Some Enchanted Evening

Gowodoweee (say it out loud, you’ll understand). Here it goes.



I take the bus up to Jill’s place. Because she’s a successful litigator and I am a lowly independent movie producer (used to be a successful lawyer), I live in Battery Park, and she lives in a tony new building in Murray Hill. Its just the right distance to her office so that she can jazzer-cize to a workout tape all the way to work.

So I get off the M-90 a few blocks from her place, so I can stop by the Duane Reade on the corner of 37th and 3rd Avenue. They have a great selection of Fanny Farmer individually wrapped chocolate candies (the kind with stuff in the middle) and more greeting cards for a romantic good start than you can shake a stick at. And trust me, I’ve shaken some sticks.

Before I go any further, let me tell you how I’ve dressed for this very special occasion. I cleaned and polished up my sneakers to make sure that I look my best, and I have my best sweater tucked neatly into a pair of acid washed jeans (people say that I don’t know style, but I know the eighties are BACK).

As you all can tell, I am feeling pretty jazzy myself and I am pretty excited. I picked up some tums and a side of Gas-X in the drug store to deal with that excitement – I always try to be a gentleman.

I get to Jill’s house fifteen minutes early, because women don’t like guys who are tardy. And besides, I am so excited to be there, I have to use her bathroom as soon as I get there, and I can’t wait any longer.

After using the restroom, we’re on our way (yes, I washed my hands, and by the way, what an interesting collection of pharmaceuticals in her medicine cabinet).

She’s in heels and a skirt, and looks quite comely, and my palms begin to sweat a bit. I guess we wont be holding hands. I haven’t really had much of an idea of what we’ll do after I pick her up. I thought the card (inscribed with the message, “Glad you decided to come after all” and with a picture of a woman smiling) and the chocolates would buy me some time after picking her up, but it didn’t work out that way. She laughed at the card, though, maybe it meant something I didn’t think of.

On a spur of the moment, I think that it would be great to head out to Shea Stadium to see the Mets play. It is raining, and maybe the game wont be totally sold out.

Now, I know Jill isn’t the biggest sports fan, and I know that we aren’t going to get the greatest seats, but I figure, it would be worth the trip for the hot dogs alone. Jill doesn’t seem to disagree, so we hoof it up to Grand Central Station. It’ll be faster than taking a taxi to Shea, and save at least eight or nine dollars against a metro card swipe for two people. And her heels don’t seem too high to walk in.

We walk by a few construction sites in her neighborhood on the way up town. I cannot believe how many construction workers that Jill seems to know. They all seem to call out to her to say “Hi.” She’s really popular, and if I had known, I probably would have been more nervous about taking her out. I am glad I didn’t know.

We get to Shea, and the game is almost a sell-out, despite a light drizzle. Even so, we’re able to get two seats, pretty close to each other. And when we get in, we actually are able to arrange to sit one in front of the other. As a gentleman, of course I let Jill sit in front for the first four and a half innings. And this lets me smell her hair every once in a while when she isn’t paying attention. It smells like some kind of shampoo.

The game quickly turns into a blowout by the visiting team and Jill doesn’t see the point in staying. However, I’ve been to enough baseball games to know that fortunes can change, and one of the reasons to bring a non-sports fan to a sporting event is because you want to inform them about something they might not know about (like dramatic comebacks). And while the Mets didn’t come back, not even close, that’s besides the point.

Jill didn’t seem too miffed about the Mets not making the comeback, and she sure did seem to enjoy the Italian Sausages they sell at the Stadium. You’d think that it was her favorite part of the game.

She seemed to really lose steam after the seventh inning stretch. I’d had a six pack of beer in my backpack that I bought at a package store across the street from the stadium, and we were able to get away with drinking it by pouring it into cups that we got from buying a couple of Pepsis from the vendor. But beer makes me tired, too, and Jill’s not much of a beer drinker, and I think the climb to the upper deck, in heels, and the beer and the sausage made her cranky. She was very popular, though, with the bleacher bums in the upper deck. I don’t think they get her type in Flushing’s cheap seats too often.

Anyway, we didn’t talk much on the ride back to the city. The train was really crowded and we were bunched up together for most of the ride, which was exciting. But because of the noise, or her being tired, we didn’t do much talking. We just hung on.

I walked her back to her place, even though she said I didn’t have to. Again, I always try to be a gentleman. And when she kissed me goodnite outside her building and thanked me for the game, it was a good thing it was on the cheek, because my breath probably smelled like beer and hot dogs, Then she was gone.

I was tired so I took a cab home, and I called her on the way home to ask her out for next Wednesday. There is a comic book show at Madison Square Garden.

I hope she says yes.