“She left off damaged,” Kat muttered under her breath.
It was past midnight, but Kat wasn’t much of a sleeper. She lived in an area far too upscale for her—West 67th Street off Central Park West, in the Atelier. A hundred years ago, this and its neighboring buildings, including the famed Hotel des Artistes, had housed writers, painters, intellectuals—artists. The spacious old-world apartments faced the street, the smaller artist studios in the back. Eventually, the old art studios were converted into one-bedroom apartments. Kat’s father, a cop who watched his friends get rich doing nothing but buying real estate, tried to find his way in. A guy whose life Dad had saved sold him the place on the cheap.
Kat had first used it as an undergrad at Columbia University. She had paid for her Ivy League education with an NYPD scholarship. According to the life plan, she was then supposed to go to law school and join a big white-shoe firm in New York City, finally breaking away from the cursed family legacy of police work.
Alas, it hadn’t worked out that away.
A glass of red wine sat next to her keyboard. Kat drank too much. She knew that was a cliché—a cop who drank too much—but sometimes the clichés are there for a reason. She functioned fine. She didn’t drink on the job. It didn’t really affect her life in any noticeable way, but if Kat made calls or even decisions late at night, they tended to be, er, sloppy ones. She had learned over the years to turn off her mobile phone and stay away from e-mail after ten P.M.
Yet here she was, late at night, checking out random dudes on a dating website.
Stacy had uploaded four photographs to Kat’s page. Kat’s profile picture, a head shot, had been cropped from a bridesmaid group photo taken at a wedding last year. Kat tried to view herself objectively, but that was impossible. She hated the picture. The woman in the photograph looked unsure of herself, her smile weak, almost as though she were waiting to be slapped or something. Every photograph—now that she went through the painful ritual of viewing them—had been cropped from group pictures, and in every one, Kat looked as though she were half wincing.
Okay, enough of her own profile.
On the job, the only men she met were cops. She didn’t want a cop. Cops were good men and horrible husbands. She knew that only too well. When Grandma got terminally ill, her grandfather, unable to handle it, ran off until, well, it was too late. Pops never forgave himself for that. That was Kat’s theory anyway. He was lonely and while he had been a hero to many, Pops chickened out when it counted most and he couldn’t live with that and his service revolver was sitting right there, right on the same top shelf in the kitchen where he’d always kept it, and so one night, Kat’s grandfather reached up and took his piece down from the shelf and sat by himself at the kitchen table and . . .
Ka-boom.
Dad too would go on benders and disappear for days at a time. Mom would be extra cheery when this happened—which made it all the more scary and creepy—either pretending Dad was on an undercover mission or ignoring his disappearance altogether, literally out of sight, out of mind, and then, maybe a week later, Dad would waltz in with a fresh shave and a smile and a dozen roses for Mom, and everyone would act like this was normal.
YouAreJustMyType.com. She, the cute and perky Kat Donovan, was on an Internet dating site. Man oh man, talk about the best-laid plans. She lifted the wineglass, made a toasting gesture toward the computer screen, and took too big a gulp.
The world sadly was no longer conducive to meeting a life partner. Sex, sure. That was easy. That was, in fact, the expectation, the elephant in the date room, and while she loved the pleasures of the flesh as much as the next gal, the truth was, when you went to bed with someone too quickly, rightly or wrongly, the chances of a long-term relationship took a major hit. She didn’t put a moral judgment on this. It was just the way it was.
Her computer dinged. A message bubble popped up: We have matches for you! Click here to see someone who might be perfect for you!
Kat finished the glass of wine. She debated pouring another, but really, enough. She took stock of herself and realized an obvious yet unspoken truth: She wanted someone in her life. Have the courage to admit that to yourself, okay? Much as she strove to be independent, Kat wanted a man, a partner, someone in her bed at night. She didn’t pine or force it or even make much of an effort. But she wasn’t really built to be alone.
She began to click through the profiles. You’ve got to be in it to win it, right?
Pathetic.
