Cupid's Daughter

by Jason Krumbine

  Actually, he was fascinating and drop dead gorgeous. Two facts that my Mom already knew about Burt the cop because when she met him she cornered him for almost an hour and a half. That's right. My Mom talked to my date for an hour and a half. I watched from the opposite side of the room, feeling unusually helpless about it.

  "So," I said quickly before Mom could pelt me with any more Burt questions. "What's happening with the singer and her date?"

  "Thanks," Luke muttered under his breath.

  Dad sighed. "It's going to be a nightmare that never ends, I'm afraid."

  "Don't be so dramatic," Mom said.

  "I wish I was being dramatic," Dad said. "Our best case scenario is a publicity nightmare when the singer's manager leaks the involvement of Cupid, Inc to the press."

  I raised my eyebrows. "What's the worse case?"

  "They want to sue us."

  Seriously, my jaw was starting to hurt from all the times it kept dropping to the floor. "Sue? As in lawsuit?"

  Dad nodded. "I'm afraid so."

  "What for?"

  "You didn't read the article?"

  I sighed, rubbing my eyes. "No, I didn't read the article."

  "You should really read the article," Mom said.

  Dad continued, "The manager's threatening that they'll sue us for defamation of character."

  "But Luke said she came to you guys with the matchmaking request," I pointed out. "Didn't you have her sign a waiver or something?"

  "Emma, it's matchmaking," Dad said. "Why would we have anybody sign a waiver?"

  "So that you don't get sued later on if something goes horribly wrong," I replied. "You have waivers for situations exactly like this one."

  Dad smiled. I did not like that smile.

  "And that is exactly why you need to come back and take over the New York office," he said.

  Annnd I walked right into that one, too. I was so on a roll tonight. Why didn't I call in sick to the family dinner?

  "Okay, first off," I said. "I can't believe you're actually bringing that up with Luke sitting right here."

  "Dad's right, though," Luke said.

  "Hey, I'm trying to stand up for you," I said to my brother.

  Luke shrugged. "But he's right."

  "And second," I continued. "I have a very promising career."

  Mom sniffed at that. "Tearing apart marriages is hardly a promising career."

  "Okay, again, I'm not tearing anything apart," I said. "They're doing that all on their own."

  "So, you're profiting from other people's tragedy?" Mom asked. "Is that the promising career you want to have?"

  I fumed for a second. "It might seem a little mercenary-"

  "A little?"

  "-but it's going to happen regardless of what I do," I continued. "I might as well make some money off it. And, you know what? I happen to be very good at my job."

  Mom did that tut-tut thing she does so well. "I hardly think that it's something to be proud of."

  "Do you know how many billable hours I've brought in over the last three years at this law firm? I am very good at my job. There is a real possibility that they might even make me partner."

  Dad finally spoke again. "A rather hollow victory when you think about it."

  I threw my hands up. I just could not win tonight. "I can't believe this." I turned to Luke. "You're the one who's supposed to be getting into trouble, not me."

  "Okay," Mom stepped in. She may have had a strict policy of honesty, but she also knew when to not push a hot topic. "That's enough talk about work tonight. Michael, I believe you wanted to tell the children about the shows on the cruise?"

  The rest of dinner passed uneventfully. It even turned quite pleasant as Dad got into a recounting of the cruise's horrible Beatles Review show. That's how my family was: heated in the moment and as soon as the moment passed we're joking like nothing ever happened.

  I made it back to my apartment a little after midnight. My eyes felt like they weighed a ton and my head was already buzzed from the wine my Mom was serving. Are parents supposed to get their kids drunk? Even when their kids are adults? It didn't seem right.

  I noticed the heart shaped envelope on my coffee table almost immediately.

  "You've got to be kidding me," I muttered. Tossing my purse on the kitchen counter, I kicked off my heels and dropped down on the sofa. I grabbed the envelope and tore it open. A bunch of papers fell out.

