The Mistletoe Secret Read online

  Dale started in. “In non-Marine jargon, it means you leave the past behind and start living your future. It’s time to find someone new. You’re a good-looking guy, successful, smart—there’s a million women out there who would love to hook up with you.”

  “They’re pounding down my doors,” I said.

  “They would be if they knew you were available,” Nate said. “It’s like this: you don’t stop someone in a parking lot to ask if their car’s for sale unless it has a sign in the window. You need to put up the sign.”

  “You want me to wear a sign saying I’m single?”

  “Figuratively,” Nate said.

  “He could get a T-shirt,” Dale interjected. “Available.”

  Nate continued. “I could name at least a half dozen women at Traffix who would be interested.”

  “You think I should date someone at work?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m just saying there’re opportunities out there.”

  Just then our waitress, Corinne, brought over a tray of cheeseburger sliders, buffalo wings, and spinach artichoke dip with tortilla chips. “There you go, my darlings.”

  “Avast, me buxom beauty,” Dale said. “Now give us a twirl and show us your aftside.”

  She shook her head. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day,” I said.

  “That must be why the kitchen’s all talking like that.” She turned to me. “Where have you been, dear?”

  “Hiding,” I said.

  “Men usually come here to hide.”

  “Woman problems,” Nate said.

  “That’s usually why they’re hiding.” She smiled at me. “Need another drink?”

  “He could use a keg,” Nate said.

  “Keep ’em a-comin, ya wench,” Dale said. “And don’t go a-hornswoggling us on the bill.”

  Corinne shook her head, then looked back at me. “For the record, I’m available.” She winked and walked back to the kitchen.

  “There you have it,” Nate said. “Opportunity.”

  “The hurt’s still fresh,” I said. “I’m not looking for opportunity.”

  “Don’t you miss waking up to something soft and warm in bed?” Dale asked. “Be truthful, aren’t you lonely?”

  I took a slow drink, then nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes it feels like the flu.”

  Both men looked at me sympathetically.

  “Your situation isn’t going to change by itself,” Nate said. “You’ve got to make the world change. If you’re looking for something, where do you go?”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Anything. A new stereo system. A book.”

  “I’d probably look it up on the Internet.”

  “Bingo. That’s where you start.”

  “You think I should try Internet dating?”

  “At least in the beginning,” Nate said.

  “I’ve heard bad stories about Internet dating.”

  “All dating has bad stories. Big deal. So you have to sift through a few tares to get to the wheat.”

  “What’s a tare?” Dale asked.

  “It’s a weed,” Nate said. “Don’t you ever read the Bible?”

  Dale shook his head. “Not enough, apparently.” He turned to me. “I know it doesn’t sound fun, but sometimes you have to go through hell to get to heaven. Do you know Wally in engineering? The short guy with a bad haircut?”

  “The guy with a big handlebar mustache that makes him look like a walrus?”

  “That’s the man,” Dale said, touching his nose as if we were playing charades. “So, three years ago he was married to this demon shrew who was as bossy as she was lazy. He’s working his butt off to pay bills, while she stays at home during the day shopping for junk jewelry on TV and eating chocolate, you know what I mean?” He didn’t wait for me to answer.

  “After their youngest kid starts school, the shrew makes friends with a group of younger students and starts staying up all night clubbing. Then she stops getting out of bed in the morning because she’s too tired from staying up so late, so Wally starts getting up at five in the morning so he can make the kids’ lunches and breakfasts, send them off to school, and go to work.

  “But it doesn’t end there. Her enlightened friends convince her that she’s a domestic slave, so she claims herself ‘emancipated’ from Wally, which means she officially doesn’t have to do anything other than cash his checks and spend his money.

  “So every day after work the man comes home, makes dinner, does the dishes, puts the kids to bed, then goes to bed himself to start again the next day. I mean, it’s an insane arrangement, but Wally’s a timid, peaceful soul and he does this without complaint.

  “This goes on for more than a year. Then one day the demon shrew tells him that he’s boring and ugly and she wants a divorce. He pleads with her to stay because of the children, but she’s not having it. So she drains their savings and takes off with her buddies and the guy she was secretly seeing.”

  “This sounds kind of familiar,” I said.

  “Too familiar,” Nate said.

  “So, the divorce goes through and it wreaks havoc on the kids. They start getting in fights and getting expelled from school, that kind of stuff. Still, Wally does his best to be both parents, since the ex never has time to see her kids anymore.

  “Then, about three months after the divorce is final, Marco in engineering comes up to Wally and says, ‘Aren’t you divorced?’ Wally says, ‘Yeah, why do you ask?’ Marco tells him that his wife’s sister is coming up from Mexico and even though she doesn’t speak much English, she’s sweet and pretty and not married. He invites Wally on a double date.

  “Wally asks, ‘Why me?’ Marco says, ‘Why not you? You’re a nice guy.’ So Wally shows up at Marco’s house and it turns out that his sister-in-law isn’t just pretty, she’s gorgeous. Like, drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, on a scale of one to ten she’s pushing fifty, and here’s Wally on a good hair day pushing four. Love must be blind because Martina, that’s her name, is smitten. She barely speaks English, but they speak the language of love. They start dating.

