To Go Or Not To Go

With each and every sentence I dig a deeper hole with my nail lady.

I tell her about Girls Weekend first and she is giggling at the idea that all of us will be yukking it up away from all of our children and spouses. You can tell she thinks we are all headed for trouble - and that she is somewhat envious.

When I tell her about my eHarmony date, her giggling ceases and desists at once. Her brows furrow. She is making a little squeaky clucking disapproving noise. And buffing the shit out of my thumb nail while she's at it.

"That's trouble," she says. Or something that sounds like that. English is her second language. And she is a C- student, tops.

I tell her she should change her name from Joyce to Charlotte and ask her why it's trouble. Hasn't she ever gone on a date with a stranger?

She looks at me like I am a complete nut. I am not sure why. I wonder if I've just failed to grasp some otherwise widely known tenet of her culture. I shake my head and tell her all the things eHarmony says about itself. I sing the little jingle from the commercial and wish that one would come on the giant flat screen hovering above the drying machines. How pathetic am I? Even my nail technician thinks I am a moron.

She tells me I don't know this man. He doesn't know my family or my friends. He just wrote a lot of lies on the computer to get me to like him. In her heavily accented rant, she may have even called me a fool.

I ask her how it would be different if I'd met him at a bar after work and he'd asked me for a date. I'd know less about him than I do now.

It's amazing how far she could arch that one eyebrow in sarcastic disbelief.

Thankfully, she does not have the linguistic bandwidth to carry on a full blown argument about any of this. She finishes my fingernails in a pretty pale shade of shell pink and walks me to the drying machines. One for my toes, one for my hands, and a word of caution for my head. She looks me dead in the face and says "Be CAREFUL!"

I page through a Cosmo while my nails dry. Wedged between the fashion and the beauty tips are 3 stories, one each about a date rape, a near abduction, and a woman who saved a restaurant full of people from certain death and maiming by attacking their assailant with bleach. Even my horoscope was bleak.

There is a ping pong game going on in my head. Thoughts for and thoughts against this date:

Maybe I should cancel.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I could stand him up and block him on eHarmony. I'd vanish. Painless.

No pain, no gain.

What if he's endlessly boring, or a total asshole, or a complete buffoon and I am stuck there for hours until I can make a discreet and inoffensive excuse to leave?

What if he is hilarious and charming and smart and adorable and mad for me all at once and I miss it because I let my nail technician convince me that I am a fool?

I decide I am going.

I establish a secret trouble word with Charlotte. One text or one conversation cheerfully mentioning the otherwise benign word and the place will be crawling with police in a matter of minutes.

Cover me, Charlotte. I am going in.