Matching Wits with Venus

by Therese Gilardi

  Knowing what Randi expected of her, Amelia leaned forward for a series of air kisses that was so exaggerated Amelia was surprised Randi didn’t fall off her heels. Finally, Randi sat down and they ordered. Amelia pulled a large pink folder from the brocade bag and smiled.

  “Open it. Inside you’ll find the photos and profiles of three men I know will be perfect for you.”

  Amelia looked around, leaned forward and whispered, “Although you have to promise you won’t tell anyone I gave you a selection or everyone will be wanting multiple choices all the time.”

  Amelia sat back against the banquette and watched as Randi glanced at photos of an architect who’d just been awarded a major commission from the city, a film editor who had been short-listed for every major award in January, and a plastic surgeon whose clientele was so exclusive his office was unmarked.

  “Pretty impressive line-up wouldn’t you say?”

  Randi closed the folder.

  “Amelia, I thought I made it clear to you. I want to meet the man I saw in the window. Do you understand?”

  “I just thought, well, any of these three would be just perfect for you. Do you have any idea how many women would love to meet Dr. Caldrone?”

  Randi held up her hands. The diamond on her right ring finger caught the sunlight from the overhead light, and bounced it around the table like a little ball.

  “I hired you because I heard you were the best, that you listened to your clients. You know I was forgiving of your, shall we say shortcomings, in the past. I decided to give you a second chance because I thought you were like me, a shrewd businesswoman who leaves her feelings at home.”

  Amelia felt her cheeks heat up. She felt like she had when she’d been sent to detention after she’d been falsely accused of cheating. Now, as then, she seemed incapable of explaining herself clearly. She looked at the wooden planks in the floor, thinking perhaps she really was just like her socially inept father.

  The waiter delivered the barbeque chicken salad and Randi’s nacho platter, which Amelia knew Randi, who never ate carbs, dairy, or meat, would barely touch. After a few minutes of sitting together in silence, Randi drifted away to visit the table of some acquaintances across the room.

  “Is something wrong with your salad?” The waiter asked Amelia in a low voice when he came back to refill their waters and saw Amelia’s uneaten meal. “You never leave anything on your plate.”

  “No, no of course not. I, I had a big breakfast, that’s all.”

  As Amelia studied Randi, she knew what she had to do. When Randi returned to the table a few minutes later Amelia smiled at her.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll fix you up with Colin Cumin. But,” she wagged a finger at Randi, “you better not tell anyone, or they’ll be wanting to hire you as their matchmaker.”

  Randi pulled her thickly glossed lips back over her capped teeth and smiled.

  ****

  “Save me from myself!” Amelia groaned when she got back to Happily Ever After By Amelia.

  She sank down onto the padded Victorian settee and threw her head back against an embroidered pillow.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to have to go and beg him to be a client! He’s going to be laughing at me, looking oh-so-smug with those blue eyes. Ugh! When I was little, my grandmother always used to talk about people having to eat humble pie. Now I know what she meant.”

  “It won’t be that bad, I promise.”

  Jennie patted her arm.

  “You’ll make the match, then you’ll never have to deal with him again.”

  Amelia frowned.

  “I hope so. Nothing with this guy seems like it’s ever going to be straightforward.”

  Amelia looked up at Jennie.

  “And what am I going to do if he says no?”

  Chapter Five

  The time he’d spent on the streets had helped Justin become much more aware of his surroundings. His keen sixth sense made him realize that a dark-haired man had been trailing him for over a day. He’d seen the man’s reflection in some of the many windows lining the streets around Hollywood and Vine, as well as in the large rear view mirrors of the motorcycles parked against the curb. Justin watched as the deeply tanned, dark eyed man stepped from the shadow below the international newsstand where foreigners paid five or even ten dollars for a daily newspaper imported from their homeland. The man was dressed in an outfit better suited to climb the Swiss Alps. Justin frowned as he recalled his own trip to Switzerland two years earlier. He’d made the journey to celebrate the sale of his first screenplay.

  The man stopped in front of Justin and nodded.

  “Hey, man. How’s it goin’. I’m just hangin’. Just hangin’ ‘round the ‘hood, waitin’ to see if anything’s goin’ down.”

  Justin groaned. Why did so many people insist on speaking in clichés? And who did this man think he was, approaching him on the sidewalk as though trying to sell him drugs or catch him in a sting operation?

  Justin looked around, but didn’t see any of the unmarked police sedans that normally cruised the area. He felt his shoulders relax with relief as he realized he also didn’t see any of the drug dealers who worked these streets. Some of the younger ones could be aggressive with people like Justin, men who were unwilling to buy from them or stand guard while they completed their transactions.

