Клео Коул - Through The Grinder

Not pretty.

Not a disaster by any means. But definitely not a thing of beauty.

My first official “date” of the last two years had started out badly and went downhill from there.

Frankly, the last thing I expected to be doing exactly one week after “My Dinner with Quinn” (as I now thought of it) was sitting across from a guy who looked like he’d stepped off the cover of the Metrosexual’s Handbook.

Yet here I was, sitting in the Union Square Coffee Shop, which, despite its name, was not, in fact, a coffee shop, but a trendy restaurant made to look like a 1960s-style coffee shop/diner, with the addition of mood lighting, loud music, a slick crowd, and a Brazilian-American menu.

Later, when I was happily back at the Blend, Tucker would inform me that the waitresses there were employed by a major modeling agency — which owned this restaurant, as well as another, called (appropriately enough) Live Bait. And I would consider myself a heel (in retrospect) for consenting to eat at a place where a twenty-two-year-old reed-thin underwear model with long blonde hair asked my date, “What would you like?”

This man had e-mailed me as a result of the profile Joy had helped me post on SinglesNYC.com — and the only reason I’d even posted in the first place was to check out the dating service my daughter intended to use.

“What would you like?” Paris Hilton asked again.

Ensconced in the vinyl booth, I’d already ordered the churrasquino carioca; however, my date, a forty-something with curly black hair, refined features, watery hazel eyes, and a profile that listed his occupation as “Director of Fundraising,” seemed to be having an issue with the menu.

“I thought you had vegetarian fare?” he asked unhappily.

“We have a veggie burger and a ton of fish dishes,” suggested the waitress.

“I’m a vegan. No animal products, which includes the swimming animals.”

A vegan? I thought. His profile hadn’t mentioned that. I could have sworn it said nonsmoking gourmet food lover. O-kay.

“Veggie burger?” asked the model-slash-waitress hopefully.

Brooks Newman sighed the sigh of a martyr. “I suppose.”

“Cheese?”

“Yes.”

“You know cheese is an animal product,” I pointed out. “I mean if you’re a vegan.”

“Oh, yes,” said Brooks. “Of course. It’s only been three days.”

“Three days vegan?” I asked. “Is that like three days sober?”

Brooks wasn’t amused. He gave me a little squint. “No cheese,” he told the waitress.

“Anything else, sir?”

“Yes,” said Brooks. He snapped the menu shut. “And another martini. Dry. Got that? D-R-Y.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Hilton look-alike spun on her go-go boot heel and left.

“I hate it when girls that age call me ‘sir,’” said Brooks, his eyes glued to the waitress’s retreating ass. “Makes me feel old.”

“Well…” I said. No reason for that. After all, you’re acting like a child.

“You, uh, don’t look forty.”

“Thanks. I know. It’s the botanicals.”

“Botanicals?”

“Yes, in the facial products. I find a weekly spa visit to be vital for people our age. You should try it. Really.”

Oh, for pity’s sake.

“Renu Spa,” he said, draining the last of his not-dry-enough martini. “Park Avenue, by the W Hotel.”

“Renu, eh? Funny…”

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“Renew! Renew! Renew!” I said. “You know, Logan’s Run ? Do they have a ‘Carousel’ treatment for clients over thirty?”

Brooks made his little squinty face again. “Why would they have a merry-go-round in a spa?”

I shook my head. “Not merry-go-round. Carousel. Don’t you remember Logan’s Run ? That sci-fi movie from the mid seventies?”

“Sure, I remember it. Farrah Fawcett, right?”

“Right. Well, the entire premise is based on the idea that it’s the twenty-third century and Big Brother takes care of everything for you. Your whole life is spent in the pursuit of pleasure. The only catch is when you turn thirty, the red crystal embedded in your palm begins to blink. So you have to report to this ritual they call ‘Carousel,’ where you’re supposedly ‘Renewed.’ But in reality they zap you with enough volts of electricity to light up Detroit.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“‘Run, Runner!’ doesn’t ring any bells?”

“No.”

“Forget it.” I sighed and found myself thinking, Quinn would have laughed.

Brooks adjusted his pale yellow Armani sweater and looked around the room, his eyes snagging on the tight clothing of the model slash waitresses more frequently than my cat Java’s claws on my goose down duvet.

“So…” said Brooks. “What’s it like managing these…I mean, this place?”

“This place? I don’t manage this place,” I told him.

Brooks frowned. “Your SinglesNYC profile said you managed Coffee Shop.”

“Coffee house . I manage a coffeehouse. Of course, I didn’t put the name of it in my profile. The site instructions said not to put down any information on the public profiles that would give away your identity.”

“Your profile said you managed Coffee Shop.”

“I don’t see why it would say that. Does SinglesNYC.com change the profiles of people?”

“No…but there’s an automatic spell check after you send. Didn’t you review the profile once it was posted?”

“Not really.”

“I see.” Brooks now made a show of looking around the room. “So you don’t manage any of these girls.”

“No.”

The atmosphere got even chillier after that. I politely asked about his work, and he talked about directing the fundraising campaigns for various charities.

“There are myriad techniques,” he said, “depending on the not-for-profit’s history. Donation patterns can grow stale over time. So I can direct anything from phone solicitation blitzes and letter writing campaigns to gala benefits.”

“Interesting.”

“It can be.”

Not to me. Not then. I couldn’t stop thinking about Detective Quinn. Since last week’s Chicken Francese dinner, he hadn’t been by the Blend. Not for his usual latte, not even to bolt an espresso. For a full week he’d avoided the coffeehouse entirely. I tried to tell myself it was his work, or his marital issues, which appeared to be as emotionally straining as mine and Matt’s had been.

Still, I couldn’t help suspecting that he was intentionally avoiding me. Maybe he’d regretted opening up. Maybe he felt embarrassed on some level and was worried I’d put him on the spot the next time I saw him. I didn’t have a clue — but I refused to let it tear at me, which was another reason I’d gone out tonight after getting Brooks’s call. I needed to get my mind off the police detective. The still married police detective.

After the food was served, Brooks bit into his vegetarian burger. He chewed, swallowed, and made that squinty face again.

“What is that you ordered?” he asked, eyeing my platter.

“The churrasquino carioca,” I told him.

“And that is…?”

“A Brazilian-style grilled steak sandwich.”

“Steak?”

“Yes. Steak. Beef. Cow,” I said, around a mouth of deliciously marinated meat. “Listen, Brooks, my profile never said I wasn’t a meat eater. There’s no spell check I know that would change ‘gourmet food lover’ to ‘vegetarian.’”

“No, I know,” he admitted, his tone less chilly. “But I have found that everyone lies about something on these sites. One girl had this dominatrix vibe to her profile, but when we went out she mainly talked about her pain-in-the-ass parents, the sex was vanilla, and afterward she just wanted to play Scrabble.”