Gullet and I are standing in the kitchen because that's what we do. He wants to hear about my last heartbreak. We haven't seen each other in a while and he knows he's missed something, he can tell.

I give him the basics: She's beautiful, she's straight.

"What's she like?"

I look up at his whiskeryness and I think he really does want to hear about her, so I tell. She has this rickety confused hair, three colors all directions, tons of piercings, jingly things on her neck and ears, glinting with silver glints all over and none of it is for other people, these are just the things she likes. She's been to Germany and knows all the long impressive words that don't mean anything more than "parking lot" or "orange juice." I don't think I've ever seen her not being enthusiastic about something. She'll talk and talk and talk about something and then yell "What do YOU think about it?" and point at you and fall absolutely silent and give you all the attention she has in her. And she's not just waiting for you to shut up either, she just wants to know and say everything. There, Gullet, that's why I like her.

He is smiling at me, smiling and not drinking his beer. It's sweating forgotten on the counter.

We stand there for a while listening to the other people in the kitchen, Jim's kitchen is always a game of sardines. I refill the water pitcher because tonight I am not drinking I am NOT DRINKING I tell you Gullet.

"The way you talk is how Susie writes," he says. He has nothing but good things to say about her and he's going on and on which is generally what he does anyway but something is different here but I don't realize I am being set up, until "... you have to meet her!"

And I will go, because latent in every blind date is the delicious promise, improbable as a hundred-dollar bill in a fortune cookie, that maybe this is the last one of these things I will have to go on, maybe this will be it.

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