The One Drinking the Red

The clock strikes nine. It is the morning of the momentous day and I am sitting in my small apartment, calculating the odds of death by impatience. This is not hyperbole – I am in the throes of a full-blown, anticipatory-anxiety attack. There are nine hours to endure before our scheduled meetup, and they stretch before me in a perspiration- and palpitation-filled time warp of shrinking walls. Will those hours feel longer if I fill them with thoughts of her? It makes no difference; I can think of nothing else.

We had discovered each other through a blind-dating app, one that lured me in with a prohibition against photos and facetime. Members could communicate only through text via the app’s private chatrooms. This suited me, for as a writer I could present a glib first impression undamped by my unremarkable looks. I would be defined only by my words and an image of my choosing. I scrolled through thousands of the app’s options before settling on a painting of a lone glass of wine with the alluring pigments of a deep sky’s summer sunset. I considered myself somewhat of a wine connoisseur and hoped I could attract one as well.

My first match was portrayed by a blue rose, and it was love at first read. Her grammar and punctuation were immaculate, her vocabulary was expansive, and her phrasing was pure poetry. Her preference for typing out entire words rather than using their universal abridgments spoke of an assiduous spirit that matched my own. Her prose was clever and humorous, and her interest in me was generous.

“You seem like someone who can appreciate a good vintage,” she had typed during our first meetup.

“I like to think so,” I keyed back.

“Sommelier?” she teased.

“Not that good!” The woman knew her stuff. We spent the rest of the evening typing about our shared passion for wine, trading the names and years of our must-try bottles. She was fond of Argentina’s fragrant Torrontés wines, while I was partial to Italy’s oak-aged merlots.

We had textual intercourse every day of the getting-to-know-you phase, oftentimes for several hours at a time, and finally consented to an exchange of phone numbers. My macrophobia (essentially a fear of waiting) was bad on the day she had agreed to call me for the first time; I couldn’t work, couldn’t eat, couldn’t read, couldn’t clean. I could do nothing but attempt to control my breathing and anticipate with both dread and thirst the sound of her voice. After several hours of this, I was able to distract myself by researching blue roses and was drawn down a browser rabbit hole of meaning, myth, mystery, and biology, for roses of blue do not exist in nature and have come to symbolize attainment of the impossible. I wondered if my match had known this when selecting it.

An eternal time later, I answered my phone and heard her miraculous voice for the first time. Her midwestern accent was music, low and full of seriousness and sensuality, except when she laughed, like she did when I stammered out a greeting. Her laughter made me feel as though the impossible was attainable.

I spent the following week doing little more than savoring her voice when we spoke and craving it when we did not. She was eager for a facetime call, but I wanted to take it slow, to absorb each of her elements singularly before moving to the next. I was not yet prepared to know what she looked like, and certainly not ready for her to see me. What if she found me visually repulsive? What if I found her visually repulsive? Or worse, stunning? If she were half as enchanting as her voice, she’d be way out of my league. But she was persistent and I at last relented.

On the day of our scheduled facetime, I found distraction via my phone’s selfie mode, roaming the apartment, studying my likeness in the small screen, turning lights on and off, switching out light bulbs with more lumens or less, lighting and blowing out candles, closing and opening drapes, attempting to literally cast myself in the best light. At last I shifted strategies and went for dark ambiance, angling the desk light behind me. I studied my contours and wondered if a different hairstyle might give more squareness to my jaw.

Without warning, my phone (which I had been using as a mirror) erupted into the electronic harmony that announced my comfort zone was about to be infiltrated. Already? I was surprised to discover it had been over an hour since I’d last checked the time. I tucked that phenomenon away for later analysis while my trembling finger swiped the accept-call icon.

And then she was there, replacing my image on the screen. Each of us peered at the other’s silhouette, patiently waiting for our respective phones to achieve optimal exposure, laughing when we realized at the same time they already had. She gave in first, reaching back and flipping the switch behind her, and I could see her pupils shrink as she was bathed in light.

She was striking. And I was doomed.

“Now your turn,” she said.

“Would it be terrible if I could just look at you for a little bit first, without thinking about you looking at me?” I asked.

“How very Phantom of you,” she murmured, rolling her lovely eyes. “Suit yourself. We’ve more important business to attend to.”

“We do?”

“We do,” she confirmed. “Because I’ve decided that before we make an in-person date—” (my heart leapt) “—you have to answer a series of questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“My kind. There are only three. Question One. Are you familiar with a bar named Riley’s?”

“Riley’s on Seventh? It’s about 15 minutes-or-so drive from where I live.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Because that’s where we’ll see each other in person for the first time, tomorrow evening at six, provided you can correctly answer the next two questions.”

