Although Lydia seemed to have the sexual appetite of a nun, Fred and Myra nevertheless fixed her up yet again. This month’s blind date, Jim, was quite presentable, with cobalt blue eyes. And he took to Carlo, her German shepherd. Dinner was also pleasant – one of the better seafood restaurants of which Chestertown, just off Chesapeake Bay, abounds. Distressed brick and plastic ferns presided over by a mural of a humpback whale swimming placidly.
            "Do you like living with Fred and Myra?" Jim had never done well in tact school.
            "Sure. I pay rent, so it helps them out, and it gives me some company."
            “Ever feel the need to be alone?"
.           "Often. I only have two rooms."
            "No privacy."
            "You mean if I bring a man home."
            Jim blushed. "Well, what's wrong with that?"
            "Nothing,” Lydia wagged a finger, “but I never bring a man home."
            "Oh."
            "Women, either."
            "But you’re a handsome woman; and you don't seem the spinster type."
            Handsome, Lydia thought – not pretty or beautiful. She knew she was dressed smartly: a hint of cleavage, lace at the cuffs, auburn hair framing a lightly freckled face, wide gray eyes. "I'm twenty-eight, never been married, never been engaged. Does that bother you?”
            "It makes me wonder."
            "It makes me wonder, too. Maybe I'd feel more normal if I were a lesbian."
            "This date seems normal to me."
            "I like you. But I'm not being presumptuous when I say I have no desire for a relationship."
            "Maybe not presumptuous, but certainly direct."
            "I don't mean to be."
            "What does interest you?"
            "Sailing. I have a small sloop – big enough for Carlo and me." And then, as if this wasn't adequate, "Emily Dickinson said in one of her letters, 'Mere life is joy enough.' For better or worse, I know what she meant."
            When Lydia came home that night, she threw herself on the bed and gazed at a crack in the ceiling. Carlo licked her face, she pushed him away and he walked off, casting concerned glances her way. When she looked at him, he looked away – as if out of delicacy – but then he did the same thing when she was eating.
            "What's wrong with me, Carlo? Virginity and I parted as friends long ago." Carlo cocked his head inquisitively, a canine therapist urging her to answer her own questions. For instance, why had she, who prided herself on uncompromising honesty, told Jim she was twenty-eight when she was almost thirty-two?
            She had lived above her bookstore – in what the British call a bed-sit plus kitchen. When Fred lost his job, Myra suggested that Lyddie move in with them. "It must be so lonely there. And living in the same place where you work must get tiresome.” Lyddie heard the desperation behind Myra’s suggestion, heard that Fred and Myra needed extra income, and who could be more fitting than Lyddie, Myra's big sister? Lyddie liked her sister, who she’d led on many childhood adventures. So she took the two rooms plus bath in the old Victorian that Fred and Myra had bought and fixed up in palmier days. For $1000 a month, she had the flat, plus dinner. One of her rooms had a hotplate where she fixed her own breakfast. Lunch she ate at work. Now she could rent the rooms above the store.

