Adventures of a Salsa Goddess (18 page)

“I respect my father,” Javier told me, “but he’s distant, and never shows his emotions. It’s my mother and sister that I’m really close to. You know, my mother never made it past the sixth grade, but she’s the smartest woman I know. When I have a problem it’s her I go to
.”

“What about Eliseo?”

“We live together, and Eliseo works with my father and me a few days a week, but we’re not close,” he said, and I could tell it was a subject that bothered him. “We’re very different.”

“Well, you know what they say, you choose your friends, not your relatives,” I suggested, as much for myself as for Javier.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “I know I’m lucky, but sometimes I get lonely and think about how nice it would be to share my life with the right woman.”

Was he thinking about his ex-girlfriend Isabella, I wondered?
I knew I could’ve asked him, as a friend, but I didn’t want another woman to intrude on our conversation.

“Have you ever been married, Sam?” he asked.

“Almost, a few years ago,” I said, and then told him about David and about the incident that had ended our relationship after I’d brought up wanting to get pregnant. It was the first time I’d talked about it with anyone but a close girlfriend.

“So you’d like to have children?” he asked.

“Yes, with the right guy. How about you?”

“Definitely,” he said. “I love kids. I’ve got some friends I visit in Miami whenever I get the chance. The last time I was there, their one-year-old son fell asleep on my chest. It was the most wonderful feeling.”

A wave of emotions washed through me. Whenever men talked about wanting to be fathers, my insides turned to mush and the maternal lightbulb in my brain snapped on. Humans were just animals, but it was annoying all the same that I couldn’t control these feelings.

It was close to midnight when we wandered back toward my apartment. We took the path near the Milwaukee Art Museum. The moon was full, reflected into the inky black water of the lake, and it had finally cooled off to a comfortable temperature.

When Javier unexpectedly grabbed my hand and twirled me quickly three times, I lost my balance and fell into him. Instead of letting go he took me into his arms and we began to slow dance. The music from all of the stages coming from Summerfest joined together sounding a bit like a symphony warming up before a concert. I clung to him, remembering high school dances where I’d once moved like this to “Color My World.” Javier stopped moving and pulled apart from me, keeping his hands on my waist.

“Sam, it’s so easy to be with you,” he said. “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

He leaned in to kiss me and before I knew it our arms were around each other and we were pulling and tugging, trying to get closer and closer although our bodies were already smashed together. This went on, for how long I wasn’t sure, but then a million thoughts entered my brain at once, my assignment, my mother’s expectations, Robert, and the possibility that Javier was still in love with Isabella and just biding his time with me.

I pulled away from him. “Javier, hey, I better get home, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

He walked me home and I said good-bye to him outside of my building with a brief kiss to his lips. I needed to straighten out everything that was going on in my brain before things got too carried away.

Love Resume

A married friend in her early forties who isn’t completely happy with her spouse told me that if she had to do it all over again, she’d go about looking for a husband as if she were searching for a job. When a man decides to get married he pursues finding a wife just like a job search. He asks all of his friends and relatives to set him up. He may place a personal ad or even join a dating service. In other words, he takes action. Women, on the other hand, tend to remain passive.

This gave me the idea for the love resume.

Think of the emotional traumas, the endless pussyfooting about past romances and future objectives that could be avoided with this streamlined approach. Everything would be there in black and white. Candidates for potential romance would submit a cover letter, photograph, and love resume to you in advance. You could peruse these documents in your leisure over a glass of merlot, share them with family and friends, and then summon the promising
applicants in for a face-to-face interview, based on carefully selected questions such as:

“Describe a typical first date
.”

“I see from your resume that you and C
indy dated for four years. What were your greatest strengths and weaknesses during that relationship?”

“I’m concerned about the eighteen-month gap between Rachel and Susan. Were you involved in any extracurricular activities during that time period?”

“Describe a romantic situation in which you lost your temper and how you handled it?"

“How would you be an asset to my life if I selected you as my romantic partner?”

“Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years?” (If he doesn’t say married with a couple of kids and madly in love with you, you can stop wasting your time and terminate the interview right then and there.)

“How confident are you that you can successfully perform the duties of this position and why?”

“With all of your experience, how do you feel about taking an entry-level position with me?”

This is a loaded question and things could get a little dicey here. If he’s a gentleman, he’ll gently deflect the question with humor. But he could take the lecherous approach and reduce his answer to a
blatant sexual come-on like, “Entry? I prefer the rear myself.” However, this question should weed out the perverts.

