One in a Million

I am a beautiful woman. My hair is the color of sleek gold, my face is reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe, my body a collection of long luscious curves like some modish ergonomic furniture design. I have to dress cautiously or I stop traffic.

But I’m not just a pretty face. I have a master’s in English Literature and I am studying for my doctorate. I am an only child. My mother died of a rare tropical disease when I was thirteen. My father is a brain surgeon. He works although he doesn’t need to work because we have money in the family. We are rich.

But don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me. If you saw me in the street, you might think I couldn’t fail to be happy, you might think I’m one of those girls who “has it all.” Or you might know better.

You might also think that men were lining around the block for me. And there you’d be right. There is a motley bunch who line up along the railings out my building. They are getting quite weather beaten and when it’s really windy they have to cling to the railings like the nannies in Marry Poppins—for fear of being blown away. I am quite used to them by now. Otherwise, it is only the very brash and very handsome who approach. I do not want to spend the rest of my life with the very brash and the very handsome.

Of course, I dated when I was in college. I had a love affair with a man who fell off a mountain during a hike in Chile. After that I concentrated on my studies. It wasn’t a conscious decision to forgo, but I always found reasons to not go out with men. I was what you might call picky.

One day I decided it was time to find myself someone to love. This is the story of how I did that and how I found the only man in America who wouldn’t want me. The only man in the Western Hemisphere. The only man on the planet.

He took photographs of me. I don’t usually let magazines take photographs of me. I refused to go into modeling when the pressure was on, when I was fifteen. But on this occasion it was different. A collection of designer dresses was to be auctioned for charity. And one of the dresses had belonged to my mother.

We met on the rocky bed of the Thames at low tide. It was gray and very windy. I said I didn’t usually wear this kind of dress. But it was for charity.

“One knee on the pebbles,” he said. “I don’t usually take this kind of photograph. But it’s for charity.”

The dress blew up around my ears. My legs. Did I mention my legs? Sometimes I think my legs have a life of their own. Sometimes I eat a lot of cake to see if they’ll notice me. It doesn’t work. My legs go on doing their own beautifully defined thing. I beat the dress down with my hands.

“I like your shoes,” he admired.

“You like my shoes?” I asked, bewildered. “That’s it? My shoes?”

I tell you, that’s the first man who’s ever liked me for my shoes. And they weren’t expensive shoes—they weren’t Manolo Blanhik or Prada. I bought them at a junk shop when I was a student. Very high, very pale yellow and very strappy. They went with the gown.

“Are you married?” I asked.

“No. But I could be. Are you good with children and dogs?”

“Dogs?”

But he had to go. He was in a hurry. He had more important matters to attend to, a plane to catch. I caught hold of his foot at the top of the ladder as it was about to disappear over the embankment. He turned to look at me strung out below.

“My shoes,” I said again. I had taken them off for ease of climbing. I waved them, trying to revive the subject. He wouldn’t be drawn. He was gone.

I called the magazine editor to get his number. It wasn’t that he was handsome, really. He had the looks of a man who gets a long way with women by sheer force of will. Small, muscular, like a terrier. I left him a message. I said I hadn’t met anyone like him ever in my life before. Some time later, two months later, actually, he called.

“What have you been up to?” he said.

Feigning casualness, I replied, “Oh, this and that. The usual. What have you been up to?”

“I walked for thirty days through the mountains to photograph a tribe who’ve never seen a white man.”

There’s not much you can say to that.

“I’ll be in New York on the 20th,” he informed.

There’s nothing much you can say to that either.

So he came to New York and made me come within two minutes of being in my bed. His tongue was brave and confident.

“Do you always come so quickly?” he queried.

“Does it always take you so long?” He looked at me quizzically.

“Two minutes,” he said.

“Two months,” I said.

He ignored me. “I like your breasts. You have beautiful breasts.”

My breasts and my shoes. It was like that with him. Parts.

We made love. We lay awake and talked about life. “Have you had women all over the world?” I asked.

