Cupid's Bow Read online

  I took the orange from the rim of my glass, bent the rind, and was just about to bite into it when she said, “Now you’re going to start eating an orange? We’re almost out of time!”

  “Sorry.” I dropped the fruit into my glass and wiped my hands on a bar napkin. “Go on.”

  “What’s your favorite holiday?”

  “That’s more like it.” I didn’t even have to think about that one. “Halloween,” I said.

  Ann’s eyes lit up. “Mine, too. And tell me about your alter ego. What character are you most likely to dress up as on Halloween?”

  I answered without hesitation. “A pirate.”

  “Me, too! Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved the whole pirate mystique, the idea of sailing the seven seas in search of hidden treasures.” She studied me, narrowed her eyes, and I could tell I’d earned a bonus point for that answer. “So, tell me, Kay…if we were pirates and I rescued you from your sinking ship, what would you give me?”

  “Why, I…I’d give you my treasure!”

  “Aww…that’s awfully sweet,” she said with a bite of sarcasm. “But if you gave me your treasure, what would you have left for yourself?”

  “I’d have you.”

  “Ah, good answer…but then you’d have your treasure back.”

  I grinned. “There’s nothing like having it all.”

  She moistened those beautiful lips with her tongue. “You’re very slick, Kay.”

  “You can add that to my list of finer qualities. All I ask is that for our first Valentine’s Day together you use some of our treasure to buy me that potbellied pig I’ve been wanting.”

  “And you’ll get me the parrot I’ve always wanted. I really do want one in real life, but in my pirate fantasies a parrot on my shoulder seems the perfect pirate accessory.”

  “Done! And we’ll exchange pet-presents on the new schooner you’ll have waiting for me—you know, to replace my ship that sank.”

  She regarded me with a thoughtful smirk and then glanced at her papers. “Moving on…what’s your favorite number and why?”

  Another easy one. I was quickly making up for lost time. “My favorite number is three, because the rule of three fascinates me. Except when it comes to speed dating, of course.”

  “Can you expound on that subject?” she asked in typical professor fashion. Her tone suggested she was familiar with the rule and would gladly provide a mathematical explanation should I fail to logically support my answer.

  “Well, something about the human brain—animal brains, too—seems hardwired to respond pleasantly to patterns. And three is the smallest possible pattern.”

  Ann nodded. “One is chance, two is coincidence, three is a pattern.”

  “You’re jumping way ahead of me, Professor, but that is correct. You and I just met by chance. If we accidentally bump into each other a second time tonight it will be a coincidence. But if I run into you a third time, I’ll see a pattern in your behavior and begin to think you’re following me.”

  “You should be so lucky.”

  “I should.” Defiantly, I stared at her and ate my orange, then stirred my second drink.

  Ann made a face, but I could tell she was trying to keep from smiling. “Despite your aversion to mathematicians, you’re speaking in mathematical terms.” She sipped from her own glass and stared at me. “A pattern is defined as a discernible regularity. Recognizing, calculating, and predicting patterns helps us organize and make sense of life. In fact, you should think of mathematics as the search for discernible regularities in the universe.”

  I wouldn’t have minded Ann becoming a discernible regularity in my personal universe, but God forbid I say this to her; complimenting her lips had gotten me into enough trouble. “Hmm…I never thought of it that way,” I said, “but the rule of three does have wonderful applications in language and writing, not to mention art and photography. Stories, for instance, have a beginning, middle, and end. Essays have an introduction, body, and conclusion. In the visual arts, we look at things in terms of foreground, middle ground, and background, and we critique art based on form, context, and content. Threes are all around us.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Ann said, her interest seeming piqued. “How does it apply to writing?”

  “In writing, the rule of three is known as the triad. Think of the Three Stooges, Three Musketeers, Three Little Pigs…Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Three Blind Mice…even the three wise men.”

