Off the Menu by Stacey Ballis Page A

fellowship and he wooed me in a way that only a Latin man can, I completely got caught up in the amazing movie-ness of it. The late nights spinning around the city on his classic Vespa. His murmured passionate endearments, in softly purring Spanish. Taking me home to meet his family, a raucous group so like my own, that it made me deeply homesick and powerfully nostalgic. My parents met at the weddingof a mutual friend, and were married themselves within weeks. When we fall, we fall hard. So when Andres begged me to marry him three weeks later and said he would move home with me, I said yes, and we wed in a tiny judge’s office, with a family-dinner celebration at his parents’ home, and had a three-day honeymoon in Majorca en route back to Chicago, where I had to try to explain him to my family and all of my friends. Once he had successfully learned English by watching a lot of daytime television it became clear that language had not really been our barrier to communication, and that we had nothing in common. He refused to find work, was indifferent to my family and dismissive of my friends, and began to spend late nights out, coming home smelling of booze and sickly sweet perfumes that I tried to ignore. Once he had gotten his green card and completely ruined my credit rating, we divorced, and I was thrust into a dating scene that I was ill-prepared for.
    One of the problems with loving all those classic rom coms, is that it puts me in a constant state of observing my romantic life with an eye toward “the story.” And frequently, it backfires. I’m so convinced that I’m supposed to have some sort of adorable first meeting with the soon-to-appear love of my life, I forget that I am not Meg Ryan, circa 1987, and I am just a normal girl and that it might not be guaranteed. I had not really considered when I decided to pursue this odd career of mine, which keeps me in a fairly small social circle and is rife with weird work hours, that there are not, in fact, a whole lot of single men wandering aimlessly around my apartment on any given day. So meeting guys has always been, to say the least, difficult.
    A couple of summers ago, after a wine-soaked lunch with Barry, I hailed a cab to take me home. And when I got in, Isat on something uncomfortable. A BlackBerry. Not
my
BlackBerry.
    I put the treasure in my purse, arrived at my destination, and took Dumpling for a walk. While wandering the neighborhood, Dumpling managing to mark every tree on the planet, I thought of the BlackBerry and my pulse quickened.
    This was it. This was the way it happens.
    I will call the first name on the call-back list, explain that I have someone’s phone, and give my number. A voice like honey over gravel will call me back, thank me for saving his life, and take my address. And then a tall, handsome, salt-and-pepper gent with a confident bearing will arrive at my house, tell me I’m amazing, and offer to take me to dinner to thank me for my Good Samaritan ways. We will talk easily until the restaurant closes, head somewhere for a nightcap, and fall madly in love. For his birthday I will order a cake in the shape of a BlackBerry. He’ll propose on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Washington, where I got in the cab. At our wedding we will toast Yellow Cab number 1472 for bringing us together.
    I pressed redial, and got a gentleman named Robert, who announced that he was a colleague of the phone’s owner at Rush University Medical School … so now I know that not only is my
innamorato
a doctor, but a professor type as well. He praises my good nature, takes my number, and promises to get the info to my future hubby.
    I head home, chuffed. The phone rings. A voice like honey over gravel thanks me for saving his life, takes my address, and announces he will be by around six. He jokes that he would call me from the car to tell me when he was close, but I have his phone. Sigh.
    I primp. Not excessively, but I spruce up. Change clothes,add some