Wednesday

Wednesday evening over French fries and salads at their favorite café, Miranda, Samantha and Carrie discussed their day.

"Carrie, how is the article going?" Miranda asked.

"Well, I have my column. It just isn't the one that I was originally expecting. It's now like. 'Where are all the great single men in New York'?"

"Was it that bad? Charlotte said something the other day about the first date being really bad," Miranda said.

"It's coming out like a single New York woman's manifesto. If you have to have a license to drive a car, then you should have to have a license to date. Maybe you get your learner's permit when you're fifteen or sixteen. And then if you do something really heinous, they should take your license away. There should be penalties. It was so bad that the only thing that could make me feel better was a trip to Manolo Blanknik. These men owe me $550 for deceptive dating practices. Anyway, I am done. I agreed to go on three of these dates, and today's was the last. I will never respond to a personals ad ever again."

"What about the other two today?" Samantha asked

"Let's see: Last night, I had cocktails with 'Hopeless Romantic', 40." He was fifty-five if he was a day."

"Eeew."

"Today I had lunch in the Meatpacking district with 'Are you the one?' His idea of an appropriate after-lunch activity was going to a sex shop."

"You're kidding. Right?" Miranda asked.

"No. They had all this funny novelty stuff. I bought each of you a little souvenir – a wind-up hopping penis."

"That's the best you could do?" Samantha said with mock scorn. "While you were there, you should have bought yourself one of those "Super Vibra 5000s." I love mine. It's the next best thing to the real thing … not that I have used mine in weeks."

"Samantha likes a boy," Carrie teased.

"Since when do you require more than proof of a Y chromosome for having sex with someone? You do really like him," Miranda accused.

"All I am saying is that I am having the best of sex of my life. It's like there was a whole different level of hot sex out there I had no idea about. I have never felt this way about any other man, and it just keeps getting better. He's like an authentic Birkin bag in a trunk full of knock-offs"

"I knew something strange was going on today when I saw that squadron of flying pigs outside my office window today. Now I know what it was: Samantha Jones is in love."

Thursday

At the break room in the law offices of blank bland and blah, Miranda and her coworkers were having a going-away party for Henry, a junior partner who had long been a productive partner for Miranda as well as her best friend at work. Miranda had never given Henry much thought until about a month ago when he had announced that he was leaving to join another firm in Los Angeles.

As the party began to break up, Miranda started to leave the break room.

"Miranda, can I see you for a second?" Henry requested.

"Uh, sure. Is it something about the Hendrix deposition because…"

"No, that's not it," he said and led her into the copy room and shut the door behind her.

"These past few days I have been tortured. There is something I have wanted to say to you for the last year or so, but it never seemed the right time. Miranda, I love you."

"What?"

"It came up on me so gradually I didn't see it coming. We just spent all those late nights working together. Then one night we were sitting in the conference room around midnight eating greasy Chinese take-out, and it's just like, 'Wow, did you just feel that?'"

"I wish I had known. How can it be that you never said anything to me?"

"If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would have said something. Sometimes I blame myself for being a coward. And sometimes I told myself that I should just get over it because we worked so closely together. After all, I spent much more time with you than I ever did with any of the women I went out with. I am happy to be moving back to LA. The new firm is a great opportunity for me. My family is there. It just never occurred to me until the other day that I wouldn't get to tell you how I feel. Then, bam, it was all of a sudden like now or never. I just didn't want it to go my whole life never having told you how I felt. I hope that I find someone in LA who is a lot like you."

A hundred replies formed in Miranda's brain, none of which could make it to her tongue. Before she could say anything, Henry left the copy room, and shut the door behind him. A feeling of heaviness formed in her gut and made her feel slight queasy and like she was sinking through the solid floor beneath her feet. One of the best men she had ever known was walking out of her life. Why hadn't either of them said anything before he had disappeared into geographic undesirability?