Free Gift With Purchase

by Jackie Pilossoph

  “What does being single have to do with making salsa?” a snooty store manager asked me one day.

  “Uh…maybe when you’re single, you have more time to make salsa?” I answered in the form of a question, realizing that was a really stupid way to respond.

  My favorite rejection came when I gave a guy a sample. When he began chewing, he said, “I have to be honest with you. This tastes horrible.”

  My heart sank. Was my salsa horrible?

  “That guy’s an idiot!” Laura said when I told her the story.

  “What a creep!” said my mother.

  In her true nature, Alice chose not to make a derogatory remark about the guy’s reaction. “It’s just one opinion,” she said with a gentle smile. This woman could motivate me to no end.

  Into more stores I walked, rejection after rejection after rejection. I was dismissed and refused and denied and snubbed and rebuffed, to the point where I could almost no longer stand it.

  Then one day, I took the jars into Gifted, a little gift boutique that carried fine china, crystal, stemware, kitchen accessories, and some gourmet food items. The owners were two older women, and when I say they freaked, I mean it. To say they were enthusiastic about Solo Chicka’s Salsa is putting it mildly, no pun intended.

  “Wow!” said one of the women, after tasting the grape and avocado salsa, “Fabulous!”

  “And what a cute name!” the other one said.

  “Who’s Bradley Cooper?” said the first woman, as she perused the four samples I had set down on the counter.

  “Oh, you know who he is,” her partner explained to her, “He was in that movie…Valentine’s Day.”

  “And The Hangover,” I added.

  “Oh, yes!” the first woman exclaimed. She turned to me and added, “How cute that you like him.”

  I stood there smiling and adoring these ladies.

  “So, how much?” one of them asked me.

  I gave them the price. Then I held my breath while the two women looked at each other for a moment. They just stood there, each one waiting for the other to say something.

  I was just about to tell them I’d give them a twenty percent discount, (I figured anything to sell something) when at the very same time, both women exclaimed, “Give us two of each to start.”

  It was only eight jars of salsa, and I was only netting three dollars a jar. So I basically had just made twenty-four dollars, and that was before income taxes. Yet, still, I was so excited I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I had made a sale! It wasn’t the money, it was the fact that someone wanted to buy something I made! This was a moment of self-worth I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I was now Emma Bloom, salsa business owner, who had earned her first dollar in seven years. I was overjoyed.

  The two God-sent ladies who ended my losing streak happened to be the facilitators for the turning point of Solo Chicka’s Salsa. From this point on, I began to sell with such confidence, such enthusiasm and such energy, that I became a sales machine on an endless roll. I almost never left a store from this point on without selling something. I suddenly knew how to handle every rejection I heard. If a store owner was lukewarm, I’d somehow find the perfect thing to say to get them interested.

  I had a unique selling style. It made sense to not just sell the salsa, but to sell myself, the sole owner of a small business, a single mother, a once heartbroken, down-in-the-dumps, depressed and lonely women, and now, a happy, productive, inspired business owner.

  I talked about my love and passion for making salsa, and how it was therapy for me. I told them about the fresh ingredients I used, and how there were no preservatives. I let them sample the salsa, so they could taste for themselves how good it actually was. But I also played up my personal life. I talked about being a single mother, and about dating, and about Bradley Cooper. And people listened. And they liked me. So they bought from me.

  Even if an owner initially said no, I’d convince and charm them to buy just one jar, and then I would leave my business card, because I felt it in my bones that the jar would sell, and that they’d soon be calling me for more. And it was working!

  I set up a website and began getting email messages for orders. It was completely insane, overwhelmingly unmanageable almost, but I was thrilled by it. Isabelle started helping me after school, and I found myself not only happy to be spending time with her this way, but also very proud to be teaching her about business and hard work and accomplishment. I realized I was being an amazing role model in this regard. I was showing my daughter ambition and achievement.

  And late at night, while she slept, instead of spending my nights drinking wine and eating salsa with my sister, I was now standing at the kitchen counter making salsa half the night, while my sister sat at the kitchen table keeping me company.

  “I’m so proud of you, Emma,” Laura said one night.

  I looked at the successful doctor, whose professional life had always come so easily and who’d known she was meant to be a doctor from such a young age. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

  “It’s true. You’re doing so well. You turned out to be such a great business woman, such a hard worker, so motivated.”

  “You know what? I’m really happy, and for the first time in my entire life, there’s no man responsible for that.”

  “It’s wonderful,” she smiled.

  .

  Chapter 27

  My business continued to thrive. I was completely self-sufficient. It felt like the time in my life to work, set goals, and achieve professionally. But, I did start to feel very alone and although that was okay, it was a little sad.

  Preston was completely out of the picture. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. As for Luke, a couple of random texts between us had been the extent of our communication since the day he told me he was trying to work things out with his wife, the same day he compared our relationship to a tootsie pop.

  I decided that since my professional life was now in place, maybe it was time for me to try a real relationship with a man. Not a sexual relationship like I had with Preston, and not a fantasy relationship with an unavailable man like Luke, but something that had the potential for more.

