I Imagine Him Here

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From the New York Times, this is Modern Love. I’m Anna Martin, and I have a confession. Every time I get on a plane I’m secretly praying that a hot person sits next to me. It doesn’t matter if I’m single or in a relationship. I still want a hottie next to me. I want to make flirty conversation as we float through the clouds.

I want to make jokes about the bad food and the bad wine and cheers it in little plastic cups. I want to fall asleep and wake up with my head just gently resting on their shoulder. In the 28 years of my life, this has never happened. But I haven’t stopped hoping. I still have the fantasy that I’ll meet someone that way someday. Today’s essay is about a meet cute that sounds like a fantasy but it actually happened. The author, Felice Neals, meets a hot guy in the grocery store. It’s called “The Curious Tale of Mr. Kale,” and it’s read by Shayna Small.

I met Mr. Kale on the checkout line at Whole Foods in Tribeca more than two years ago. It was in the cards, sort of. A few hours earlier, I was talking to my friend Stephanie on the phone and she told me that she had become a practicing Wiccan. She offered me predictions from candles and tarot card readings. She explained that she specialized in candle healings, “and I already have clients,” she added.

“Really?”

“We all have access to this energy,” she said.

I could hear her lighting a match.

“So, do you want a reading?” Of course I did. I am an avid believer in all that is seen and unseen.

“You know that I have always been a little psychic,” she said. This was true. She always seemed to know when someone was about to call. And once she predicted the lottery numbers and won $5,000.

“So breathe, relax and concentrate,” she said.

“On what?”

“Your heart space.”

“Oh, the third chakra,” I said.

I hoped to impress her with my esoteric know-how. She inhaled deeply and exhaled. I closed my eyes.

“OK,” she said. I could hear her blowing out the candle. “I’m just going to tell you what I see.” I took a breath. My heart was racing.

“You will meet a tall, handsome stranger.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s original.”

“He has an accent. That’s all I’m getting for now.”

Later that afternoon, I stopped in Whole Foods and grabbed a sweet potato, almond milk, pasta sauce, produce and some gluten free snacks. I juggled my items on the way to the checkout when my sweet potato fell on to the belt on the other side of the plastic divider. The customer in line behind me said, “I think this is yours.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, taking it.

“Your healthy food is putting mine to shame,” he said with what I realized were traces of a British accent.

He asked, “Is that kale?” Yes, I said, and took a look at him. Tall and handsome, just like Stephanie said. “Do you mind if I ask how you make it?” the man said.

Soon we were dissecting the benefits of kale chips, kale salad, kale a la mode, the history of kale, the future of kale until we reached the exit where we introduced ourselves. “Sam,” he said. We did not exchange numbers. It was just getting awkward and then he said, “I’m in here all the time. I’m sure I’ll see you here again.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to contain my amazement that this was all really happening.

I walked to the park. Then I called Stephanie. “It happened! He’s tall. Accent. Cute. More than cute. But why didn’t he ask for my number?”

“Of course it happened,” she said, and offered to do a tarot card reading. I stayed on the phone with her and sat on a bench. I watched a pigeon circle a random breadcrumb as Stephanie did her thing. “Well, I’m not sure that you’re going to see him again,” she said. “But you might.”

“What?”

“The cards are uncertain.”

I returned to Whole Foods the next day around the same time.

I scanned the checkout counters and waited as a guy stocked the shelves with cookies. No sign of Sam. I had been there long enough. It was time to buy my mixed berry soy ice cream. Day two, same time. Purchase — coconut milk yogurt. I meander toward the checkout counter. A tall man was searching for his credit card. Nice, but not Sam.

On day three, I enlisted a friend to come with me. She said, “Maybe we should hang out by the kale.”

“Yes!” I could have hugged her. I placed some kale in a plastic bag. A man approached. Not Sam. Then another. Not Sam either. I hadn’t realized how many men liked kale.

