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By Root 481 0

“Would you like to ride up with me?” He smiled and said yes. We chatted in the elevator; we chatted in the foyer; we chatted during drinks before dinner; we chatted until we were seated. He was easy to converse with. He was also an architect, but we didn’t discuss architecture, which was a huge relief because “What’s your favorite building in New York?” between architects is as tired as “What’s your sign?” for the rest of the trolling population. When dinner was called and we all gathered around the table, I saw his tiny place card off down the table, next to what looked to be another single woman; the company around me soon carried me away into other possibilities. I was popular in the room that night, and I lost sight of my pre-dinner friend until it was time to leave. As the other guests were saying their goodbyes to our hostess I sought him out to share a cab uptown.

The next day I was in my office when a Peter Shelton called. The name didn’t ring any bells.

“Hi, this is Peter,” he said. “We met last night. I’m doing a modified bed check.”

“A bed check?”

“Yes, I’m calling to see if you took Mr. Deep Pockets up on his offer to go to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame gala in Fort Worth.”

“Oh, please,” I huffed, as though I had never had any intention of going on this jaunt. I was a bit surprised that Peter had overheard that particular tidbit. The truth was, in my newly single dating days I was up for anything; but I had a set of architectural drawings to get out of the office, and Mr. Pockets’s private jet was leaving soon. I glanced at the clock. No dice. I was about to cut my losses and engage Mr. Shelton in some date-driven witty banter when the phone went dead. My office was being wired for a new computer system, and a guy with a tool belt poked his head in my door and said, “Oops.” I looked at the phone in my hand and mused over Peter’s choice of the term “bed check.” When I had first moved to New York and left my first husband back in Texas he would brokenheartedly call at all hours, an activity my close friends and I began referring to as “bed checks.” I placed the phone back in the cradle and looked at the clock to see if maybe I could still swing liftoff.

Three days later, my friend Julie offered to take Cleo to a movie. Free babysitting for a single mother is not an opportunity to miss. I phoned the hostess from the dinner party to get Peter’s number, and without regard for the Rules I bravely dialed it.

“Would you like to go for a drink tonight?”

“How about tomorrow? I have to work late.”

“No, it has to be tonight. What time are you done?”

“Ten?”

“Perfect.”

Julie took Cleo to the movies and Peter and I went to a bar near my apartment for martinis. I wore the dress and shoes from the night of the dinner party—it was my best outfit, and honestly, the man didn’t notice. Probably because he still wears the same clothes he wore in boarding school, nametags intact, but also because he just doesn’t get hung up on superficial details. Owing, no doubt, to the martinis, I don’t really remember much from that first date, except Peter sitting in the gutter trying to tie the tiny ankle strap of my high-heeled shoe.

Then, breaking every other rule in the dating book, he ignored both my drunkenness and my high-maintenance footwear and called the very next morning to invite me for the weekend to his house upstate. With my child. Who does that? Let’s see, I thought. Fifty years old, never married, no children. Two possible explanations: severe commitment phobia or gay. What did I have to lose? I certainly wasn’t ready for a second husband, and really, what single mom doesn’t need all the gay help she can get?

I drove. There were two things I had kept from my marriage: my daughter and my Porsche 911 (a girl’s got to have a sexy getaway car). I was going broke paying for a garage in New York City, so this was my big chance to show off the Porsche. The weekend found us speeding up the Palisades Parkway, headed to Peter’s house in Cold Spring, New York.

“So what kind of a house is it?” I asked, curious about what style a fellow