Miss Match

by Leslie Carroll

  What had he expected—or wanted—from that little visit to the ninth floor? What he got was an awed thank you, a grateful hug, and a kiss he wished he could forget. So much for the promise to stick to business. Since, in his own words, it was part of his “marketing strategy” to hear from his clients after their first date, he was doubly pained to receive calls from both Kathryn and Colin telling him what a smashing excursion to the zoo they had both had. Irish coffee at the Oak Bar, a stroll along the Poets’ Walk in Central Park, and something called a golden-rumped tamarin, which sounded like a cross between an exotic dancer and a Siamese fruit.

  Rushie was never home, which was a blessing in and of its own since he couldn’t yet return to his Connecticut refuge. Just a few weeks ago, he had agreed to extend his subtenants’ lease until the end of the year. Most of his leisure time during the past few days had been spent contacting various contractors to repair the water damage to the penthouse and exorcising his aggressions on the piano.

  Valerie had called a couple of times, at first under the guise of a professional call, reminding him that they had unfinished legal business regarding Six in the City that needed prompt attention. During the last call, Walker told her pointedly that his mother was back in town and it was Rushie whom Valerie should be speaking with. When the lady barracuda phoned again to ask if she could make dinner for him, he flatly, and for the first time in his life, refused a woman’s offer of a night of passion. Walker coolly reminded her that the night they’d double-dated with Josh and Lou, she had boasted about not being a cook.

  He’d even called Eleanor to find out if she had heard anything from Kathryn, but got only the answering machine at her Park Avenue home. Eleanor had at least retrieved the message. She returned his call, but responded that she wasn’t at liberty to say anything about her sister.

  “Well,” he said glumly, “call me if you hear from her.” He had just replaced the receiver in its cradle when the phone rang. His heart leapt. That was quick.

  “Hullo?” It was a woman’s voice. Lovely and lilting, with a genteel English accent. “I’m trying to reach something called ‘Six in the City.’ ”

  “That’s me.”

  “May I enquire what you are?”

  “What am I?” Walker asked, confused.

  “Yes. What is ‘Six in the City’?”

  “It’s a dating service, ma’am. A matchmaking service in Manhattan. We make videos of each of our carefully screened clients, who complete a full profile of themselves. And then we endeavor to match up each client with the perfect partner. Five matches, plus the client, makes six in the city.”

  “I see. And who might you be?”

  “I am the company’s current manager, Walker Hart.”

  The silence on the other end of the phone seemed interminable. Finally, the woman spoke first, her voice slightly tense, her words slow and deliberate, as though she were addressing the village idiot. “Mr. Hart, my name is Gemma Fleetwood.”

  Chapter 24

  Kathryn thought it was her imagination when she heard the phone ringing. Dripping wet, her hair still coated with a generous slathering of coconut-scented conditioner, she groped for the telephone adjacent to the glass-walled stall shower. Finding she couldn’t quite reach the receiver, Kathryn stepped out of the stall and crossed the room, hoping she wouldn’t electrocute herself when she answered the phone.

  “Hi, Kitty!”

  “Ellie, are you all right? You didn’t give birth or anything, did you?”

  “Not yet. Don’t worry. If I had, Dan or Mom would have called you, not me. No, you said that I should let you know if you had any phone calls you might need to deal with.”

  “Where are you? Is there an emergency?”

  “I’m at my place. I figured I’d tell you that this woman called twice since you left for school this morning looking for you. She sounded like the Yenta from upstairs in your building, but the name seemed different so I had no idea whether or not it was something that could wait until you got back to New York.”

  Kathryn frowned and scrunched up her lips. “What’s her name?”

  “Ruth—how biblical—wait a minute, I wrote it down here . . . Johanna? Hold on, Kitty, she took the paper. Honey, Mommy doesn’t want to play games right now. She’s on long distance with Aunt Kittycat. Can I have the paper, sweetie?”

  Over the phone, Kathryn could hear the muffled tones of a mother-daughter negotiation worthy of the Geneva Convention.

  “Kitty, are you there?”