If and only if the interview is going extremely well would you ask the all-important gonad-shriveling question: “What are your views on monogamy?” If at this point he should start to fidget or suddenly seem engrossed in trying to determine if your walls are painted ecru or eggshell, this is a bad sign. If he says, “I think it’s
great!” you know he’s lying since there’s not a man on the planet who is going to tell you his honest views on this question because there’s not a man on the planet that thinks monogamy is a good thing. Most men view monogamy with the same grim determination with which one faces the prospect of months of painful dental procedures to correct receding gum lines. It’s not that it’s impossible for him, it’s just that he doesn’t like it. After all, even Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart.

So what is the purpose of this question? Not to find out his views, but to tell him yours. This is your opportunity to make it clear that any transgressions in this area are grounds for immediate dismissal.

Finally, no matter how promising the candidate, NEVER offer him a position on the spot. Always ask for at least three references.

I walked into the Chinese restaurant and looked across, tables laden with bowls of sweet and sour soup and plates of moo goo gai pan and egg rolls, searching for my group. The low hum of pleasant conversation bubbled up from the dining room, which was filled with happy couples, families with children, and, oh God, there they were, my group, three women and three men. This was going to be much worse than I’d thought.

Should I yell “fire?” No, people get arrested for things like that, and I hated to see everyone’s dinner getting cold until the fire department and police figured out it was only a hoax and led me away in handcuffs.

Should I just leave? Yes! I turned toward the door, stopping just as my hand touched the handle. The years of etiquette lessons my mother had forced me to attend in high school had finally paid off. I never could tell the dessert from the salad fork, but it had seeped into my consciousness that it was generally not
considered polite to make a dinner engagement and leave before you’ve at least said hello, and then faked an emergency. I turned back and, steeling myself, marched over to them.

“Oh, you must be Samantha Jacobs,” said a pretty blond woman in her mid-thirties, who looked nine months pregnant. “I’m so glad you found us!”

We shook hands, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the middle of the table. As I sat down across from the woman heavy with child, she completely disappeared behind the centerpiece, a frighteningly realistic two-foot-high stuffed owl, with yellow eyes that drilled into my own.

“Does anyone ever ask why you have an ow
l on the table?” I asked no one in particular.

“Strangely enough, many people do,” chirped a brunette with a pageboy haircut and big gold hoop earrings. “We put it on the table for our get-togethers so new Mensa members like you can find us.”

When Sally told me that I had to take an IQ test before leaving New York, I wondered if Elaine was trying to gather some independent proof that I was smart enough to find a man. Since even plants were able to reproduce and, in my experience, being smart was usually not a plus given the fragile egos of men, at first I couldn’t understand why, until Sally had explained that Elaine wanted me to join Mensa. For years, Elaine Daniels has been a member of this international society for people with IQs in the top 2 percent of the population. But the critical factor was Mensa’s official website, which claimed that many marriages have been made among Mensans.

Patty, the pregnant woman, poked her head around the owl and smoothly began the round of introductions, as if talking around a great horned stuffed owl centerpiece was something
she did every day of her life. She explained that she was a Montessori schoolteacher, and then gestured to the empty chair next to her, saying that her husband would be a little late. She had no sooner finished speaking than he appeared.

“This is my husband, Zack,” Patty said, with a proud grin as she patted her bulging belly. “Zack, meet our newest member, Samantha Jacobs.”

“Zack?” I couldn’t believe it. I felt my mouth hanging open.

“It’s nice to meet you, what is your name again?” Zack asked, casting me a desperate look as if to say, “I’ll give you my first-born child if you will just keep your mouth shut.”

Well if it wasn’t Mr. Gorgeous-No-I’m-Not-Married-Midwest-Express-Pilot who picks up women on Bradford Beach, flirts with them madly, tells them he’s single, and then turns out to be married. Shades of my mini-affair in Peru with Wayne the entomologist resurfaced. I felt sick at the thought that it had almost happened again. What was with these assholes who apparently thought nothing of cheating on their pregnant wives?

“Do you guys know each other?” asked his wife, Patty, her smile fading as she looked from one of us to the other.

I paused. A bead of sweat broke out on Zack’s forehead. “No, no,” I protested. “For a moment I thought Zack was someone I’d met recently ... on
Bradford
Beach.”

“Zack is an airplane steward,” said Patty, who grabbed on to his arm and beamed at him like a lovesick teenager, at which he wiped his forehead and sat down.

“Samantha, what would you like to know about our little group?” Patty continued with her hands securely fastened to Zack’s arm, after the rest of the introductions were over. If only she knew what I knew, she’d have him surgically attached to her body or have the words
I’m married
tattooed across his forehead.