  I briefly glanced through it all: Profiles for the Draper's, their daily schedules through the weekend, a few random photos, and a list of foods that they were allergic to.

  I shook my head. I had seen plenty of these to know what it was. Heck, I knew what it was even before I opened it. I mean, it was a red heart-shaped envelope.

  It was a matchmaking packet.

  There was a note attached to the top of the packet. It had my Dad's handwriting.

  Emma,

  You need to have the Drapers reunited by the weekend. Please and thank you.

  Love, Dad

  "No, actually I don't," I said to the note. I crumpled it up and tossed it across the room. After staring at the rest of the packet for what felt like an hour, in reality it was only probably a few seconds, I tossed it in the trash and went to bed.

  Chapter Ten

  My dreams were Randy Tyler free that night and when I woke the next morning I felt remarkably rested.

  I stretched out across my bed and twisted at my waist. I was rewarded with the satisfying sound of my back cracking. That felt good. I must have slept on my stomach, always a bad idea.

  Yawning, I stared up at the spinning fan. When was the last time I had felt this rested? I couldn't remember. Man, it felt great, though. I wished I felt this way every morning.

  Every morning...

  It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't recall my alarm going off.

  I looked over at the clock on my nightstand, it was blank. As in, completely shut off.

  "Oh, no," I whispered.

  I jumped out of bed, peeking behind my dresser. The clock was still plugged in. Had the power gone out after I went to sleep? I reached for my cellphone, but it wasn’t in it’s normal spot on my nightstand.

  Where was my phone? I looked frantically around my room for it, but it was nowhere to be found.

  A frantic nervous feeling was quickly growing in the pit of my stomach.

  Checking the living room, I found my cell under a couch pillow. It was completely turned off.

  Turned off?

  When do I ever turn my phone off?

  I powered it back up and my stomach did flip-flops as the time came into focus.

  It was a quarter after twelve.

  In the afternoon.

  I was over four hours late to work.

  Suddenly, I felt very sick. I rushed to the kitchen sink before I vomited all over my living room furniture.

  Four and a half hours late?

  How did that even happen?

  Hovering over the aluminum sink I glanced at the clock on the stove. It wasn't blinking like it did when the power normally went out. So why was my alarm clock dead?

  There was a shrill beep, startling me. It was my phone telling me that I had over a dozen missed calls and half as many messages.

  Four and a half hours.

  This was really bad.

  My stomach was tying itself into knots, but I obviously wasn't going to be revisiting last night's dinner.

  I couldn't believe it. I had never been this late before. Never.

  What happened last night? I didn't have that much to drink, did I?

  Were they going to fire me? Could they even fire me? I mean, I was only four hours late. That wasn't a fireable offense. At least, I don't think it was.

  I smacked my forehead. I was a lawyer, why didn't I know what they could fire me over?

  I was out of time to waste, so my morning routine was going to suffer. I skipped the shower and instead sprayed myself with liberal amounts of perfume. I alm
ost skipped brushing my teeth, too, but a quick inspection with my tongue told me that wouldn't be a good idea.

  With toothpaste foaming out of my mouth, I grabbed whatever was closest in my closet: slacks and a blouse. I had no idea if they even matched. My underwear certainly didn't and that was going to be my own little private horror show.

  I didn't bother listening to my voicemail. I knew what they were and listening to them was only going to stress me out even more.

  Besides, I was going to lose my job. I felt certain about that. Even though there was no legal basis for a lawyer getting fired over being tardy. Although, I think tardy was a little tame for my situation. There probably had to be a worse word than tardy.

  I should really work on expanding my vocabulary. It'll probably help when I go out on job interviews after getting canned at Lane & Pryce.

  Moaning, I remembered that just yesterday I was entertaining dreams of becoming a partner.

  This was a nightmare.

  I almost forgot to rinse the toothpaste out. I was halfway to the door before I realized that my mouth was still filled with the thick, foamy paste.

  That would have gone over real well. Not only would I have shown up late, but I would have shown up late with foaming toothpaste dripping from my mouth and looking like a rabid dog.

