Summary
In order to increase his sample, Don attends a party where a number of single people will be present. Don cheerfully hands out copies of his questionnaire to the single women who are attending. An attractive woman named Fabienne introduces herself to Don and makes a clear sexual advance towards him. Don turns her down because he is focused on the questionnaire and sees that she has failed several questions. Don also attends a speed dating event, where he uses the questionnaire to quickly eliminate women, and he wonders why women seem slightly annoyed by this approach. Despite these unsuccessful attempts, within a few days, Don has received more than 200 responses online. However, none of them meet his standards. Gene thinks that Don is being too critical, and he offers to go through the responses and identify a few whom he thinks Don should consider. Don reluctantly agrees and even accedes to Gene's request that he will ask any woman of Gene's selection out on a dinner date.
A couple of hours later, Don is working in his office when a young woman walks in and explains that Professor Barrow (Gene) had recommended she speak with him. Don assumes that she is one of the choices Gene identified, and, in line with their agreement, he immediately asks the woman to dinner. She seems surprised but agrees to go to dinner with him, suggesting a restaurant called Le Gavroche. After they agree to meet at the restaurant, Don phones Gene who tells him that the woman's name is Rosie. Don makes a reservation at the restaurant but when he arrives, he is told that he doesn't meet the dress code because he is not wearing a jacket. Don is confused, because he does not understand that the restaurant staff means "jacket" as in an item of men's formal wear, and he is simply wearing a rain jacket. As the confusion escalates, Don ends up in a physical confrontation. Fortunately, his martial arts training means that he excels. At this point, Rosie arrives, and the restaurant staff seems to know her. Rosie finds the whole situation funny and persuades the staff to let her and Don leave.
As they walk away, Rosie explained that she chose Le Gavroche because she used to work there; she now works at a bar, so she is used to dealing with situations where tempers flare. Rosie asks Don about his martial arts skills; he explains that he began training because he was bullied as a child and values physical fitness highly. Rosie explains that her father is a personal trainer but she has little interest in exercise. Don is taken aback when Rosie offers to come back to his apartment to eat dinner there, but she takes charge of the situation so quickly that he has little time to protest. At his apartment, Rosie comments on the lack of art and the highly curated music collection, prompting Don to reveal more of his idiosyncrasies and regimented routine.
Don commences cooking and is taken aback when Rosie tells him that she is a vegetarian. Don has previously found himself in stressful situations when he has failed to ask others about their food preferences. Fortunately, Rosie explains that she does eat seafood, and since Don's standard Tuesday meal involves lobster, they continue to cook. Don has a regimented system in which he prepares the same cycle of elaborate meals over and over. When he expresses concern about his process being disrupted because the time is different from when he would usually cook, Rosie helpfully resets the clock on his stove. The two of them eat dinner on his balcony, a space Don does not normally use. Don wavers in his opinion of Rosie: he perceives her as disregarding health because she drinks, smokes, and does not exercise, and he is skeptical of her intelligence because she works at a bar. Still, he finds her engaging to talk to.
During the dinner, Rosie explains the story of her conception: when Rosie's mother was graduating from medical school, she slept with another medical student at her graduation party. Rosie's mother was already in a relationship with Phil (the man who raised Rosie as her father), and while Rosie's mother did tell Rosie that Phil was not her biological father, she never revealed the identity of the man who was. Rosie's mother subsequently died in a car accident, and lately, Rosie has been wondering about the identity of her biological father. Eventually, Don arranges for Rosie to leave, and it is only after she is gone that Don realizes how disrupted his routine has been: he has stayed up far later and consumed more alcohol than usual.
The next day, Don and Gene meet for lunch. Gene explains that he knows Rosie and that she did not complete the Wife Project questionnaire. Don decides that it would therefore be pointless for him to see Rosie again; this information confirms his suspicion that Rosie would be a totally inappropriate match. Nonetheless, later that day, he starts to think he could get to know Rosie as a kind of "benchmark" for comparison against the women who actually did complete the survey. Don also realizes that if Rosie truly does want to pursue finding her biological father, his expertise as a geneticist could help her. With this in mind, Don goes to the bar where Rosie works. He is oblivious to the fact that Rosie works at a bar catering to gay men, and he tells her that if she was able to obtain DNA samples from the men who might be her father, he would test them for her. They briefly discuss the types of samples that might yield genetic material, but the bar is getting busy, so Rosie gives her number to Don and tells him to call her.
