We make plans to go out that coming Saturday night. It is going to be on the late side since he is seeing a play first with this Lithuanian couple who own the city’s most well-known Lithuanian bookstore, according to him. Weird Lithuanian friends, I jot down in my notebook. When Saturday night comes, I’m ready at 9 pm and am neither looking forward to the date nor dreading it and he shows up. It’s raining. He buzzes and I rush outside and there he is, in front of my apartment building, holding an umbrella. He tells me the cab’s waiting and then he takes hold of the crook of my arm and steers me across the street, holding the umbrella over my head, like I’ll melt if a raindrop hits me.

We go to Seasons for dinner, where I had gone on a date with Phil Greenstein, the lawyer, a few months earlier. On our way into the restaurant I realize that Seth is actually very little, about 5’5”, and that his haircut is funny. He has a full head of silky, black hair, but it’s parted severely to the side, like a dodgy, old accountant, and it puffs around his head like he’s wearing a bowler derby. But he’s dressed sharply, in a blue and white checked shirt, with dark slacks. We sit down and when the waitress comes he does something embarrassing. After she says hello and tells us her name he says, “Hello, Ann,” and then tells her our names. But soon our conversation goes well and the bottle of wine Seth orders certainly helps. By the end of dinner I’m very drunk. I have to go to the bathroom and am worried that I won’t be able to walk straight and that I’ll look like a fool. He pays the bill. I don’t think I even offer to contribute. He asks what I want to do next, talk some more and go somewhere else or go home? I tell him I’d like to keep talking so we go outside and walk, in the mist, to Luna, where I had gone on my date the week before with Jeremy Hornflek, the stock market analyst. It’s dark and smoky inside and we sit down at a table in the back, away from the draft. He’s sitting across from me and it’s hard to hear with all the techno music thumping and people laughing so after a while I ask if he wants to sit next to me, which he does, apparently, since he doesn’t answer but jumps up from his seat and in a split second appears by my side. Up until now he’s hardly touched me. We finish our wine and he pays the bill and this time I do offer: I can pay for this one since you got dinner, I say and he says, You can pay but I won’t let you.

We leave the bar and it’s late and we start to walk toward my place and I link my arm through his and he immediately takes my hand instead, weaving his fingers in mine. We walk like that, hand in hand, in the rain, back to my apartment. When we get inside my courtyard I lean in to give him a kiss on the lips and it’s like I triggered the jack out of the box for he’s suddenly upon me, kissing me, his tongue immediately staking a claim inside my mouth, his arms wrapped around me, squeezing, squeezing, and there we are embracing, making out, me in my fuzzy white hat and long leather coat and umbrella and purse, the two of us, in our 30s, two small, dark-haired Jews, holding each other tight, like the whole world can just fall away for all we care, at that moment in time we have each other, and that’s all we know and see and want. Then, in one fell swoop, he picks me up and pulls me against his chest, my legs wrapped around his waist like a little clinging monkey. He kisses me hard. I will say goodbye and let you go, he says. And I say, Do you not want to come up because it’s our first date? And he says, I was just waiting for an invitation. So we go upstairs, still drunk on wine and on kissing and we start on the couch and then make our way to the bedroom where clothes get yanked off and thrown on the floor, and we’re kissing and rubbing up against each other and he can’t get enough of my body, his hands are everywhere, whispering against my skin, tracing my face with his fingertips, caressing my closed eyelids, my lips. And he’s kissing me all over, nibbling my fingers, nuzzling the soft place under my arm. And throughout it all he’s sighing, like’s he’s touching something so delicate and beautiful, so soft and feminine that it’s making his soul cry out with joy. We barely sleep. I’m not tired and each time we start to sleep I touch him some more and he comes to me, hungry. But he doesn’t say much throughout that long night. He doesn’t tell me in words that he loves my body or that he’s happy to be with me, and he doesn’t smile much, either. What a droll, funny little guy, I think. And then I think that it’s peculiar, this being so naked and intimate with a man I’ve only known for a few hours. I think it’s dangerous, this coupling, and will certainly lead to hurt feelings. I even ask if he thinks it’s strange, ask if he always does this with a woman he barely knows. And he shrugs. If it feels right I do, he says.

Early in the morning he tells me he’s hungry, suggests we go and get something to eat but I’m not hungry and where will we go at 6 am on a Sunday morning? So I ask if he wants me to make him something to eat, some challah toast and eggs, perhaps? He says yes to the eggs and no to the challah, even though I ask more than once, suspicious of his not wanting any bread. He asks if he can help me and I say, What can you do? So I throw on some clothes and make him some eggs and watch him eat and then he asks for more so I make him another batch. All together he eats four eggs, which I think is strange.

“So let me get this straight,” my therapist asks later. “You think he’s strange because he eats four eggs and because he drinks Orange Crush?” That’s right, I say, because Seth had told me that for breakfast he drinks Orange Crush, not coffee. He even special orders it by the crate. And I notice that his eyes are too close together and that when he eats a little piece of food gets stuck on the left corner of his mouth. After he finishes eating we go back to the bedroom to lie down some more and kiss a little, although he’s got crust in his eyes, which I point out, and also egg on his face, which I also point out and he cleans himself up and makes some crack about being unpresentable. Soon he says he should go home. I decide to help him find him a cab so we walk outside together and we hold hands, but I don’t feel close to him, and then he motions to a cab that pulls over and idles by the curb while he gives me a quick kiss on the lips. I say, I’ll talk to you later and he says, Yes, we’ll talk later and then he’s gone and I think, What was that all about?

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