  “One night she asks if they can stay home. Martina makes Wally a real home-cooked Mexican meal, then afterward, she tells him to just relax in the living room. She brings him a cold drink and turns the TV on for him, then—get this—gets down on her knees and rubs his feet. He doesn’t know how to handle it.

  “Six months later, they get married. One day Martina comes to him crying. Wally asks her what’s wrong. She says, ‘My love, you are so handsome. I know you have many beautiful women who want you. I am afraid one will come and take you from me.’

  “Wally says, ‘No one is going to take me. No one thinks I’m handsome but you.’ She says, ‘You are humble too. I will never be able to hold you.’

  “Karma,” Dale said, leaning back in emphasis. “Sometimes the route to heaven goes through hell. Karma may pay slow, but she eventually covers the bill.”

  “Where did you hear this story?” I asked.

  “Marco. Martina came down to bring Wally lunch and I asked him who the looker was.”

  Nate raised his glass to me. “Dale’s right, man. Heaven awaits. You just need to apply yourself. It’s like Stuart always says in sales conference, ‘Nothings sells itself.’ ”

  I took another drink and then said, “The Internet, huh?”

  Dale nodded. “You can find whatever you want on the Internet.”

  “Give it a try,” Nate said. “There’s a dating site for everyone.”

  I thought for a moment, then said, “All right.”

  Nate looked at me seriously. “ ‘All right,’ you’ll do it, or ‘all right,’ you’ve said your piece, now leave me alone?”

  “The former,” I said. “I’ll try.”

  “Try not,” Dale
said in a pitched voice. “Do, or do not.”

  “You sound like Yoda.”

  “I was imitating him.”

  “I prefer the pirate.”

  “Aye, then. Make us proud, matie,” Dale said. “Scuttle ye boats.”

  “Scuttle ye boats,” Nate said.

  “Scuttle ye boats,” I repeated.

  We all took a drink.

  CHAPTER

  Three

  We stayed at the pub until a little after eleven, when Dale’s wife, Michelle, called to see where he was. From Dale’s end of the conversation we could tell she wasn’t happy.

  “You really left Michelle alone on a Friday night and didn’t tell her where you were going?” Nate said as Dale hung up.

  “Slipped my mind.”

  “Keep that up,” Nate said, “and you’re going to be Internet dating.”

  “No, she’ll just give me the silent treatment for a few days, which is kind of like a staycation. That reminds me. The other day Michelle asked me to hand her the lip balm but I accidentally handed her the superglue instead. She’s still not speaking to me.”

  I laughed.

  “Good one, Dale,” Nate said. “Good one.”

  I picked up the tab, gave Nate a lift back to his car, then drove home to my apartment. Even though it was past midnight, I turned on the television. I watched the last twenty minutes of Citizen Kane, then began surfing channels.

  Just as I was about to turn off the television, an advertisement came on for a dating site—a video collage of happy, love-frenzied couples swooning over each other. It seemed to me like some kind of a sign. I took a deep breath and got up from the couch. “All right, fine. Let’s do this.”

  I walked over to my computer and pulled up the dating site advertised on the commercial. The home page showed an attractive couple laughing, their faces touching, their eyes blissfully closed.

  LONELINESS OR LOVE?

  It’s your choice with eDate.

  As I looked at the page a pop-up box appeared.

  Tell us, are you:

  a)A man seeking a woman

  b)A woman seeking a man

  c)A man seeking a man

  d)A woman seeking a woman

  e)Other

  Other? I clicked “a,” then entered my zip code and ­country. The box disappeared and three words appeared:

  Let’s Go, Stud.

  Interesting beginning. I wondered what it said to women.

  I started answering questions. There were a lot of them. I hadn’t realized that signing up for a dating site would be like taking an SAT exam, but the site advertised the proven power of its matching process, and if true love was at the end of it all, it was a small price to pay.

  I clicked through the basic questions, answering them as quickly as possible. Gender, age, city, relationship status—­single or divorced. One of the prompts asked me how many times I’d been married; the options started at zero and went all the way up to five-plus. Who goes after people that have been married five-plus times? I wondered. Probably other people who have been married five-plus times. They should get a frequent marriage card.

  In the next segment, I was asked to rate my own personality traits on a scale of one to five. Was I warm? Clever? Sensitive? Generous? After a while I just started marking fours for everything until the website scolded me.

  Slow down, partner. We know you’re excited, but you’re answering too many questions the same. Take time to carefully consider and answer each question. Your future happiness is at stake.

  So much at stake. I threw in some threes and fives, not necessarily because I thought it was more accurate, but rather just to please the software. After ten minutes of questions, I clicked FINISHED. The site congratulated me for not quitting, and then a graph popped up showing that I was only 10 percent done. “Ten percent?” I said to myself. This was going to take all night.

