I was walking on the beach at the end of a typical day. I love the beach, seashells and sunsets.
I certainly don’t like what the beach does to my hair — enter the perks of the job. Good blows on any given day/ 7 days a week.
I started talking to a man walking on the beach – he was in South Beach visiting a friend who is a dermatologist. I asked him what kind of work he does. He told me and I asked him if he knew a friend of mine who is one of the top 3 in the US in this field. He said he never heard of him. That was Red Flag #1.
He asked if we could meet for drinks after I finished work Tuesday night. He was a nice looking professional, why not. He asked for my cell number then he called my phone while we were still having a face to face conversation and said, ‘Now you’ll have that number forever.” I thought and said, “Until it’s no longer a recent call.” I realized afterwards I was wrong. I said to him, “Did you call my phone because you thought I gave you the wrong number?” He said NO — but I don’t remember what else he said. (This should have been Red Flag #2) but I let it slide.
So we made plans for Tuesday night at 8 PM at the salon. I thought he would arrive, I’d turn on the alarm, lock up and out the door.
I said to him, “I’m going to google you.”
He shrugged. We said goodbye.
The first thing I did was call my father to tell him I met an interesting man on the beach.
DAD: You better make sure you google him
That was on my list of things to do but the fact that my father told me to google him? (Red Flag #2)
I came up with two men with the same first and last name and I wasn’t sure which of the two hits with his name and area of expertise was him. I liked the resume of the man who didn’t look like him – but I met him with his sunglasses on the beach and hoped it was him and just a bad picture. I didn’t like what I read about the other person with the same name. I figured I would ask him when he called to confirm Tuesday night and if he was ‘bachelor number two’ I wouldn’t keep the date.
He did call the next night — and I said, “So are you ‘bachelor number one’ or ‘bachelor number two’ hoping he said, “I’m number one.”
He said let’s wait and talk about it. (Red Flag #3)
He called Tuesday night @ 7:55 PM and said he was running late. I was annoyed but went online and read the NY Daily News political blog, The Daily Politics. I’m from the Bronx, a political junkie, and the people on this blog are very smart and not getting paid to think. I like that.
At 8:20 PM I heard a noise in the back of the salon and couldn’t imagine what it was — so I looked. It was the man from the beach in the salon and he had not come through the front door and there is security outside the backdoor. I said, “How did you get in here? How did you get past security.”
HE: I walked past them
This didn’t make sense that he got past two security guards. (HUGE RED FLAG #4)
I turned on the alarm, locked the door, and as we were walking to the restaurant …
ME: Are you ‘bachelor number two’? The man with the shady past?
HE: Let’s sit down at a table and talk
Red Flag #5 — (notably smaller than HUGE RED FLAG #4.)
We started talking and he fessed up to being ‘bachelor number two’ with explanations that I wasn’t buying. You don’t end up being ‘bachelor number two’ for being a good guy.
I said good-bye after the drink (he gave me his business card) — I went home — to my computer — and now that I knew he was ‘bachelor number two’ I googled him some more and found out he was worse that just ‘bachelor number two’ on my first search. Turns out he was involved with a very public violent crime story. Then I found out he didn’t live in LA as he said — he didn’t even live in the US.