“Oh God, why?” Jon groans, wrinkling his nose. Jon notoriously hates New York, despite having lived here since graduating college.
“So where are we going first?” I ask them.
“Roman & Roman,” Kevin pronounces. Kevin took it upon himself to spearhead my search as soon as I mentioned I wanted to propose. “They specialize in antique engagement rings. Beautiful stuff. Highly unusual pieces. You’ll love it.”
“Sounds perfect,” I say.
We finish brunch and amble through the Union Square greenmarket. I love the smell of farmers markets, the fresh flowers and dirt. I’ll have to take Sarah Louise here. She thinks she’s not a New York person, but I bet she would be if we came together.
A woman with a chic blond pageboy greets us as soon as we walk into the jewelry store. “Kevin!” she says, moving in for a hug.
“Seth, this is Adair,” he says. “We go all the way back to my days at Iconic. I had her pull some pieces for you.”
“For Sarah Louise, right?” she says with a warm smile. “Kevin told me all about her and I think I have some options that might be perfect.”
She leads us through the wood-paneled, minimalist space to a small room with a case of glimmering rings in black velvet waiting on a table.
She pulls out a platinum ring with a large, round center stone. “This is an estate piece. Rose cut, two carats. Incredibly classic.”
Kevin makes a noise like he’s having an orgasm. “Want,” he moans.
“That’s pretty,” Jon says.
“I’m not sure,” I demur. Something about it seems too much. Like it would make more of a fuss on Sarah’s finger than she might be comfortable with. “It might be too … statementy.”
Adair nods like she knows what I mean. She puts it back and pulls out a much smaller ring with a diamond surrounded by green sparkly rectangles.
“Art deco,” Adair says. “Brilliant cut, flanked by these four exquisite emerald baguettes. So delicate—look at the filigree along the edges.”
“Ooh, I love that,” Jon says. “Reminds me of the Chrysler building.”
“Right?” Adair laughs. “I often suggest art deco pieces for people whose taste is a bit more quiet—the style is so striking, but delicate.”
This ring is cool, and definitively all wrong for my girlfriend. Sarah Louise is a midwestern girl. She is plains and cornfields and natural platinum hair. She does not want a green engagement ring, art deco or not.
Adair shows me ring after ring. I learn about Asscher cuts and Old Mine cuts and look at something called a Fancy Yellow diamond that costs $78,000.
“I think she’d want something more … un-yellow,” I gulp out.
A new tray is brought in.
We look at a half-carat solitaire that seems stingy, and infinity rings that look more like wedding bands than engagement rings. I like them all. But none of them is quite right.
What keeps occurring to me is that these rings are ever so slightly too specific. I keep imagining them on the hand of someone like Molly Marks—someone who might not want a ring at all until she saw these, full of history and character.
I can see Sarah walking into this store and thinking she wouldn’t want to wear someone else’s ring. I can hear her saying, “Oh, but what if they’re bad luck?”
“You know, I’m just not sure she would want something used,” I say apologetically to Adair.
“He means antique,” Kevin says, horrified.
“I get it,” she says, “don’t worry at all. You might check out Trinket, in Williamsburg. Lots of super pretty pieces. Most of it’s a little more modest, which is what it sounds like she might want.”
I nod, although I’m not sure she would want modest. She’s a public defender but she appreciates nice things. Her friends certainly wear substantial rocks. And I don’t mind buying her something expensive.
Still, Kevin seems to think this is a very good suggestion. We hop on the L train and take it to Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. All the people look like they live in a different city from the one we just left. They are not just fashionable, they are outfitted, ready to see and be seen at 12:30 p.m. on a random Saturday.
“Didn’t you use to live here?” I ask Jon. “Wasn’t it all guys with lumberjack beards in really tight jeans?”
“Uh, yeah, back before I got priced out in like 2010. Now it’s all finance bros and models.”
Jon is a middle school teacher. He does not truck with finance bros and models.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I say. “Sarah would hate it here.”
Kevin shushes me. “If you’re not careful you’ll end up with one of those big boring Tiffany rocks.”
Tiffany.
Yeah.
I instantly get the bad feeling that what Kevin considers big boring rocks might be exactly what Sarah Louise would want.
We edge our way into the jewelry store, which has old-fashioned gilt signage on the window and is about the size of my foyer in Chicago. Everything in it, including the salesgirls and the crowd of mostly women browsing, are tiny. Jon is slight enough to fit in unobtrusively, but Kevin and I take up about 80 percent of the remaining space.
The twenty-year-olds who work here ignore us, so we just browse. Adair was right that this stuff is pretty, but it’s also aggressively dainty. Some of the rings seem deliberately too-small, like they might be more befitting a child than a grown woman. Some are just bizarre, like a tiny opal set in the mouth of four interlocking snakes.
I can imagine Sarah being confused and disappointed if I bought her one of these.
