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talk at all.
A group of women with wings came through the door. Out of habit, I turned to see if anyone else noticed them and saw that Ethan was frowning. For a second I thought he must have noticed the fairies, too, but then he took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on. Nothing more magical than a smudged lens, then. And I could tell from the foot that kept accidentally bumping against mine under the table that he was, indeed, solid and real. I decided his mind was just clearly elsewhere and that was what gave him such a vague look.
It felt like we were going to break the New York record for longest dinner ever by the time we got dessert and coffee. I couldn't take any more of Pat's silence and retreated to the restroom while the others finished their dessert. Armed with fresh lipstick, I returned to the table just in time to hear Pat talking to Jim. "It'd be like dating my sister," he said. It was a safe guess who he was talking about. I got that reaction from men all the time. I could understand it in a small town where most of the boys were my brothers' friends, but how did it transfer to New York, where nobody even knew my family?
Finally, everyone finished their coffee and we made our way out of the restaurant. I wasn't at all surprised when Gemma and Will announced that they were going to hit a nearby jazz club. They invited the rest of us, but clearly didn't want us to take them up on the offer. I didn't expect Gemma to make it home tonight. The rest of us said insincere things about how nice it was to meet each other, then said good night for the evening without bothering to exchange contact information. You know your blind date hasn't gone well when nobody even asks for a phone number.
Jim and Connie hailed a cab, and Marcia linked her arm through mine. "Want to walk home?" she asked. "I need to work off that dinner."
I wasn't wearing the best shoes for walking, and I'd already had two long walks that day, but walking through the Village at night is almost magical—but not in the real magic way, with spells and illusions and all that. Though come to think of it, I'd seen more than the expected amount of weirdness in the Village at night and written it off as just another New York thing. It would be interesting to see how much of it really was magical.
Marcia and I headed off down Bleecker toward our side of the island. The whole time we walked, Marcia complained about her date. "Could you believe him? All he could talk about was work."
"Y'all talked about more than work. You were arguing a lot."
"About work. He questioned everything I said."
"He's a lawyer. He's used to having toanalyze and interpret everything."
"Don't tell me you're defending him," she said with a laugh.
"No, not really. He was just more interesting than my date. At least he actually spoke."
"You do have a point there."
"And he didn't think of you as an annoying little sister."
She winced. "So, you heard that."
"I came back from the bathroom at a very good time."
"If it makes you feel better, he did say you were okay, cute, even."
"But he's just not interested in that way." I couldn't fight back a sigh. Was it too much to ask to make a man's heart beat faster, just once?
She gave my arm a squeeze. "Don't worry about it. Your time will come. You just have to meet the right guy who appreciates you for what you are."
"Marce, I'm your age, remember. You don't have to treat me like your kid sister."
"Sorry about that. But look on the bright side. A few years from now you'll be glad for people to think you're younger. And like I said, you have to find the right guy.
You're the kind of girl men go for when they're ready to settle down."
"So I'm not the kind of girl they want to go out with when they want a good time?"
"Is that so bad?"
"I don't know." To be honest with myself, I wasn't anyone's idea of a good-time girl.
I was the kind of woman who made people think of things like apple pie and picket fences. That didn't make me very popular in a place like New York, where people came to get away from picket fences.
"I guess those are two guys we can cross off our lists of Mr. Right potentials,"
Marcia said, interrupting my musings.
"How many million does that leave in the city?"
"It can't be a million, not if we exclude men who are gay, married, or seriously involved, or that we've gone out with before. We've got to be down to the thousands."
