where the host basically has to cannibalize himself to survive the last inhospitable terrains left on the planet.

It was the maître d—Peter’s mother loved hearing there were still places with maître d’s—thinking he was doing anyone but himself a favor, who blocked Peter’s view of his own fantasy by handing him the woman’s purse and relaying her message she had to take care of some urgent business but was committed to their evening, hence the leaving behind of her purse.

Blind dates were their own form of inhospitable terrain, Peter thought.

But he took the purse. He surprised himself. This guy who just a minute ago was the picture of a pantless coward making love to barbecue sauce accepting responsibility for a stranger’s personal property. A stranger who was either a very trusting person or, more likely, too crazy to care. Really, what did he know about this woman? Her name, what she did for a living, a fleeting impression of what she looked like. And her taste in handbags—not the “cargo ships” his mother went for, but a sleeker, red leather square with a flap that clasped in the front like an envelope. That was supposed to clasp. That couldn’t clasp, because the purse was overstuffed and something at the top of the pile inside fell out when he tried to figure out how to hold the thing and still hold on to his masculinity. The maître d smiled dumbly at him, maybe seeing in this situation the makings of something romantic. Probably, Peter thought, vaguely aware he might be projecting, the guy was just happy to have released himself of his obligation to the woman. The maître d did pick up what had fallen, a compact case, and carried it with him as he led Peter to a secluded table in the back corner of the restaurant. An intimately lit, lean enough to lean across to kiss kind of table. Not at all close to the nearest exit. Okay, so the guy was a romantic and she wasn’t a complete stranger, red leather purse owning Allison Dawner, marketing consultant, a strawberry blond? with blue eyes? a friend of a friend of his co-worker. Still, he couldn’t vouch for her sanity.

Like it mattered. He almost laughed out loud. They all went to shit in the end anyway. The blind dates, the Internet dates, the meet-up groups that spun out into dates. Even the dates that turned into longer term relationships. How long had any of those shit storms lasted? He guessed six months was his personal record. At the very least this date was beginning unlike any of the others. The maître d wished him good luck and instructed a busboy to bring out a glass of the house red, compliments of the house. Peter discovered he wasn’t immediately envious of the other couples in the restaurant, the ones who didn’t have to perform for each other. Maybe it was the wine, but tonight felt different. So what, he thought, let it be the wine. He was going to enjoy a fresh beginning before it all went to shit.

His mother used to say relationships were a numbers game. He had to keep trying, every failure brought him that much closer to a success. She’d been saying that since he was in high school and she repeated it every Thursday when they got together for chicken salad sandwiches and a few hands of gin rummy. When he’d turned forty she took a harder line. Like she’d set an alarm when he was born and now it was finally going off. Maybe he wasn’t taking good enough care of himself, or maybe he didn’t understand how to treat a woman. Or god something had happened to alter his brain chemistry. She’d read somewhere that it sometimes happened to men in middle age. Should he be on medication? Should he try some of her medication? Peter did his best to explain to her that it took two people to unravel a relationship and each of his doomed unions had been its own particular mess. The only constant was that they never worked out. He guessed he was just unlucky. And maybe stupid, because he kept at it, kept playing the game, hoping the odds would eventually land in his favor. His mother wasn’t convinced. He’d found a baggie with four of her Lexapro secreted inside a pocket of his jogging vest.

The wine tasted like a dessert topping; what Peter’s brain was turning into. Bad idea drinking on an empty stomach. How many of those dates had ended prematurely? He flagged down a waiter and asked for a basket of bread. He had to stop thinking about his mother. If she was on his mind he’d bring her up and how many of those—what was that?—how many of those—something was catching light, irritating his eye.