Four of a Kind (4 page)

Alicia accepted, once they’d established that her apartment in Red Hook wasn’t too far out of the way to Carla’s house in Windsor Terrace, a Brooklyn neighborhood near Prospect Park. The idea of getting on a bus after a glass of wine made Alicia preemptively nauseated, and she didn’t want to spring for a taxi. Robin lived only a couple of blocks away. Brooklyn Heights was completely safe at ten o’clock for a woman walking alone, but Robin accepted Carla and Alicia’s offer to escort her to her building on Hicks Street.

Once they said their good-byes to Bess on her stoop, the three departing players headed for Robin’s building.

Robin lit a cigarette, and dished, “Bess’s ten percent cheerleader—which is about nine percent more than I’m usually willing to stand. But I like her.”

Carla kept a tight lip. The doc was not a gossip, which Alicia liked. On the other hand, Robin’s brash honesty was alluring. “I like her, too,” said Alicia. “Considering her house, her money,
her husband
, I’m shocked I don’t hate her.”

They arrived at Robin’s building quickly. “Here I am,” she said.

“You live across the street from a fire station,” observed Alicia.

“Yup, hot firemen ’round the clock,” said Robin. “See you at drop-off.”

The two remaining women walked to the hospital parking lot a few blocks away. Not much talking. The silence was a bit strained. Alicia wondered if making a personal connection with Carla was only possible when they had cards in their hands. One part of the brain distracted by the game, the conscious mind relaxed its inhibitions. No cards in hand, the restrictions were back in place. They automatically reverted to Topics A and B—kids and jobs.

Carla asked, “You haven’t said what you do for work.”

“I’m a copywriter at a small ad agency,” said Alicia. They entered the fluorescent-lit lot.

“Anything I’d know?” asked Carla. “I don’t want much TV.”

Alicia
wished
her clients had TV ad money. Too embarrassed to
explain that her days were mainly spent producing small-type copy for insurance company print ads, she said, “Nothing splashy. No beer ads or car commercials.”

“This is me,” said Carla, pushing a button on her fob, and unlocking the doors of her Ford wagon in a Physicians Only reserved spot.

Buckled up, Carla steered the car out of the lot, and drove down Hicks Street to Atlantic Avenue to make a left and head into Red Hook.

“Is that Robin?” said Carla, pointing at a figure on the street.

Alicia peered through the windshield at the slim figure of a redheaded woman, dressed in a flowing skirt, as she ducked into Chip Shop, a pub on Atlantic Avenue. Through the storefront window, Alicia thought she saw Robin greet a man at the bar before the car pulled too far away. Could Robin have pretended to go up to her apartment, and then turned around to go back out? To meet a man at ten o’clock on a school night? Was he a friend? Or (thrilling to imagine) a friend with benefits? Did single moms make booty calls? The very thought was exciting and terrifying to Alicia. So she dismissed it.

Nah
, she thought.
Had to be someone else
.

Robin Stern, thirty-seven, twirled her dessert fork on the tablecloth. That would be all the action the fork got from her tonight. Stan, her date, had eaten only a few bites of the cheesecake he’d ordered. He’d acted suspicious when she said she didn’t want any. “I thought women loved to share dessert,” he said.

“I’m not like most women,” Robin explained.

Stan excused himself to the bathroom and the waiter brought the bill. It sat on the table, in a leather fold, waiting to be paid … by whom? Would Stan spring for the first date like a gentleman, or would he expect her to split it with him like a cheap bastard?

The problem with Internet dating, thought Robin, for perhaps the thousandth time, was that you never knew what to expect. You could exchange emails with a guy for months, have a dozen phone conversations, but nothing—
nothing
—was as telling as meeting a man in
person for a meal. How he treated waiters, how and what he ordered, his table manners, eye contact, use of salt, chewing with his mouth closed, ability to listen, and whether or not he disappeared into the bathroom moments before the arrival of the check. Her late-night drinks date a couple of weeks ago with that loser at Chip Shop tore it. Recession or not, unemployed or not, the guy had to pay for the first date.