  “I’m still here, El.”

  “Her name is Ruth Goldfarb. Do you know her?”

  Kathryn thought for a moment, as she ran her hands through her hair, trying to detangle two things at once. She was having better luck with her tresses. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I thought she might be from Briarcliff. Tell you the truth, her voice also sounded a lot like our old after-school preteen theater director from the Y. Must be a ‘type.’ ”

  “Hmm. Did she leave a number?”

  “She did, but she also said that she would keep trying to reach you.”

  “Well, I don’t know who she is, but I’ll try the number after dinner. We just arrived. I’ve washed all my Manhattan tensions away in the surf, and the last thing I want to do is deal with the outside world, unless the issue is Armageddon.”

  “Fair enough. I just thought I’d pass along the information.”

  “Thanks. It’s fine that you did. Give my niece a kiss and I’ll talk to you when I get back. This place is absolute heaven. A sybaritic idyll tucked away on two acres of waterfront on Martha’s Vineyard! Does that sound Travel and Leisure enough for you? So you all have fun in the nitty gritty city, while I finish my complimentary hot toddy and dry my hair in the sun before it starts to set. The sun—not my hair. Let’s see,” Kathryn gloated to her sister, “shall I try the Adirondack chair or the hammock?”

  “Careful, you could catch a chill at this time of year. It’s not July, you know. Seriously, I’m just glad you finally met someone through Six in the City who treats you the way you deserve to be treated,” Eleanor said with just a touch of envy in her voice.

  “Yeah, yeah. Me, too, actually. Talk to you soon. Love you!” Kathryn, dry by this time, hung up the phone and wrapped herself in the enormous fluffy green Tugman House bathrobe. She grabbed a copy of Great American Short Stories from the bathroom minilibrary and the remains of her toddy and went out to their secluded terrace where she installed herself on one of the deck chairs.

  The sun was dipping toward the horizon when Colin returned to the room. Kathryn was standing outdoors at the opposite end of the premises, transfixed by nature’s light show of cerise, gold, and lavender, when he tiptoed up behind her and combed his tapered fingers through her long curls.

  She looked up at him and saluted him with her empty toddy glass. “This is lovely. Truly lovely. I can’t thank you enough for bringing me here. The perfect fall weekend. It’s what my soul seems to have been crying out for. I really needed to try to forget . . . never mind.” She reached up and cupped her hand behind his neck, pulling him down toward her for a kiss.

  When their lips parted, Colin drew back and regarded her with admiration. “I admit that I still know so little about you, but with every hour we spend together, I yearn to know more. And everything I learn about you makes me admire you tremendously.”

  Kathryn felt herself blush. “Thank you,” she replied softly. “I could say the same for you.”

  The air was silent and still as they both gazed down toward the beach, drinking in the splendor and wonder of the sunset.

  “You are everything I have ever wanted in a woman,” Colin added, as he reached over to caress Kathryn’s soft cheek. “I should like very much to marry you.”

  It felt like a jolt of electricity.

  Kathryn saw her whole life flash before her eyes. Every choice and possibility, past and present, paraded itself through her mind with lightning speed. She took
stock of beliefs she had long held, behavior she had equally long desired to change, and what appeared to be the prospect before her of what she so overwhelmingly thought she wanted—the opportunity to make a life with someone. She had hoped that the “someone” would be Walker Hart, but how long was she supposed to wait for him to realize what a catch she was and what a dolt he was being by denying himself a chance to ensure their future mutual happiness? What if he never had that epiphany? Was she supposed to remain single and in a state of semi-requited passion forever?

  Colin Fleetwood wasn’t Walker, but he was a handsome, successful, charming, generous man with a tremendous amount to offer, not the least of which seemed to be the desire to marry her. Kathryn heard herself say to Colin, “Perhaps I will accept your offer—in . . . in . . . the fullness of time.” Suddenly, she felt like she was underwater. “Colin, this is all happening incredibly fast for me, you have to understand. I mean it’s amazing, but . . . we’re not in any rush, are we?”

