How to Talk to a Widower

and frigid against my skin, and then run back upstairs. Through Mason’s bedroom doorway, I can see Suzanne sitting on his bed, holding both crying children on her lap. “Suzanne,” I say.
    The withering look she shoots me carries a nuclear payload that makes every organ in my body contract like a sponge. “Just leave,” she says, and I realize that there will be no fixing this, that there is no explanation she’ll be willing to accept. I am now, and forever will be, the guy she found drunk and pantless in her bed. The next time she tells her bad date stories to another man, I will top the list, and as he shakes his head sympathetically, she’ll shrug and make a self-deprecating comment about all the scumbags and perverts she seems to attract, and it doesn’t seem fair that I should be included in that company, but it’s not like I can file an appeal. And so, damage done, there’s nothing left but to nod sadly, pull up the sagging waist of my cold, soaked pants, and beat the latest in my fast-growing collection of ignoble retreats.
    Driving home, I’m laughing hysterically, or else I’m crying, I’m not exactly sure how to categorize the high, glottal barks erupting like gunfire from my throat, but either way, I can feel sharp, hot pricks on the inside of my chest, the floating jagged edges of all the things in me that are still broken.

    In the weeks that follow, I have enough lousy first dates to merit a musical montage. Cue the pop song and watch Doug try on different outfits and pose in front of the full-length mirror as Claire directs him, laughing from the bed. Watch Doug escorting various attractive and semi-attractive women from central casting in and out of different restaurants and coffee shops. Fast cuts of different women seated across the table: speaking or not speaking, painstakingly scraping the dressing off a piece of Bibb lettuce, angrily underscoring some clearly salient talking point with a violent jab of her finger, weeping uncontrollably, and sucking up a seemingly endless piece of spaghetti. And then more fast cuts of Doug dropping each of these women off at their homes or apartments, shaking hands, or awkwardly jockeying back and forth between handshakes and chaste goodnight pecks, the camera lingering on them in the background to show on their faces the sad certainty of another man who won’t be calling again, and then Doug coming into focus in the foreground as he heads back to his car, his expression bathed in the abject worthlessness of it all. The song choice is key here, something slow, but with a beat, a gruff smoker’s voice singing romantic lyrics laced with irony to convey the utter futility of it all; the boredom, the wasted time, the awkward beginnings and endings, the instantly forgettable, canned-date conversation, the sad, damaged lives to which he is now unwittingly privy, a song that ends in fading minor piano chords as Doug drives home with the windows open, his face sadly vacant as he stares blankly at the empty road ahead.

    Then one sleepless night, I dig out Brooke Hayes’s business card from my wallet and dial her cell phone. She picks up on the fifth ring.
    “It’s Doug,” I say. “Parker.”
    “Hi, Doug Parker,” she says drowsily.
    “I woke you up. I’m sorry.”
    “No. It’s okay. What’s up?”
    “Nothing.”
    “What time is it?”
    “It’s one a.m.”
    “Oh.”
    “Look, this was stupid. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
    “You sound funny.”
    “I’m a little drunk.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay.”
    “I lied. I’m not.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “I’ve started dating.”
    “Oh. That’s a positive step, right?”
    “I don’t know. It just feels wrong and awkward and utterly hopeless.”
    “You’re dating, all right.”
    There’s a moment of silence during which I can hear her breathing, still heavy with sleep. “Hi,” she says, after a bit.
    “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to the movies tomorrow, around noon. You know, just in case you were too.”
    “Oh. What are you going to see?”
    “Whatever you want.”
    She laughs and says, “I’ll see what I can do.”

30

    BROOKE SHOWS UP TO THE THEATER DRESSED IN a long, flowing bohemian skirt, and a baby T-shirt, her hair pinned up off her face by two bobby pins to reveal the multiple hoops and studs in her crowded earlobes. She looks effortlessly pretty, poised and relaxed, and I have to quell the urge to reach out and run my