My heart continued to hammer.

“Question Two. Why won’t you let me see your face, really?”

I flushed and was relieved she couldn’t see it. “Maybe because I’m thinking there’d be less chance of you bolting if you saw me for the first time in person,” I admitted. “I’m supremely unphotogenic.”

She huffed. “How could you think I’m that shallow?”

“If you’re not, then you’re too good to be true.”

“A hallucination,” she mused. “You know, the longer you hide whatever gross disfigurement you’re hiding, the more I will mercilessly tease you for it once it’s revealed.”

I laughed. “Patience, my dear. You’ll see me in person in less than 24 hours.”

She sighed. “We’ll see. Last question. Ready?”

“Ready,” I replied, relieved to be moving on.

“Question 3. If I were a wine, what kind of wine would I be?”

“I’m saving that one for purposes of future seduction,” I said.

“I think you’re stalling,” she pouted.

I wasn’t. She was unquestionably an exquisite merlot, seasoned with the moonlit salt of ocean air, substantive, rich, complex, and perfect. “Do you have an alternate question?” I asked.

“Okay, fine. What will you be wearing tomorrow night?”

“Not sure yet.”

“You are so bad at this!” She huffed again. “How will I know which of the gentlemen at the bar is my date?”

“I’ll be the one drinking the red,” I said in a voice honeyed with the suavity of every old theater romance. Her laugh was a song that would repeat in my head through the night and into the next day. Although we had never met in person, I already felt she was mine and would do everything to keep it that way. I am so close….

* * *

I am late.

Traffic is a virtual nightmare. After being at a near-standstill for 20 minutes, I inform the cab driver that I need to get out. An anguished glance at my phone’s clock informs me it’s almost six and the GPS indicates I’m still a mile away; if I hurry, I can get there on foot in less than 15 minutes. Surely she will wait at least that long before giving up on me.

My feet pound the sidewalk as I imagine her entering the bar and scanning the room for the man drinking the red. When she doesn’t see him, she will slide into a booth, or maybe take a seat at one of the small tables in the back, or perhaps she will sit at the bar so she can keep an eye on the door. She will order a glass of merlot, accompanied by a selection of mild cheeses, signifying the precision of our pairing.

And then I imagine her sadly signaling for her tab. I check the map on my phone as I slow to a jog and find I’m still a few blocks away. I exit map mode so I can text a quick message: I’m here!

And before I know it, I really am there, standing in the bar’s doorway, positive she is gone. But then I see her, sitting at the bar, exactly as I’d envisioned. I drink in the sight of her while she knocks back what can only be --

“Another merlot,” she calls to the bartender, holding up her stemless wine glass and swirling the half-swallow left at the bottom.

I’m overcome with a need to run to her and embrace her and apologize for ever thinking she wouldn’t wait. But then the walls of the bar start closing in; I am having a full-blown macrophobic meltdown, which is strange because I’ve never had one on someone else’s behalf before. Paralyzed, I watch as she turns to the man sitting next to her, and I note with horror that he is also drinking red wine.

“What do you think?” she asks. “I told you, it comes in at 6:10, the same message every night.”

The man is staring intently at his phone. “You’re right – and it’s from that disconnected number,” he says.

The man hands her the phone and she tucks it into her bag – it is her phone. Did she get my text? I watch her sip from the fresh wine glass provided by the bartender. She is breathtakingly beautiful, but there is something different about her, a gauntness I hadn’t noticed the day before.

“Every night for the past five years, Doctor,” she is saying to the man, whose body language is clearly indicative of his interest in her. I move to intervene before realizing I still can’t move. The man seems eager to impress, reciting an eloquent string of words that culminates with “a preternatural reverberation.”

“A what-now?” she asks with a light laugh, the same laugh that hogtied me from the start. I still can’t make sense of what the man is saying. Something about echoes and ripples, about how the intensity of some memories can fray the fabric of the physical world. He asks her a question about “unfinished business.”

She laughs again and this time there is an acidic quality I never expected. “We were in love and he was killed before we ever got within 30 feet of each other. He was hit by a car crossing the street to meet me for the first time, right here at this very bar. I never even saw his face. I’d say that qualifies.”

She is distraught and dives into her merlot as though it is an escape hatch. As soon as I can move, I will rush to comfort her, and we will figure out together how to fix everything. In the meantime, I will continue to luxuriate in the vision of her, almost close enough to touch. We were clearly meant for each other. After all, she had been drinking the merlot.

The clock strikes nine. It is the morning of the momentous day.