I run for the door of the restaurant, Douglas trailing behind; he holds open the door. We are seated by the window. Our talk is full of banter, easy, and I am glad to have accepted the invitation. The place has that cozy feeling that is somehow just right on a rainy day and there is a fire going across the room that contributes to the intimacy of a first meet.

In between discussing well-known and less-known writers, and the habits and history of two truly obscure men of jazz, Douglas gives me the rundown on his recently refurbished diet. He's apparently given up bacon and daily breakfasts packed with fat because of a summer scare, a heart pounding warning from his body. "I've lost thirty pounds," he tells me. "I'm ready to be bad today." He is studying the menu. "I want that cheddar cheese soup with the bacon in it. It can't have that much bacon, really." He looks at me as if I know the bacon-to-cheese ratio.

I smile. He talks, I listen, my mind overactive with criticism. He is big-faced; indeed, he has a large bald head, sloping shoulders and wears a Berka-like sweater to cover a fulsome stomach that is far too generous on a five foot six-inch frame. And he has a huge neck. The neck tells. The neck tells the story of the body, the real story. It is not a romantic tale.

Douglas teaches at a local college and does specialty repairs on wind and brass instruments, a tidy little business, it turns out. I picture him at home wrestling with a recalcitrant clarinet or an unwieldy bassoon. Divorced twenty-five years, his previous relationships seem fraught with the sort of drama I try heartily to avoid at this stage of the dating game. He attracts therapists and makes them his girlfriends; he is trying to change this habit, turned down a recent applicant who presented herself at one of his gigs. His story about the girlfriend who broke up with him without actually informing him, and then moved another man into her house is over the top. He is the patsy in the love triangle and yet there is an air of confidence and contentment that are not without their attractiveness. His is the new classic line: I'm fine by myself, but I know it would be better with that special someone.

I am a horrible person to criticize and yet everything going on in my head is an effort to decide. Will I or won't I see this man again? Our conversation is terrific, even if it occasionally smacks of condescension—pretty much from his side of the table. I don't let it bother me. Any literary allusions that whiz past my head, I ask about.

Toward the end, he says something interesting. "You have to come to terms with your looks at some point in your life." Then he laughs. "I'm bald and I go with it. How could I hide it anyway?"

Lunch lasts two hours. As Douglas helps me with my coat, I glimpse his girth, amazed again that he can be so small and yet so huge. His belly is the kind you'd knock into if you were turning in a dance move. His belly is the kind...No no no I can't picture him naked, won't imagine lifting his sweater no, no...

And I wonder if he's accepted the extra weight as part of the coming to terms with his looks.  He's given up given up is all I can think.