“Is this everyone in the Milwaukee chapter of Mensa?” I asked, doing a quick check by which I could see that all of the members here, except a guy seated next to me, were married.

“There are about one hundred Mensans,” Patty said, “but we’re the only active members in the Milwaukee chapter.” Mensans. If you say it over and over again it begins to sound like the kind of disease that no one discusses in polite company, like having gonorrhea or scabies. “Did you hear? Samantha has mensans.” “Oh, God no! She didn’t seem like the type to me.”

“We meet at a different restaurant once a month,” Patty continued. “Then two weeks later we have our official get-togethers. We usually have a guest speaker who talks on various subjects. Last month it was chaos theory. But pretty much we Mensans get together as an excuse to eat
.”

“Speaking of food
can I get the recipe for that artichoke dip you made, Selma?” asked a woman for whom the expressions
granola
and
New Age
must have been coined. She had mousy brown hair down to her waist, no makeup, and wore a loose conglomeration of gauzy robes in drab olives and browns. And I was willing to bet my next paycheck there was a pair of Birkenstocks on her feet.

So much for chaos theory. This question prompted a lively debate of the pros and cons of using low-fat versus regular sour cream for the artichoke dip.

I turned to the lone single man in the chair next to me, John Krest, a thin, dark-haired man with features so sharp that they might have been carved out of granite.

“So, John, you’re a writer?” I began, hoping the two of us might plunge into a matter a bit weightier than sour cream dip.

“If I had my way, people wouldn’t have jobs,” he responded, as his left eye wandered over my shoulder. There was a lost look about him, as if he were searching for his keys or had to be somewhere but couldn’t quite remember where.

“Our society should promote people’s innate talents and passions,” he continued, as though poised behind a podium. “If they like to quilt, then they should become quilters and give their quilts away to people who need them. If they like to sing, they should
become singers and perform free concerts for whoever wants to attend.”

“What if they just like to smoke pot and get stoned?” I asked him.

“I haven’t worked out all the kinks yet,” he said, looking a bit alarmed and rubbing the bridge, of his nose with his finger as the table discussion moved on to favorite barbeque recipes.

“Are you working on any particular projects, John?”

“I’m writing a book. It’s about a leaf.”

Had he said Leif, as in Eriksson, leaf, as in attached to a tree, or leaf, as in leave me alone?

“The leaf falls from the tree into the river,” he said dramatically, “and as the leaf is floating down the river it asks the birds and the fishes, ‘Who am I? What am I?’ And every creature the leaf encounters tells the leaf that they don’t know what it is.”

“And then what happens?”

“Finally, when the leaf reaches the ocean, it realizes it is just a leaf and it is okay with that, and then it floats out to sea and a seagull eats it.”

I’d just taken a swallow of green tea. It took every scintilla of willpower I possessed to not spit it directly into the owl’s beak.

“How long is your book going to be?” I asked him, unable to resist yet another question. I assumed his answer would be in the neighborhood of, oh, perhaps two pages, if he’d really stretched it.

“So far it’s about fifty thousand words.”

“Wow! You must have studied a lot of philosophy,” I said.

“No, actually I think Aristotle and Plato are stupid.”

* * *

The next afternoon I was home lounging on my balcony, reading a book about bachata, when Lessie called me.

“Turn on the TV now!” she said excitedly. “Channel twelve.” Fifteen seconds later I was looking at Oprah Winfrey holding up a copy of the May 27 issue of
Tres Chic
magazine with the cover story: “Will Our Mystery Woman Defy the Statistics and Find Mr. Right?”

“Oh no,” I said as I sank into the couch. “I’ll call you back, Lessie.”

“With us today is Harvard-educated sociologist Dr. Victoria Huber, author of
The Single Professional Woman Over Forty: The Hopeless Search for Happily Ever After
,” Oprah continued. “Dr. Huber, it’s your assertion based upon your extensive studies of the demographics of the single population in our country, that a never-married professional woman over forty has a better chance of winning a seven-figure lottery jackpot than of ever getting married. Are things really that bleak?”

“I could have just as easily said she has a better chance of giving birth to a set of identical quadruplets or being the first person to walk
on Mars,” said the unsmiling Dr. Huber, who looked like a man in drag. “Yes, things are that bleak.”

“So does the Mystery Woman have any hope at all, Doctor?” asked Oprah.

“I don’t know about hope,” Dr. Huber said grimly, “but I do know about numbers. I’m afraid the statistics would say no.”

“I don’t want to accept that!” said Oprah. The audience clapped and cheered. “Let’s ask the audience, does anyone here
know a never-married, professional woman who got married after the age of forty?”