  “Hmm…and the Three Wise Men…didn’t they bring three gifts to baby Jesus?”

  “They did. Gold, frankincense, and—” I couldn’t remember the third.

  “Myrrh,” she said.

  “Myrrh. That’s right. And for that matter, we think of God as a trinity, don’t we? We even think of ourselves as a trinity—mind, body, and spirit.”

  I glanced at a clock over the bar. Three minutes had come and gone. We’d been speed dating for fifteen minutes. It was safe to say Ann and I were both hard-boiled. She wasn’t checking her watch anymore, which made me feel far more relaxed.

  She stirred her drink, seeming lost in thought, until her eyes suddenly widened, and she turned back to me. “Hey, what about superstitions? Don’t we always say death comes in three?”

  “Good one!” It was on the long list of threes I used in class discussions with my creative-writing and honors-English students. “And how many wishes does the genie in a lamp grant?”

  “Three! Yes. And—oh!” she said, bouncing on her stool with the enthusiasm of a game-show contestant. “Snow White has three fairy godmothers—Flora, Fauna and Merryweather!”

  If this had been a game show, Ann would have won the new car. “Outstanding,” I said, laughing at her excitement and warding off a compulsion to touch her upper lip.

  “And…and…what about the three witches in Macbeth?” she blurted out. “This is fun!”

  “Mythology, too, is full of threes…a fine example being the three Fates who weave our lives together. And if you think about it, life itself and the passage of time are divided into threes. Past, present, and future…morning, noon, and night. Listen to people, and you’ll hear them speak in threes all the time. We say, on your mark, get set, go, don’t we? And ready, aim, fire.”

  Ann beamed. “One-two-three!”

  “One-two-three?”

  “Yes, you know, when two people are getting ready to lift something they don’t do it on the count of two or four. They lift on the count of three.”

  Ann was right. She was a quick study. “So, you see,” I said, “something inherent in our nature attracts us to patterns and things that come in threes.”

  “I do see. And you know you’re going to have me up all night thinking about triads.” She took a maraschino cherry between her teeth and pulled it from its stem.

  “Well, if you can’t sleep, you can always round up a couple of lonely speed daters for a ménage à trois.”

  “I’m going to ignore that suggestion. I’m not into threesomes. When it comes to lovers I’m a one-woman woman.”

  “Me, too.” One at a time, but never a one-and-only. True love was reserved for the characters in my novels.

  Ann searched my eyes as if looking for something. I couldn’t tell what color hers were in the ambient lighting of the bar, but their intensity nearly took my breath away. “So,” I asked, trying to stay focused, “what’s your favorite number?”

  “1.618.”

  “A decimal. Seriously? Your favorite number is a decimal?” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Do I dare ask why?”

  “It’s a very special number. 1.618 is the Golden Ratio, the Golden Mean. It’s the value of phi.”

  “Oh, Lord, here we go—I’m about to get a math lesson. I can feel it coming.”

  “Well, the English teacher just gave me a lesson, so the math professor will give you one. And you might actually enjoy mine because the Golden Ratio is thought to be divine. Some believe it’s the blueprint for all of creation.�
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  She got more comfortable on her stool. “Phi is actually a geometric construction. It’s a specific type of rectangle whose proportions are unique because when you divide it into two parts—a bigger and a smaller one—the total length of the rectangle divided by the long part is also equal to the long one divided by the short one.”

  “What?” My eyes crossed, and she laughed at me. “I have no idea what that means.”

  Hearing the words geometry, phi, and ratio made me want to politely excuse myself and run screaming to the ladies’ room, never to return. I’d never been a good math student. Even now, as an educator, I steered clear of colleagues who were math teachers. Numbers made me nervous. But something about the word divine captured my attention. Ann captured my attention. And so I stayed.

  “Let’s try it another way,” she said in a soft, patient teacher’s voice. She picked up her pen and turned over a sheet of paper on which she’d been scribbling her dating questions. I watched as she began to draw a rectangle, but halfway through, she discarded her pen and reached for her phone.