  One night after Izzie was asleep, I went to Match.com in search of Den0507, the guy whose picture and profile had captivated me, the same guy I spotted while walking out of Walgreens, and the same guy whose favorite food was chips and salsa.

  I pulled up the 35-50 year olds in my zip code. It was no surprise that the same match dot com-ers who popped up months earlier were still there. “Yourprince65,” “Goodguy2know1203,” “takeme44” and let’s not forget “lookingforcowgirl,” all remained ready and available to meet me.

  Finally I spotted Den0507 and found myself immensely relieved that his cute picture remained on the site. After all, wasn’t it possible that Den could have met his soul mate in the past few months and taken his profile off? Fortunately for me, he was still searching for love.

  I printed out the picture, cut it to size and put it in my wallet. Then, the search began. Over the next few days, I carried around Den’s photo and showed it to people, asking them if they knew this mystery man. After all, not only didn’t I know his last name, I didn’t even know his first name. All I knew was that I was on a mission.

  I pulled Den’s picture out everywhere I went. At my bank, I handed it to the teller who waited on me. “Sorry, Mrs. Bloom, I’ve never seen that person.” I showed it to a couple of my neighbors. “No, Emma. Never seen him. He’s cute, though.” In one week alone, I showed the picture to at least twenty-five people. Friends, my post man, a local florist, the guy who owned the gas station by my house, my hair stylist, Izzie’s teacher, and pretty much every store owner I called on that week. Now I had two jobs, salsa saleswoman and private investigator.

  “How can no one know this guy?” I practically shouted to Laura in Starbucks, after just having shown the picture to the woman who made my tall skim misto with no foam, “He lives in our to
wn and he’s single!”

  My sister and I were spending Sunday afternoon together, taking advantage of an unusually long stretch of free time. My parents had taken Izzie to lunch and a movie, so the two of us decided to do what girls do best: drink coffee and talk. I invited Alice to join us, but she declined, as she was leaving the next morning for a two-week business trip to London and had lots of packing and last minute errands to run.

  “Calm down,” said my soothing sister, “You’ll find him.”

  “I’m obsessed!”

  Laura asked, “So what do you say to these people when you show them the picture? I mean, do you explain why you’re looking for him?”

  “No. I don’t give any explanation and no one really seems to care,” I answered, shrugging my shoulders, “It’s pretty hilarious. Not one person to whom I’ve shown the picture seems even the slightest bit fazed.”

  “Maybe there’s a little piece of everyone who understands the concept of desperation,” Laura joked. “You know, you could always join match dot com,” she suggested, “Have you ever thought of that? Then you could contact him right away.”

  “Are you crazy? I’d never put my picture on that site. What if Luke saw me?”

  “First of all, I guarantee Luke’s not on there. He’s back together with his wife, right?”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “And secondly, if he did happen to go on there and see you, well, then he would be looking on there too, so what’s the big deal?”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “There’s the drama I never get enough of,” my sister joked.

  We continued sipping our coffees, and then my sister proceeded to tell me about a new guy in her life. Actually, he wasn’t really new, he was Tim McMillon, a guy we’d gone to high school with, who now lived in Texas. Tim apparently found Laura on Facebook and contacted her.

  “Do you remember him?” she asked me.

  “Vaguely. I think he was a nice guy.”

  Laura told me Tim was divorced with two kids, he was a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch, and the best part, he was coming here to visit her.

  “I’m so happy for you!” I exclaimed. I really was. My sister had been so down about Dan.

  “I’m not so sure there are that many good guys out there,” she had said to me a few days earlier.

  I had asked, “What about Luke?”

  Laura’s response was to make some snide comment about Tootsie Pops. I left it alone because I knew how she felt, and there was nothing I could say to change her mind. Some great guy had to come into her life to change her attitude about the availability of quality men in the world. And maybe that guy was Tim. I hoped.

  Don’t even ask how I had such a positive attitude about the opposite sex. My recent dating history painted a bleak picture, especially when it came to Luke, the man who I sometimes felt like I was in an imaginary relationship with. The amount of time I spent dreaming of him and lamenting over him and wondering how his marriage was going was unnatural, given the actual amount of time I’d spent with him in reality. I mean, how well did I really know him? Not well. Still, something kept me clinging to hope that Luke and I might someday be something.

  “So, where’s Tim staying?” I asked Laura.

  “The Sheraton.”

  “Well, that’s a good sign,” I joked, “Should I book you a couple’s massage?”

  Laura laughed and then the two of us literally planned her outfits for the entire weekend. We chose her clothes and accessories and shoes in our heads, knowing full well she was going to have to model everything before any decisions were final.

  Just as we were about to leave, I heard a cell phone ring, and I was confused for a second, until I realized it was my phone, and that once again, my sister had secretly changed the ring tone. I let out a huge laugh. She had changed it to some salsa tune, and I felt like I was in a Mexican restaurant.

  “It’s so appropriate for your business,” she joked.

