“We have a couple songs you’d know if you heard them.”
“Mm.”
We spent the rest of the walk talking about the band and the tour and him. Minneapolis was the second-to-last stop on a long tour. And “long” was saying a lot, because they were a “touring band,” whatever that meant. He was ready to get back to his house in LA. He missed his Range Rover. He used to lift weights, but it’s hard on tour; hotel gyms don’t have squat racks. The other thing that’s hard about touring is the food. The other guys had all this garbage food on the band’s rider, whereas he always asked for a Vitamix and the fixings for green smoothies. He was getting really into Buddhism. The middle way—had I heard of that? He was going to give me the names of some books I should totally check out.
I made vague murmurs of acknowledgment as he talked, but when he informed me that sometimes the universe gives you signs that you need to be open to, I decided to wrestle hold of the conversation. Since this was my last kick at the can, I didn’t have to worry if it seemed like I was interrupting. “I definitely believe in signs from the universe. I recently had one myself.”
“What did it say?”
It said to take all the time and energy—and money; bikini waxes were not cheap—I’d been spending on dating and invest it in myself. Invest it in my empire. But I didn’t say it like that. I told him about Granola with Gretchen.
“So yeah,” I said in summation, “I close on August thirty-first, which also happens to be my fortieth birthday.” It didn’t “happen” to be my birthday; I’d done that on purpose, once I’d learned the seller preferred a late-summer close. I liked the symbolism of it. I would be closing on the building but also on the midlife crisis. “I’m going to have a party in the emptyspace. I was thinking I might make it a demo party—I’m doing a major remodel, so a bunch of stuff, including an interior wall, has to come out. What do you think? Would you be into a party where you could dance and drink but also take a sledgehammer to the wall?”
Scott wasn’t listening. I could tell by his glazed-over eyes.
I had lost my audience. I wondered why men never seemed to have enough self-awareness to realize whenthey’dlosttheiraudience.
When we got up to his room, he took out his phone, and I had to listen to fifteen minutes of Concrete Temple—apparently my time to speak was over. I did recognize a couple of the songs, but only vaguely, and let’s just say I was not a fan. Let’s leave mumbled vocals and walls—nay, tsunamis—of guitars back in the 1990s where they belong, shall we?
When he stopped the music and looked at me expectantly, I was supposed to say nice things. Instead, I said, “I’m more of a pop person.”
“You would be,” he shot back.
“And you would know that how?” He hadn’t asked a single question about me. I felt certain he couldn’t have passed a pop quiz about the Granola with Gretchen monologue. When he didn’t answer, I said, “The cool thing is there’s lots of different kinds of music in the world. Something for everyone. You guys remind me of Nirvana. I’m a dance teacher, and I once tried to use ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for a semijoking—”
He cut me off with a rough kiss.
OK, no, turns out Ididhave to like a guy to sleep with him. And I didnotlike this one. I guess if signs from the universe are real, this was mine to skip the last hurrah and retire fromdating effective immediately. Pillar Number Two: activate. I pushed him off me. “I should go.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You just got here.”
“I know.” This was the part where I would usually make up a lie about having forgotten something I had to do in order to make my desire to leave about some external thing rather than about him, but I kept my mouth shut.
“I have to say, Gretchen,” he said with a smirk, “you’re passing on an opportunity here that would at least give you a good story to tell your friends. Do you know—”
“Are you about to ‘Do you know who I am?’ me? Because I think we’ve established that no, I do not know who you are.”
He held his hands up in an exaggerated fashion, like he was the subject of a stickup in a silent movie. I knew that gesture. It was designed to telegraph that I was being difficult. Shrill. If there were an audience, he would have broken the fourth wall and looked at them likeCan you believe this crazy chick?
And yep, just in case I hadn’t gotten the silent message, as I was making my way out the door, he muttered, “Bitch.”
So predictable, these mediocre men.
I stitched myself back together as I rode down in the elevator. Hardened myself. Iwasa bitch. I was a bitch who got shit done and didn’t take crap from anyone. Back in my car, I got out my phone and deleted Tinder. And all the rest of them: Hinge, Bumble, all of it.
I gave half a thought to getting out, setting my phone against my rear tire, and backing over it.
I was almost forty, and I was retired from dating. I had asuccessful business I had built from nothing and was about to take to the next level. I had family I liked and who liked me back, even if we weren’t close. I had friends I loved like family.
I had a good life.
Except that niggling refrain that had been wending its way through my consciousness of late was still there.
Is this all there is?
