The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken Read Free Page A

me again just as I’m working to pick myself up and dust myself off. I’ve been a good person. I don’t deserve more rotten love luck. Isn’t it enough that I got dumped a week before my wedding? Or that my first and only post-break-up Match date failed to mention he was quadriplegic—after he told me he enjoyed skiing and hiking, and arranged to meet me at a basement restaurant with no handicap access? Instead of bringing me out of my slump, that date sent me home panicked that I am a horrible person because I had the audacity to think, that no matter how angry the poor guy was at the world, I deserved a heads up on his condition.
    I tell the little voice that there’s no harm in nurturing a little hope. That shuts her up.
    Oh please, I beg whatever higher power determines such matters, please let him be at least a little cute and a lot nice.



TWO
    He doesn’t appear. Not during the lunch I scarf at my computer, pretending to work, but stealing furtive glances across the street and up. Not in the tiresome afternoon hours that drag by.
    With every passing minute in which the mystery man fails to show himself, I become increasingly convinced there’s been a mistake. The flowers must have been meant for someone else, in some other window, on some other block. But a small, okay, maybe a not-so-small, part of me still wants a glimpse of this secret admirer. Not that I’m even considering his offer. He could be a serial killer. Normal guys don’t send roses to women they don’t know. And even if they do, things like this only end well in the movies.
    But curiosity is natural, right? I’d be a freak if I weren’t a little interested. I just want to see him, and then I’ll get right back to work. I congratulate myself for suppressing the urge to call my best friend Angela and hash out all the possible outcomes. When you work in a bullpen, everyone knows your business. You don’t need to go broadcasting your innermost thoughts for public consumption by making unnecessary personal phone calls.
    Still, I check my make-up at fifteen minute intervals for the rest of the day, and run a brush through my hair way more frequently than usual. If my secret admirer decides to appear, I might as well look nice. I kill way too much time alternately staring out the window and at my own reflection. I hate how my make-up mirror magnifies every pore, but in the good news column, I’ve always loved my round blue eyes. Plus my hair is looking good these days, despite Carol’s frequent snarky remarks about it. Maybe the expensive salon I now patronize on Angela’s advice isn’t a luxury after all. Her genius of a hairdresser convinced me to add subtle layers, because “they would emphasize my heart shaped face and good cheekbones.” He was right, and my new haircut is the most flattering one I’ve ever had. Too bad it doesn’t hide my nose. It’s what I would change about myself if I could transform one thing. I’ve never liked it. I think it resembles one of those bad early-eighties ski slope nose jobs. Lucky me: I was born this way. I didn’t pay a one-trick surgeon thousands of dollars for the effect.
    I snap the compact shut and check the window again. Nothing. I spin my chair the other way and tell myself I will return all four calls on my list before looking again.
    I’m not the only one who spends the better part of the afternoon watching. Carol is tied up in meetings outside the office for most of the day, so Jessica doesn’t need to fabricate an excuse to hang by my window. She keeps buzzing around my desk, twittering, “Still not there!” As if I need clarification.
    Marvin, on the other hand, takes it upon himself to do a bit of recon. At lunchtime, he marches right across Madison Avenue and uses what he calls his “immeasurable deductive powers” (meaning he consults the building directory) to discover that, if indeed the flowers came from an occupant of that particular building, the sender works at Takamura