  “I don’t know whether to ruin my French manicure wringing your thick neck, or thank my lucky stars that you have finally met a woman who can have an impact on your life,” said Ruth Goldfarb Hart Haggerty Tobias Haggerty Aviles de Tournay Glendower, to her son who was bruising his knuckles raw by sparring with filing cabinets.

  Walker grunted something incomprehensible.

  “I know you were mad at me for dumping the business in your lap, honey, but you didn’t have to find ways to make me come home to salvage it.” She waved away the smoke from her pink cigarette, her chunky gold rings catching the fluorescent light.

  “Frankly, Rushie, it never occurred to me that people would be dishonest about their intentions when they register for a dating service.” He growled at his mother and punched the wall. “And what bottle did that come from?” he asked, noticing for the first time that the color of his mother’s hair was somewhere between russet and aubergine—brighter than usual, even for her.

  “You’ve done it twice already to the same girl. With that Hollywood boy-toy and now with the pilot. Thank God there haven’t been any other slip-ups with the rest of the clientele . . . or have there?” Ruth asked, tamping out the cigarette into an air-filtering ashtray.

  “Stop smoking in here, Rushie.”

  “I’m still your mother, Walker. Don’t tell me how to run my life.”

  “Obviously I haven’t done that, or you wouldn’t be rivaling Liz Taylor for frequent-flyer miles to honeymoon havens.”

  “Mickey Rooney has still been married more times than I have—I think—and don’t blame me because I made bold choices in life.”

  Walker looked at his scraped knuckles and decided he hadn’t destroyed enough property.

  “Stop that!” his mother warned, as she reached for a ballpoint that he was snapping in half. “I’ve been back from the Catskills for less than twenty-four hours and already I’m cleaning up your messes again. Who called that Lamb girl? I did. And after three tries, who convinced her sister to tell me where she was, without setting off bells and whistles? And right now I suggest that you rent yourself a nice midsize that gets good mileage and finish what you started.”

  She opened a hidden catch on a diamond-studded bracelet and looked at her watch. “Who knows what damage has been done by now? A romantic B and B has a way of turning a girl’s head. Especially at this time of year. And while I admit that Martha’s Vineyard isn’t exactly Anguilla in the exotic-locale department, Kathryn’s a New Yorker who probably never gets as far as Amagansett on her schoolteacher’s salary, not a blushing virgin who’s going to keep her legs closed, for God’s sake! We’re an accessory to adultery!”

  Her antagonism started Walker pacing like a caged animal. “We don’t know for sure what’s been going on in the bedroom up there.” He didn’t even want to think about the subject . . . except that once Rushie had raised it, he began to obsess about it. It was making him nuts picturing Kathryn rolling around in a four-poster bed at a romantic inn with anyone other than him. “I told you I would handle it, Rushie. Where do you think I’m going?”

  “First, I think you’re going to Staples to get me a batch of new office supplies,” she replied sharply, as a three-hole punch whizzed past her head, practically shattering the door. “Then, I think you’re going to Hell in a hand-basket. After that, you’re going to the Vineyard before Gemma Fleetwood slaps a bigamy suit on us and Eleanor Lamb Allen—whose husband does the collagen injections and lipos for all the big television stars, by the way—screams ‘fraud’ to the Better Business Bureau.” She mopped her glistening brow. “I should have listened to Mira. She told me this would happen.”

  “Who the hell is Mira?”

  “My astrologer. She saw it. She told me that my business might take a nose dive. That’s what the Tarot reading said, too. And the I Ching when she threw it.”

  Walker was exhausted. He held out his hand to his mother. “Give me one of those awful pink things.”

  She obliged, lighting the cigarillo for him. “I should have read the signs,” she sighed. “Mira was right, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t read the signs.”

  “You’re full of shit, Rushie.”

  “Watch your language, and what kind of a son calls his mother by her first name? It’s not natural.”

  “What kind of mother runs off to the south of France with a man half her age and leaves her grown son—who has a lucrative life of his own, mind you—with the business she started, just because she’s bored and wants to escape . . . or find herself . . . or get laid. Whatever it was this time.”

