Weird Fishes

The phone rang at 4:48, late enough for people’s questions to lose their boundaries.

“Adult Services,” I said.

A man breathed on the line. Not heavily. Not dramatically. Just long enough for me to see Unknown on the caller ID.

“Can you recommend something spicy for me and my wife to read at bedtime?”

“Spicy,” I said.

“For bedtime.”

“Let me check.” I fake typed a few keys. “We have Chile Peppers: A Global History.”

A beat of silence. Then click.

He had called before. Not enough to report, but enough that we knew the breathing.

Edie looked over from Internet Computer 2, where she was helping a patron with a print job.

“Bedtime stories caller?”

“Still needs readers’ advisory, apparently.”

“Speaking of romance, don’t you have a date tonight?”

“Divorced agnostic. Three or more kids.”

She wheeled her chair over. “Three or more?”

“That’s what the profile said.”

“I thought your rule was divorced, no kids.”

“It was. This is my What the Heck era.”

“Your what?”

“My year of making questionable choices and calling it personal growth.”

After two years off the dating sites, I decided to try going out with fathers. It's not that I disliked children. I had just always believed that women without children belonged with men without children. Fewer exes and no custody calendars to memorize.

Still, I was trying to be open. I tried one child. No children. Two children.

I had data.

The one-child experiment had seemed manageable. His profile said divorced with one kid. Our conversation at the bar clarified things. The child was not from his marriage, but from a recent ex-girlfriend. And the child was, in fact, not even a year old.

Then the details kept stacking up. He was an artist who created large abstract canvases, lived with his dog in an art studio that was not legally an apartment, and slept on a couch to maintain the appearance that he was only there to paint.

He was not a bad guy. He was just more life than I knew what to do with.

After that, I returned to men with no children.

The attorney seemed safe. The first date went well enough for a second. He arrived fifteen minutes early to pick me up, texted from outside, and I told him to come in while I finished getting ready.

“You can sit down,” I said. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

Oliver, my tuxedo cat, believes every visitor has come to see him. He does not throw himself at people. He conducts an interview. First, he walks over. Then he looks the person in the eye. Then he places one paw on a leg and waits to see if the person understands the assignment.

I was moving between the bedroom and the living room when I saw him stiffen on the couch.

Oliver had made first contact.

The attorney’s eyes widened.

Oliver lifted his other paw.

The guy sprang up as if the couch had caught fire.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. I just can’t touch cats.”

And that was how I learned a man could have no children and still fail to understand mine.

A few weeks later, I tried two children.

We met at a coffee shop with a green velvet couch and a leather chair angled beside it. That should have warned me. He took the couch. I took the chair. Within ten minutes, it felt clinical.

He was divorced in the legal sense, not in any emotional sense I could detect. His ex-wife was dating again. But they were still tangled in ways I did not need explained, though he tried.

Then his voice cracked.

“And now,” he said, “she’s getting Brazilian waxes! She never did that when we were married.”

I felt sorry for him. I really did. I nodded with the patient face I had perfected at the reference desk that said take your time, even when three people were waiting for a title check.

By the time we walked to our cars, I understood I had not been on a date so much as an intake appointment. I gave him a sympathy hug, and he held on like he still had things to work through.

“I’d really like to see you again,” he said.

I half expected him to ask if I accepted Aetna.

Edie looked puzzled. “So after one child, no children, and two children,” she said, “you’re going out with three or more."

“Apparently.”

“Why?”

I looked at the clock. Five minutes until closing.

“This is not a life decision. It’s happy hour.”

Edie gave me a look.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just bring a journal and take notes for your future rom-com.”

Thirty minutes later, I was applying MAC’s Lovechild in the rearview mirror and trying not to think about the profile.

Divorced. Agnostic. Three or more children.

Oh, absolutely not, I thought.

I tucked my keys into my purse and went inside.

At the Cheesecake Factory, I gave my name to the hostess and waited up front, trying not to check my phone for an excuse to leave.

He walked in a few minutes later wearing a blue shirt, a tie, and khakis, like he had come straight from work. He smiled when he saw me, and I was surprised by how calm I felt. Not nervous. Just calm with a flicker of excitement, which on a first date felt suspicious.

The hostess led us to a booth for two.

“You go ahead,” he said, gesturing me first.

It was a small thing. Polite without being theatrical. I noticed it anyway.

We opened the enormous menus.

“Appetizers?” he asked.

“Appetizers.”

“Artichoke dip,” we said at the same time.

We looked at each other.