  “Hey,” Justin replied.

  The man reached into his pocket and withdrew a packet of Marlboros.

  “Want one?”

  “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  “Sure you don’t want it so you can use it later?”

  Justin gave the man an odd looked then smirked.

  “I’m hopin’ you can help me,” The man said earnestly. “I’m lookin’ for someone who knows the neighborhood, somebody who knows the woman who owns Happily Ever After By Amelia. Know her?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man took a step closer. Justin looked at him, hard.

  “So what do you want?”

  “I’ve heard there’s going to be a bit of trouble for her, some kind of rumor goin’ around about an angry, dissatisfied customer comin’ back to seek revenge. I’m lookin’ for someone to trail her, stay within her eyesight at all times and make sure nothing happens to her.”

  “Why don’t you go to the police?”

  “I can’t. The guy who hired me, he’s the one who thinks something might happen. But he can’t say anything, ‘cause if he’s wrong he looks like he’s crazy, saying his ex is out to get him by smearing his reputation. Next thing you know, he’s the one got a restraining order against him. Maybe he’s even locked up.”

  “Why don’t you watch after Amelia, or tell her what’s going on?”

  The man shook his head.

  “I’m just doin’ this guy a favor. I’m leavin’ town day after tomorrow so I can’t do the job. And he specifically said he didn’t want her to know about this because he was afraid she’d blame herself.”

  Justin nodded, trying not to laugh as the other man parroted dialogue that seemed straight out of a police drama.

  “So are you in?”

  “Maybe.”

  The man pulled out an Italian leather billfold. As he opened it Justin saw a thick stack of bills that included euros yen and rubbles. He frowned. Something was not right. Justin looked at the dark stranger, who grinned at him as he peeled off five one hundred dollar bills.

  “Yeah, sure I’ll do it.”

  The man looked around then handed Justin the money.

  “All you have to do is keep her within your sight at all times for the next four or five days. After that, this guy says his ex is goin’ out of town on a film shoot.”

  “Okay, man.”

  Justin sneered slightly as he gave the stranger the clichéd response he knew the other man wanted.

  “We’d better split.”

  As soon as the man was gone Justin hurried to the alley behind Happily Ever After By Amelia and tapped on the window of the back room.<
br />
  “Let me talk to Amelia,” he hissed when Jennie appeared.

  “Can’t,” she replied. “She’s not here.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Jennie grinned.

  “Yeah. Out on a blind date with my cousin Rob. Although I don’t know where they went. But she’ll be here tomorrow.”

  ****

  Amelia was sitting at a table across from a man who was almost twice her size at a restaurant that claimed to be the oldest Italian eatery in Hollywood. Although the man was Jennie’s cousin, she was having trouble seeing any kind of family resemblance. Whereas Jennie and her brother and sister were always ready to hit the latest art show gallery opening or theater event, Rob seemed to be stuck in the past. The very distant past, as in the Civil War Era.

  On and on and on he droned about his postcard collection, managing to make a hobby that sounded like it could have been quite interesting appear to be about as fascinating as watching the waiters fold napkins at their nearby station. At one point, he even withdrew a card from the pocket of his patchwork sports coat, although when Amelia leaned over to examine it, he pulled it from her reach, claiming that the oil from her hand would somehow diminish its value even though it was protected behind two layers of plastic.

  “So this scene of Savannah….”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Amelia practically shouted at a waiter passing by. “May I please have some more water?”

  Amelia was eager to finish her pasta arrabiata. She was famished after eating almost nothing at her lunch with Rhonda. However the sauce was too spicy without the water. But the waiter never returned, so she was unable to eat the rest of the meal.

  When she finally got home, after tuning out Rob’s tutorial on the price of his Porsche and refusing him the good-night kiss he seemed to believe he was entitled to, she collapsed on her white sofa in tears.

  “Is it always going to be like this, Petal, I’ll have no one to eat dinner with, nobody but you to share my house?”

  Cupid watched from Amelia from outside her window. He was carrying the sketches he’d made earlier that day at the Louvre, the drawings with which he’d hoped to impress her. He took another look at them, then crossed her tiny backyard, opened the lid of her blue trashcan and placed them on top of the rest of Amelia’s garbage.

  As soon as Cupid dropped the trashcan lid, he heard the little dog begin to bark. He watched as Amelia walked over to the window, as she had the previous evening, and peered out into the darkness. Cupid inhaled as he saw Amelia cock her head, then step outside and look up at the stars that hung low on the horizon, then over at her chaise lounge and her little table. Cupid watched as Amelia cocked her head and frowned as she looked at the pink potted geranium he’d knocked over. He stood in the shadows as Amelia bent over to pick up the flower, then walked toward the open trash -can lid.