Stan had passed most of Robin’s tests (although he ate too slowly, which annoyed her). Since she was lukewarm on him, she’d leave the bill where it lay, untouched. If he had the balls to ask her for money, she’d excuse herself to the ladies, and sneak out of the restaurant.

“Great smile,” Stan said, reclaiming his seat opposite her at the Heights Cafe, an upscale restaurant on Montague Street. “What were you thinking about just then?”

Robin shrugged. “Thanks for coming to Brooklyn.”

“No problem,” he said, reaching for the leather fold, opening it and examining the check before he put his card inside it. “Brooklyn is the new Manhattan. I like what I’ve seen of it so far.”

Of course, he was looking right at Robin. He was Trying Too Hard. She wanted to like him more, to find his fifteen extra pounds, comb-over, and prison pallor attractive. Life would be so much easier if she could fall in love with one of these shlubs.

The waiter took the card and brought back the slip. Stan signed it with a flourish. “I’ve always wanted to see the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Would you show me? Take an after-dinner stroll?”

Robin would rather not. It was a school night, and she was tired. If she went home now, she could get in a solid hour of HBO before she put herself to sleep. She pictured her beautiful daughter, Stephanie, nestled under her pink bedspread. The image gave Robin a visceral tug to go home.

“I’ve got to relieve the babysitter,” said Robin.

Stan checked his watch. “It’s only nine o’clock.”

“I had a long day on the phones,” she said.

“What was the question today?” he asked.

“ ‘Do you feel like our country is moving in the right direction?’ ” she said, pushing her chair back, letting Stan guide her by her bony elbow out of the café.

“And?” he asked. “Did they?”

“Most respondents describe the nation as ‘stuck.’ Not moving at all.”

“Do people hang up on you a lot?”

Whenever Robin told people she was a professional pollster for Zogby, their first question was always Stan’s, or, in other words, “Exactly how much rudeness do you have to swallow on a daily basis?” Next, if Stan was predictable, he’d ask, “Have you ever made a personal connection with someone you called to poll?”

Robin said, “People hang up. People tell me to fuck off. But usually, people apologize and say they don’t have time, or they just answer the question. Hardly anyone ever challenges the fundamental flaw of Yes/No/Not Sure answering. How often is a feeling—and that’s what I’m asking about—so cut and dry? Promenade this way,” she said, surprising herself by walking in the opposite direction of her apartment. “Feelings, thoughts, and opinions—mine, anyway—are never ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Rarely, even, are they ‘not sure.’ It’s always more complicated than that.”

If Robin asked herself, “Do you feel like your life is moving in the right direction?” what answer would she give? As goes the nation, her life wasn’t moving, like wheels in muck. Had been for a while. Her stagnation began long before the recession, and she had the nagging fear it was going to continue long after the economy recovered.

“You should rephrase the question,” said Stan. “ ‘Do you
think
our nation is moving in the right direction?’ ”

“Pollsters like to ask about feelings. Everyone has feelings.” In this way, pollsters weren’t gathering opinions per se, but were taking the emotional temperature of a population sample. Therefore, emotional detachment in a pollster was an absolute necessity. Robin was
excellent at detachment. Almost born to it. She was a natural at keeping her voice monotonous, her tone vague. Otherwise, she might unduly influence a response, invalidating it.

Right now, she feared she was transmitting an attraction to Stan—by taking an after-dinner stroll and by answering his questions. He was picking up on the message, and sending his own, that he liked her and hoped she liked him. If she wanted to keep him interested, she would speak to Stan in the neutral tone she’d perfected for work. When you were a blank page, people were only too happy to write their own ideas all over you.

He said, “Maybe ten in a hundred people are informed. And only one in a hundred can intelligently process information.”

