THIRD DATE

They parked somewhere on Brunswick, or was it Borden? They’d circled around a bit before finding a spot. The point is, they were in the Annex and it was a perfect late May evening. Lucy suggested they stroll awhile before settling down at a patio, and Paul was happy to oblige.

The houses were pretty, verging on delapidated, with tiny, overgrown front gardens, and as the daylight dimmed, the lit interiors glowed like quiet Dutch paintings. The back of her hand glanced off his as they ambled, and there were short silences that neither felt compelled to fill. They explored an alley lined with the garages of houses that backed onto it and came across three young men — U of T students — playing ping-pong. Paul said nice table and one of them invited him to have a go. Paul looked at Lucy and she smiled and so he took up a paddle and held his own in a battle to eleven. The students offered them beers but Paul said thanks maybe next time and they kept walking.

He asked her about her cousin’s wedding, which she’d mentioned, before the crash, on their previous — second — date, and which had occurred in the interim. It was the best wedding ever, she said, because it had the worst ever speeches. No but I mean THE, she said. The groom’s father flattered the bride by cataloging the women who’d preceded her but hadn’t merited the gold band of perpetuity. And the bride’s sister, prior to raising her glass in a toast, had regurgitated her senior-year sociology essay on marriage as institutionalized rape. Lucy laughed and said, I know, right?

She said your car looks fine, by the way, and he said yeah three thousand dollars later and she said whoa and he said insurance covered it. She said did they charge the guy and he said no, the cop told him they thought he was probably speeding but it wasn’t clear, they couldn’t prove it. Paul had told the cop he was definitely speeding because he came out of nowhere but the cop just said you’re probably right and left it at that.

They rounded up onto Bloor Street and passed BMV books and Paul said can we just duck in here for a minute? and while Lucy browsed coffee table history books — large-format pictorials of the Holocaust and the Kennedy assassinations — he unearthed an old but intact edition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She sidled up to him at the register and said what did you get? and he said, this, for you, and gave her the book as they left. You said you were an Audrey Hepburn fan, he said, recalling a conversation from date No. 1. This book beats the movie by a million miles, he said, and she said thanks that’s so thoughtful, and she didn’t tell him that she’d read the book about a million times a million years ago.

Casting about for a destination, they briefly considered Future Bakery, but there were no seats and anyway it felt loud, or at least somehow too energetic. They turned down into the alley behind Future’s and went up to the Green Room, but it was full of students and even louder. Paul suddenly felt decades older than everyone. He said let’s go, too loud, and Lucy said what?

They migrated south — at an almost somnambulant pace — toward the more civilized shores of Harbord Street. As they walked, Paul scanned the length of the block, and he saw a muttering drunk stumbling north, toward them, on the same right side of the street. Without saying why, he engineered a subtle cross to the left. But then, when the drunk crossed too, Paul thought it would be silly, unmanly?, to cross back to the right again. The sidewalk was narrow and the drunk, who stunk (less of alcohol than sweat and urine), staked the middle, so they were forced to dip into the road to pass. As they did he said, got any fuckin money? and Paul said sorry, no, and he hissed at them — a menacing feint; no follow-through — and Lucy instinctively took hold of Paul’s arm. In two dates, the only deliberate contact had been a couple of parting hugs and two quick kisses, cheek to cheek. Now their arms interlocked, giving them the appearance of an honest-to-goodness couple, and though the sudden intimacy felt awkward, at least for Lucy, disengaging seemed a delicate, possibly ego-bruising business, so they remained like that til the end of the block, when Lucy broke free to check her phone, which had chimed propitiously.

They found a quiet corner table at the upstairs back patio at Harvest Kitchen, and ordered drinks before scanning the menu. The patio had been constructed to accommodate the gargantuan maple whose trunk weaved through it like a cradling arm, and whose leaves and branches provided a lush canopy for candle-lit diners. It’s lovely, said Lucy, and Paul smiled, not mentioning how many dates he’d squired to this patio, to this very table in fact.

