You said you were looking for someone who is playful, but not silly. Here are some things I like to do. One is to visit my nephew and niece and have football games in the street. Don’t worry, we use a soft ball and have yet to break an automobile windshield—and the kids are 12 and 8, so they are pretty good about watching out for oncoming traffic. I also like to build things for other people. When my niece and nephew were little, I built a swing set for my sister’s backyard. I built a doghouse for a friend’s dog that was spending its nights in the cold. Perhaps those are not playful things, but they are things that make others happy, and that makes me smile.
You mentioned travel. I have not had the opportunity to do as much traveling as I’d like. I immigrated to the United States from Sweden with my family when I was a teenager. I’ve had to work hard to make my way in this country, but things are better now and I have the means to live a more comfortable life. I am hoping that will include more travel in the future, both within the country and internationally. Have you been to Europe? I have not been back, but I would like to go someday, especially if I were accompanied by a travel companion who might appreciate the Old World for all its beauty and history.
Another of my interests, which you did not mention, is American sports, particularly baseball. Perhaps you are not a fan. I hope that if we were to meet and get to know one another, you would forgive me this indulgence. They say baseball is America’s pastime, and as an American myself now, I find that it has become mine as well.
I’m glad you were not afraid to say you are looking for a man who wants a family. A lot of ladies seem afraid to admit that, as if they think it makes men desire them less. I guess they might be justified, because a lot of fellows (especially past a certain age) are either on the fence or adamantly say no to the idea of children. I don’t feel that way. I’ve always wanted a family and I hope it’s not too late! (I’m only 34, so I suppose there is time.)
So you see, miss, why your advertisement appealed to me. I hope you’ll respond. I would love to get to know you.
Sincerely,
Lars
I sit there, rereading the letter. I stare at the telephone number he wrote in a postscript. And then I read the letter through a few more times. True, he is not Shakespeare. But it’s clear why I wanted to contact him. There is something there; I can’t deny a connection, just through those few pages of written words.
Later, while cutting up vegetables for my dinner, I telephone Frieda. Although I am worried that she’ll still be in a mood, I need to talk to her. Perhaps, I think as I dial, her brisk walk will have cleared her head.
She answers on the third ring; her voice, when she hears mine, is friendly. “Miss me?” she asks. “I know it’s been almost two hours since you saw me.”
I laugh. “Of course,” I say. “But that’s not the only reason I’m calling.” I plunge in and ask her, “Do you remember a fellow named Lars? From the personals?” There is no response, so I ask again.
“Thinking,” she says. “Yours or mine?”
When I ran my personal advertisement, I realized—after skimming a few of the initial replies—that not all of the respondents would turn out to be likely suitors for me. “I am wunderfull. Pleeze call me” was the entire content of one rather revealing letter. Sadly, it was not an anomaly.
There were others, too, in whom—while they were capable of stringing basic sentences together—I did not feel a spark of interest. My reasons varied: too tall, too talkative, too slick sounding.
One evening Frieda came over to my apartment, and we went through the letters one by one. We made three piles: “Kitty,” “Frieda,” and “Discard.” Into the Kitty pile went letters from those who intrigued me. “It’s my ad, after all,” I told her, laughing. “I get first dibs.” Into the Frieda pile went letters from the fellows for whom my initial reaction was lackluster. Frieda selected several of these to contact. “Why not?” she reasoned. “They’re just going here otherwise.” And she waved her hand at the Discard pile.
Ironically, she had better luck than me with the letters. She went on quite a few dates, and actually went steady for several months with a man she met through my personal ad. I thought they were going to get serious, but it was not meant to be. When she told me their relationship had ended, Frieda shrugged flippantly. “He simply wasn’t good enough for me,” she’d said. “He didn’t think as highly of me as you do, Kitty.”
You might think that with a name like Frieda, my best friend would have wiry red hair and be a little self-centered, like the Frieda in the Peanuts comic strip. And while Frieda has her vain moments—don’t we all?—she certainly looks nothing like that little girl. Tall, with long, straight dark hair, she is nearly the opposite of me. She is athletic and strong; she played softball and was on the swim team in high school, and to this day she still swims a few times a week in the field house pool at DU. She strikes up conversations with everyone she meets, from the teenage girls who sell movie tickets at the Vogue to the occasional confused passerby who stumbles into our shop looking for directions to an entirely different part of town. Other shopkeepers on our block call Frieda “the sales-y one.” I am “the bookworm.”
“Lars was one of mine,” I tell her now. “I know you don’t remember mine that well.”
She laughs. “I can barely remember last week. You want me to remember who you went out with—what was it—eight years ago?”
I select a carrot from the refrigerator and start to peel it. “I was just hoping.”
“Why? Did you run into him again?”
“In a manner of speaking.” But I don’t speak it, because even telling Frieda seems ridiculous.
“Did you run another ad?”
“No, nothing like that.” I cut the carrot into small disks. “Look, I have to go. I’m about to start cooking dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
After we hang up, I reread Lars’s letter and my advertisement. I’ve read them over and over since I got home.
And then I remember something else. We talked. We talked on the telephone.
It was just once. I called him, because that’s the smart thing to do in these circumstances—that’s what Frieda told me. “That way,” she said, “if they sound like they just escaped the loony bin, no harm is done. They can’t call you back.”
So after reading Lars’s letter several times that evening, I took a deep breath, picked up the telephone, and rang the number he’d given me. He answered right away.
“This is . . . Katharyn,” I said, testing the name on my tongue. It felt fresh and tingly, like a breath mint. “From the . . . the ad.”
“Katharyn.” In his voice, the name sounded magical, unique, special. “I knew it would be you.”
This scared me a bit. “How did you know?” I asked nervously.
He laughed. He had a nice laugh. “I just knew.”
I turned down the radio, so I could hear him better over the line. Oh, good heavens—now I remember when that Rosemary Clooney song was number one on the charts.
It was playing on the radio that night. The night when we talked on the telephone.
Stars in one’s eyes, indeed.
Lars asked how my day had gone, what I did for work. “I’m actually between jobs at the moment,” I said. Then I told him about the bookstore, which was scheduled to open a few weeks later.