A Dark and Stormy Night

by Simone Westfall — April 10, 2007

The art dealer, Ben, calls me on a blustery March afternoon from Boca Raton. “Well lucky you,” I say.

“And an apartment in New York,” he adds.

My heart skips a little beat. Money is soooo interesting.

“Well, if I were you, I’d stay in Boca for the time being. The weather is okay now, but the forecast is for miserable over the weekend.”

We chat for a while about the weather, about my memories of Boca (extremely fuzzy, having been there only once years ago with my ex), about his business. He is a private dealer with a specialty in one particular artist. When I ask whom that might be, he puts me off. “You’ll have to meet me to find out.

“I need to be in the city for an appointment with a client on Thursday and will probably stay through the weekend,” he continues in a sweet deep voice with a vaguely New York accent. “How about dinner on Friday night?”

I agree and he tells me he will email a place and time later. That turns out to be the restaurant of an extremely posh hotel downtown, which augurs well, but the weather is truly foul on Friday, with snow and freezing rain, and it will take me three trains to get there. On the wind-whipped street to the subway, I become resentful with him for choosing a venue in lower Artsy Fartsy, and angry with myself for not insisting on a meeting place midway between us.

Inside the steaming subway, trying to concentrate on a copy of the Post, I wonder how much of my behavior is motivated by the Evil Phillip (whose story I do promise to tell anon), who turned out after eight months of hot and heavy loving to have two or three other women on the side (in fact, I probably counted as “on the side” because the main squeeze, who blew his cover—and a few other things as well, I’m sure—had been in his life for about four years). In taking out the CL ad, I had the thought in the back of my mind that a married man is unlikely to cheat on me because he is already cheating on someone else, but the example of EP, who was a multiple traducer, would seem to invalidate any such assurances.

On the street, with snow and rain stinging my eyes, I am indeed now madder than a wet hen and my mood does not particularly improve when I spot Ben inside the elegant marble lobby on his cell phone. When he sees me, he holds up a finger to signal “just a moment,” and I get a chance to scrutinize him more closely and feel my hopes sinking low low low. Stocky I had assumed from his emails, as he mentioned having lost a lot of weight in the past year but still had more to go. But I didn’t bargain on jowly and balding as well—and remembered that one should always inquire into the age of photos sent online and request one more recent that the Reagan administration.

I remembered, too, the wise advice of a therapist I was seeing years ago, in the miserable aftermath of divorce, who counseled, “Never meet a man for more than a drink or coffee on the first date. That way you can slip away easily.”

It was advice I consistently ignored, as I have so much other well-intentioned counsel, much to my chagrin.

Simone Westfall is the pen name of a critic and novelist in New York City.