Analysis
The second section of the novel further develops the idea that Don is actually quite attractive to women, contrary to his own doubts and fears. Fabienne makes an unprompted sexual advance to Don, in explicit enough terms that he knows her intentions; this interaction is important because it reinforces the idea that Don is being driven by an emotional desire for companionship, not a desire for sex. This behavior is in contrast to Gene and also serves to undermine Gene's claims that most behavior is driven by evolutionary biology and a desire to have as much sex as possible. Moreover, many women are willing to play along with Don's questionnaire approach and submit their responses. Don has literally hundreds of prospects to choose from, which represents an interesting inversion of the power dynamic. Don starts off seemingly disempowered in his pursuit of a relationship because of his unusual behavior and social awkwardness. However, he finds himself with a plethora of women lining up to at least try—and he responds with extremely exacting standards.
Because Don is being so picky with his candidates, his willingness to go on a date with a woman of Gene's choosing shows how much he trusts Gene. Gene, however, doesn't use this trust to carefully select a woman he thinks would be compatible with Don: he essentially plays a prank on both Don and Rosie and creates a potentially volatile situation for his own amusement. Rosie's spontaneous and open-minded approach to life is evident when she quickly accepts a dinner invitation from a strange man; she is confused but willing to take a chance. This philosophy continues when she pivots from the original plan to suggest eating at Don's apartment; her willingness to adapt to circumstances is an important counterpoint to Don's tendency to be rigid. Rosie is also genuinely curious: she doesn't make judgments about Don without getting to know him, and she puts in the effort to uncover more information about who he truly is.
Don's confrontation at the restaurant reveals both the limits of his ability to engage in social interactions (especially in unfamiliar settings) and some surprising aspects of his character. Don is already stressed and uneasy because of the prospect of going on a date with a woman he knows nothing about, and he cannot understand that the restaurant staff is trying to communicate to him about his "jacket." This interaction is an example of how language often has socially constructed meanings as well as literal ones. Don is correct when he insists that he is already wearing a jacket, but he misses out on the contextual meaning, which implies that in the case of a fancy restaurant, "jacket" has additional connotations that imply only an item of male formalwear is acceptable. This interaction prompts a reader to reflect further on the way language is used in complex ways, as well as how much information is conveyed in non-verbal and contextual fashion. As Catherine Belsey explains in her guide to post-structuralism, "Language makes dialogue possible, but only on condition we use it appropriately, subscribing to the meanings already given in the language that always precedes our familiarity with it" (pg. 3). For some people (and writers might often fall into this category), the complex meanings of language can be exhilarating, but for someone like Don, this kind of nuance and ambiguity is completely overwhelming, and at times terrifying.
While the events at the restaurant may seem to be disastrous, they actually move Rosie and Don towards an opportunity to get to know one another in a more authentic way. Don would be unlikely to invite another person to his apartment because it would disrupt his systems, but Rosie's spontaneity sweeps him along. Rosie pushes Don out of his comfort zone because she simply goes ahead and does things that would never occur to Don, such as eating out on the balcony. At the same time, Rosie is respectful of Don's systems and encourages him to adapt rather than simply discard them (which would likely be too jarring and upsetting for Don). For example, she suggests Don adjust the clock on his stovetop so that he can still keep the cooking preparation times he is accustomed to, and this suggestion appeals to Don because it is logical and maintains an orderly process. Rosie also shows herself to be a good match for Don because she doesn't try to modify herself in order to please him. She is respectful of Don, but she also expects him to be respectful of her habits (drinking, smoking, eating a mostly vegetarian diet). The 200+ women who filled out Don's questionnaire were showing their willingness to be measured according to his standards, but Rosie is cheerfully ignorant of Don's expectations. While he might think he wants a woman who can meet his highly specific criteria, Don actually seems to be drawn to the one woman who makes no effort to please or accommodate him.
Rosie's Father Project has clear parallels to Don's Wife Project and becomes the impetus that will draw them together. While Rosie seems independent and happy living her life on her own terms, she is also clearly somewhat unfulfilled and craves an idealized parent-child relationship. Similar to how Don seems to have unrealistic expectations about a perfect partner and how to find her, Rosie seems to naively imagine that she could have a loving relationship with her biological father even if they have never had contact with one another before. Given the loss of her mother at a young age, Rosie understandably wonders what it would be like to have a biological parent in her life. Her desire to find her biological father might even hint at why she seems to be interested in spending time with Don: he is clearly a model of consistency, routine, and stability. He is also approximately ten years older than she is, and he is established in his professional field. Rosie's desire for a father figure in her life might simultaneously draw her towards Don, and also towards their shared attempt to locate her biological father.