Some men could be eliminated with a quick glance at their profile photograph. It was key when you thought about it. The profile portrait each man had painstakingly chosen was, in pretty much every way, the first (very controlled) impression. It thus spoke volumes.
So: If you made the conscious choice to wear a fedora, that was an automatic no. If you chose not to wear a shirt, no matter how well built you were, automatic no. If you had a Bluetooth in your ear—gosh, aren’t you important?—automatic no. If you had a soul patch or sported a vest or winked or made hand gestures or chose a tangerine-hued shirt (personal bias) or balanced your sunglasses on top of your head, automatic no, no, no. If your profile name was ManStallion, SexySmile, RichPrettyBoy, LadySatisfier—you get the gist.
Kate clicked open a few where the guy looked . . . approachable, she guessed. There was a sad, depressing sameness to all the write-ups. Every person on the website enjoyed walks on a beach and dining out and exercising and exotic travel and wine tasting and theater and museums and being active and taking chances and grand adventures—yet they were equally content with staying home and watching a movie, coffee and conversation, cooking, reading a book, the simple pleasures. Every guy claimed that the most important quality they looked for in a woman was a sense of humor—right, sure—to the point where Kat wondered whether “sense of humor” was a euphemism for “big boobs.” Of course, every man also listed preferred body type as athletic, slender, and curvy.
That seemed more accurate, if not downright wishful.
The profiles never reflected reality. Rather than being what you are, they were a wonderful if not futile exercise in what you think you are or what you want a potential partner to think you are—or most likely, the profiles (and, man, shrinks would have a field day) simply reflect what you want to be.
The personal statements were all over the place, but if she had to use one word to sum them up, it would probably be treacle. The first read, “Every morning, life is a blank canvas waiting to be painted”—click. Some aimed for honesty by telling you repeatedly that they were honest. Some faked sincerity. Some were highfalutin or showboating or insecure or needy. Just like real life, when Kat thought about it. Most were simply trying too hard. The stench of desperation came off the screen in squiggly, bad-cologne waves. The constant soul-mate talk was, at best, off-putting. In real life, Kat thought, none of us can find someone we want to go out with more than once, yet somehow we believe that on YouAreJustMyType.com, we will instantly find a person we want to wake up next to for the rest of our lives.
Delusional—or does hope spring eternal?
This was the flip side. It was easy to be cynical and poke fun, but when she stepped back, Kat realized something that pierced her straight through the heart: Every profile was a life. Simple, yep, but behind every cliché-ridden, please-like-me profile was a fellow human being with dreams and aspirations and desires. These people hadn’t signed up, paid their fee, or filled out this information idly. Think about it: Every one of these lonely people came to this website—signed in and clicked on profiles—hoping it would be different this time, hoping against hope that finally they would meet the one person who, in the end, would be the most important person in their lives.
Wow. Just let that realization roll over you for moment.
Kat had been lost in this thought, clicking through the profiles at a constantly increasing velocity, the faces of these men—men who had come here in the hopes of finding “the one”—blurring into a fleshy mess from the speed, when she spotted his picture.
For a second, maybe two, her brain didn’t quite believe what her eyes had seen. It took another second for the finger to stop clicking the mouse button, another for the profile pictures tumbling by to slow down and come to a halt. Kat sat and took a deep breath.
It couldn’t be.
She had been surfing at such a rapid pace, thinking about the men behind the photographs, their lives, their wants, their hopes. Her mind—and this was both Kat’s strength and weakness as a cop—had been wandering, not necessarily concentrating on what was directly in front of her yet being able to get a sense of the big picture. In law enforcement, it meant that she was able to see the possibilities, the escape routes, the alternate scenarios, the figure lurking behind the obstacles and obfuscations and hindrances and subterfuge.
But that also meant that sometimes Kat missed the obvious.
She slowly started to click the back arrow.
It couldn’t be him.
