How to Talk to a Widower

don’t.”
    Up close, she’s somehow smaller, petite almost, and her skin is flawless, her eyes wide and unyielding. The fear of saying something stupid is a palpable tremor in my chest.
    She indicates my tub of popcorn. “Buttered?”
    “Yup.”
    “Excellent.”
    We sit in the soft, weighted silence unique to large empty spaces while on the screen they flash ads and the scrambled names of movie stars. “So,” Brooke says, munching on some popcorn.
    “So.”
    “So, after we met at the school that day, I kind of thought you were going to ask me out.”
    I don’t actually spit out my mouthful of soda, or even choke on it, the way they do in the movies, but it’s definitely a spit-your-soda kind of moment. “Did you?” I say. “I’m sorry.”
    “I shouldn’t have said that,” she says, mortified. “I always do that, say what I’m thinking, as if the pure shock value will excuse my saying it. I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer me.”
    “You didn’t ask a question.”
    “You’re right.” She nods thoughtfully, reaching for some more popcorn. “Fill in the blank,” she says, after a minute. “When I first met you … ”
    “Excuse me?”
    “It’s a prompt, something I do to get the kids to talk about their feelings. Sometimes answering a question is hard, but finishing a sentence works for them.”
    “So you’re treating me like a screwed-up kid?”
    She smiles, keeping her eyes on the screen. “Should I not?”
    “Fair enough. What was the question again?”
    “It wasn’t a question, it was a prompt.”
    “Right. Can you please repeat the prompt?”
    “When I first met you … ”
    “When I first met you I thought about asking you out.”
    “So why didn’t you?”
    “It’s complicated.”
    “People always say that, but it never really is.”
    “That’s probably true.”
    “So,” she says with a smile. “Fill in the blank. I did not ask you out because … ”
    Turns out that Brooke has little or no conversational filter, but neither do I these days, and the combination is kind of like bare-knuckle boxing. “I’ve never been very adept at approaching women,” I say. “I’m a great responder. If you show up crying in my office, I’m golden. But starting has always been harder for me. Because no matter what I’m saying, you know I’m just saying it to break the ice, so that I can ask you out, so that we can go out, and if that goes well, so that we can have sex. So basically, I go from being this nice guy with no agenda to the sleazy asshole who’s trying to sleep with you before he even knows you.”
    “You think maybe you’re over-thinking the whole thing a little?”
    “That’s what I do,” I say. “And the sad irony is that I thought I was done with all of that. I thought I had broken the ice for the last time and had earned myself a lifetime of never having to feel like that anymore. So then I resent the hell out of my dead wife for reneging on her part of the deal and stranding me here to fend for myself again, and then, of course, I feel guilty for resenting her, because it’s not like she died on purpose.”
    “Okay,” Brooke says. “You’re still messed up about your wife’s death. It’s all very understandable. Textbook, even. But to be honest, not very complicated.”
    “I’m just getting warmed up,” I say. “Then there’s the whole mindfuck of Hailey’s death being this great enabler.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “My little sister is about to marry a friend of mine that she met at my shiva. So her husband, her unborn children, basically her entire future, comes courtesy of Hailey dying, and I just can’t get my brain wrapped around that. That column I write is making a name for me, opening doors. I used to pitch books nobody wanted, now publishers are coming after me. My professional dreams can start to come true, and all because Hailey died. I’m famous for being sad. And then there’s the airline settlement. I’m going to be paid handsomely for being sad too. So I’m going to be rich and successful, but if I could go back in time and somehow save her, stop her from getting on that flight, I would. In a heartbeat.”
    “Of course you would,” Brooke says.
    “But someday I’ll fall in love again, right? I’ll start over with someone, and maybe we’ll buy a big old house with all this new money I have, and we’ll have kids, and I’ll be a professional writer, maybe even write some books. I’ll have this whole great