            "Miss – ?"
            Lydia, slouched in an old leather recliner and engrossed in a book, jerked her head, then looked up to see a burly, fortyish man with curly black hair wearing pressed jeans. In retrospect, it was the jeans that made a good first impression.
            "Sorry. I guess I startled you."
            "I didn't hear the door. Sometimes I get wrapped up."
            "Must be good."
            Standing, Lyddie showed him the cover.
            "Moby Dick? Taking a course?"
            "Nope. And it's my third time. Man overcoming external and internal conflicts – can’t beat it."
            “Cliff Notes got me through it. But I’m here about the rooms you have for rent. The name’s Manny, Manny Ashkenazi.” Twenty minutes later, he said, “Rooms are great, here’s the $400 you wanted. Just so you know, I’m a long-haul, freight train engineer, so you won’t see much of me. The perfect renter, eh?” Lydia smiled.
            Since then the two had developed a bantering relationship. When he would come into the store, he’d ask for something which would keep him awake while his fellow engineer took his turn at the controls during a five-hundred mile run. She got him into detective stories, and he became an aficionado of Kay Scarpetta and V.I Warshowski. Once in a while he'd boom, not caring whether anyone else heard him, "Lyddie! You're an attractive woman. Let's go away – just the two of us –to some island – and spend the whole time making love. How about it?"
            Lyddie smirked. "Sure. You footing the bill? I'd really like to go to Tahiti."
            "Would you accept Kent Island?"
            "I've been to Kent Island. I like exotic. Tahiti is exotic."
            Manny laughed. "I'll take you away yet. I'll save my money."
            Then she’d toss her hair and say, "By the way, I'd like to arrive on a forty-foot schooner."
            "I can't save that much," and he’d sag his shoulders in defeat.
            There was, Lydia reflected, something attractive in Manny's bluff, open style. And he didn't mind letting Carlo lick his face.
            Estelle, who ran a curio shop next door, thought Lydia was persnickety. “I don't know who you're waiting for." They were drinking latté at an outdoor table perched on the cobblestoned walkway.
            "Prince Charming."
            “Since you're not Snow White, you can hardly expect Prince Charming."
            "You think I'm picky, but I'm not. It's not as though I sized men up, and then found them lacking in some respect. I just don't respond to any I've met."
            "What do you mean 'respond?’"
            Lyddie frowned. "I don't feel anything. I couldn't marry any of them."
            “The last of the romantics. Women can't afford to be romantic." Estelle's cup clinked in the saucer.
            "Depends on what you mean by 'romantic.' If it's just the boy-girl thing, then no. Maybe it's necessary for the perpetuation of the species. Makes us a little crazy. And I haven't met anyone who drives me crazy. So, should I marry just to be married?"
            "Pick someone reasonably compatible, and then interest him in marriage."
            "Is that what you did?"
            "More or less. I know, look at the result. But Brad and I had fun – while it lasted."
            "Do you feel the need of a man to complete yourself?"
            "Mmmm, that's a loaded question."
            "Okay, don't answer. But I don't. Why should I? Where is it decreed that everyone must marry?"
            "Increase and multiply?"
            "Good motto for a stock-breeding farm."
            "There's always sex."
            "I'm not a sex machine."
            "Togetherness?"
            "Ugh."
            "Then don't marry. But what if someone came along and swept you off your feet?"
            "Like a scrap of paper in a high wind?"
            ”You're hopeless."
            Lyddie drained her cup. "I know. Carlo told me the same thing."

            After a two-week absence, and when they were alone in the bookstore, Manny said, "I've got just the place – Islamorada." He looked at her expectantly.
            "Where is it?"
            "The Keys."
            "That's not my idea of an island. You can drive there."
            "So what's wrong with that?"
            "Too public. And what about the forty-foot schooner? I'd even settle for a ketch."
            "C'mon, Lyddie. Why are you so difficult?"
            She put down the book she had been reading and looked at him. “Okay."
            His eyes gleamed. "When?"
            "I can close the shop anytime. I'll have Estelle look in on Carlo. When's your vacation?"
            "Week after next. That's why I'm pushing this now. I'll make the arrangements."
            He bent and kissed her on the nose.

            The length of the trip necessitated one motel stop. Foreseeing this and sure that Manny had reserved only one room on Islamorada, Lyddie saw no point in insisting on two now. Whatever happened, happened.
            At the motel Manny emerged from the shower in T-shirt and sweat pants; he took nothing for granted. Taking the initiative, Lydia appeared in bra and shorts as he lay on the bed reading a map. He looked appreciatively, smiled and said, in a voice a little above a whisper, "You're some woman, Lyddie."
            Their lovemaking was tentative, exploratory. Pleasant, not exciting, like the generic room itself. Lyddie liked it and knew she could get along with Manny. And, given his oft-expressed aversion to marriage, he was unlikely to ask her to commit herself. They were the perfect couple, no strings attached.
            They spent their first hour at Islamorada walking on the beach of trucked-in sand, staring at the green water. The room was functional, with kitchen. The bed was king-size, which suited Lyddie. And the high window gave them some natural light when they closed the front drape. That night they were tired or maybe just did not want to press their luck; both dropped off to sleep early. The next day they rented a small sloop.
            "You'll have to teach me," Manny grinned.
            "I'm not the best teacher." When Lyddie told people that she was an English major back in college, they assumed she was going to be a teacher. She said nothing. Although she liked to read and talk about books, she couldn't see herself making people read them who didn't want to.
            "But you'll have to show me the ropes." Then he laughed. “Literally. I'm an all-thumbs landlubber."
            "Okay. First of all, they're not ropes. On a boat, they're called lines. This one is the mainsheet."
            "Wait a minute. How can a line be a sheet?"
            But nomenclature was not the problem. Lyddie didn't have to suppress her laughter at Manny's efforts to crew, since his own laughter at his failures was contagious.
            ”It's not your fault. I must not be much of a teacher."
            "Naw, like I said, I'm a landlubber." Then he grabbed a sheet which had unfastened from a cleat, just in time to prevent the boom from whipping around and knocking Lyddie into the water.
            ”See what I mean?"
            Between laughing and trying not to, Lyddie couldn't answer.
            "So I'm a schlemiel. Anyway, I like it out here on the water." Then, "Why don't you get a powerboat?  Less work, just sit back and cruise. And you get somewhere."
            "Too much noise and stink. And if I wanted to get somewhere, I’d go by car."
            "You got a point. Sailing is not a goal-oriented pursuit. I think I could learn to like it."  He stood at the bow, staring at the water ahead.
            That night, while Manny slept after relaxed, tender lovemaking, Lyddie opened the window, taking in the wetlands smell. She looked at the hooded moon, the beamed ceiling, and Manny. I like him. He's easy to get along with. And he's not demanding.  So what am I afraid of? She knew that the problem wasn't Manny, but her own quirkiness. Then she remembered the pressed jeans and realized that Manny had his quirks, too. And how many Jewish railroad engineers were there? She and Manny were two of Melville’s "isolatoes."
            The next morning Manny had the coffee brewing. When Lyddie began to stretch, he put the sausage on and got the eggs out of the fridge. "Want home fries with your sausage and eggs?"
            "Why not."
            "You got it."
            Lyddie came to the table wearing one of Manny's shirts, unbuttoned.
            "If you dress like that, we're gonna have to repeat last night right now."
            "Could we finish eating first?"
            "If you insist."
            Lyddie looked at the sausage. "You don't practice your religion, do you?"
            "For my parents, kosher was a big thing, but I don't see the point. It’s enough to believe. So what do we do today, more sailing?"
            "I thought you were so charmed by my irresistible body that we had other plans. If we play our cards right, that could take all morning."
            "As the deer said to the hunter, I'm game."
            "I'm not a hunter."