  The third segment asked more questions along the personality line and I was asked to pick out adjectives that described me:

  Content

  Genuine

  Vivacious

  Wise

  Bossy

  Aggressive

  Opinionated

  Romantic

  Are people actually honest on these sites? Do people actually choose people who admit to being bossy, aggressive, and opinionated? So far the site hadn’t asked if I had a police record or if I’d ever been accused of a felony. Maybe that came later.

  The questions continued. It was annoyingly long, sometimes asking the same question in a different way, presumably to trick liars into revealing themselves. There were a lot of questions I should have asked Jill before marrying her. But then, the Jill who divorced me wasn’t the same person I’d married anyway. If you think about it, when you marry someone, you’re just jumping into one part of a very long river, hoping the current takes you somewhere worthwhile.

  Then again, maybe she would have just lied anyway; she was good at it.

  After the fifth segment I was informed by the graph that I was only halfway done. It was half past one in the morning and I was tired of answering questions, but now I felt trapped, unwilling to throw away all my work. I reminded myself of how lonely I was and that I’d had a Red Bull along with my beers. There was no turning back.

  The ninth segment asked me what I did for a living. I wrote consultant, which, in a matter of speaking, was true, but mostly just sounded better than saying I was a salesman. Still, it made me feel a little sneaky.

  The next segment asked me to rate my looks, then post pictures of myself. I suppose that it’s somewhat revealing that I didn’t have any pictures that didn’t have Jill in them. I’m not a “selfie” kind of guy, but I snapped a picture of myself and uploaded it.

  By experience, I know that most women think I’m attractive, but I’m not vain and the selfie I took should have proved it, easily dropping me a few points on the Hot or Not scale. At least no one would accuse me of Photoshopping my profile pic. That was my professional slogan: underpromise, overdeliver.

  When I finally reached the end of the survey I was asked which of the service’s packages I wished to purchase. I got out my credit card and paid for ninety days of the gold package, the highest level possible.

  Okay, I did it, I thought. The trap is set.

  Sometimes the most profound experiences of our lives start with an act so simple and careless that we hardly think about it—like tossing a small stone that causes a massive avalanche. I don’t know what possessed me, maybe it was the beer or the hour, but, on a whim, I typed “lonely” into a search engine and scrolled through a few pages of mostly song lyrics before landing on a blog post with the title “Is Anyone Out There?”

  I clicked on the link, which took me to a blog site with the initials LBH at the top. There was a silhouette of a woman, but her face was indistinguishable.

  Is Anyone Out There?

  Dear Universe,

  I’m so lonely tonight it hurts. Is anyone out there? Can you hear me? I once heard it said that the Internet is like a dark hallway you shout down—you don’t know if anyone is there.

  So here’s the existential question of the day. If you blog something and nobody reads it, did you make a sound?

  Sigh.

  —LBH

  I looked at the navigation bar for a profile or an about me page but there wasn’t one. Whoever this woman was, she wasn’t ­particularly interested in being identified. Just initials. LBH.

  I scrolled down and read the previous blog entries she had posted, reading from the most recent back to the beginning.

  Dear Universe,

  This morning I was walking in to work from my car and looked up to see a single orange balloon floating into the sky. I was late for work but something made me stop and watch it get smaller and smaller, unt
il it disappeared into the clouds. I guess I felt like it needed a witness, someone to stand there and say I saw you float away. I saw you disappear. I wish someone would do that for me.

  —LBH

  Dear Universe,

  Many great minds and people have addressed loneliness. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote, “All great and precious things are lonely.” Mother Teresa said, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” Norman Cousins wrote, “The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.”

  I don’t know that I’m adding anything with these little blog posts, but the thought that someone might read them somehow makes me feel less alone. If you’re reading this, Thank you. If you’re not, don’t tell me.

  —LBH

  Dear Universe,

  Why do we consider loneliness to be so shameful? A recent study showed that we are not alone in our loneliness. A full 40 percent of adults described themselves as being lonely. Yet people go to great lengths to make it appear as if they are not lonely. I recently read an interview where a top loneliness researcher sat reading a copy of his own book in public (a self-help book with the word lonely in the title) and suddenly became very embarrassed. What if the people around him noticed the book and thought he was lonely? His thought surprised him. Why was it that he, someone who studied loneliness for a living and therefore knows how pervasive it is, was so afraid of being perceived as lonely?

  I have a theory. Perhaps we’re afraid our loneliness will make us appear less lovable, less attractive, and less worthy of connection, and therefore more lonely.

  Ironically, I’m not alone in my loneliness. Maybe that’s why I keep these posts anonymous. We want to be lovable. We don’t want to be alone. So we hide our loneliness, and it makes us . . . well . . . lonely.

  —LBH

  Dear Universe,

  Okay, here’s something that concerns you, dear reader. Did you know that the amount of time you spend online is inversely related to your general state of happiness and connection? In other words, the more time you spend online, the more unhappy and isolated you feel. I know that doesn’t put either of us in a very good position, seeing as we are both online right now. But have you ever taken the time to think about why we spend so much time online? Why the average adult checks their social media upward of seventeen times a day?