The Hypothetical Girl Read Online Free

Myra. “It just so happens I cook very well.”
    “What do you cook?”
    “I cook brisket, Moroccan lamb stew, shrimp Alfredo, and Thai, I cook Thai. I have several recipes. Like chicken satay.”
    “You make chicken satay?” he texted. “I may have to marry you.”
    “Okay,” she wrote back. “I accept.”
    Louis had just returned from a three-week trek in the Golden Triangle region, where he had gone white-water rafting and smoked opium with a village chief.
    “Why is it everyone I know who has been trekking in Thailand has smoked opium with a village chief?” Myra asked.
    “Oh, it is part of the standard trek package,” Louis replied. Louis was funny.
    When Louis declined the invitation to have lunch somewhere, Myra decided to confront his reticence with another limerick.
    There once was a man who liked girls

but his love life began to unfurl

So he made reservations

To visit distant nations

To find happiness, diamonds, and pearls
.
    “Okay,” Louis wrote, “that was a stretch.”
    “What? The rhymes? Or don’t you like girls?”
    “No, I am pretty sure I like girls. The whole jewelry trope.”
    “I know,” Myra wrote back. “I was at a loss for words.”
    “A good time NOT to write a limerick.”
    “Says he of ‘bent’ humor.”
    “Touché.”
    “Okay, we are even, but I still think we should have lunch,” Myra wrote.
    “Send me some pictures,” he texted, quite out of the blue.
    “I sent you pictures,” she wrote.
    “But they are just head shots …”
    “Louis, are you asking me to send you nude pix?”
    “NO, just something that shows you, the real you.”
    Myra was stumped. She had sent him pictures. But he wanted more, so she sent more. She sent him one of her rowing her kayak and one of her standing in front of her kayak.
    With the photos she sent him another limerick.
    This is my kayak, Lenore

She’s a skiff you might love and adore

She is small, sleek, and fun

In her, rapids you can run

and her owner invites you for more
.
    Immediately came his response—just one word, but oh such an important one:
    “More?”
    “Yes, more, like lunch.”
    “You are cute,” he wrote. “I think you are pretty.”
    “And I think you are cute too. I will be honest, I am smitten.”
    “Smitten?”
    “Smitten.”
    Silence for two days was followed by the following dispatch from Louis to Myra.
    I think I am in love with you, Myra

And I think I might like to come try ya

We can drive in my car

To some very small bar

Where we might like to have some papaya
.
    “Okay,” Myra wrote back. “That was clever.”
    Her smittenness had gotten quite out of control. She was thinking about Louis pretty much all the time. She woke up and thought about him and then went to work and thought about him. She kept returning to the photo of him hanging from that tree in Sri Lanka. In fact, it seemed a little stalker-y, but she actually made that photograph into her screen saver.
    When she came home at night she practiced recipes for Thai fare to prepare for their courtship. She learned how to make a lemongrass soup and several tasty curry dishes.
    Then Myra wrote a beautiful love poem. It might have been the most beautiful love poem ever written, she thought. (And Myra was an actual poet. An MFA-degree-carrying, poetry-teaching poet who worked with the Connecticut “Poetry in the Schools” program. She had credentials.) Her love poem had three sections. It was full of winning metaphors and synonyms. It had great images. But most important, it had heart. Real heart.
    To send it or not to send it? That was the question. She pondered it all night long, and then finally at 2:00 a.m. she did it. She pushed the button. She sent the poem.
    Here is the love poem that Myra sent Louis:
    YES, DUDE, A LOVE POEM
I
    Tonight I will be the traveler of you
.
I will travel the valleys and hills of you
,
the faraway deserts of you
,
I will drink from the rivers and streams of you

I will backpack through your high