You Have To Kiss a Lot of Frogs. Laurie Graff

      “I was…friendly.”

      We were face-to-face in a stare-off. No one was winning.

      “Why won’t you go out with me? Don’t you like me?”

      “I’ve known you fifteen minutes. That’s not long enough to like or dislike you. I just got home from Florida. I hailed a cab. Please…be a mensch and just let me out of here.”

      “If you weren’t going out with that guy would you go out with me?”

      “Perhaps,” I said, wondering if someone had once dropped him on his head for him to wind up like this. “Perhaps if you asked like a gentleman instead of scaring the shit out of me.”

      “Are you scared?”

      “Yes! Of course I’m scared. I’d have to be lobotomized not to be scared.”

      “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Alan Cohen said. He sat up straight and tucked his shirttails into his khaki pants. “I just wanted you to like me.”

      “I think you can use some improvement on your courtship skills, Alan,” I said, feeling out of danger although I was not yet out of the woods. “Some men bring flowers and candy. Wine and dine a girl. You trap me in the back seat of your taxi, act like you’re going to rape me, and, by the way, now you owe me money because suddenly I don’t feel like tipping.”

      He looked right through me and got out of the cab. I grabbed my bags and bolted out the door. I could feel my hands shaking underneath my bravado. I approached the first step down into my building. A hand touched the back of my neck.

      “AHHHHHHHHHH,” I screamed. My bags rolled down the cement stairs. I could see my tampons tumbling over my curling iron.

      “Don’t scream. I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry,” he said, putting his pudgy hand in his pocket. “Really.”

      “It’s okay,” I said. My heart beat so hard I thought I’d find it on the stairs next to the tampons and the curling iron. “I have to go.”

      “I just don’t want you to think bad of me,” he said. “Do you like me?”

      Out of my right eye I watched my blow-dryer fall out of my bag and cascade down. I heard a small crash.

      “Yeah, Alan, I like you. In fact, I’m crazy about you. Jesus Christ!” I screamed. “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”

      He ran into the street back to his cab. The engine had been going all this time. I knelt to pick up my broken belongings. My script was still in the cab. Fortunately, the envelope with my name on it was in my purse.

      “Are you absolutely sure?” I heard him yell from the street. “I live in Park Slope. We probably won’t ever see each other again. I can leave my number on the car over here or, if you…”

      Alan Cohen was still yelling when I rang for the elevator. I couldn’t make out the end of the sentence.

      10

      Wherefore Art Thou?

      Valentine’s Day

      Upper East Side, NYC 1994

      “Have whatever you want,” Henry told me. “You’re our little girl, it’s Valentine’s Day, and your mother and I don’t want you to be alone.”

      “Look, Karrie,” Millie said. “There’s a Valentine’s Day Special. You can have a tender, juicy chicken breast à la Romeo with artichokes and mushrooms. You’re the artichoke eater here, and an Idaho baked potato with fresh asparagus and hollandaise. I don’t like hollandaise sauce, it has no taste, but you like that. And it comes with dessert. Juliet Surprise: A chocolate brownie topped with whipped cream and a cherry. How does that sound?”

      “Chicken and artichokes make me think of Jack,” I said. I reached for the miniature blackboard that had the daily specials written in pink chalk.

      “Why are we talking about Jack?” asked Millie.

      “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, contemplating the chicken breast. “Maybe because he was my boyfriend for a year, and it’s only six weeks since we broke up and I’m despondent about the whole thing. Maybe that’s why. But I could be wrong.”

      “It’s Valentine’s Day,” said Henry. “We’re all together. Why are you even thinking about him when you’re with us?”

      “I don’t know. I can’t imagine what came over me.”

      We were seated in a corner nook of the heated indoor café. A candle illuminated the table. Outside on Second Avenue couples walked by, huddled in down coats, romping through the gray of the city, hailing cabs and kissing. I turned to my parents. “What are you going to have?”

      “I’m going to have the fish,” Henry said.

      “Me too,” echoed Millie.

      “So will I.” I made it unanimous.

      “Since when do you eat fish?” asked Henry.

      “Always. I always eat fish. What is the fish tonight?”

      “Snapper,” Henry said. “Red snapper. You like that?”

      I nodded.

      “You’re sure now?” Henry grilled me. “I don’t mind ordering anything you want, but I want to make sure you like it. Don’t do it on my account.”

      I took a deep breath. This would have been Jack’s and my second Valentine’s Day. Last year at this time I was so excited. It was still early, we’d only been dating two months. Jack surprised me with a warm blanket, a cold bottle of champagne and an easy climb in Central Park to a rock that overlooked the lake. It was a little cold, but totally romantic! This year I thought I’d cook an indoor dinner, but we broke up soon after Christmas. That disaster. Somehow I knew from the start it could never work. A Jewish actress and a born-again Christian comedian. It would have been easier to not have the relationship and to have just sold the movie rights.

      Jack and I met at a second staged reading of Eat This just before Christmas in 1992. Eat This still looked like it could happen for Broadway, but the money the producers thought was there was not. In almost two years, there had been four readings with one more to go. My part had been cut to shreds, but I was still a contender so I was happy. Anyway, the second reading, the one where I met Jack, was the best. I say this objectively, even though my part was a lot bigger in that version! I was flying that night, and really up when we all went out after for a drink. My friend, Jane, was dating Philip Moore, an actor in the show, and came to the reading. And Philip invited his stand-up friend, Jack Whitney, whom I’d once seen emcee at The Comic Corner. The four of us got a booth and a round of drinks. Jane and Philip were pretty cozy, and I thought Jack was cute and funny. It was a pretty instant attraction. After they left, we lingered over a glass of Merlot and the rest, as they like to say, was history.

      “It comes with dessert,” said Henry. “You’ll have the dessert too?” he asked, bringing me back.

      “Yes, she’ll have the dessert,” my mother answered for me. “She needs to put on a little weight. I think you lost some weight. What do you think? Your face looks thin.”

      “I think I lost some weight.” It felt easier to agree.

      The waiter came over to our table. He was a tall, gangly-looking man with an earring in his left ear. He wore wire glasses and a befuddled expression.

      “Three snappers,” Henry told him. “And make them all on the special.”

      The waiter smiled pleasantly and looked at me.

      “Don’t I know you from The Comic Corner?”

      I had no recollection of him whatsoever.

      “I took Jack Whitney’s ‘Intro to Stand-Up’ class at the Learning