Downtown Girl

Story Sent in by Betty:

I live uptown. Ramon lived downtown. For our date, he asked me if I could meet him downtown. I asked him if we could maybe meet somewhere in between, but he was adamant about downtown. He said, "There's a place I want to take you for dinner."

Once downtown, I asked him where he wanted to go for dinner. He said, "Emma Rae's."

Emma Rae's is a great place. I love Emma Rae's. Thing was, though, there is only one Emma Rae's. And it's uptown. Way uptown. More uptown than I live.

I told Ramon that Emma Rae's was out of the question, as I had just come all the way downtown to meet him. And why had I done that if we were just going to wind up closer to where I lived, in any case?

"I really want to go to Emma Rae's," he said, "I'm paying."

"Why didn't we just meet there? Wouldn't that have been easier?"

He said, "Because I wanted to go there together. Why is that a problem?"

I sat on my ever-rising frustration and we hopped on the subway. When we were two stops away from the stop closest to Emma Rae's, Ramon stood up and said, "Let's go."

"We're two stops away."

"I know. We're getting off here."

"Why?"

"Just trust me."

I followed him off, we exited the subway, then walked uptown, towards Emma Rae's.

"Are we walking to Emma Rae's?" I asked, "I told you we were two stops away."

"I said I know! What's wrong with just walking there?"

"It's like you're picking the least efficient way to go to this place. If you just told me to meet you there, we could've been there an hour ago."

"I didn't want to be there an hour ago. I want to be there when we get there."

I said, "That's stupid."

He stopped walking and said, "Do you want to call this quits, then?"

I said, "We're already most of the way there. Let's just go."

We finally made it to Emma Rae's. But Ramon walked right past it. "It's here," I said to him as he continued down the sidewalk. "Hello? Earth to Ramon?"

He said, "I know. I just want to walk around the block, first."

"But it's here!"

He said, "We're walking around the block. Then we'll go inside."

I said, "How about I just meet you inside?"

He didn't answer but he kept walking. I went inside and fully intended to wait for him... for about a second. Once I realized that he was totally nuts, I left before he returned. If he ever returned. For all I know, he continued on to Montreal.