Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) by Rachel Kadish

machine has, over the years, earned its keep as a social lubricant.
    According to Yolanda, though, I come up with an excuse to put a potential date on hold; then I listen in on his filibuster and subtract points for cliché and poor grammar.
    â€œI have never, ever, put someone on hold unless I had to,” I say, as Yolanda takes a sip of her smoothie and turns for the door. “And I’m not that picky with men.”
    â€œWhat about that sweet guy with the flowers?”
    â€œHim? He was a madman. He showed up for our first date with roses.”
    â€œHe wasn’t a madman. He was crazy about you.”
    â€œI don’t even
like
roses.”
    â€œStill, it was romantic. He was the wrong guy, I give you that. But bringing roses is romantic.”
    â€œIt’s the
opposite
of romantic. Romance is careful attention to what a particular lover wants or needs. Giving roses to a woman who doesn’t like flowers is not romantic. It’s the opposite of romantic—it’s generic. And if a woman loves, let’s say, auto repair, then buying her a welder’s torch is the ultimate in romance.”
    Yolanda sweeps open the door. “Everybody make way for the love expert.”
    We step out onto the sidewalk. There is a shout. Just feet from us, a restaurant delivery man and his bicycle flip hard onto the sidewalk. In one continuous motion, the scrawny preteen skateboarder who just shoved him bends, nips two bulging bags of food out of the bike’s basket, and is straightening from his crouch—the downed biker and I still inert from shock—when Yolanda knocks one of the bags out of his arms with an impressive kick.
    Still holding the other bag, the kid palms the pavement for balance, slams his wheels to the sidewalk, and shoots away, heading uptown.
    â€œYou want to know why you piss me off?” Yolanda screams after him.
    If I were a zoologist hunting specimens of the indigenous New Yorker, this would be my hunting call. No Manhattanite can resist.
    A block away, the kid slows.
    â€œOkay, fine. Steal the food. But at least you could stick around and
acknowledge
what you did to him!”
    Holding aloft his middle finger, the skateboarder turns a corner.
    From the pavement the delivery guy, a ropy black man with skin so dark he almost shines, looks up at Yolanda as though he’s having a religious vision.
    â€œYou okay?” I ask him.
    â€œNot English,” he says softly, with a thick, eloquent accent. He turns up his palms.
    I point to his leg, where a long, painful-looking scrape extends from the edge of his shorts to his ankle. He smiles to reassure me. “Not English,” he repeats.
    â€œDenial,” Yolanda tells him, setting a firm hand on his shoulder as he stands. “That’s the problem with the world.”
    â€œAh,” he says with fervor, and follows Yolanda with large glimmering eyes as she hugs me goodbye and strides off, smoothie in hand.
    Â 
    When I get home from work, the number two is blinking on my machine. The first message is Hannah: Adam is back, has already taught Elijah the Russian word for snot, is driving Hannah crazy so nothing has changed. They all want to see me.
    I set down my bag and reach for my calendar.
    The second message is George. It was a pleasure throwing hors d’oeuvres with me yesterday. Would I care to call him?
    I put down the calendar. Then I unload my bag and tidy the papers on my coffee table. I wander to the kitchenette’s narrow window and stand for a long while, my eyes roaming a familiar course across the skyline. Uptown, the high rises are a bright, endless filigree. Though I’ve been hoping for George’s call, I abruptly don’t want to think about him. I think instead about the city. All those lives. All those individual, earthshaking dramas, and threaded through them the workings of history and poetry and the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, all rushing