Didn’t this place used to be Tati?, said Lucy, who knew well it used to be Tati and Kensington Kitchen before that. She’d devoured how many meals on this patio? — at this table, even — with Rob Smirnoff, her ex almost-fiancé who, after nine hopeful years, had broken her heart more or less irreparably.

When Paul had said I know a place with a terrific patio she’d feared it was this one, to which she hadn’t returned since the calamity, but she bit back the urge to say let’s go somewhere else, and found the wherewithal to say it’s lovely when they ascended, as if laying eyes on it for the very first time.

Paul was the first boy since Rob that she’d been half-inclined to see more than twice, so she figured now was as good a time as any to break the melancholy spell of this place. Granted, their first date — post-work cappuccinos at the Aroma at Bay and Dundas — had been a bit stiff, but he’d seemed decent at least, and he looked marginally better than his Jswipe profile advertised.

On their second date the plan had been to go bowling at Bathurst Bowlerama and then grab a bite somewhere on Dupont. The bowling was fine but not quite the riot he’d hoped. She was more competitive than he’d expected, berating herself for gutter balls, and making him far too self-conscious about his own imperfect form. When they left she said that was fun and he thought maybe for you.

But then, making the left onto Dupont, a northbound moron in a souped-up Camry clipped the back of Paul’s car just as it was about to clear the intersection, spinning it 180 degrees til it faced west in the eastbound lanes. Paul said Jesus you okay and Lucy said yeah, I think so, you?

The cops were there within a minute and a pair of tow trucks soon after that. Paul said this sucks, I’m sorry and she said what are you talking about, it was totally not your fault. Paul said I know but not exactly what I had planned, maybe we should take a rain-check on the rest of tonight while I get this sorted out. She said are you sure, I don’t mind waiting with you but he insisted. So after the officer took her statement she left, and refused Paul’s offer to pay for her cab.

So it wasn’t that she felt duty-bound, exactly, to see him a third time, but she sort of did. And anyway, and compared to the general talent pool, he wasn’t a complete idiot. At least not on the available evidence. She couldn’t not see herself kissing him, which was something.

After they placed their orders, and sipped the first of their drinks, he said thanks for letting me redeem myself, and she said what do you mean? and he said for last time, that was probably one of your worst dates, and she said you have no idea. She told him about some recent gems, like the guy who threatened to fight the bartender at the Fifth. And the one who kept telling her how she looked like his ex except prettier. Those were train-wrecks, she said, adding, with a chuckle, at least with you it was just a wrecked car. He smiled and, for the first time in her presence, he relaxed. His shoulders dropped and he breathed deeply.

Drunk on food and moderately tipsy from the wine, they left the restaurant and started traipsing back to the car. Paul was thinking ahead to the kiss, the awkwardness of seat belts and parking breaks, and wondered if he should just stop here, on Major — or were they on Robert? — in front of this tiny yellow brick house with its white picket fence, grab her face and kiss her now, boldly, like a true romantic. He felt reasonably sure — 57% — that she’d be cool with it. But he hesitated — true romantics, he knew, don’t think in percentages — and lost his nerve. That’s okay, what’s the rush? No need to risk everything on an ill-timed smooch. They’d be alone in the car soon enough, and soon after that outside her door. And maybe she’d even invite him inside.

Except, where was the car? He thought he’d parked on Brunswick, or was it Borden? Haha, don’t worry, he said. It’s on this block or the next, I’m sure of it. She wasn’t worried, she said. Besides, it was perfect out. A little post-dinner constitutional was hardly unwelcome.

It wasn’t on this block, or the next. He thought he spotted it — a silver, 2-door Civic — on Sussex — he couldn’t remember, neither could she, if he’d parked north-south or east-west — but that car was someone else’s, which Paul only confirmed after jamming his key in the lock and failing to open the damn thing; then he saw the rosary hanging from the rear-view mirror and said whoops.

She was a good sport as they wandered about, doubling-back and tripling-back across this leafy urban maze, where one charming porch-front began to resemble a hundred others. Didn’t we check this block before, she asked, and he said no I think we checked one down or one up I can’t remember maybe you’re right.

