Paige

My friend Anna and I had just ordered drinks when a man in a sweater I’d been admiring (the sweater, not him) approached our table. “You're cute. Can I sit down?” He had already had, confusing his own enthusiasm with consent.

“Hi, I’m Ana. Good to meet you.”

“I’m Garrett. I’m actually running home to get a large Ziploc of cocaine right now. Be right back. It’ll be my gift to you!” He leapt up and sprinted up the stairs.

I could have told him I was deeply fulfilled by my martini and crudité, but why stand in the way of a man chasing his dream?

Minutes later, a different man — alarmingly intoxicated — collapsed into the chair across from us. “I need to know you,” he delivered his slurred pronouncement. He was dressed in a suit that appeared to be actively losing a fight with its buttons. His friend winced an apology, introducing themselves as Tom and Ethan.

Still, they looked at us the way men sometimes do when they’ve decided you’re both hot and dumb. Ethan asked where we were from. I took it as my cue to launch into my origin story, slipping in a few degrees and my day job like a résumé on fire. I’m just a girl…who spends many of her days alone, but who also enjoys watching grown men realize they’ve been intellectually outmaneuvered by someone in a crop top.

Not intimacy, but it’ll do.

Still, they remained unswayed.

“What are your names?” The drunker of the two asked.

I stuck my hand out. “Ana.”

My friend stuck hers out. “Anna.”

“I don’t understand…” Ethan whispered, like we’d spilled the beans on the earth being round. I could see the error screen flash across his eyes.

“Well,” I explained, “my name is her name minus one N. Does that make sense?”

He turned to Tom, his sober friend. “Did you hear that? She’s Ana. She’s Anna.”

And then, of course, he got us reversed. I corrected him — sternly, with great commitment.

Ethan kept patting the seat next to him, trying to get Anna to sit. After the twelfth pat, Tom snapped:

“Yeah, buddy. One more tap oughta do it. One more tap and she’ll come sit.”

Then, to us: “He’s actually the smartest energy analyst I know. He’s one of my clients at Morgan Stanley.”

I believed he believed that.

Meanwhile, Snowy Joe (Garrett) burst back from the bathroom, refreshed and buzzing.

“Can I have your number?”

He was attractive in a waspy Connecticut country club way. Very much not my type. And he’d age like milk. Resistance required energy I didn’t have, so I handed him my phone.

He typed it in, texted himself, and blinked. “Woah, 212??” Men react to my area code the way Victorians reacted to electricity.

I smiled and recited my played out: “It’s my best character trait.”

He laughed. Then texted hourly for the rest of the night. I did not reply.

The next morning I got another message from the man saved as Garrett:

“Ok Paige, I need to take you to dinner.”

I don’t know who Paige is, but apparently she’s my alter ego now.

So Paige replied: “Would love that. I’m craving sushi. How about Masa?”

The next night, Paige went on a blind date with a different man who insisted many Jews came over on The Mayflower. When I asked how he knew, he told me the Mayflower sailed with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. I explained the several-century interlude between Christopher Columbus and Plymouth Rock.

Separately, but still relevant, he also didn’t know how to use the word “hence,” coupling it with the word “why” on multiple occasions. (For the record: hence means therefore. You cannot say “hence why.” Idiots.) But this is probably how dates feel when I suggest their dog would be better served in a lettuce cup. Improper grammar is the cock fighting of the written word.

He was actually quite lovely though — vaguely funny, kind, medium charming, quarter smart. We probably wouldn’t wed.

I told him I had to meet a friend who’d just been dumped. I did not. I left, collected a friend, and came back 20 minutes later.

Garrett texted back. “So far uptown. Sushi does sound good though.”

I saw my path clearly and replied:

“There’s also a great Ethiopian place in Bushwick.”