  ****

  “We must be getting a pretty selective class of people moving into this neighborhood,” Amelia said to Jennie the next morning. Amelia told her about finding the drawings.

  “How many times have I told you don’t reach into your trash after you put it in the bin? Who knows what strangers passing by are throwing in there if they think you can’t see them?” She frowned.

  Amelia shook her head.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I keep my bins inside my walled courtyard. Someone would have to go through my gate and enter my yard if they wanted to use my cans,” she said.

  As the realization of what she’d said dawned on Amelia, she shivered.

  “Ah, I’ll bet it was probably just someone who didn’t want to litter,” She said, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “Anyway, whoever it was left several sketches made on that expensive sketch paper my father used to draw on. You can only get it in certain shops. I think one of the drawings is going to give me some inspiration for my next poem.”

  “Mmm.”

  Jennie was absentmindedly sorting through tins of tea, separating the various flavors and caffeine levels. She jerked her head up.

  “Really, Amelia, you saved them? You are impossible!”

  “I know.”

  Amelia looked at the storage space to the left of the back room, where she’d been collecting all of the “treasures” she found on her runs through the city.

  “I can’t help myself. I see all these booths at the Rose Bowl flea market and think, ‘why not’? One of these days I’m going to have enough stuff that I can rent a stall for the weekend and sell some of it. You need to be more receptive to finding treasure among the trash.”

  Jennie pointed at the Victorian settee in the main room.

  “I agreed to that, didn’t I? I know, it didn’t help that I’d been sitting on it for a month before you let slip you’d found it at the curb one night.”

  Amelia giggled, “It’s a harmless vice I assure you.”

  “You know,” Jennie said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just, well, if you’d only allow yourself to be open to finding more good in yourself, the way you are about spotting the gem in a pile of garbage, I think you’d be a lot happier.”

  “If this is about Rob….”

  “No, you guys were a disaster. I admit it. I just mean that maybe you could be a little more trusting of other people the way you trust that the trash you pick up will yield some treasure.”

  “Maybe. Like I said, though, at least this ‘trash’ may lead to some new work.”

  Amelia looked out the window.

  “I see Justin.”

  Amelia raised her hand as Justin appeared at the back window.

  “Do we have anything I can give him?”

  Jennie looked at the pine sideboard. She grabbed a box of chocolate covered pecans that had been flown in from New Orleans a week earlier by a grateful client and pressed it into Amelia’s hands.

  “I forgot to tell you he was looking for you yesterday, after you left.”

  Amelia reached for the candy and opened the back door.

  “Sorry I missed you yesterday. What’s up?”

  Justin frowned.

  “You need to be careful. Some guy yesterday offered me five hundred dollars to watch you at all times. ‘Don’t let her out of your sight’ was the way he put it. Said he was afraid for you, then gave me some absurd story about how a disgruntled ex-client would be coming back to seek her revenge. He said this woman is crazy and obsessed with getting back at you for a match that went wrong.”

  Amelia put her hand to her mouth.

  “You know, I always wonder what happens with the ones that don’t work out. We don’t ever hear about them. All we get are the wedding invitations and the baby announcements. But I know they’re out there somewhere, the ones pushed over the edge.”

  She pulled her sweater close.

  “Who was this guy anyway?”

  “Don’t know, I never saw him before. But something was wrong. He had a wallet full of euros, yen and rubbles. Be careful Amelia. I don’t think I’d trust this story or this guy.”

  “Okay, thanks. Here, take these.”

  Amelia handed him the candy.

  “I think you’d better disappear for a few days, don’t you?” Justin asked.

  Amelia looked at Jennie.

  “What was that you were saying about being more trusting of people?”

  Jennie looked at the ground, then began to push her cuticles back.

  “Maybe you’re right. But at least I’ve got someplace you can go.”

  Chapter Six

  “Nobody will ever look for you in the desert; it’s obvious you and the sun are just not made for each other.”

  Amelia caught her reflection in the small mirror above the little sink in the back room. Her face had grown so pale over the last few minutes that it appeared to be missing a layer of skin. She frowned at the sight of her pulsing temples.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. This is probably all just a weird coincidence of some sort.”
<
br />   Amelia raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, it’s totally normal for someone to offer a homeless man five hundred dollars to serve as an unofficial anonymous bodyguard for a perfect stranger.”