Love Is a Scheduling Error

How it begins

Nora's first date in eleven months arrived carrying the documents from her last professional humiliation.

Eli put the folder beside the bread basket.

"Please tell me you're not Martin."

"Please tell me you haven't billed me for dinner."

She looked at her phone. Martin, forty-one, architect, no pets. Opposite her sat Eli, thirty-seven, mediator, a man whose greatest talent was making silence sound like a legal objection.

He turned his screen toward her.

Dinner with Nora. Seven thirty. Discuss future.

Below it was a heart.

She had not added the heart.

For a moment the restaurant seemed to continue without them. Wine arrived at other tables. Someone laughed too loudly near the window. A waiter approached, assessed the atmosphere and retreated with professional grace.

"Our old calendar," Nora said.

"You never removed me."

"You never left."

The sentence landed differently from the way she had intended.

Eli unbuttoned his coat. There was rain in his hair. He had always walked when a sensible person would have taken a taxi, arguing that difficult conversations needed somewhere for the body to put its dread.

"Martin canceled," he said.

"How would you know?"

"He declined the invitation. I accepted it. Apparently we both have editing privileges."

Nora stared at the empty chair beside their table as if the architect might materialize through the force of sufficient disappointment.

Eli opened the folder.

Inside was not a contract.

It was the menu from the terrible cafe where they had eaten lunch for six years, annotated with her handwriting. No olives. Extra bread. Ask whether the soup is actually hot.

"They're closing," he said. "I thought you'd want this."

She touched the paper before she could stop herself.

The waiter returned.

"Are we celebrating anything?"

"No," Nora said.

"Possibly a clerical error," Eli said.

She looked up.

For the first time that evening, the future on her calendar seemed less like a threat.