  “If I hadn’t gone to Cap Ferrat with Ludovic, I never would have gone to Wales.”

  “You lost me, Rushie.”

  “And then I never would have met Dafydd Glendower. And then I never would have met the archbishop of Canterbury. Did I tell you I helped him with his babka?”

  “Yes, Mom,” Walker groaned. He took his mother by the arm and steered her into a chair, then knelt beside her and took her firmly by the shoulders. “Listen, Rushie, as soon as I got the phone call from Gemma Fleetwood, I planned to pull the plug on this matchup. And when I learned where Kathryn and Colin were, I made arrangements to go up to the Vineyard myself, immediately. Contrary to your belief, it was not your idea, so don’t try to take credit for it.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “First of all, Rushie, you haven’t a clue what it is I really do, when I’m not trying to run the business you keep running away from. You think I don’t have a regular job because I haven’t been putting in nine-to-five hours punching a clock and being a corporate drone. Do you have any idea how gratifying my career is? To set my own hours, call my own shots, have my name alone open doors all over the world? The Hart Monitor is as well known and well respected as The Wall Street Journal. I can conduct a conference call on my cell phone while I’m fishing off the Christopher Street pier, barefoot, my jeans rolled up, with an administrative assistant baiting my hook as I dispense financial advice to Fortune 500 CEOs across the country. Do you have any idea how swell that is?”

  “How ‘swell’ it is that you’re a millionaire and you want to act like the Huckleberry Finn of the Hudson?” Rushie interrupted.

  “And at this very moment, the reason I’m still down here in the city is because you’re keeping me in this damn office arguing with you so that you can remind me what a lousy son I am, which only reminds me what a rotten mother you’ve been.”

  Ruth heaved a melodramatic sigh. “It’s always a mother’s fault.”

  Walker slammed his open hand against the wall. Rushie jumped, startled. “Mother, I want your promise not to call Kathryn at the Tugman House, and not to tell her sister what’s going on yet. I need to be the one to tell her about Colin. I will handle the situation from now on. Alone. Have we got that straight?”

  Ruth looked her son full in the face. “You better handle it, son. Because if you don’t, I can be a real ball-buster. You don’t know your mother.”

  Walker set his face in a grima
ce. “You’re damn right about that, Rushie. You were never around for me to find out.” He looked at the ridiculous, smoldering, bubblegumcolored cigarette and crushed it in his palm, then stormed out of the office, shattering the door as he slammed it behind him.

  Kathryn was enjoying a delicious buzz. After a sumptuous late supper at the Fisherman’s Rest, Tugman House’s four-star restaurant—ranked number one in the area by New England Gourmand and Gastronomy— and capped off by the slow enjoyment of a couple of glasses each of port, Colin suggested that they take a stroll along the beach in the moonlight to walk off some of the calories they’d consumed.

  “That’s one of the things I think is so funny about you Brits,” Kathryn teased. “No matter where you go, you try to bring the motherland with you. Here we are on my territory—the colonists did win the war, you know—and they’ve got fish and chips on the menu.”

  Colin squeezed her hand. “At least you know the fish is fresh.”

  “And you drink like one, too. It must be part of your national character that over the course of an evening you can consume several varieties of alcoholic beverages— that would make any normal person deadly drunk and dizzy—and not appear affected in the slightest. I like a cocktail now and again, don’t get me wrong, but it’s very hard to keep up with you. Ouch,” she said dully when her ankle turned. “Wait. Stop.” Kathryn slipped off her pumps. “My stilettos are digging into the sand, and I’ve got a slipper full of silt.” She removed her shoes and dumped out their contents onto the beach. “Join your friends,” Kathryn said tipsily to the grains of sand.

  She plunked herself down on the beach and gazed heavenward into an indigo sky. “Look!” Kathryn exclaimed. “When have you ever seen so many stars?” She looked over at Colin. “Look who I’m asking. A pilot.” She shook her head. “Silly me.” Kathryn sat on a dune, her elbows propped up on her knees, her chin resting in her hands, staring at the stars.