“But ninety-nine in a hundred think they can.” Robin had placed two hundred calls today, conducted sixty-three full interviews (forty registered Democrats, twenty-one Republicans, and two Independents), ranging in duration from three to five minutes, most of that time spent explaining who she was and what she wanted. She asked the question, and dutifully logged the responses into the Zogby database online. There were thousands of pollsters all across the country conducting the same scripted interviews. The data would be culled, tabulated, and fed to the media in time for the evening news. The poll’s methodology was hardly unassailable, despite the plus and minus three percent swing. And yet the numbers would be interpreted and analyzed by experts as it they were the word of God.

Stan said, “So do you feel like this date is moving in the right direction?”

“Feel, or
think
?” Robin asked.

“I’ll take your evasion as a ‘not sure,’ ” said Stan, bemused. Why wasn’t he afraid of rejection? Was he that rational? “Mind if I ask a personal question?”

Did I ever hook up with someone I called to poll?
she assumed. “Go ahead.”

“I noticed you barely touched your pasta, and refused to eat dessert.
You are very thin. I wondered if you have an eating disorder. Or maybe I just kill your appetite.”

Whoosh, that
was
personal. Robin was impressed he’d be so direct on a first date. Impressed, but offended, too. Weight and body issues were Robin’s core insecurities, had been since she was put on her first diet at age eight. She could talk casually about sex and money all day long. But when the subject of weight came up, Robin was instantly on guard.

She said (neutral tone), “You killed my appetite.”

Small red circles formed on Stan’s cheeks. He was embarrassed. Too bad, she thought. He’d asked for it.

“Where did the Twin Towers used to be?” he next asked, gesturing toward the lower Manhattan skyline, in full view on the Promenade.

They leaned on the railing and Robin pointed to a blank black space in the sky. She’d been pushing Stephanie in her baby stroller to a pediatrician’s visit soon after the planes hit the towers. The doctor gave Stephanie a cursory once-over, and then said he was closing the office and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to see if he could help the injured. By the time Robin and Stephanie were back outside, the debris blizzard of dust, crushed mortar, and (probably) organic matter had swept across the East River. It was almost too thick to walk through. She was sure they inhaled some of it. Once home, Robin got into the tub with Stephanie. Then she put the baby down for a nap, and opened the first of several bottles of wine. She watched CNN. Although, as it turned out, Robin didn’t know anyone who died that day, she felt the sadness and misery as if she’d known them all. She was alone on 9/11, alone now. Just like Ground Zero—which, after all these years remained an empty hole; talk about a shovel-ready infrastructure project—Robin hadn’t started rebuilding either. She looked at Stan—a forty-five-year-old, divorced marketing exec from Murray Hill—and wanted to feel a glimmer of attraction or hope. But she felt nothing.

Stan said, “Most people take at least one solid bite when they go out to dinner.”

“Are you the food police?” she asked.

“If you weren’t hungry, why order anything?”

She should have split the bill. Clearly, he was put out to have paid for a bowl of pasta that she hadn’t eaten. If he was going to push it, then she’d tell him the truth.

“I had gastric bypass surgery nine years ago,” she said. “I can’t eat more than an ounce or two at a sitting.”

“Oh,” he said, genuinely surprised, as most people were when they heard the news. Surprised—and disgusted. “But you’re so thin. I can’t believe you were ever big.”

The next question was on the tip of his tongue, she knew. Wait for it … five, four, three, two …

“So how fat were you?” he asked.

That was when Robin knew she’d never see or hear from Stan again. Fat terrified men, no matter how long gone it was. The fact that Robin had once been obese would turn him off forever. Her current size was irrelevant. Robin’s defenses kicked in.

“I was
so fat
,” she said, “I couldn’t fit in an airplane seat or a movie seat. I had to order custom-made shoes to fit around my fat feet. I had skin ulcerations, under my boobs and between my belly rolls, that never healed, no matter how much cream I put on them, not that I did such a good job of it, since I couldn’t see what I was doing under all that blubber.” When she finished, Robin heard her short breath, realized she must’ve sounded a little bit hysterical.