Steamed

“socially challenged.” His rubbing and purring meant either that he was in love with my new colors or that he was hungry. I assumed the latter. In the kitchen, I filled his dish with lams, grabbed the phone, and checked my voice mail. Nothing. Just me and my paint and my socially challenged cat. I stroked Gato while he devoured his meal and then gave him a final pat.
    I had another shot at brewing a pot of Peet’s coffee and was rewarded with billows of steam surging from the appliance and dark paste seeping out the bottom. I poured a gross cup, changed into torn sweatpants, and decided that if Noah showed up, I wouldn’t answer the door. I threw on a Patty Griffin CD, cranked the volume, taped off the trim in the living room, loaded the paint tray with primer, and started rolling. To cover the red, I’d have to put on a good two coats of primer before I could even begin to create my tranquil room.
    My apartment was small: bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom all joined by a small hallway with a large linen closet. The garish paint and unfinished projects made the place seem cramped. I was convinced that my new design plan would remedy everything. By the third time Patty had sung “Blue Sky,” I had put on two coats of primer. I was just about to start the first earth tone when the phone rang.
    My sister, Heather, had finally called back. I rattled off my woeful Noah story in expectation of sisterly outrage.
    Instead of agreeing that I’d been terribly wronged, Heather said, “Well, what did you expect, you dummy?”
    “Did you not hear the words tank top and swagger ?” I demanded.
    'Oh, Chloe, get over it.” She covered the phone and yelled, “Walker, pull your pants down before you start to pee! When is he going to stop doing that? Look, Chloe, I’m sorry that things are bad for you right now. I keep telling you to use Back Bay Dates. That’s how Ben and I met, in case you’ve forgotten. I didn’t meet my husband in college the Way everyone says you’re supposed to, so I used modern technology. That way you can weed out all the bad ones and match up with someone who shares your interests, wants a relationship, and all the other things you’re missing with these bozos you keep dredging up from God knows where.”
    Heather raised her voice and practically shrieked with; glee, “In fact, this is a perfect idea! You can marry your Internet date and both the Carter sisters will be written up in the paper, and we’ll be, like, spokeswomen for Back Bay Dates, sharing our love stories with the public, encouraging-people to take charge of their dating lives. It’s a very logical approach to finding the perfect mate. Walker is tangled up in his pants! I gotta go, call me later!” And she hung up.
    There was no way I was going online to meet some serial-killer date. Those Web sites were even worse than the horrible restaurants that hosted “speed dating.” I knew all about speed dating. My old college roommate, Elise Jackson, tried it when she was heartbroken about the end of her calamitous six-month marriage. She prepared by memorizing a short speech outlining her background, her interests, and the top five reasons she was an excellent candidate for further dates. Clad in a professional-looking suit from J. Crew, her hair in a bob, Elise marched off to a round of speed dating prepared to make an eloquent presentation and snag a dream husband. She spent approximately six minutes with each man there, and each time she swapped tables she used up all the allotted time by rattling off the same speech. As each man looked at her with glassy-eyed boredom, she started to panic and began to perspire profusely. By the time she reached her final date, she’d become such a wet, stuttering disaster that she flung her speech away, yanked off her sweat-soaked blazer, downed the rest of her date’s Heineken and begged him to take her out of there. To her surprise, he agreed. He introduced himself as Teddy and took her for drinks at Rialto. There he confessed that he’d made a mockery of himself by passing out “cheat sheets” to the women: his romantic resume, including all his contact numbers, printed on four-by-six cards. He said the ultimate humiliation had come when a severe-looking brunette had taken out a red pen and begun correcting his notes. “See where you’ve written, ‘Adventurous and ready for anything’? You should really give an example of what you’ve done that’s adventurous so