  Speaking of a rabid dog, I glanced at my reflection in the mirror as I rinsed out my mouth. My hair looked like a rat's nest. I tried to smooth it out with my fingers, but I kept running into knots. Nice. Grabbing a hairband, I pulled the knotted mess back into a ponytail. Maybe nobody would notice?

  Sniffing myself one more time I decided that a little more perfume couldn't hurt and spent another thirty seconds bathing myself in it.

  Grabbing my briefcase I raced out the door.

  I couldn't even remember the last time I had been this late to anything. Maybe my first day of college? Even then, I only missed one class that day. This, however...This was like missing an entire day's worth of classes.

  Crap. I had meetings today. Who did I have meetings with?

  Wracking my brain, I tried to piece together my schedule as I half-jogged down the sidewalk. At least since I slept through half the day, it couldn't get any worse, right? I mean, that made sense to me, I think.

  I was so lost in my own head that I was hardly paying attention to anything else.

  I suddenly smacked into another pedestrian and almost went sprawling, face first, into the concrete. A strong arm grabbed me by the elbow at the last second and pulled me back up.

  "Sorry," I mumbled hurriedly.

  "No worries. Just pay better attention to where you're going."

  I hated when people said things like that. It always made me feel like I was twelve years old again. And feeling like I was twelve years old was not what I wanted to be feeling. I spun around to give my run-in stranger a piece of my mind, a convenient target, really, for my frustration over waking up late, when I realized who I had run into: George Draper.

  Chapter Eleven

  "Ms. Valentine." Mr. Draper smiled at me, which wasn't really the reaction I would have expected.

  Maybe he forgot who I was? Nope. That was a pretty dumb thought. He just called me by my last name. Hey, Emma, why don't you get your head screwed on right for the day, okay?

  "Mr. Draper," I said, a little more breathlessly than I would have liked. I stumbled my way around a few more words. "I, uh, that is, uh, what are you...?" Finally I just gave up. There was zero chance of a coherent sentence coming out of my mouth right now.

  Man, this was weird.

  Mr. Draper was dressed in a pair of khakis and a grey polo shirt. I was guessing this was casual for him? He didn't seem any more relaxed than he had been yesterday.

  I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. I think my brain was still about ten percent asleep. I could literally hear the gears grinding in my head. "I'm sorry," I said finally, with a little too much effort. "I wasn't paying attention. My bad."

  I groaned inwardly. I should have stopped with 'I'm sorry.' Who says 'my bad' anymore? I think I spoke too soon about the day not getting any worse. Clearly it could, and would, get a thousand times worse any time I had to actually communicate with another human being. Why did I bother waking up at all? The only way this day could be improved was by me skipping it all together.

  "It's all right," he replied. He watched me for a second. Oh, please don't engage me anymore. Can't you see that I'm basically a lost cause today?

  Then Mr. Draper did the last thing I expected: he gestured to the nearby coffee shop and said, "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

  A free cup of coffee? Of course I said yes.

  As soon as the caffeine hit me, my stomach immediately started to unwind and the rest of my brain woke up. It was amazing. The cloud of panic lifted from my mind and everything in the world made sense again.

  Wow. Yeah, I was totally out of my head this morning. Note to self: don't ever let this happen again.

  Now that I was thinking clearly again, I noticed an itch in my nose. I twitched my nostrils. There was a sour smell nearby. What was it?

  With some horror, I realized that it was me.

  I was the sour smell.

  Oh, boy. I just wanted to crawl under the table and die. I would certainly smell better than I did now.

  Maybe bathing myself in perfume wasn't such a great idea after all.

  I leaned in closer to my coffee, inhaling the toasty aroma of my drink. It smelled a billion times better than I did.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mr. Draper watching me with a bemused expression.

  "Sorry," I said sheepishly. I discreetly shifted my seat away from him. I hoped he hadn't noticed my smell and, even more, I hoped he wasn't sitting down wind of me. "I woke up a little late. This coffee is basically a godsend."

