Til the Real Thing Comes Along Read Free Page A

night he finally felt close
     enough to R.J. to tell her that story, and when he did, she remembered thinking how sensitive and dear he was. And how hurt
     he’d been and how much he needed her.
    “R.J., I love you. I want to dedicate my life to you and your son. I want to marry you and adopt Jeffie.”
    Jeffie. Since Arthur’s death he’d never been the same. The hopeful glow was gone from his sweet little eyes. Two years. Her
     friends said two years was long enough and it was time to stop mourning and get on with her life. She would get on with her
     life, she told them, but she would never stop mourning. That was when the friends always exchanged a look that meant “she’s
     so neurotic” and then told her with a pat on her back or her arm or her hand: “We’ll find you someone.”
    Michael Rappaport had been a fix-up by her accountant and his wife. He was a literary agent at a large show-business agency
     and a Harvard graduate. “He should havebeen a lawyer,” her accountant, Morrie, told her. She guessed he said that to point out how smart Michael was.
    “You’re both single, and you’re both Jewish. You’re petite and he’s five something. Three… four… not a giant, but extremely
     attractive,” Sylvia, her accountant’s wife, had told her.
    Hardly criteria for a relationship, but it was a beginning. Short men. People loved trying to fix her up with short men. Always
     she turned them down since the fix-up she’d had once in high school with Phil Stutz, who was even shorter than Michael. Phil
     took her to a dance, and while they were dancing to Johnny Mathis singing “Chances Are,” R.J. overheard someone refer to them
     as “the puppet couple.” Short men. Her accountant’s wife, Sylvia, must have heard the hesitation in R.J.’s silence.
    “Hey, you’ll go,” she urged. “It’s one evening. How bad could it be? You’ll talk. You’ll be sitting down and you won’t notice.”
    So she went. On one date with a man to whom Dinah referred for weeks afterward as Michael How-Bad-Could-It-Be Rappaport. And
     then she went on another because the truth was, he wasn’t so bad. And then another because he was very persistent, and then
     another because she didn’t know how to say no, and now… She should have known it would go wrong when after only four dates
     with Michael he told her he loved her. My God. How could he possibly know so soon? It embarrassed and unnerved her.
    She had been seeing him for nearly two months when she introduced him to Jeffie and watched the way he had knocked himself
     out to charm the kid. Jeffie was crazy about airplanes. Michael knew airplanes. Promised to take him out to the Planes of
     Fame Museum at Chino Airport. Jeffie played soccer in the park. Michael promised to come out to watch him play. Jeffie loved
     video games. Michael promised to spend an afternoon in a video arcade with him.
    When R.J. finally decided to say yes to Michael’s proposal, she told herself it was because she had to make a new life for
     herself and Jeffie. A family for herself and her son. Jeffie seemed excited by the idea, and that convinced her that she’d
     made the right choice. To be a family. Her son needed that. Some corner of her knew that it was a rationale. A place to hide.
     Michael promised her—no, swore to her—that he wanted to be part of a family too. That’swhat he was offering her. In August. Now it was November, and not only had there been no Chino Airport, no showing up at a
     soccer game, and no visit to an arcade, but now the little shit was backing out of the marriage too.
    When he’d consumed and smashed out what R.J. counted as three more Dunhills and made a phone call to his mother to tell her
     he was on his way over to see her with some bad news—“No, Ma, I won’t tell you over the phone. No. No one died, and it has
     nothing to do with Aunt Minnie’s surgery”—Michael begged R.J. once more to forgive him, swore he’d never stop loving