Day four, I planned on a quick run through the paper goods aisle. You always need paper towels. The checkout lines were distressingly short. I walked to the longest line where the cashier said, “Hey, you were here yesterday, right?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said. Days five and six were quick visits. I think I bought dishwashing liquid.

By day seven I had decided to avoid Whole Foods, which reminded me of every mistake, missed connection and lost chance I’d ever had in my life. Mr. Kale was now a symbol of all my break-ups, of all the times that I wished I’d spoken up for myself, of my desire to have kids, of my fifth walk down the aisle as a bridesmaid, and finally of my desire to have a Mr. Kale in my life.

A month passed. I needed vitamins. Whole Foods was the closest option. And I thought I’d moved on from Mr. Kale, but as I walked to the cashier, I couldn’t help but look around to see if he was there. He wasn’t. I walked to the park and sat on the grass. I was watching a ferryboat waddle on the river when I heard a man with a slight British accent say, “Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.” My heart had leapt at the possibility that it could be Sam. It wasn’t Sam. Of course, it was some other British man who plopped himself next to a woman sitting on a blanket. I knew Sam was not coming back.

[MUSIC]

I’d starred in my own romantic comedy that told the story of a brief encounter in Whole Foods with a tall, handsome stranger who liked kale and fueled my belief in serendipity or fate or something that made me so eager to find him again. Maybe I have New York City and its millions of strangers to thank, a place where chance encounters can happen every day if you let them. I somehow gave a signal to the universe that I am open to this sort of thing. Here, the magic of synchronicity is always primed to unfold and I remain eager to ride its waves as far as they will take me.

[MUSIC]

Felice went looking for love in the grocery store, and after the break a story about looking for love in a home that’s no longer yours. That’s next.

[MUSIC]

I can spend hours on Zillow just browsing apartments and brownstones and homes I absolutely cannot afford. But it’s really fun for me. It’s like I’m peeking into the life I could have in those spaces. Today’s Tiny Love story is from a woman who also spends a lot of time on Zillow. But instead of dreaming of the life she could have, she’s remembering the life she did have. Jessica Strange’s story really moves me. Here she is.

Sometimes I scroll through our old home Zillow listing to remember the life I had before my husband died.

The perfectly staged photos are on display for anyone to see. The rooms are stripped of our belongings, of personality. Still, I picture us in these spaces loving, living, fighting, making up, making out, raising our babies. The kitchen table where we communed at the day’s end. The bed where our children and I slept for months after he died.

The listing’s estimated price doesn’t take into account how rich that house was with love.

Jessica, thank you so much for reading your story.

Thank you.

What was your husband’s name?

His name was Dylan.

Dylan. I think we should look at the Zillow listing of your and Dylan’s house together. How does that sound?

Yeah, sounds good.

So I’m clicking in right now. It’s a house in Texas. I’m looking at these photos. You want to start with this front hallway? What a cheerful red door.

[LAUGHS]: That was a door I installed later on. It was a really ugly blue door the entire time Dylan lived there. That’s the door that he came through every day home from work, and our little people would rush to meet him right there. Of course here I’m standing like in the background. Like I’ve been playing games with these kids all day.

I’m here all day.

And I’m here all day and I am down on the floor playing, and all you have to do is walk through the door, but that was enough, and give them a hug, and they were just ecstatic. And you know, I was too.

Mm. After you walk in through this front hallway, what’s the first room that you see?

You come into this great room. It’s a very traditional ‘70s style ranch that is just everything there — your living room, your tiny little dining room area, and then the kitchen. That’s where everything happened. You can’t see it in this picture, but his reading chair, the realtor made me take it out for staging purposes. But it was an old IKEA chair that he would sit in the corner and read like all the time.

Yeah, tell me where Dylan is in this room for you. He’s in his chair. Where else is he?

He’s at the — he’s at the piano.

He’s like refinishing those cabinets.

He’s doing laundry. He’s always really present. So just always doing something.

Sorry.

No, please don’t apologize. I see the piano is still in this photo.