At first he tried to laugh it off. Didn’t think I drank that much, haha. And then, cursing the damned car itself — twice now the ruin of a perfectly good evening. Finally, it was embarrassing. He said you don’t need to be part of this, go home, I’ll find it. Please. But she’d left him the last time. And even though her toes were beginning to hurt, some chivalrous instinct forbade her abandoning him again. No, she said, we’re going to find it, together. He said are you sure and she she said sure. But whether it was north of Bloor or south of Bloor, they were increasingly unsure; north of Harbord or south of it, the same. They even dipped south of College at one point, before Paul convinced himself that was crazy.

Maybe it was stolen? But when Paul called, the officer who answered said where did you park it and when Paul said he didn’t remember, exactly, that was basically the end of that.

Around midnight the temperature dropped and Lucy didn’t object as Paul draped his jacket over her shoulders. At about two a soft but persistent rain began to fall and they sought shelter on the dusty sofa of a peeled-paint porch fronting a large Victorian on Huron. Lucy took off her wedges and began massaging her toes and Paul thought, what wonderful feet. His fatigue — and the dim flickering light — lowered his inhibitions, and hers. He took her feet in his hands, and she let him. He wasn’t a bad masseur and frankly, she thought, she’d earned it. She closed her eyes.

In the night Paul shifted in his sleep just as a raccoon, unaccustomed to humans on this porch at this hour, stole across the balustrade. The startled creature fell, more or less silently, into the bed of begonias below.

They woke with the sun, stiff and cold. Their phones still had bars. They called their respective offices saying they’d be late. Car trouble, they reported. They got coffees and egg-and-cheeses from the counter at Vesta, used the facilities at George Brown to freshen up, and picked up where they’d left off.

It might’ve been better to be methodical about their wanderings, logging each block on each street, block by block, street by street. But although they were both competent, trained professionals (banker, lawyer), in this they seemed inclined more to madness than method. They made multiple passes, up Euclid, down Manning, and then later, up Euclid again. As the days turned, the borders of plausibility expanded, block by block, street by street. They ranged west as far Ossington, east to Avenue Road. There’s no way we parked this far, one of them would assert, but then just as quickly concede that maybe they did.

Annex residents — initially wary — grew accustomed to the young couple scanning horizons and peering inside silver cars. When, in time, their credit cards froze, a mulberry tree on Herrick Street sustained them. They spruced up the porch on Huron and, when frat parties made that inhospitable, found alternative overnight lodging at a porch on Grace or the garden shed in back of a small blue house on Croft. When Lucy’s parents tracked her down, pleading with her to come home, they ran and hid in the branches of a tree in Bickford Park. And when Paul was arrested for public urination — by the dumpsters behind the Metro on Sussex Mews — that only confirmed their suspicions of a conspiracy. I love you, he said, surprising himself as he said it. I love you too, she said without reservation.

September, still hunting that elusive silver Civic, they married, persuading the rabbi from the First Narayever to officiate under a chuppah of red leaves from the bough of an old oak on Barton. They honeymooned on the Palmerston canal, imagining a gondola as they passed under cast iron street lamps.

They kept at it through November rains, pressed on through the eventual snowfalls that obscured every parked car in sight, and refused to be deterred by a February so frigid that Lucy lost three of her toes to frostbite. But not in vain! They found the car one night on Brunswick — shortly after the boy was born in April, under a full moon at the bottom of the playground slide at Christie Pits. The long-lost Civic was so completely obscured by its thicket of yellow parking tickets that it resembled a giant, untended shrub more than a Japanese automobile. Paul plucked the tickets while Lucy nursed the child. Then Paul took the key from his pocket. He unlocked the doors and, with some hesitation, they got in. He put the key in the ignition and they were both a bit disappointed, even a little scared, when the engine turned over and roared to life.

He drove her home. Parked in front of her building. Walked her and the baby to her door. Well, he said, I guess this is goodnight. He kissed her and she kissed him back. I’ll call you, he said.