When I first met Z, she and I immediately hit it off. Eager to make a new friend, I emailed her afterwards with some information I knew she would want, and suggested we get together for lunch sometime. She replied, "I really enjoyed meeting you as well. I would love to get together for lunch." But her schedule turned out to be too busy, and she couldn't find the time.
Two and a half years later I tried again, we found a day and time, and met for lunch.
Lunch was lovely. We had a lot in common. When I complained about the self-absorbed people in Orange County, she was quick to agree. She felt strongly about it.
My friend seemed surprised. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'll pay," I said, as I got out my credit card.
"Why would you do that?" she asked.
"I'll pay this time, and you'll pay next time. That way I know there'll be a next time."
Z thought that was so clever. She liked the idea of ensuring that there'd be a next time. She wanted me to meet her husband, who got a PhD in my field before leaving mathematics.
Nearly a year later, having heard nothing from Z, I asked my friend K whether I should remind Z that she owed me a lunch. He told me not to; doing so would be terribly rude. So I emailed Z, "How time flies! I remember how much we enjoyed our lunch together in January, and was thinking we should do it again. Do you have time over the break?" and I added some info that I thought her ex-mathematician husband would be interested in. A few weeks later I wished her a happy New Year, asked if she had gotten my message, and said I hoped that everything was OK with her.
She replied that she'd love for us to get together. She invited me to dinner at her home, for a date a couple of months in the future.
In the interim I invited F, a mathematician in my field, to give a seminar talk at UCI. He wanted to fly in on the evening of Z's upcoming dinner. I thought to myself, "What are the chances that the dinner with Z will really happen? Should I tell F that I can't pick him up at the airport or go to dinner with him because I committed to something else? Or should I reschedule with Z? After all, this is Orange County, the land of ghosting and bailing. Z will undoubtedly cancel at the last minute."
I decided that if I cancelled on Z to accommodate F, I'd be succumbing to unwarranted cynicism, in addition to being a bad person. So I told my colleague F that I couldn't meet him that evening.
Sure enough, a few days before the planned dinner, Z "postponed" it.
When Z emailed a month later and made a vague suggestion that we meet in two or three months for dinner at a restaurant, I again asked K whether I could remind Z that she owed me a lunch. He told me to let it go. Knowing that I didn't have the self-discipline to go to a restaurant with Z and not mention our "next time" discussion, I didn't reply to her email.
Years later my colleague G, who was a patient of Z's, told me that my name came up when she saw Z. Z told G the basics of our story (but not the part about her free lunch), and wondered whether it was too late to get in touch with me. G told her it was. I wish she hadn't. It's stories like this that make me think of Orange County as the land of missed opportunities.