Essay: A little (not so) love story

By STACY APPEL
Special to the Times-Union

I’m fascinated by the workings of serendipity. My friend Ruthann, 90 years old, had a big grin on her face when she told me how she met her husband. She taught at a junior high school and parked in the same parking garage every day for nearly 20 years when she finally struck up a conversation with Norton, who had been teaching and parking there for just as long.

They were both 40 years old. Once married, they had a sunny 30-plus years together, just the two of them in a sprawling white house in the hills, until he collapsed one day while picking raspberries.

Their meeting can’t be characterized as a near-miss. I picture Cupid yawning lazily near the parking garage entrance, or napping once in a while in a green lawn chair next to the elevators, his cache of arrows spilling across his lap while he snoozes, waiting for the perfect week, the perfect year to bring Ruthann and Norton together.

Cupid has plunged mysteriously in and out of my own life. He likes to surprise me, but has remained conspicuously absent from every casual set-up engineered by friends, as if to show disdain for mortal interference. He managed near-total invisibility for excruciatingly long stretches of time, seeming to wait until I gave up on love.

There he was, mischievous, unmistakable, showing off at the party I very nearly didn’t attend, the one where I met Mikhail and fell so wildly in love I felt the world catch fire.

A time before that, Cupid stowed away on an innocent outing. My women friends and I took a spontaneous detour to a dance club on a country road. He hid almost until closing time and then readied his bow, striking Brian and me, complete strangers, with arrows so deftly aimed we could hardly bear to part at evening’s end.

But, oh, where was Cupid when I met Hunter? We were introduced by my friends Peggy and Al, who’d campaigned for weeks to bring us together at dinner. Hunter was a psychologist with curly dark hair, a warm smile and a knack for conversation. I liked him well enough; at least until we started going out on our own. A succession of dates revealed Hunter’s less than-stellar qualities: He was obsessively frugal, only choosing restaurants for which he had two-for-one coupons, and always waiting until I’d forked over my share of the tab before handing our payment to the waiter. He took me to musicals he knew well and sang the songs in my ear.

The conversational streak I’d found charming at Peg and Al’s house began to seem more than a little one-sided, and his good-night phone calls after our dates, which once sounded appreciative, now struck me as desperate.
During the next several weeks, I tried to gently extricate myself from what he considered a budding relationship and I suspected was a sinking ship. But my efforts to turn down outings with Hunter only resulted in his pressing me to plan another specific night with him in the near future. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take the hint. I dreaded hurting him.

My father’s impending visit from out of town provided me with what I hoped was the perfect excuse. “I haven’t seen him for a long while, Hunter. You know how it is with family.”

But, alas, Hunter wanted to meet him, just the once, and in some ill thought-out burst of creativity, I imagined that introducing my chronically depressed father to the needy psychologist I was trying to dump might make for an interesting evening.

We drove to pick up Hunter at his apartment and then to a Chinese restaurant for which he had both an early-bird-special coupon and a buy-one, get-one-free deal. Dad restrained a grin while my date chattered non-stop, cutting egg rolls and pork buns into exact thirds and distributing everything on the table like war-time rations.
My father paid for the meal, gallantly waving the coupons away, which threw Hunter into a fit of agitation and conflict.

We headed to a jazz club I’d picked out, knowing the music would lift Dad’s spirits, though Hunter seemed depressed that we each had to pay full freight for the cover charge.

“Isn’t there a senior discount?” he asked the girl at the door, pointing to my father. She shook her head and stamped our hands with neon ink.

Later, inside the dark, ale-scented depths of the club, I gazed at my father, snapping his fingers in time with the quartet on stage, clearly enjoying himself, and then at Hunter, who had made little earplugs out of his cocktail napkin and slunk down, eyes closed, in his wooden chair, looking for all the world like a miserable old man.

“It’s too damned loud in here, and I have to work tomorrow,” said my date finally, for the very first time ending an evening with me of his own accord. “Would you mind dropping me off?”

Beneath the heady thrum of the bass, I could’ve sworn I heard an arrow break and fall noisily to the ground as Hunter wrestled himself into his jacket and stomped down the club’s narrow passageway ahead of us.

My father and I headed to my house again. “That was some music,” Dad said. “I’d go there again.”

“Good. What did you think of Hunter?” I asked. In the quiet before my father spoke, I wondered why I’d introduced them and how I’d explain to Dad that I wasn’t going to see the guy again.

“Frankly, I was a little hurt that he didn’t kiss us good night,” said my father.

I started to laugh, and Dad laughed back. We just couldn’t stop.

“Who are we going to date next, honey?” he said. “Seems like slim pickins’ out there.”

“Maybe a guy who’ll spring for dinner,” I said to my father, which sent him into a fresh fit, his eyes crinkled up with warmth and merriment.

I’m not sure when I’ve loved a man more.

Stacy Appel is a writer in California whose work has been featured in The Chicago Tribune and other publications. She has also written for National Public Radio.