Love in the Twilight Zone

Part II

J#1, the Matchmaker

The end of the semester was approaching and still no sightings of J#2. I had an in-class final to study for the last week of regular classes, and not very adept at pulling all-nighters, I got up at 4 am to study. I went down to one of the dorm basement study areas and found it already occupied by a rather crabby J#1. He, unlike me, was too familiar with all-nighters. He had been up all night studying and took the arrival of my friendly presence as a signal to start complaining. He was starving, had no money, and his car was buried in snow so that even if he did have money, he didn't want to take the time to clean off his car and drive out to Nick's Diner to get some breakfast so he'd have the energy to finish studying for one of his chemistry exams. I told him I had money and had dug my car out the day before. I offered to drive him to Nick's and buy him breakfast. His eyes lit up, and we were at Nick's Diner on the edge of town before the sun came up.

At the diner, I told J#1 to order whatever he wanted, I was rich that week. He ordered one of the big breakfast platters and when it arrived looked at it, and me, appreciatively. As he was about to take his first bite, I said to J#1, “So, if one wanted to run into J#2, let's say casually, and hang out with him, where would one find him?” J#1 looked at his plate, then looked at me. He asked if the breakfast was a bribe. I nodded. He smiled and between bites of his pancakes, went on to tell me how perfect he thought J#2 and I were for each other. He had known us both since freshman year and he thought highly of us both and J#2 was such a great guy and... J#1 started sounding like M, extolling the virtues of J#2. The problem with J#2, though, was this: He was a really serious student, the smartest of their class of chemistry majors. He spent long hours studying, staying in the library until it closed each night (which explained why I didn't run into him). But J#1 said he knew for a fact that each night, after he came back to the dorm, J#2 went down to the rec room to watch reruns of The Twilight Zone to unwind. J#1 told me that if I went down to the rec room at 11 pm, J#2 would probably be down there in front of the television set.

The next night I went down to the rec room at 11 pm, and there was J#2, watching The Twilight Zone. He smiled at me, and I went over and sat next to him. We watched the episode, then talked. We did the same the next night, and the next, and the next. Some nights we'd go for a walk, some nights drink tea together. During one of these early mini-dates, I heard that still, small voice in my head that I usually identify as too wise to be my own thoughts say, “This is the man you are going to marry.” I filed the voice away in my mind, noting that I hadn't heard that on a date with anyone else before. That week J#2 asked me out to a chemistry professor's Christmas party. Finals came, and then Christmas break. When we returned to campus in January, J#2 and I met in the rec room each night, continuing our pattern of watching The Twilight Zone reruns for much of the semester.

Sometime during the summer after our senior year, after months of dating, J#2 and I were reminiscing about the dorm mixer where we met, laughing about M's desire to match me up with someone so I would stay away from her beloved J#1. J#2 told me that shortly after the mixer, before finals, J#1 approached him and asked him if he liked the girl M had tried to pair him up with at the mixer. J#2 said, yes, he had liked her, liked her a lot. J#1 went on to say that if J#2 was interested in, say, casually running into that girl, he knew for a fact that she went down to the rec room every night at 11 pm and watched reruns of The Twilight Zone...

***

The voice in my head proved to be prophetic. I married J#2 two years later. We've been married 38 years this month. (M did marry the devious J#1, and they have been married almost as long. And Nick's Diner still exists, remarkably unchanged...)

It's been almost 40 years to the day that it was revealed the creative deception of a mutual friend was apparently responsible for bringing me and J#2 together. Yet, I can never bring myself to say our relationship began in a lie. I prefer to think it was forged in the mysterious realm where many long loving relationships begin, a place that often defies simple explanation, a place known as the twilight zone...

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets

the eye is as it appears. -Rod Serling