  “It’s easier if I show you,” she said as she searched the internet, “but just think of a picture frame, or a painting on canvas, something you’d like to hang over your sofa. The Golden Ratio is like that canvas, except that its length and height would have very specific proportions, a ratio of one to 1.618.”

  “Hmm…okay. That I understand.” A rectangular shape hanging on my living-room wall was a lot easier to envision. “Is phi like pi?”

  “No. The value of pi is 3.14. Both are two of the most important numbers in history, but basically you can think of it this way: pi is to a circle, what phi is to line segments.” Ann paused to sip her drink. I watched her lips slowly part, watched them hug the rim of her rocks glass. Never mind pi and phi; I was more interested in calculating the value of her mouth.

  “The Golden Ratio has been used everywhere,” she went on. “In advertising, artwork, playing cards, postcards, even some monitors and television screens, because that unique rectangle is supposedly the most visually pleasing of all possible rectangles. And as an author, and presumably a bibliophile, what you’ll find most interesting is that during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, books were commonly sized and printed according to the Golden Ratio. Apparently books of those proportions felt especially good being held in one’s hands.”

  She finally brought up an image on her phone and held the screen to my face.

  “Okay. Ignore the spiral for a moment,” she instructed me. “Just look at the outside rectangle. See the vertical line that divides it into a larger and smaller part? Now look at the smaller part and see how that rectangle is again divided into two. And in the smaller portion of that rectangle the pattern repeats itself.”

  “On and on into infinity?”

  “Exactly. Because as a decimal, the Golden Ratio can’t be represented by a finite number of digits. It can never be solved, really...but we can find it with a compass and ruler.”

  “Hmm.” I didn’t understand everything Ann was saying, but having numbers translated into words and pictures helped me grasp the concept. It really was sort of fascinating. “So what’s up with the spiral? I like it.”

  “The golden spiral is a logarithmic or growth spiral. For every quarter turn it makes, it gets closer or farther from its origin by a factor of phi, 1.618.”

  Ann saw my eyes beginning to cross again and laughed. “You don’t have to understand the math itself, only that the Golden Ratio and the golden spiral—the divine proportion, as it’s called—is a mathematical relationship that appears in nature. You’ll find it in everything from the shape of our galaxy to the shape of flowers, pinecones, seashells, embryos—even the double helix spiral of a DNA molecule.”

  Ann smiled and nodded with satisfaction at the apparent look of wonder on my face. “Suddenly math isn’t so boring, huh?”

  I grinned. “Not when you explain it.”

  “Well, when you get a chance, search the images online. Something about that special rectangle appeals to our sense of aesthetics the same way your rule of three does. In fact, the pyramids of Egypt, the architecture of ancient Greece, even the Mona Lisa are presumably constructed according to its proportions. Plato thought it was the key to understanding the physics of the whole universe. Composers like Bach used it, and believe it or not, the analysis of some modern-day systems, like financial markets, is based on it.”

  Ann brought up an image of a nautilus shell, and I saw the spiral right away. The swirls brought another design to mind. I examined my hands and thought for a moment. “Do fingerprints qualify? They sort of look like golden spirals too, don’t you think?

  Putting her phone down on the bar, she nodded. “I like that…yeah…the Golden Ratio might be right at our fingertips,” she said.

  And as we both sat there, holding our hands to the light and staring at our thumbprints like two idiots, I saw Michelle raise her arm in the air and tap the face of her watch.

  “Damn…I have to go,” I said. “My friends are getting hungry.”

  Ann looked at her watch. “Oh, my gosh, me, too!”

  “I don’t think your three-minute speed dates will appreciate you being fashionably late.”

