On Tuesday, my friend Nika knocked on my Yahoo IM window, so we opened a chat session.
"I'm going on a blind date tomorrow," she said, "but I'm having second thoughts about the guy. Would you make me a rescue call?"
"Sure," I said. "What time?"
"About 4:15 PM," she said.
Despite having gone on more than my fair share of blind dates, I've never had to resort to a rescue call, but I'm thoroughly familiar with the protocols. At the designated time, I'd ring Nika's cellphone. She'd feign surprise, shock, then, under the cover of an emergency, cut the date short and run. Of course, for that little favor, I might get a free cup of Latte from her the next time we get together.
"Where are you going to be at?" I asked.
She named the place, which was across the Bay in Berkeley, about an hour away from me.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked.
"What if I just rescue you in person?" I offered. "I can just show up and interrupt your date."
"But there's a chance that the date might go well," she pointed out.
That gave me pause.
"I think we need some codewords," I suggested. "When I call, if the date is going well, you say something about Elizabeth Bennet, but if it's going awful, you mention Mr. Darcy."
Nika has, like me, devoured the repertoire of Jane Austen novels, with some Brontes on the side, so I knew she'd appreciate the humor. We'd be using as codes the names of the leading man and woman from Pride and Prejudice, the couple that couldn't stand each other in chapter one but ended up marrying each other in the end.
"Wait, that won't work," I interjected. "You can't talk about Elizabeth Bennet without mentioning Darcy. That'll just confuse me."
Then I came up with another idea.
"What if, instead of calling you, I call the restaurant and ask them to page you on their PA system?" I asked. "It would be more spectacular, wouldn't it?"
The IM window went dead. I could almost hear Nika giggling through the DSL connection.
In the end, she dismissed all my flair for drama and my complicated instructions and opted for a simple solution. If the date was going well, she'd hang up on me.
Yesterday, while Nika was suffering through her blind date, I was sitting outside the Starbucks by Golden Gate Park, sipping my Latte, with my cellphone on the side. I was reading Pericles, Shakespeare's play about a father-daughter duo separated by war and betrayal. Somehow, I got lost in the immortal Bard's words.
I forgot to call Nika.
At 10:30 at night, when I signed onto Facebook, I had a message from Nika: It may have been the worst date ever!
Oh, crap!
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