Homesick by Ward Sela

Author:Ward, Sela [Ward, Sela]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

5

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Howard was as blasé about meeting me as I was about meeting him. When our mutual friend, Carrie, the matchmaker, called to tell him about me, he was curious . . . until she told him what I did for a living.

“She’s an actress,” Carrie said.

“Wait, stop right there. Completely not interested,” Howard told her. He’d grown up in Los Angeles; he knew actresses were a dime a dozen.

“Well, she’s a working actress,” she said.

“Even worse,” Howard replied. “Let me tell you what she probably is: an actress who’s dated lots of actors, and she wants to meet a regular guy.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Here’s the thing,” Howard explained. “We regular guys, we put our pants on one leg at a time. We’re mortals. We’re not going to call and say, ‘The jet will pick you up and we’re meeting Woody Allen for lunch in Barbados.’ When you’re dating actors, it’s a whole different world. She probably thinks she wants a regular guy, but she’ll think it’s not exciting enough.”

Carrie tried for three weeks to sell Howard on the idea of a date with me. Finally she told him, “Howard, I don’t think you understand. I’ve only set up three couples on a blind date in my life, and all three couples ended up getting married.”

Based on that track record, the man who would become my husband agreed to meet me.

But first he decided to do a little research of his own. He rented Nothing in Common, a film I’d been in with Tom Hanks, to see what I was like on-screen. My character in that movie was one of those ice princesses I’d been trying to get away from before I got Sisters, but it was the only time he’d ever seen me. So he became convinced that in real life I was just like my character—“Kind of a typical L.A. woman, been-there-done-that, nothing impresses them,” he says today. Carrie told him I was a football fan, so he suggested the four of us—Carrie and her boyfriend, Howard and I—take in a Raiders game, for what he was sure would be our one and only date.

Carrie arranged for the three of us to meet Howard on a street corner and drive to the stadium together. He was late, and when he finally arrived he pulled up in his car and said, “Follow me.” Follow him? Sure, he was tall and handsome, but was this guy raised by wolves? We three tailed him in Carrie’s car, and when we stopped at a red light I got out of Carrie’s car, walked up to his window, and said, “Shouldn’t I be sitting in this car?”

In the thirty minutes it took us to drive to the stadium, though, my impression of Howard Sherman began to change. Dressed in jeans and a faded green turtleneck, he seemed so comfortable, quietly sure of himself. There was no posturing, no trying too hard, and he wasn’t wrapped up in himself. And in his presence, somehow, I just felt safe.

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