A Stand (You) Up Kind of Guy

Charlie just called.  He didn't stand me up.  He was here after all.

It turns out that he forgot his cell phone at home this morning.  By the time he realized, he said, he was already too far down I-95 to turn back.  The morning was a series of blunders, including some awkwardness getting onto the Metro, but he said he got here just shy of our 12:45 p.m. reservation time.

He did go into the hospital to look for me, but I wasn't there.  (I was studying in the medical school building, across the street.)  He said he asked for my name at the front desk, much to the chagrin of the security guards, and eventually realized that there was no way he was going to find me in a huge teaching hospital.  Instead, he asked for directions to the restaurant (I was supposed to walk with him over there) and hoped that I would figure out that he might have gone there.

This is the point in which I should mention that I did think about calling the restaurant.  He was the one who made the reservation, though, and with my fear of being a clingy, obsessive, annoying woman, I decided against it.  Not that he would have known if I did call the restaurant to ask if he had shown up.  Clearly, this fear of being a crazy girlfriend is irrational and cruelly magnified in my own mind (I blame you and your ridiculous accusations, Rich).

The restaurant kindly gave him a table by the front window and he said that he sat for a long while, hoping that I would eventually show up.  When I didn't, he asked for his original table, not wanting to displace someone else (We had reservations at a very good, in-demand DC restaurant). 

Apparently, there was another gentlemen waiting for his own lunch date and so, he ended up being one of two men, sitting alone and waiting.  When the hostess sent the other man's date to his table, he was taken aback--with her being much older than he. 

"I was actually expecting a young, attractive Indian woman," he said he told her.

"Well, I've got the attractive part down, don't I?," he said that she quipped.

And so, he waited some more before the waitress suggested that he order something, which he finally did.  He said that he wondered what I had thought and where I had ended up eating lunch.  When he was walking back to the Metro, he said that he kept scanning the faces of people on the street, hoping that he might see mine.

In actuality, I probably just missed him.  I did walk over to the hospital, just after 12:45, and I did end up buying lunch from a place only a block away from where he was waiting for me.  It's possible that we were on the street at the same time, but in a city so large, in such a busy area, we completely missed each other.

He wants to reschedule, but he's going to have to wait three weeks now, because of my schedule.  And, he sure as heck better remember that cell phone of his.