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sun follows me like the evil eyes of a mysterious painting in a Scooby-Doo episode. It’s a good thing I have my sneakers on today. As I do every day. Dana tried to convince me to buy two-inch heeled pumps for the office. “But I’m allowed to wear sneakers,” I said.
    “It’s about image,” she said. “Your ten-year-old sneakers don’t scream sophisticated, now do they?”
    “At least they don’t scream pain.” I don’t get why anyone would choose to be uncomfortable.
    Dana and I have very different understandings of the purpose of clothes. I see it as something you wear so you’re not walking around naked. Dana sees it as something worth going into debt for. Or at least worth borrowing money from my father, the person she can’t stand the most.
    The sweater and jeans I’m wearing (which Dana has already vocally disapproved of—“they’re too straight leg and too light. You’ve had those jeans since eighth grade. You’ve got to thinkdarker, boot cut.”), were chosen with an air-conditioned office in mind, not the Florida marathon.
    Did I put deodorant on this morning? Last time Steve came to visit me he forgot his deodorant and had to use mine. He smelled like summer tulips all weekend.
    Sweet Stevie. How we met is an example of how great men appear when you’re not looking. It was one week after I moved into my new one-bedroom ocean-view Fort Lauderdale apartment, when Steve spilled his mocha latte down my shirt.
    I was at Pam’s, one of my favorite coffee shops in Miami, a small, homey, southwestern decorated café on Washington Avenue. I was on my way to meet with a research firm for a new chocolate soda we were developing, when the spilling took place. I wanted to maim the idiot but he kept apologizing and throwing coffee holders at me, thinking they were napkins. I kept telling him to stop, that it was fine even though it was not fine.
    “You look like a Gestalt test,” he said staring at my shirt, and I laughed. He wanted to buy me a coffee, but I said no. When he told me he was visiting from New York, and was on his way to spend the afternoon at the retirement community, Century Village, where his Bubbe lived, I almost relented. That was pretty sweet. His parents lived in Miami, too. And he was Jewish. Not that I cared, but I knew it would make my father happy.
    “I understand. But if you’re ever in New York, come to my family’s restaurant. I run it now that my dad moved here. It’s kosher but still nice,” he said, and wrote down Manna and an address on a preferred customer card, right above a bunny-shaped hole punch, and told me if I ever came to the restaurant, to ask for him and he would make it up to me. He had a nice smile. I told him my father worked in Manhattan and that I just might.
    A month later, I went to visit my dad in NewYork. I hadn’t seen him since the January before, he’d been really busy, but I decided that if he didn’t have time to visit me, then I wouldmake the trip. As usual, Dana wanted nothing to do with him. She prefers his checks as direct deposits, rather than through person-to-person contact. On the second night of my visit, when my dad told me he’d be stuck at the office again and would miss our dinner plans, I thought of the boy with the nice smile.
    It wasn’t until I told the cabbie to take me to the restaurant and he said he’d never heard of it, did it occur to me that maybe Steven wasn’t the owner of Manna. Maybe Manna didn’t exist. Maybe Steven wasn’t his name. Maybe he didn’t have a Bubbe . Maybe the guy I met ran around Florida, using his fictitious Jewish grandmother the way a single father uses his kids as bait to attract women who feel the need to be maternal.
    “Here it is, West Ninety-first Street,” the cabbie said, pointing ahead of him.
    After I was seated in a small table by the window, I asked the waitress if I could speak to Steven.
    “I can’t believe you came,” he said, a carafe of wine and two plates of kosher