He said an Afghan woman had come into his room in the middle of the night and risked being stoned to death. I imagined him with her. I wondered if Afghan women shaved their legs.

We slept for an hour and woke simultaneously and came into each other’s arms, experienced the divine.

“It’s strange,” he said.

“What?”

“It feels right.” I fell in love.

Over breakfast the next morning he told me about a man in Kosovo who had his ear cut off and fed to a dog. Then he had to go. He was in a hurry. He had important matters to attend to, a plane to catch. He hurried away with not a glance at the line of rain-soaked men outside my front door. They watched him go, disconsolate.

He sent me passionate e-mails. Re: I want you. He said he dreamed about me intensely. Occasionally he would call me from airports. Out of breath, with two minutes to spare.

I was glowing. People said I was lit up. I caused a seven car pile-up walking down to Elizabeth Street. I was obliged to go out in a purdah like my Afghan woman friend who may or may not have shaved her legs.

Hours, days, weeks went by.

“I’ve been thinking about the Afghan woman,” I suddenly said when he called. “The one who came to your room in the middle of the night. What happened to her?”

“It all went wrong,” he said simply.

“Did you make love to her?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“She wanted to marry to escape the country.”

“And you wouldn’t save her? After you’d had her?”

“I’ll be in New York on the 3rd,” he said.

When he came we danced together. “Where were you today?” I asked.

“At a meeting with the charity board,” he replied. “In Seattle.”

“Was it boring?”

“The desire to see you was almost unbearable,” he said. He took my shirt off and we slow danced like that.

“Women have all the power,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“Only women know what’s going on.”

“They do terrible things to the women in Afghanistan,” I said bravely. My friend again. With the hairy legs.

“They do,” he agreed.

“Because they think women have all the power.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

“You hadn’t thought of that?”

“I just take photos,” he shrugged. His face clicked shut like the closing of the aperture. I took more clothes off to try to make it open again and let the light in. “You could have any man you wanted,” he observed.

“Any man?” I said. “Do you promise me?”

At breakfast he said that a woman on death row was due to be hung in five hours and forty minutes’ time. Then he had to go. He was in a hurry. He had important matters to attend to, a plane to catch.

Does she shave her legs on death row?

“He’s an angel,” I told friends.

“Angels are in heaven,” friends said. “Not manifest.”

“Well then,” I said, “a hero.”

“Ditto,” they said.

“He’s my hero,” I said. I told the guys out by the railings. They were happy for me even though their clothes were torn to rags by the elements.

He called from the airport. “I’ll be in New York on the 12th,” he said.

We danced again.

“Who was the last woman before me?” I asked.

“I was in love with an evangelical Christian in the Bible Belt,” he said. “God told her not to sleep with me.”

“Do you like women who like you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” He looked puzzled.

“It’s a simple question. Maybe you only like women who don’t like you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I love you,” I said.

When he came he made a sound like he was dying. “That’s the first time you ever made a sound like that,” I pointed out.

Over breakfast, he told me that convicted rapists get castrated in South American countries. Then he had to go. He was in a hurry. He had important matters to attend to, a plane to catch.

He didn’t tell me when I would see him again. I never did see him again.

“I’m walking for thirty days to photograph the building of a school for the tribe who’d never seen a white man,” he said.

“What do they want with a school?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Will I see you?” I asked, flustered.

“It’s not enough,” he said hopefully, “is it?” But I refused to comply.

“I’ll call you,” he said. He lied about that. He wrote me a letter at Christmas.

“Unfortunately I find it’s impossible,” he said. He enclosed a gift of a carved wooden knife. We are forced to part ways.

I read the letter out to the guys by the railings. Greetings for the coming year, he wrote. The guys raised their eyebrows. “That’s it,” I said, “end of the letter. No love, no kisses, no regrets.” That was when I noticed their clothes, ripped and torn like my heart. “Am I not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” I asked them.

“Yes,” they said. Did that make you think he’d love you? What made you think that? Then they asked me what he’d done to deserve my love.

“He liked my shoes,” I said.

“But you’re one in a million,” they said.

“One in a million,” I said.