I’m floating around my apartment cleaning happily, watering plants, playing with Baby, singing loudly to one of my favorite Indigo Girls CDs: I don’t want what’s best for you / Where would I be / If you found it? A man like Eli, my god, could make me forget Alan. And Brandon. I’m already fantasizing about the traditional wedding we’ll have. Do Jewish brides do that same white-dress deal? Well, maybe by then they’ll have VirginiTea.
The phone rings, and I leap for it. Eli had promised to call today. It’s Georgette, though, and I spend a happy hour yakking about Eli. She’s a good friend and listens, requesting details at the appropriate moments (even though she must be envious; she still hasn’t found a boyfriend), so I can blather on and on about his magnificentness. However, she’s also a good enough friend to ask the question I’ve been dreading: “So…do you know what his fatal flaw is yet?”
“Georgette, I swear, he doesn’t seem to have one!”
She sighs. “They always have one, Ave.”
I sigh back. “I know.”
“So, Ave, let me give you this guy, Jon’s, phone number. J-O-N.”
“But Eli—”
“I know, I know. Just do me a favor and jot it down, okay? If Eli does turn out to have something majorly wrong with him, then you can call Jon.”
“But I’m telling you, Eli is perfect. I won’t be needing this Jon.”
“But, Ave, you’re not giving up on the bet, are you?!”
“Well…”
“Ave! You can’t do this! Where’s that feisty spirit? What about all the women you were going to redeem? What about—?”
“Georgeeeeeette,” I whined. “What if Eli wants to do the, you know, boyfriend-girlfriend thing? You know, that thing I haven’t done for soooooooo long?”
“Well…I can certainly see the temptation in that. We all want that, no matter how much we deny it, right? But in the meantime, take down this number—just in case Mr. Perfect should happen to fall from his pedestal. Okay?” I was sure I wouldn’t have to use it, as I’d fortuitously stumbled across The Man. And as for Alan, well… Uh-oh, now I was experiencing a small moment of doubt: Alan was the Einstein of Elbows, the Pavarotti of the Pelvic Bone. But—Alan was a slob; Eli was a Sharp-Dressed Man. Alan left; Eli was here.
The phone rang again. I immediately recognized that amber tenor, that dulcet tone.
“Aviva, hi! It’s Eli.”
“Hi……,” I purred. “How are you?”
“Great! Listen, I’m glad I got hold of you, because I’m packing up to leave right now, and…”
“Leave?! Where are you going?” My chuppah came crashing down, rose petals flying away, scattering in the sudden gust of gelid wind.
“Oh, didn’t I mention it last night?” he asked casually. “I’m leaving on a five-year tour of duty with this excellent organization—have you heard of them?—Doctors Without Frontiers.”
“What?! Five years?! No, you didn’t mention it!” I was dumbfounded. “The what? Isn’t that a Peter Gabriel song?”
He chuckled. “I meant, Doctors Without Borders. I always translate it wrong. We’ll be traveling all over the world, doing volunteer inoculations, that sort of thing.”
“You could’ve told me before!”
“But, Aviva, last night was beautiful. It was poetry. It was…exquisite. Whether I’d told you or not, what difference would it have made?”
“Well…” I said. What about our wedding? What about the child I’d suddenly decided I wanted, who’d have an adorable miniature version of that hawk nose, and be the modern bearer of the awkward, multisyllabic name of some Hebrew biblical personage? “Well, when you get back,” I started, then dead-ended again. When he got back, I’d be forty!
“I just wanted to tell you what a fantastic evening that was, Aviva. It was my best Fourth of July ever. I’ll remember it always. Nights when I’m lying in my vine-woven hammock, fanning myself with banana leaves and watching the tarantulas creep up the wall…”
“I can’t believe you’re leaving!”
“I can hardly believe it either. I’m not even packed yet, actually. You know, Aviva darling, I’d try to stay a little longer, but my wife is expecting me at the airport in Addis Ababa in about thirty hours, with ten boxes full of syringes and alcohol swabs. Farewell, my sweet princess.”