Yeah.

Tell me what Dylan would like to play on the piano.

So I think he got the piano around the time that the first “Trolls” movie came out — this like animated kids movie with little troll dolls singing all these pop songs. And one of the big ones was Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors.”

I love that song.

And my daughter, who was probably about three or four at the time, also loved that song. And she would be like, Daddy, can we play Troll song?

[PIANO PLAYING]

And he would play the piano for her. And so it was just a really sweet thing to see them like bond over that.

I think he enjoyed doing that with her, and she just liked living out her rock star Troll fantasy life. [LAUGHS]

Where would you be when they were singing the Troll song together?

[SNIFFS]: I’ve always just been an over documenter. I was always there with the camera catching it, like cheering them on in the background while they sing.

But I felt it was like my mom duty to document our life together.

Mm. Jessica, you said that everything happened in this room. Tell me another memory that you have in this space.

This is where I had my last conversation with him. We both worked separate schedules. I had worked that night. But he would stay up and talk to me about our day when I got home.

And I had just turned like 35, and I was feeling very midlifey. And I said, by that math, then I’d lived to be about 70, which — that’s a good run. And he’s like, yeah. But I’m invincible. Like, I’m never going to die. And then I kind of just went to bed. He stayed up and watched a movie.

I don’t know if I said I love you.

I hope I did.

Can you tell me what happened after that?

Mm-hmm.

He was working really early shifts, so I didn’t see him before he left for work. And I got a phone call on my phone. It was from his phone. And I heard a woman’s voice. And she said, how are you related to the person that owns this phone? And I said, I’m his wife. And she said, we found him collapsed in the hallway at his place of work. He’d had a pulmonary embolism, and the paramedics are here and they’re trying to resuscitate him, and you should probably come up here.

What did the house feel like without him there?

Not our home. We had started fixing it up and it was all DIY. He wanted to be kind of frugal with it. And with him not there, I kind of went the opposite direction and hired a contractor and spared no expense. Oh, I could just hear him like, you paid how much for tile?

And then, you paid someone how much to install? I could have done that. [LAUGHS] Get on YouTube or figure out how to do it yourself. [LAUGHS] And I think I knew I was doing it because I was going to sell it, since it didn’t feel like our house. It just felt like we were almost like renting it from the family we used to be.

We didn’t belong there.

Yeah, that’s such a powerful idea, renting it from the family we used to be, like it was no longer yours once Dylan was gone.

Yeah.

I think very early on I figured out this is an entirely different life now. Who we are as a family of three is vastly different from who we were as a family of four. The dynamic is completely different. And so if we were going to venture off in this life of three, we had to do it in a place that felt like it was for the three of us.

Mm. Mm-hmm. You know, I’m looking at these photos and, yeah, I mean, it looks very real estatey. It looks like what you’d assume staged photos to look like.

Yeah.

Why are these pictures then, if they’re sort of stripped of your family, your personality, the color, why are they still so resonant for you?

I think because they’re the only documentation of the rooms. We took photos and, like I said, I was always documenting our lives. But the space was always the backdrop. It wasn’t the main focus point. And so how else would I have documentation of a space that we spent 14 years in and raised two kids in and did a whole lot of living in? I think it’s almost like when you have a backdrop for a play or your dollhouse growing up, you can play out all sorts of scenarios because it is so blank.

It’s a space where you can superimpose 14 years of memories.

Yeah.

Jessica, thank you so much for telling me about Dylan and telling me about your home. It’s beautiful.

Thank you.

[MUSIC]

Modern Love is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Djossa, Elyssa Dudley and Hans Buetow. It’s edited by Sarah Sarasohn. Our executive producer is Jen Poyant. This episode was mixed by Sophia Lanman and our show is recorded by Maddy Masiello. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell.

Original music by Diane Wong and Marion Lozano. Digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nell Gallogly. A special thanks to Anna Diamond at Audm. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of Modern Love projects. I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.