Rooftop Arrangement

Another Saturday night, and I was still recovering from Friday's guy, who talked about his fantasy football league for two hours. I sat on my fire escape with a glass of wine and the last of the June light, and I asked myself the same question I ask every time: Latisha, why do you keep saying yes?

I'm 44, I'm a veterinarian, and I promise you the irony of spending all day asking "where does it hurt?" and then coming home to men who never ask me anything at all is not lost on me. Last night's date, a guy named Doug, actually said "you're a very good listener" like it was a compliment.

Sir, you did not pause once. You did not ask one question about my life. I told you about my egg retrieval coming up next week and you said "huh, cool" and moved on to your fantasy football league.

So yeah. I was out on the fire escape feeling sorry for myself, which is a hobby of mine, when my phone buzzed. Mitchell.

Mitchell and I have been friends since vet school, when we were both 22 and both broke and both feeding a clinic cat named Beethoven out of our own paychecks. There has never been anything romantic between us, which he proved beyond doubt by once falling asleep at my kitchen table while I was crying about a breakup. He's the brother I never wanted.

"Who's Doug and why did he bore you," he said, by way of hello.

"How do you know about Doug?"

"Because you posted 'another great conversation' on your story with a wine glass emoji and you sound like a hostage. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. He just didn't ask me a single question for two hours."

"Two whole hours?"

"Well, an hour and forty minutes. I left before the check came."

He laughed, and then he did the thing he does when he's about to ask me for something, which is go suspiciously quiet. I knew that quiet. I'd known it for twenty-two years.

"Mitchell. What."

"So there's this woman," he said.

"Absolutely not."

"You haven't even heard it!"

"Fine, hear it I will. Talk."

"Her name is Cathy. She's 35, she's an illustrator, she's two floors down from my roommate Jada, and she keeps getting dragged to things as her friend's social alibi. There's a gallery opening Friday and the friend bailed, and Cathy doesn't want to show up alone and get pitied all night."

"Uh huh. And you thought of me because?"

"Because you're single, you're great at parties you don't want to be at, and you owe me for the time I drove you and that kestrel to Cornell at four in the morning."

"That was a professional courtesy. He was a protected bird."

"He threw up in my car, Latisha."

I sat there with my wine, looking at the string of laundry I keep forgetting to bring in, and thought, why not. A fake date. No expectations, no small talk about fantasy football, just me pretending to be someone's arm candy for an evening. Honestly it sounded easier than another Doug.

"Fine," I said. "One dinner. One gallery. I'm not promising charm."

"You're always charming. You're charming to dogs with parvovirus."

"Dogs don't talk about fantasy football."

* * *

Friday, the gallery. I wore the green dress, the one I bought two years ago for a wedding where the groom cried so hard I laughed, and I got there ten minutes late because the F train hates me personally.

She was standing by the window with a plastic cup of gallery wine, and she spotted me before I spotted her, which I didn't learn until later was a thing she does. Cathy. Two floors down from Jada. She was wearing overalls to a gallery opening, paint on them, actual paint, and I remember thinking, well, either she's a mess or she's the realest person in this room.

"Latisha?" she said. "Oh thank god, you exist. I was starting to think Mitchell invented you."

"He very nearly did. He threatened me with a kestrel."

"That tracks. Jada says he keeps a ledger of favors. Hi, I'm Cathy." We shook hands, which was ridiculous, and then we both laughed at how ridiculous it was, and that ended it. Or so I thought.

The gallery was the usual thing, paintings of Brooklyn bridges by a man who has clearly never looked at a Brooklyn bridge, and Cathy leaned over to me about four minutes in and whispered, "He painted the same pigeon six times. Six. Look at the corner of each one."

"He's developing a pigeon cinematic universe," I whispered back.

"It's a crow-verse."

I laughed louder than you should laugh in a gallery, and a man with a scarf glared at us, and Cathy glared right back, and I thought, oh no. Oh no, this one's fun.

