The Perfect Father

After ringing in Mr. Buchanan’s order, Sylvie handed it off to one of the waiters headed back to the kitchen, almost hitting her co-worker in the face with it as he passed. She apologized sheepishly as she spun back around. Business at Cosmo’s that evening had been slow, even for a Tuesday night, but her timing had been off completely since coming in to work several hours ago. As she frequently did at times like this, she couldn’t help wondering yet again why she hadn’t put her degree in humanities to better use than tending bar.

Maybe, she decided as she ran a blue grease pencil under the last of the drinks orders at the service bar, it was because no matter how hard she looked, there was never, ever a listing in the classified ads under the heading Humanities.

“Order up, Sylvie.”

She spun around to find one of the waiters scooting a plate of oysters Rockefeller precariously close to the edge of the bar, and she snatched it up just as it was about to go over the side.

“Keith!” she called out to the swiftly departing server after she’d placed the appetizer in front of a well-dressed couple seated at the bar.

Keith turned. “What is it? I’m in the weeds big time.”

She threw him what she knew was her most beguiling smile. “Got a minute?”

He smiled back as he returned to the bar. “Sure. But just one. And just because it’s you who’s asking.”

She tried to feign a more intimate interest in him. “Mind a personal question?”

His smile broadened. “How personal?”

“You, uh, you graduated from Princeton, right?”

He nodded.

“And you’re going to Villanova now? Law school?”

Another nod. “What’s this leading up to, Sylvie?”

She extended her index finger onto the bar, coyly drawing a few idle circles in the remnants of a spilled beer. “What, um...what’s your G.P.A?”

“Three point ninety-eight. Why?”

Sylvie looked at him, taking in his blond hair, blue eyes and slender build. Nice genes, she thought. And his coloring was identical to hers, so if she asked him to father her child, the baby would resemble her no matter what. “Oh, I was just thinking,” she began again. “I need to ask you about some—”

Her words ceased when Keith cried out, bent over suddenly and cupped a hand over his left eye.

“What?” she asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he muttered as he straightened. He manipulated his left eyelid gently over a red, watery eye. “I just got something in my contact. It’s okay now.”

Sylvie studied him more closely. “You wear contact lenses?”

“Yeah, I’m blind as a bat without them.”

“Oh.”

“Now, then,” Keith continued, wiping away the last of the tears. His eye was still quite red and puffy. “What was this personal question you wanted to ask?”

“Your eyesight is really bad?” Sylvie asked.

“The worst. Everyone in my family has lousy eyesight. I don’t think any of us made it out of childhood without getting a pair of glasses. Mine have lenses as thick as Coke bottles.”

She nodded. “I see.”

“And this personal question?” he asked again, clearly interested in getting as personal as possible with Sylvie.

“Uh,” she hedged. “Never mind. I forgot what I was going to say.”

His expression fell. “Oh. Well, if you remember...”

“I’ll let you know.”

When Keith was out of sight, Sylvie pulled a well-worn scrap of paper from inside her shirt pocket and unfolded it. Keith’s name was midway down the list, beneath a half dozen or so others that had been crossed out. Leonard had been her first choice as the ideal candidate to father her child, but she’d learned he had recently become engaged. William, the second of her male acquaintances on the list, had just returned from a skiing trip with both arms and one leg in a cast. Jack, whose wavy brown hair she had loved, also had a brother in prison, and Sylvie simply didn’t want to risk the felony gene turning up in any child of hers. Donnie, she’d discovered, had worn braces all through junior high and high school.

So far, none of the candidates Sylvie had considered with good genetic potential for fatherhood was working out at all. There always seemed to be something that just didn’t quite set well. Edgar had been close, she recalled, but there was that big bump on the bridge of his nose that, despite his assurances to the contrary, she wasn’t quite convinced he’d suffered in a fight. It might just be a congenital condition. And Michael...well, he had been just this side of perfect. But he’d confessed to having absolutely no musical inclination whatsoever. And Sylvie wasn’t about to give birth to a no-talent child.

Yet there was still that question of the second set of chromosomes she would need to make a baby. There must be someone, she thought, looking down at the list again. Someone who would enjoy a little intimate rendezvous with her—maybe two, depending on how well it went the first time—and then get the heck out of her life. But who?

She glanced discreetly over her shoulder at Mr. Buchanan, the one person who frequented the bar whose nightly appearances she genuinely welcomed. Most of her regular customers were jerks, which was why she hadn’t explored that group of men when considering potentially perfect fathers. But Mr. Buchanan, she thought now...

That little conversation the two of them had just enjoyed had pretty much reinforced everything she already knew about him. He had absolutely no desire to encumber himself with a family, because his work was his life. Therefore, should he be the one to father her baby, she wouldn’t have to worry about him becoming all sappy and sentimental, wanting to play a role in the raising of that child. He was handsome, too, she noted, not for the first time, and he seemed the result of a better-than-average set of genes. She liked him. An intimate rendezvous with Mr. Buchanan wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Of course, it would help if she knew his first name.

She scanned the list in her hand once again. There were five names left, all of them men Sylvie didn’t know particularly well. She wasn’t sure she could make love with a man she scarcely knew, especially when she hadn’t made love that often with men she knew extremely well. But time was running out. It was already the last week of February. She’d be ovulating again in two weeks. If she wanted a Christmas baby—and she did very much want a Christmas baby—she was going to have to find the perfect father for her child quickly.

“Order up, Sylvie. Shrimp étouffée.”

Her gaze traveled slowly from the plate of food a passing waiter placed on the bar to the man who had asked her to surprise him. And as she made her way slowly down the bar toward Mr. Buchanan, she began to study him in a way she never had before. When she set the plate before him, he looked up to murmur his thanks, and she found herself staring into clear green eyes full of intelligence.

She moved slightly away as he began to eat, but continued to observe him closely, noting with interest the expensively cut, jet black hair, the high cheekbones and perfectly sculpted jaw, the finely formed lips beneath a near-perfect nose that claimed not a chink. She had always thought Mr. Buchanan was very attractive. She considered him smart and ambitious. She also knew that although he was scarcely forty, he headed up one of Philadelphia’s most prominent architectural firms.

When he turned to lift a hand in greeting to another regular at the bar, Sylvie studied his eyes in profile. No contacts, she noted. When he turned back to her, he caught her watching him and smiled, and she noticed that one of his front teeth was bent just the tiniest bit over the other. Not enough to mar his appearance in any way, but enough to let her know he’d never had orthodontic work done.

She pulled the pencil from behind her ear and added another name to the bottom of her list, drawing an arrow from the words Mr. Buchanan to the space immediately beneath Keith’s name. Then she tucked the list back into her shirt pocket.

“Hey, Mr. Buchanan,” she said thoughtfully as she reached for his empty glass to refill it for his usual second drink. “You know, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Do you play any musical instruments?”

Two

Chase was stumped. “Musical instruments?” he asked.

Sylvie nodded as she reached for a bottle of Laphroig from the mirrored shelves behind her. Had he become such a regular at Cosmo’s that she didn’t even bother to ask what he was drinking anymore, or if he even wanted a second? he wondered. Come to think of it, he couldn’t in fact remember the last time she had asked him what had once been the lead-in to all their encounters. However, the question she was asking now was a new one.

“Yeah,” she replied. “You seem like the musical type.”

“Well, I played saxophone in my high school pep band,” he confessed. “And I was part of a little jazz combo in college.”