  "It's fine," he said and smiled again. At first my brain went to the bad place. You know the place that I'm talking about. The place where I kept the little voice that suggested that Mr. Draper was going to hit on me. But quickly I shut that voice down.

  I had seen that kind of smile before on my Grandpa. It was the bittersweet smile he had at Grandma's funeral.

  This was so weird.

  I didn't make it a habit to socialize with clients outside of work. And I really didn't make it a point to socialize with client's exe's, because, you know, that would be super awkward.

  And yet, here I was. Taking a free coffee from George Draper. The man who I just cleaned out twenty-four hours prior.

  And, yes, it was awkward. So, yay for me for being right.

  The frosty bitterness that had filled the air in the office when Mrs. Draper was present wasn't anywhere in sight here with Mr. Draper. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that I was looking at a man who was in the process of coming to terms with his actions and the consequences that came with them.

  I flashed back to my conversation with Fiona. Was this really a man who could have an affair? He seemed so, grandfatherly.

  "So." I had a sudden urge to fill the awkward silence. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to fill it with and more silence followed.

  Mr. Draper looked at me expectantly.

  I suppose I could ask him if he cheated on his wife, but I didn't think that would make things any less awkward.

  I held out my hands, palms up. "I'll just come out and say it: this is kind of awkward."

  Draper laughed. "It is, isn't it?"

  That wasn't really the reaction I expected. My face must have said that, I know my lips didn't, and he shrugged. "I apologize."

  I grimaced. "And that makes it even more awkward."

  "Why's that?"

  "Well, for starters," I said. "I was the one that ran into you. And I also just got finished representing your wife in the divorce." I shrugged my shoulders side to side. "I kind of feel like I should be the one to apologize."

  "Why?" He seemed genuinely curious.

  "Why?" I echoed back at him.

&nbs
p; "My wife came to you for your help and you gave it," Mr. Draper said. "It's not like you were the one who poisoned our marriage."

  I raised my eyebrows at his choice of words. Poisoned?

  "Okay, well, still," I said. "You look at me, you have to see the woman that basically held you at legal gunpoint and robbed you blind."

  Draper laughed again. It was such a weird sound coming from him. "You hardly robbed me at gunpoint."

  I tilted my head, looking at him over the rim of my coffee. "Were you paying attention to any part of the mediation? I know I shouldn't be saying this, and I'll deny it if you bring it up to the judge, but your wife walked away with a lot more than she should have."

  "I'm fully aware of that," Mr. Draper replied. He sipped at his coffee.

  That...was not what I was expecting.

  I didn't say anything. I wasn't sure what to say, anyway. This whole meeting was too bizarre. Every time I thought he was going to zig, Draper zagged.

  Finally, after a few minutes of us staring each other down, Mr. Draper said, "I knew exactly the kind of lawyer I was getting."

  "Oh." Well, that was all kinds of interesting.

  "Don't get me wrong," he continued. "You're an excellent lawyer. But I knew exactly what I was doing in that room."

  I folded my hands on the table, collecting my thoughts. "Then I guess my next question would be: why did you do it?"

  He paused a moment. "Why did we get a divorce or why did we bother with lawyers at all?"

  I only meant to ask about the later, but curiosity got the best of me. "Why did you get a divorce?"

  Mr. Draper didn't answer right away. He stared at his coffee for so long I figured that I finally overstepped my bounds.

  I opened my mouth to say something, to tell him not to bother answering the question, when he finally spoke.

  "Anna and I were very much in love when we first met," he said. "It was what some people might call a whirlwind romance. We met and less than two weeks later we were married. That's how much in love we were. That's how sure we were perfect for each other. There were no regrets. Just excitement, hope and love. What more could you possibly need? And, in fact, that's all we really did need for many years after that. It seemed as though our love would never fade, that our love could weather anything. I believe that we believed ourselves to be invincible.