Afterwards we went for noodles at a place she picked, a narrow little spot with laminated menus and a staff who knew her name. She ordered the spiciest noodles on the menu, the ones with the three little flame icons, and when the waiter raised an eyebrow she said, "I have a system. I judge a week by how many times I make myself cry at dinner."

"That's the saddest system I've ever heard."

"It's not sad, it's honest. What about you, what's your system?"

And here's the part that got me. She asked a follow-up. Then another. By the time the noodles came I'd told her about the egg retrieval, the whole thing, the hormones and the appointments and how I'd decided at 42 that I was done waiting for some man to be ready before I was, and she put down her chopsticks and said, "Wait, so you're doing this alone? On purpose? That's the bravest and most insane thing anyone's told me at this restaurant, and I once watched a guy eat the three-flame noodles without crying."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's the highest compliment I have. Also you should probably drink more water, those noodles are a lot."

They were a lot. I was crying a little, from the spice, and she was crying from hers, and we sat there in that narrow steamy room laughing and sniffling at each other like a couple of idiots, and I thought, when did I last have this much fun at dinner? Because I couldn't remember. That's a thing, at 44, when you can't remember the last time.

"I have to ask," she said, at some point, noodles demolished. "Why'd you say yes to this? Mitchell's great but he's not exactly subtle. You knew this was a pity plus-one situation."

"It was a favor. And honestly? I'd just come off a date with a man who didn't ask me one question in nearly two hours. A fake date with zero expectations sounded like a spa day."

"Zero expectations." She raised an eyebrow at me, and it held a certain quality, some little hook, but she let it go. "Well, for what it's worth, you're a much better fake date than Doug would've been."

"You're just saying that because I told you about my reproductive choices over dinner."

"I'm saying it because you laughed at the crow-verse and most people just nod at me. People nod at me a lot, Latisha. It's very tiring being nodded at."

The check came and we split it without ceremony, which I liked more than I can explain, and then we were outside on the sidewalk with the whole late-June night sitting on top of us, and she said, "Do you want to see the roof? I know that sounds like a line. It's not a line. I have a hibiscus up there that's dying and I need a witness."

"A witness to what?"

"To the crime. Jada says I'm overwatering it. I say the heat is a killer. I need a professional opinion."

"I'm a professional at animals, not plants."

"You're a professional at things that are alive. Come on."

So we walked the two blocks to her building, past a bodega cat who regarded us with total indifference, and up the stairs of her walk-up while she told me about the painting she's doing of the ocean that she's never seen in person. And I want you to understand, I had every intention of going home. I had ice packs for the hormone schedule and an alarm set and a whole evening planned of lying on my couch being nervous about next week.

But she was ahead of me on the stairs, laughing about something, that loose real laugh from dinner, and I followed her up to the roof anyway. The string lights were tangled on the railing, the city was buzzing below us, and the hibiscus did in fact look terrible.

"So?" she said. "Verdict. Am I a plant murderer?"

I looked at that sad hibiscus, and at her, and I thought, well. This was only supposed to be one dinner.

"Not guilty," I told her, "but your watering schedule is a mess. Who taught you to water?"

"The internet. Which clearly has opinions." She knelt by the pot and jabbed a finger at the soil like it had personally wronged her. "I've been doing it every morning, generous splashes, thinking I'm being loving."

"That's drowning with extra steps. Every other day, deep soak, let it dry out between. And move it out of that afternoon sun before it cooks."

"See, this is why I needed a professional." She stood up and wiped her hands on her overalls, which as far as I could tell was their entire purpose. "Okay, witness duty fulfilled. But since you're here, and since it's not even eleven, do you want the tour? It's not much of a tour. It's mostly one water tower and a lot of skyline."

"Water towers are underrated," I said. "That's a real thing I believe. Keep going."

She led me along the railing, past a rusted fire escape and a folding chair with a cushion zip-tied to it, and pointed at a squat brick water tower crowning the building across the alley. "That's the good one. Sometimes, in the