“You only think that you need that, Dick. Right now. In time, you’ll be happy that it’s like this.”
“But don’t you want to live with me?” he asked. Then, and he revisited this sometimes on his runs, she didn’t hesitate for a second before saying that she liked things exactly as they were. Enjoying each other when they could because they wanted to at that time. Without the pressure of commitment.
Later, when he would confide in Charmaine, his assistant who had been his father’s assistant before Dick inherited her and in whom Dick entrusted all of his secrets and fears, that his offer had been rebuffed, he found himself nearly whining with disbelief. “Isn’t this what every woman wants? To be the person that the rich guy actually leaves his wife for? Don’t all women want that, Charmaine?” But that was later. In the moment, when Olga rejected his offer to cohabitate, before he could become pouty or offended, she had come over from her side of the little dining table where they were eating and straddled his lap, opening her robe as she did so, reminding him of how much more fun everything is when it’s spontaneous, and didn’t he agree with that? And he had said, enthusiastically, yes.
Charmaine reminded him that the city was full of women who would want to be that girl, that he didn’t need to chase after Olga. The problem was that he wanted to chase after Olga. He didn’t simply want to catch her, he wanted to pin her down, and make her love him as much as he loved her. （The irony of this did not escape him. The challenge throughout his entire marriage had been his deep-seated resentment of having himself felt caught by the former Mrs. Eikenborn.） The unevenness of their relationship both vexed him and moored him, rendering him unable to fix his mind on anyone else. In an effort to open his eyes to another woman, any other woman, he signed up for one of those dating apps, anonymously, of course. He wasn’t famous, but his face and name were in the financial papers—and his divorce on Page Six—enough that he knew better than to show his recognizable self. So instead he showed the parts of him that were less frequently seen, carefully cropping out his head. He wrote his self-description cautiously: his aim to be truthful, but not too revealing. “Five-foot-ten Caucasian businessman and entrepreneur, athletic build, passionate about travel, cycling, flying planes, and wine collecting. Enjoys a good joke and live concerts.” He could be anyone, he thought to himself.
The “likes” started immediately. He was overwhelmed and flattered. He never responded to the messages with anything more than, maybe, a wink. He never gave out his number. Yet, rather than take his mind off Olga, these other women only made him more resolved to wrestle commitment, of some sort, from her. To make her see what even strangers on the internet saw: Richard Eikenborn III was a catch.
“Why don’t you like my photos?” he asked her one evening in bed.
“The Dick dick pics?” she asked.
“All of them. The body shots, the dick pics. Yes. Why don’t you like them?”
“No women like photos like that. We’re just told that we’re supposed to by a lazy patriarchal culture that assumes that women must like the inverse of what men like. Men like topless boob pics, ergo, women must love bare chest shots … it’s just lazy.”
He felt himself getting defensive. “If I were to post these photos on a dating app, Cherry, women would love them, I bet you anything.”
She laughed.
“Are you on a dating app, Dick?”
“Of course not! Why would I be on an app when I have you here with me?” He pressed himself closer to her back as he spooned her in bed.
She giggled again and rolled away from his embrace.
“If you posted pics like that on a dating app, I have a feeling that the ‘women’”—and here she put her fingers in the air to emphasize the point with air quotes—“who like them might not turn out to be women at all. Or at least not the kind who don’t expect a monetary exchange at the end of the evening.”
Dick was both grazed and perplexed.
“What are you trying to say? That people on these apps aren’t real people? Why would someone do that?”
“I’m not saying that they aren’t real people, I’m just saying that they might not be the people they are presenting themselves as. Grifters. Married guys too afraid to download Grindr. Online hookers. A whole assortment of explanations. My cousin Mabel went on a date with a guy and when he showed up, he was only five feet tall. In one of his photos he was towering over Jon Hamm—she showed me!”