The image had been no more than a flicker. All this thinking about a true love, a soul mate, the one she would want to spend her life with—who could blame her imagination for getting the better of her? It had been eighteen years. She had drunk-Googled him a few times, but there had just been a few old articles he’d written. Nothing current. That surprised her, had piqued her curiosity—Jeff had been a great journalist—but what more could she do? Kat had been tempted to run a more thorough investigation on him. It wouldn’t take much effort in her position. But she didn’t like to use her law enforcement connections for personal reasons. She could have asked Stacy too, but again, what would be the point?
Jeff was gone.
Chasing or even Googling an ex-lover was beyond pathetic. Okay, Jeff had been more than that. Much more. Kat absentmindedly touched her left ring finger with her thumb. Empty. But it hadn’t always been. Jeff had proposed, doing everything right. He had gotten permission from her father. He had done it on bended knee. Nothing cheesy. He didn’t hide the ring in a dessert or ask her on the scoreboard at Madison Square Garden. It had been classy and romantic and traditional because he knew that was exactly how she’d wanted it.
Tears started to well in her eyes.
Kat clicked the back arrow through a potpourri of faces and hairstyles, a verifiable United Nations of eligible bachelors, and then her finger stopped. For a moment, she just stared, afraid to move, holding her breath.
Then a small cry escaped her lips.
The old heartbreak came back to her in a rush. The deep stab of pain felt fresh, as though Jeff had just walked out that very door, just now, just this very second and not eighteen years earlier. Her hand shook as she moved toward the screen and actually touched his face.
Jeff.
Still so damned handsome. He had aged a bit, graying at the temples, but, man, it worked so well on him. Kat would have guessed that. Jeff would have been one of those guys who got better-looking with age. She caressed his face. A tear leaked from one eye.
Oh man, she thought.
Kat tried to put herself together, tried to take a step back and gain some perspective, but the room was spinning and there was no way she was going to slow it down. Her still-shaking hand came back to the mouse and clicked on the profile picture, enlarging it.
The screen blinked to the next page. There Jeff stood, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, hands in his pockets, eyes so blue you’d look in vain for a contact lens line. So handsome. So goddamn beautiful. He looked trim and athletic, and now, despite everything, another stirring started from deep within her. For a quick second, Kat risked a peek at her bedroom. She had lived in this co-op when they were together. There had been other men in that bedroom after him, but nothing ever came close to reaching the high of what she had experienced with her fiancé. She knew how that sounded, but when she was with Jeff, he had made every part of her hum and sing. It wasn’t technique or size or anything like that that made the difference. It was—unerotic as it sounded—trust. That was what had made the sex so mind-blowing. Kat had felt safe with him. She had felt confident and beautiful and unafraid and free. He would tease her at times, control her, have his way with her, but he never made her feel vulnerable or self-conscious.
Kat had never been able to let go like that with another man.
She swallowed and clicked the full-profile link. His personal statement was short and, Kat thought, perfect: Let’s see what happens.
No pressure. No grandiose plans. No preconditions or guarantees or wild expectations.
Let’s see what happens.
She skimmed toward the Status section. Over the past eighteen years, Kat had wondered countless times how his life had turned out, so the first question was the most obvious one: What had happened in Jeff’s life that he was now on a singles website?
Then again, what had happened to her?
The status read: Widower.
Another wow.
She tried to imagine that—Jeff marrying a woman, living with her, loving her, and eventually having her die on him. It wouldn’t compute. Not yet. She was blocking. That was okay. Push through it. No reason to dwell.
Widower.
Underneath that, another jolt: One child.
They didn’t give age or sex and, of course, it didn’t matter. Every revelation, every new fact about the man she had once loved with all her heart made the world teeter anew. He had lived a whole life without her. Why was that such a surprise? What had she expected? Their breakup had been both sudden and inevitable. He might have been the one to walk out the door, but it had been her fault. He was gone, in a snap, just like the entire life she had known and planned.
Now he was back, one of a hundred, maybe two hundred, men whose profiles she had clicked through.
The question was, What would she do about it now?