After college, he found it difficult to get dates. He joined dating sites in an effort to improve his chances. He’d read articles about what women thought were red flags. One of them was a meager dating bio.

Nobody could complain about him. Wasn’t that enough? He represented himself fairly accurately, he thought. His bio was about the shows he liked, the kind of music he listened to. He didn’t lie about his age and he didn’t use old photographs, as some women complained of men doing. And yet, when he sent women messages — which were unfailingly polite—they often went unanswered. The ones that turned into conversations tended to flag (How was your day? How was yours? I’m doing well, how about you?) and then die.

He devised various conversational tests in order to weed out frivolous women, but rarely had the chance to use these.

He found this pattern exhausting, but he kept at it, knowing dating required effort. He set aside 10 minutes each day to message women who he thought were attractive but also intelligent. (He devised various conversational tests in order to weed out frivolous women, but rarely had the chance to use these.) It was fine, he told himself, he didn’t need to have a lot of sex. He had his job, which kept him satisfied. Every time he felt the urge to have sex, he watched porn: Video after video, until he had come two or three times and felt a pleasant soreness steal over him.

One woman seemed more promising than the others. The woman’s name was Sara, and she was very pretty, with bangs that fell severely across her pale forehead. She had two dogs — he liked that — and she said she had zero expectations from dating sites because she always had bad luck on them.

“What do you do, Sara?” he asked late one night, when he was tired from work and feeling a little lonely. He looked at her photographs for the 10th time, wondering if they would meet in real life.

“I’m an astrologer,” came the reply. He sent a laughing emoji, but it turned out she was serious.

“Really? Wow. I’ve never met an astrologer.”

He was confused about where she worked. He didn’t think there were many job openings for astrologers these days. When he asked her about it, she replied rather brusquely, and he was confused by her sudden coolness toward him. He had only been trying to learn more about astrology. He hadn’t even said what he really thought, which was that astrology was fake science for sad people, and it turned him off Sara slightly to know she believed in it. More than believed in it, peddled it to other idiots for money. He could, he supposed, overlook it for now.

After a day or two of messaging, she resumed her old manner toward him, and he was pleased. She agreed to meet him for ice cream at a new place. Waiting for her in a booth at the back, he began to feel slightly nervous. It didn’t help that the lights in the restaurant were garish—they contrasted poorly with the enforced cheeriness of the walls.

“Hi,” she sang as she came up, unwinding a too-large scarf from about her neck. “I’m sorry, traffic was terrible…”

He liked her voice, breathy as it was. She was just as pretty in person, prettier still, and he suddenly felt a pang of insecurity about his own looks. He wondered whether she thought he was attractive, whether other people thought they looked good together. Would they think she was his cousin or his girlfriend?

“Nice restaurant,” he said.

“Isn’t it!?”

“I’m being sarcastic,” he said, amazed she hadn’t picked up on his tone of voice. He wondered if she was as intelligent as he’d thought. “It looks like the inside of a creepy clown van. There’s something so off-putting about kiddie décor when you’re an adult.”

“Oh,” she said, strangely. “Okay.”

The conversation dipped slightly after that — she hadn’t liked the clown remark. He felt wounded somehow; he was just trying to be witty. Anyway, they had the night to get through. He’d hoped she would laugh at his jokes, at least.

“How’d you get into astrology?” He remembered to ask her about her work, and the conversation continued from there. They talked about their jobs while they ate large sundaes (his was unexpectedly good; she couldn’t finish hers). It was a good conversation, but she was subdued, more subdued than she’d seemed online. He brought up a number of topics, and was happy to discover she could keep up with him. She might have been an astrologer, but he found her to be intelligent, well-informed, and passionately curious about the world.

“Have you been single long?” she asked him.

He wondered why she was asking, whether she suspected he had trouble dating. He told her about Jane, realizing to his surprise that he missed her. (He left out the fact that he’d been with Jane in college.)

She seemed sympathetic, nodding her head and telling him she could relate, and that she always seemed to be the one getting broken up with. All her friends were married, she said, and she felt as though she had been left behind in the playground after school, that nobody was coming for her. He pictured her being lonely at home, with sad music in the background, crying. The image endeared her to him.

Afterward, she said, “Well, I’ve got to be going home.”

He was disappointed.



“Do you — I mean, would you want to do this again? Maybe we could get drinks?”

“Sure,” she said, with a quick smile and a nod. “I’ll text you.”

He wondered whether that was a good sign. Was it better or worse than “Text me?” He felt from her demeanor — so businesslike and brisk, in contrast with how she’d been at the beginning of the date—it wasn’t a good sign.