            Manny sat up. "I could use a cigarette."
            "Sorry, no tengo. I didn't know you smoked, you haven't been."
            "Only after soul-satisfying sex."
            "You smoke much?"
            Manny roared. "Well put! As a matter of fact, no. I haven't had a cigarette in four years. Does that tell you what you want to know?"
            "Yeah, I guess."
            "Ya know, Lyddie, I'm beginning to like you."
            "Oh, oh. I think you should fight that feeling."
            "Why?"
            "I'm thirty-two, old enough to have come to certain conclusions about myself. One is that I'm not meant for meaningful relationships."
            "Jeez, Lyddie, I'm not asking you to marry me."
            ”I know. But I don't even want to live together – or anything."
            Manny was silent. "It's ironic. The fact that you don't want to get close is what makes me like you."
            "Look, Manny, I like you, too. But why do we have to discuss closeness? Can't we just do what we feel like, no ties, no promises?"
            "Isn't that a little – well, you know –"
            "Irresponsible?"
            "Yeah."
            The old accusation; she brooded.
             "Hey, cheer up. I hope I didn't hit a nerve."
            "You did."
            "Look, I withdraw the remark. I won't pressure you to do anything you don't want to.  Okay?"
            "Okay."

            The next day, running before the wind, Manny at the tiller, Lydia sprawled in the cockpit, keeping an eye out for the jibe.
            "Manny?"
            "Yeah?"
            "About yesterday."
            "Forget it. I know what you mean."
            "Let me try to explain. I just can't do what's expected of me simply because it's expected."
             "Just like these lines, you resist."
            "I'm too idiosyncratic to make a match with anyone."
            "That's a paradox."
            "What is?"
            "I'm the same way. We're soul mates, and for that reason can never be close."
            "It is a paradox."
             "Well, the sex is good."
            ”Momentarily."
            "You put a negative spin on everything?"
            "I didn't mean that. It's my imp of the perverse.”
            "Your imp of the perverse?"
            "Story by Poe, about a guy who had an irresistible urge to defeat himself. He had committed the perfect crime, but he couldn't stand success, so he blabbed about it."
            "And that's you?"
            "Sometimes." Lyddie leveled her gaze, boring into Manny. He turned to her. She said, "As long as we're into group therapy, what about your marriage?"
            "A mistake from the beginning. I was head over heels. The perfect woman, understanding and sexy." Manny frowned.
            "So what went wrong?"
            "Everything. She said I took her for granted. Meanwhile, she's studying me with a more and more jaundiced eye. End of love. She walked out."
            "And you formed the opinion, based on one experience, that marriage wasn't for you?"
            "Look who's talking."
            "Yeah, well, I always kinda knew." She stood. "Time to jibe." She hauled in the mainsheet, watching Manny's hand on the tiller. The jibe went beautifully, and they veered away from the coast, water bubbling along the hull.
            On the way home they took turns driving and sleeping. Lydia didn't feel the need to say anything, and apparently neither did Manny. It was a good moment, after a succession of good moments. But she knew that if a vessel running before the wind didn't jibe, it would run aground. But, with people, how do you jibe?
            Finally, he broke the silence. “Okay, no commitments, but who's to say we can't do something like this again?"
            "Not me," she replied.

By John Green