don’t think so.”
“Was anybody in the 1890s attractive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“It serves me right for coming to a movie on a Monday morning,” Q says. Then she thinks about the full implication of this reflection and looks at me suspiciously. “What about you? Do you just hang out in movie theaters with jossers all day or do you have a job?”
“I am gainfully employed. I am a professor and a writer,” I explain. “I am working on a novel right now. Usually I write in the mornings. But I can never sleep on Sunday nights, so I always end up being tired and blocked on Monday mornings. Sometimes I come here to kill time.”
Q explains that she cannot sleep on Sunday nights either. This becomes the first of many, many things we learn that we have in common.
“I’m Q,” she says, extending her hand—her long, angular, seductive hand.
“Your parents must have been quite parsimonious.”
She laughs. “I am formally Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, but everyone calls me Q.”
“Then I shall call you Q.”
“It should be easy for you to remember, even in your tired state.”
“The funny thing is, this inability to sleep on Sunday nights is entirely vestigial. Back in graduate school, when I was trying to finish my dissertation while teaching three classes at the same time, I never knew how I could get through a week. That would get me nervous, so it was understandable that I couldn’t sleep. But now I set my own schedule. I write whenever I want, and I am only teaching one class this semester, which meets on Thursdays. I have no pressure on me to speak of, and even still I cannot sleep on Sunday nights.”
“Perhaps it is something universal about Mondays, because the same thing is true for me too. I have nothing to make me nervous about the week. I love my job, and furthermore, I have Mondays off.”
“Maybe it is just ingrained in us when we’re kids,” I say.
“Or maybe there are tiny tears in the fabric of the universe that rupture on Sunday evenings and the weight of time and existence presses down on the head of every sleeping boy and girl. And then these benevolent creatures, which resemble tiny kangaroos, like the ones from that island off the coast of Australia, work diligently overnight to repair the ruptures, and in the morning everything is okay.”
“You mean like wallabies?”
“Like wallabies, only smaller and a million times better.”
I nod.
“You have quite an imagination. What do you do?”
“Mostly I dream. But on the weekends,” she adds, with the faintest hint of mischief, “I work at the organic farm stand in Union Square.”
On the following Saturday, I visit the farmer’s market in Union Square. It is one of those top ten days of the year: no humidity, cloud-free, sunshine streaming—the sort that graces New York only in April and October. It seems as if the entire city is groggily waking at once from its hibernation and is gathering here, at the sprawling souk, to greet the spring. It takes some time to find Q.
Finally, I spot her stand. It is nestled between the entrance to the Lexington Avenue subway and a small merry-go-round. Q is selling a loaf of organic banana bread to an elderly lady. She makes me wait while the woman pays her.
Q is in a playful mood.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Yes,” I say, clearing my throat to sound official. “I should like to purchase some pears. I understand that yours are the most succulent and delicious in the district.”
“Indeed they are, sir. What kind would you like?”
At this point I drop the façade, and in my normal street voice say, “I didn’t know there was more than one kind of pear.”
“Are you serious?”
“Please don’t make fun of me.”
Q restrains herself, as she did in the theater, but I can see that she is amused by my ignorance. It is surely embarrassing. I know that there are many kinds of apples, but somehow it has not occurred to me that pears are similarly diversified. The only ones I have ever eaten were canned in syrup, for dessert at my Nana Be’s house. To the extent that I ever considered the issue, I thought pears were pears in the same way that pork is pork. Q thus has every right to laugh. She does not, though. Instead she takes me by the hand and leads me closer to the fruit stand.
This is infinitely better.
“We have Bartlett, Anjou, Bosc, and Bradford pears. Also Asian pears, Chinese whites, and Siberians. What is your pleasure?”
“I’ll take the Bosc,” I say. “I have always admired their persistence against Spanish oppressors and the fierce individuality of their language and people.”
“Those are the Basques,” says Q. “These are the Bosc.”
“Well, then, I’ll take whatever is the juiciest and most succulent.”
“That would be the Anjou.”
“Then the Anjou I shall have.”
“How many?”
“Three,” I say.
Q puts the three pears in a bag, thanks me for my purchase, and with a warm smile turns to help the next customer. I am uncertain about the proper next step, but only briefly. When I return home and open the bag, I see that in addition to the pears Q has included a card with her phone number.
On our first date we rent rowboats in Central Park.
It is mostly a blur.
We begin chatting, and soon enough the afternoon melts into the evening and the evening to morning. We do not kiss or touch. It is all conversation.
We make lists. Greatest Game-Show Hosts of All Time. She picks Alex Trebek, an estimable choice, but too safe for her in my view. I advance the often-overlooked Bert Convy. We find common ground in Chuck Woolery.
Best Sit-Com Theme Songs. I propose Mister Ed, which she validates as worthy, but puts forward Maude, which I cannot help but agree is superior. I tell her the little-known fact that there were three theme songs to Alice, and she is impressed that I know the lyrics to each of them, as well as the complete biography of Vic Tabak.
We make eerie connections. During the discussion of Top Frozen Dinners, I fear she will say Salisbury steak or some other Swanson TV dinner, but no, she says Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese and I exclaim “Me too!” and tell her that when my parents went out on Saturday nights, I would bake a Stouffer’s tray in the toaster oven, brown bread crumbs on top, and enjoy the macaroni and cheese while watching a Love Boat–Fantasy Island doubleheader, hoping Barbi Benton would appear as a special guest. We discover that we favor the same knish (the Gabila), the same pizza (Patsy’s, but
