Jack With a Twist

divorce. Instead, we’re discussing the fact that her mother has been setting her up on a multitude of dates— almost five a week for the past four weeks. This before her divorce is even final. We can’t decide if it’s because Millie thinks that dating other men will send Vanessa flying back to her own estranged husband, or if she’s just trying to get her daughter married off again as quickly as humanly possible. The smart money’s on the former.

“And so he says, ‘I really feel like I should see you home in a taxi.’ Even though we were only two blocks from his apartment and mine was twenty blocks uptown.”

“That’s so sweet!” I say, sipping my Vanilla Coke. Dating in Manhattan can be funny like that—most people don’t have cars, so the most chivalry a girl can hope for is for her date to hail her a taxi at the end of the evening. Taking you home in a taxi makes a man total marriage material, as far as I’m concerned.

“No, it’s not,” she says, dipping a French fry in ketchup, “he picked a place that was two blocks away from his apartment. That’s totally rude.”

You see, Vanessa has never dated in the city before, so she has no idea how hard it is and how often you have to drop your standards and expectations. She met her husband on her first day at Howard University and by senior year, they were engaged. She’s never had to be an adult in the world without her husband standing beside her. She’s never had to go through endless amounts of bad first dates, hopeless blind dates and awkward bar hook-ups. She never wondered, night after night, if she’d ever find the right person. If she was destined to end up alone.

Until now.

So now, at age thirty, she’s doing—for the very first time—what the rest of us did in our twenties. And it makes me wonder: is it better to have struggled for all those years only to finally find love now, like me, or to have found love all those years ago, and then lose it and have to start all over again, like Vanessa? It’s sort of like when you play that morbid game with yourself, wondering whether you’d rather die quickly in an accident without even knowing it was coming, or if you’d rather be ill for a long time first, and get to say goodbye to your loved ones and make peace with your universe.

Is it bad that I’m getting married and I just equated relationships with death?

Anyway, the point is that Vanessa is entering the New York City dating scene for the first time and it’s been a bit of culture shock for her. You see, she was with Marcus, a handsome, charming surgeon, who was always the perfect gentleman. Except, of course, for that one tiny incident where he kissed another woman while married to Vanessa, thus precipitating their divorce, but you know the general point I was trying to make.

“I still think it’s very gentlemanly for him to see you home in a taxi,” I say, taking a bite of my pickle. “And rather out of the ordinary. Usually a guy gets brownie points just for hailing you a cab. Actually getting into one with you and taking the trip to your apartment with you? Call The New York Times because it’s front-page news. Oh, wait, were you annoyed because you thought it meant that he assumed he was coming upstairs?”

“No, you’re missing the point. He didn’t see me home at all,” she says, dipping another fry into the ketchup.

“You just said that he said that he felt like he should see you home.”

“That’s right,” she says, “that is exactly what I said.”

“What am I missing here?”

“He said that he felt like he should see me home,” she says, taking a bite of her burger and then a sip of her Vanilla Coke. “So I said, ‘Oh, that’s so sweet!’”

“It was sweet,” I say, swiping a fry off of her plate.

“And then he said, ‘Oh, but I’m not going to.’”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes,” she says, “You heard that correctly. Then he said, ‘Oh, but I’m not going to.’”

“He did not,” I say, swiping another fry off of her plate and sticking it into my mouth. In my shock over what she was telling me, I even forget to even dip it into the ketchup first.

“Yes,” she says, “he said, ‘I feel like I should see you home…. But I’m not going to.’”

“Charming,” I say, “was he trying to get brownie points under the guise of it being the thought that counted?”

“At least it’s not as bad as the guy who wrote me an e-mail the day after our blind date and said: ‘I know you’ve been out of the dating world for a while, so here are a few pointers….’”

“I thought we agreed never to speak of that again,” I say, taking a sip of my Vanilla Coke, “Anyway, I still think you made that e-mail up.”

“The one thing I learned from all of your years of dating and countless bad date stories,” she said, “is that you just can’t make this stuff up.”

“No,” I say, “you cannot. So what did you do?”

“I said goodnight and hopped into the nearest taxi,” she says. “Isn’t that what you would have done?”

“Yes,” I say, “but then I would have also called my mom to yell at her for setting me up with such a jerk, cried about how depressing my life is, and then had a pint of Häagen Dazs while sitting on the couch watching Blind Date.”

“Oh,” Vanessa says, “I did all of that, too.”

This is why I’m so glad to have Jack, I think, but don’t say out loud.

Or rather, don’t mean to say out loud, but say out loud since I’m on a sugar high from the two Vanilla Cokes I’ve had. When I was single, I used to hate women who said stuff like that out loud to me. How could I have just said that to Vanessa! “Not like he’s that great or anything.”

“You don’t have to say that to make me feel better,” she says, “didn’t we cover this? I can still be happy for you even while going through my divorce.”

“Well, he served me with massive discovery,” I say.

“That makes sense,” she says, “since you’re litigating against him. You totally should have blown it off, though, for wedding dress shopping. I’ve been stuck with your mother alone for three nights in a row.”

“Sorry about that,” I say.

“Strangely,” she says, “I’ve been having a lot of fun with Mimi. She’s had some really great advice.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun with my mom,” I say. “I guess.”

“It would have been more fun with you,” Vanessa says. “Stop working so hard, would you?”

“I will,” I say, “and, anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that I got him back.”

“Are you going to tell me some sort of kinky sex story now?” she asks, slurping the remains of her Vanilla Coke. Our waiter swoops in and grabs her glass for a refill. “Because I may be happy enough for you to hear about wedding stuff, but for a kinky sex story, I just do not have the strength.”

“Here’s your Vanilla Coke,” the waiter says, setting down Vanessa’s Vanilla Coke with a strange look. He lingers for a brief instant, waiting to hear, no doubt, my kinky sex story.

“No,” I say, “I served him with discovery requests.”

“Why the hell did you do that?” Vanessa asks, “are you trying to create work for yourself?”

“No,” I say, “I’m just doing what I would do against any adversary.”

Vanessa puts down her burger in righteous indignation and glares at me. Okay, okay, so I wouldn’t normally do that. I would normally just be trying to settle and make as few billable hours for the client as humanly possible. And when I say “as few billable hours for the client,” I really mean: as little work for myself as humanly possible.

Oh, please. As if you wouldn’t do the exact same thing.

“You do realize,” Vanessa says, “that now Jack will have to work more hours with Miranda Foxley, man stealer extraordinaire. You do realize that, don’t you?”

Clearly, I had not thought about that. But now that Vanessa’s brought it up, it’s the only thing that I can think about. I stir my Vanilla Coke slowly as I formulate a plan.

“There’s only one thing I can do now,” I say, looking Vanessa straight in the eye.

“Why do I have a feeling that I’m going to be involved in this in some way?” she says, stirring her own Vanilla Coke. “Please don’t make me do anything that would get me disbarred.”

“You need to start spying on Jack and Miranda,” I say, “just to make sure that there isn’t any hanky-panky