All That and Then Some

ALICE - This Charming Man

MY MOTHER'S ROMANCE WITH (not) Tom Selleck is heating up. Whether this has anything to do with her mod-style gyrating across my kitchen floor to the tune of Love Shack is hard to say since it doesn't seem to have gained the social momentum she was hoping for. She texts Maeve daily asking about her 'fan base'. So far, the video has been seen only a handful of times and shared exactly never.

"I don't understand it," she whines down the phone at me. "Why has your video taken off while ours just sits out there like lemon?"

I assume it has something to do with the fact that my video was unrehearsed -- and a total invasion of my privacy -- while hers was clearly choreographed and, as Maeve puts it, cringey.

Although, not quite cringey enough, somehow. It's a delicate balance that is nearly impossible to achieve intentionally.

"I think it's just not to this generation's taste," I tell her. "They don't get it. Don't worry. That wasn't really the point, was it? You just wanted something to lure Hawaiian Shirt man in. And that seems to be working."

I can practically hear her cat-who-got-the-canary grin down the phone line.

"Do you know, we email and text every day now? Great, long exchanges where we trade stories and secrets and..."

"Not financial or personal identity sorts of secrets, I hope."

"Oh, Alice, I've told you before, I'm not stupid. I know all that about never sharing my password or clicking on emails."

"But Mum, just be careful with what you tell him -- information like where you were born, the name of your primary school -- these are things people can use to guess or change your passwords."

She laughs. "Ridiculous. This gentleman isn't interested in my passwords. We have so much in common; it's like we've known each other all our lives. We tried guessing each other's favourite Beatle the other day, and he got mine right on the first try. Isn't that something? Then I told him how we named our first dog, that little cocker spaniel, Ringo."

"Mum! That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about."

I'm envisioning a crafty young man somewhere in the third world, posing as Tom Selleck, composing emails and texts designed to trick elderly North American women into revealing all their PVQ answers over the course of a long, drawn-out, completely false relationship.

"I think you should ask to meet this man in person. Somewhere safe, of course. Like at the cafe."

"Oh, I don't know," she hedges. "He says he wants to take things slowly. He's been burned before, you see. We haven't even spoken on the phone or the zoom yet."

Hmmm. I can imagine why.

"Then how do you know he's not an identity thief, casting a great big net around your personal information?"

She doesn't respond for a moment.

"I just don't. I can't explain how, but I believe he's a very genuine, kind gentleman who's interested in getting to know me."

"Just be careful," I say again, uselessly.

I AM BEGINNING TO sweat unprettily, and I really need to pee. I'm sitting on one side of a long boardroom table in a meeting room that could easily double as a sauna, regretting the cashmere turtleneck sweater under a loose-fitting blazer with skinny jeans that I chose for this auspicious first meeting of the Carvil leadership team. I'd forgotten that corporate offices are consistently frigid in the summer and unbearably overheated in the winter and that cashmere turtlenecks, no matter how kitteny-soft and cute, are ill-advised under the blasting heat of the air vents.