A whoosh alerts me that I have an incoming message. An e-mail from Jude, who says he can meet at four p.m. today. Excellent. Eager and communicative is a good sign in a client. I e-mail him back with directions to Café Crudité.

Then I take out my phone to test myself on how well I’ve absorbed my client’s profile.

I open up 24/7, one of the scores of dating apps I have downloaded (as a work thing, of course, because I, myself, am obviously never dating again. The profiles aren’t even set up as me, but as a hodgepodge of background info I made up and pictures stolen from a Google Images search that I’m pretty sure are from a random Czech college brochure). I look over the twenty-four thumbnail images and short profile snippets that have popped up as the daily matches for “me.” And then I pick the five that I think Jude might be most likely to select. I hesitate, choosing between a financial analyst who plays softball on the weekends and a marketing coordinator who is a Pilates instructor. I end up going with Miss Pilates: probably has more free time along with being more limber. I’ll check my answers with Jude at the end of our meeting.

Now I just have forty-five minutes to kill before he gets here. I’m feeling a little hungry, but the biscotti are gone (obviously) and some desperate person even took the kale muffins. I glance over to the corner table and see that I Am Legend is on her way out too, throwing one last glare my way before she reaches the door. Fare thee well, Tampa Bay. You better toughen up fast or New York will break you within a week, sending you back to the sun-soaked swamps whence you came.

Despite my rumbling stomach, I decide against buying anything to eat. Even with my due diligence today, who knows if I’m still going to be employed next week, and I’ll be kicking myself if I have to skip out on dinner because I got tempted by a four-dollar cake pop. And now that Legend is gone, there’s no one interesting here to even look at/stare down as an unofficial tour guide on the Real New York Experience.

I take out my phone again. And before I know exactly what I’m doing, I’ve opened up Instagram and have navigated over to Jordan’s pregnancy post. This time, I only spend a minute or so looking at the picture itself before I get whirlpooled into the rabbit hole of comments.

In between the congrats and the OMGs are some real gems.