Portrait of a Date

I found myself in the unlikeliest of places tonight.

On a second date.

At Bamboo, with a view of the rain through the front windows, endless Talking Heads playing overhead and the two of us discussing our affection for Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady."

No one is more surprised than me.

When I told him about my movie-going adventure today and about the books I'd read that had led me to the movie, he says he needs to read those books so we can discuss them.

Then he suggests we both read the upcoming Thomas Pynchon book, "Bleeding Edge," an historical romance set during the Internet's infancy in New York City, so we can have someone with whom to decipher the layers of meaning that are a Pynchon book.

When we get off on a tangent about prose stylists, I offer Gabriel Garcia Marquez as an example of an author whose words can be savored purely for their beauty and he's amazed, saying he was about to use the same example.

I think it might have been the point when he said "You and I are kindred souls when it comes to literature" or maybe when he told me how beautiful I looked in black that I realized there will almost surely be a third date.

Wow, never saw that coming.