  I looked at the number and didn’t recognize it. “Hello?” I answered.

  “Hi, is this Emma?” said some guy on the other end of the phone.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Hi, it’s Tony Strong. I met you at Henry Horowitz’s party.”

  “Oh, hi!” I remembered Tony immediately. He was the widower who had really made an impression on me. He had seemed smart, honest, practical, and rational. I wondered why on earth he was calling me after all this time.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. How are things with you?”

  “Great,” he began, “Thanks for introducing me to Georgia. We’re still dating.”

  “Really?” I asked. I looked at Laura. She was mouthing, “Who is it?”

  I didn’t want to tell her it was Tony, the guy whose date was Dan’s ex-wife, who had to leave the party because she couldn’t stand the sight of Dan. So instead, I held up my index finger and said, “Tony, can I call you back? I can’t really talk right now.”

  “Actually, do you have just a minute? I’m calling because I have this friend. His name’s Matt. I think you two may hit it off. Can I give him your number?”

  “You want to set me up on a blind date?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Laura whispered, “Do it!”

  “Um, can you tell me about him?”

  “I think you should just go out with him,” Tony said, “Trust me.”

  For some odd reason, with absolutely no knowledge about Matt, I agreed to let Tony give him my number. The guy texted me the next day, and two days after that we went out. His last name was Bricker also, and we spent the first thirty minutes of our dinner date trying to figure out if we were related because if we didn’t have that to talk about, we would have been majorly struggling for conversation. Boy, Tony was a great guy, but his matchmaking skills left something to be desired. He couldn’t have been more off in setting the two of us up. At the end of the night, both Matt Bricker and I were very sure there was no connection.

  I even pulled out Den0507’s picture and asked him if he recognized the guy because I knew he wouldn’t be offended. I wasn’t into Matt Bricker and he wasn’t into me. Ironically, he was the first person to actually ask me why I was looking for Den. I told him it was for a friend. Matt smiled and I knew he knew I was lying. I also knew he didn’t care.

  We said our good-byes and went our separate ways, and I was sure I would never hear from him again. I didn’t leave with a bad feeling, however. Even though my date and I didn’t have a connection, I had met a guy who seemed nice and decent. More importantly, though, I was officially becoming open minded when it came to dating. It was both good and sad. I was happy to be moving on, but a big part of me was still struggling with that old familiar widow’s guilt that seemed to tug at my heart every time I was with someone of the opposite sex or having the least bit of fun. It was much less pronounced now, though.

  A couple days later, I received a surprising voice mail. “Hi, Emma, this is Matt Bricker from the other night. Look, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. I didn’t really feel like we hit it off.”

  “Really?” I said to myself with sarcasm, as I prepared my third batch of Hotter than Bradley Cooper salsa of the day.

  “So anyhow, I know this sounds really weird,” he went on, “but I’d like to set you up with my friend. His name is also Matt. Call me back or send me a text and let me know if you’d be willing to meet him. He’s really a great guy. I think you two would like each other.” Matt Bricker left his number and said good-bye.

  “There’s no way, right?” I asked my sister, who was standing in the kitchen in slinky black top number five, one of the options she was modeling for her upcoming weekend with Tim McMillon.

  “That’s the one, by the way,” I exclaimed, motioning to her halter top.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, “I feel like my boobs look too saggy.”

  My poor sis, so critical of her physical appearance, when in reality, she should have
been beaming with pride at how beautiful she was. I gazed at her without speaking.

  “What?” she asked, “Saggy, right?”

  I took her shoulders, pulled her toward me, and looked right into her eyes. “Listen to me, Laura. You are beautiful. You’re not just smart, and a good doctor, and a good mother. You have a beautiful body and a beautiful face. Do you understand that?”

  Her eyes quickly filling with tears, she said, “Alan obviously doesn’t think so. Neither does Dan.”

  “Fuck Alan and fuck Dan!” I shouted.

  “Mommy said a swear word,” Izzie sang.

  I whipped my head around and saw my daughter standing in the doorway. “Sorry, honey. I was just trying to make Aunt Laura feel better,” I said.

  “Someday you’ll understand,” Laura said, kissing Isabelle’s cheek.

  “That’s a really nice shirt, Aunt Laura.”

  “See?” I said.

  .

  Chapter 28

  The next night, I went out with Matt number two, who turned out to be perhaps the biggest jerk I’d met in all my life, almost to the point where it was humorous. Matt was 42, divorced with a ten year-old, a six year-old and a baby. We never actually got into why he got divorced, which I was sure was a nightmare in and of itself, but when I asked him if he had dated much since, his response was, “Actually, I’m dating two women right now.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, do you have a problem with that?”

  “Um…no… I guess I’m just surprised.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, why are you getting fixed up on blind dates if you have two girlfriends?”

  He answered, “One of the women I’m seeing is still married, so I don’t think she’s ready for anything serious. As far as the other one, well…” He began to chuckle in this very creepy kind of way and then continued, “…she’s just a friend with benefits.”