“Well,” he said. “That was easy.”

“Now we each pick one more,” I said.

I silently prayed he would not pick anything that needed wet naps.

I chose calamari because guys usually liked it, and it only needed a fork.

He studied the menu for a moment. “Potstickers?” he said.

A good sign, I thought. Not proof of character, but a good sign.

Neither of us ordered alcohol. He asked for seltzer with lime. I asked for seltzer with lemon.

“Keeping it exciting,” the waitress said.

“Always,” he said.

A man who didn't order a drink during happy hour was unusual, and I liked that.

Halfway through the calamari, he said, “You know, I messaged you before.”

I looked up. “You did not.”

“I did.”

“I would remember.”

“You ignored me," he said, teasing.

I searched my memory. Nothing.

“In my defense,” I said, “your profile did say three or more.”

He laughed. “Fair.”

“Anyway,” he said, “I deleted my profile. You’re my last date from the app, at least for a while."

“That sounds ominous.”

“No. I’m getting busy with local politics. I won't have time for all this.”

All this, I thought. Me, apparently.

Then he said, “I almost didn’t message you because of Radiohead.”

That surprised me more than the three children.

“Really?”

“You had them in your profile. I didn’t know if I could get along with someone who liked that kind of music.”

“What kind of music?”

He thought about it. “Complicated. What do you like about them?”

I liked that answer, even though he meant it as a reservation.

“It is complicated,” I said. “That’s the point. I find their music calming and energizing at the same time. And live, they're unbelievable.”

“Do I know any of their songs?” he asked.

Please don’t say “Creep,” I thought. That's what guys said when they didn’t really know Radiohead. “I like Creep,” then a pleased look, like they’d passed a quiz.

“I don’t think I really know any,” he said.

That was better.

“What do you listen to?” I asked.

“Mostly old stuff,” he said. “The Great American Songbook. Buddy Holly. That kind of thing.”

At least it’s not country, I thought.

Then he reached for another potsticker.

Politics turned out to be the first thing we had in common.

“I’m glad you didn’t say middle of the road,” he said. “Most people say that to be safe.”

“I’m not a middle-of-the-road person. Pick a side.”

“Exactly. Middle of the road is where the roadkill is.”

I laughed, partly because it was funny and partly because I had not expected to hear “roadkill” over artichoke dip.

Finally, I had to ask.

“So. Three or more?”

He smiled. “Three.”

“Just three?”

“Just three.”

I felt an unreasonable amount of relief for someone who had once considered zero the only acceptable number.

He laughed.

He talked easily after that. Work. His children. Town meetings. Music. No dating horror stories, no asking me to diagnose him over dinner.

We talked about dating-profile clichés.

“Everyone loves sushi and travel,” I said.

“And wine,” he said.

“I hate wine.”

“So do I.”

That felt more intimate than it should have.

He just talked. And somehow that confused me more.

By 8:55, I was starting to think I had become the most convenient person to sit across from on a Monday night when he didn’t have his children.

I liked him more than I had planned to, which was inconvenient, because I still could not tell whether he liked me at all.

At 9:05, I reached for my purse.

“So,” he said, as if he had been waiting until the last possible second, “how would a guy know you were flirting with him if he came into your library?”

I stopped.

The sensible answer was that he wouldn’t because I was at work and I had sense.

Instead, I heard myself say, “Why don’t you come in sometime and find out?”

He looked surprised.

So was I.

Then he gave me the smallest smirk, and for the first time all night I knew exactly what was happening.

When I got home, Oliver trotted over and sniffed my ankles as if he were checking for evidence. Then he wandered off, unimpressed.

I dropped my purse on the counter and sat on the edge of the bed, still in my clothes, replaying the night in fragments.

My phone buzzed.

“Which Radiohead song should I start with?”

I smiled despite myself.

“Weird Fishes.”

A moment later, another message appeared.

“Is it about online dating?”

“Ha! No. Just listen.”

Ten minutes later, he wrote back.

“Okay. I liked it. I think. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

I stared at the message.

Then he sent a single fish emoji.

The next day, I was at the desk helping someone borrow e-books. Beside me, Edie said into the phone, “For steamy bedtime reading, I’d recommend Sauna: The Power of Deep Heat.” She glanced at me, and I gave her a thumbs-up. One of the high school pages nudged my shoulder. “Hey,” she whispered. “Um, Ethan is here to see you?”

I looked up. He was standing by the new releases, grinning like we were already in on something.

I smiled back.

Two weeks later, Oliver climbed into his lap and stayed.