  “Nope. No time for lateness.” She hesitated as though she didn’t want us to part. “Well, thank you for the drink, Kay.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “The pleasure was mine.” She held out her hand and I shook it. The moment our hands touched, I felt an intense sexual attraction and knew she felt it, too. It seemed neither of us wanted to let go. “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a conversation more,” she said.

  “Me neither. It’s been great…educational, to say the least.” I slid off my stool and straightened myself. “Well, Ann, I hope you meet the love of your life tonight.”

  She shrugged. “You never know. Maybe today’s the day.” She looked at me with a tenderness that hadn’t been there before, and I decided she liked me considerably more than she had a half hour ago. I thought of asking to see her before leaving Boston but saw no point in being chastised for crossing the line again. “Can I ask how many serious relationships you’ve had?”

  “Serious? As in long-term? Two.”

  “Ah. Then maybe the next one will last forever. You know what they say: the third time’s the charm!”

  “Oh, wow.” She laughed. “More threes!”

  I paused, hoping she’d ask to see me before I left town, but when she didn’t, I said good-bye, leaving her to collect her papers. Halfway down the bar, though, she called out to me. I stopped and looked back.

  “Hey, Kay, what about dinner?”

  I felt my face light up, but just as I opened my mouth to speak, to say yes, of course, I’d love to have dinner with you, she said, “Isn’t dinner served according to the rule of three—appetizer, entrée, dessert? And isn’t it the third meal of the day?”

  From the distance at which we stood I don’t think she saw the disappointment wash over my face, but in a split second I went from elated to deflated. How ridiculous was it that someone I’d met less than an hour ago should have this effect on me? I forced a fake smile and cheerful tone. “Good ones, Ann. Thanks. I’ll put them on my list.”

  She regarded me hesitantly, as if hoping I’d say something more, but a crowd of people walked into the bar just then, partially blocking our view of one another. I waited in place, giving her one final opportunity to say something, anything, and when she didn’t, I held up a hand and waved.

  I don’t know what it was, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was walking away from something very important, something meant to be, possibly one of the best things to ever happen to me. But I did. I walked away.

  During dinner that evening, at a place not far from the hotel, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  “What’s with your ‘wife’?” Michelle asked. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask her to join us. You hooking up later?”

/>   “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t ask me.”

  “Why didn’t you ask her?”

  “She doesn’t like pushy women. She made that clear. So I left it up to her to do the pushing. Apparently, she’s not pushy either.”

  “Someone better push!”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” I patted the pockets of my coat hanging on the chair, feeling for my phone. “She lives here in Boston. I’m in New York. We’re two hundred and fifty miles apart.”

  “Minor details,” Michelle said, pointing to Rose. “This one talked me into relocating from New Jersey to Oregon.”

  “Someone had to get you out of Jersey.” I winked at Rose and pulled out my phone. A tangled necklace and bracelet came with it. I put the phone on the table and stuffed the jewelry back into my pocket.

  “Why do you have jewelry in your pocket?” Rose asked.

  “The safe in my room stopped working today.”

  I knew it was impolite to use a cell phone at a dinner table, but I just had to put a name to that part of Ann’s lips that fascinated me. In between the waiter clearing our table and bringing dessert, I kept my phone hidden in my lap and busily searched the internet to find the proper term for that contoured outline of one’s upper lip.

  Michelle scrunched her face as she lifted the tablecloth and peeked underneath the table. “What the hell are you doing under there? Playing with yourself?”

  “No.” I sucked my teeth and shook my head. “I’m doing a little research, if you don’t mind…trying to find the technical name for a person’s upper lip. It must be called something.”

  “That’s the…the philtrum, isn’t it?” She looked to her partner, the nurse in the group.

  “No,” said Rose. “The philtrum is the grooved skin between your lip and nose. Your lips are your labia.”

  “I’m not talking about those lips,” I said.

  “Lips are lips.” Rose laughed. “I think the upper lip, the one on your face, is the labium superioris, the bottom the labium inferioris…or maybe it’s the other way around.”