Which was funny because what had I been doing since I’d decided to retire from men but giving up hope?
But hope, it finds you, the sneaky motherfucker.
It wasn’t exactly like the movie. I lived in a little bungalow with a small yard. It was only one story. So there was no looking down from a great height, Juliet style. There wasn’t a lot of distance between us, either. He wasright there, a foot from my window, jammed in between my house and a lilac hedge. In the movie, Lloyd was somehow illuminated even though it was night. Teddy was illuminated, but not in a romantic, cinematic way. He was blinking against the bright, motion-triggered floodlights I had mounted to my house outside my bedroom—hey, a woman alone needs to be careful.
In other ways, it was exactly like the movie.
He was holding a boom box over his head, Lloyd Dobler style, and it was playing “Moon River.”
I laughed. Which was probably not what Teddy was going for. But it was all so absurd. But also… happy-making. When I examined my croneish heart, when I examined it honestly and not just defensively, I found I washappyTeddy was here. That was my first reaction. It was that God damn hope again.
I opened the window warily. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was wary. I was nervous about what he was going to say, I guess. But I was also afraid of my own reaction, of this hope that was starting to flow through my body.
“This would work better if there was a moon,” he said.
“How did you know which window was my bedroom?”
I did realize that asking logistical questions was perhaps not the point.
He didn’t seem to mind. “I walked around your house like an unhinged creeper and looked in all of them—some of them had a crack in the curtains big enough to figure out what room it was—and made my best guess.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Following you back to your regular life in Minneapolis and holding a boom box over my head outside your bedroom window,” he said, quoting the joking line he’d given me about what he was never going to do.
I was so glad he was here.
“I’m sorry,” we both said simultaneously.
“You should put that down,” I said when, after our in-stereo apologies, he didn’t move. “I’m not sure that movie has aged well. Standing silently outside the bedroom of someone who has rejected you is actually kind of creepy if you think about it.” I winked to show I was kidding.
I winked to cover my fear.
“The other thing the movie doesn’t get right,” he said, wincing as he set the boom box on the lawn, “is how much it hurts your arms to hold a boom box over your head for so long. You took forever to wake up. This song has looped like twelve times.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stopped the song.
“The music wasn’t coming from the boom box?” I exclaimed. “What a rip-off!”
“Hey, man, you try getting a boom box in the middle of the night, forget acassetteof ‘Moon River.’”
“Where did you even get a boom box?” And why was I still asking logistical questions?
“Marion hooked me up with an ancient friend of hers who uses it to teach aqua aerobics for seniors.”
I smiled at him. I couldn’t help it. It was very un-crone-like. Bordering on goofy, I feared. “What are you sorry for?” I knew whatIwas sorry for, but since he was the one standing on my lawn with a boom box, I thought I’d let him go first.
“So,” he said, “here’s the thing: I love you. I’m in love with you.”
The light went out, and for a moment I thought I had died. That my heart had stopped and I’d literally died. But then I realized no, it was only the lights timing out.
“Wave your arms around,” I said, and he did. This hadn’t happened to Lloyd, either.
“So,” I said, “you love me, and you’re sorry about it.” Ouch.
“No. I’m sorry I crashed your party and didn’t lead with that fact. That truth. Which, just so we’re crystal clear, is that I love you.”
“But you’re not sorry for anything you actually said.” I paused. “You’re not sorry you told me I was making a mistake with the new studio.”
“For the way I said it, maybe. But for what I said?” He paused. “No.”
