The Coincidence Makers

by Yoav Blum

  She would do it. This evening.

  She was good enough.

  This diagram had been sketched years ago.

  During classes in the course, instead of drawing hearts with arrows or mixing the letters in their names like a normal young woman, she would sketch complex diagrams of matchmaking on scraps of paper she tore from her notebooks and draw circles with arrows on restaurant napkins. The sketches always started with two circles with two names inside them, then grew into a more and more complex system of lines and connections that ultimately drove her crazy. Then she would toss the paper into the trash after devoutly tearing it into pieces.

  And, of course, the one and only time she didn’t bother to tear it into tiny pieces, Eric had found it.

  It was during one of the evenings when the three of them were supposed to study together at her place before an exam.

  Guy fell asleep on the sofa, a thick volume of Introduction to Serendipity open on his chest, his mouth ajar like an old and tired sea lion. Eric and Emily decided to let him sleep and continue to quiz each other on history.

  By this time, she knew that Eric was a narcissist, though good-hearted in his way, but she wasn’t fully ready for his curiosity. She left for just two minutes to get coffee and cookies, and when she returned Eric was holding her diagram in his hands, studying it with great interest.

  “Eric!” she shouted, and Guy almost woke up. “Why are you rummaging through my trash?”

  She went up to him and snatched the paper from his hands, tears in her eyes. “You son of a—”

  “Hey, it stuck out of the pile,” Eric raised his hands in defense. “And I saw my name. What did you expect?”

  “What did I expect? I expected you to respect other people’s privacy and not poke around in things when someone leaves the room for a moment. Apparently, these are unrealistic expectations.”

  Eric was silent and went back to studying his notes. Emily started to rip the paper.

  “I hope you’re not thinking seriously about this,” he said.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “The man is taken,” he said, nodding toward Guy. “It’ll just break your heart.”

  “Taken?” This was news to her.

  “Perhaps not physically,” he said. “But definitely emotionally.” “Who?”

  “An I.F. from his past. Cassandra something.”

  “Guy is in love with an imaginary friend?”

  “Yes. So adolescent of him, huh?”

  “It’s not funny.” Emily flared. “It’s not funny.”

  “In any case, that’s the situation. And even if he were available, I wouldn’t try to use coincidence making to arrange this between the two of you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not your thing. You’re better suited for inspiration coincidences, not matchmaking coincidences.”

  “Actually, why am I talking about this with you?”

  “Okay, forget it. I’ve said what I have to say.”

  “And I have no problem making any coincidence I want.”

  “I’m sure. Do you remember, perhaps, who was responsible for the coincidence of discovering penicillin? Baum or Young?”

  “Don’t change the subject. I can do matchmaking just like anyone else.”

  “True, but not for yourself. You’re too involved. I think it was Young. Her coincidences are simply gorgeous.”

  “Why not for myself? And the only reason you like Young is because she arranged for McCartney to meet Lennon. Baum contributed a lot more than she did.”

  “Baum is a bit technical for me. Discovering LSD, electromagnetism—terribly serious. Young organized the discovery of corn flakes. That’s what I call a historic piece of coincidence making.”

  “Eric.”

  “And Teflon too, I think. Just a moment, let me look. . . .”

  “Eric!”

  He looked up from the pages. “What?”

  “Why do you think I’m incapable of doing matchmaking coincidences for myself?”

  Eric put down the pages. “Listen, Em, darling. You can make any coincidence you want. Really. I’m sure you’ll do lots of matchmaking, and you’ll facilitate a ton of inventions and you’ll change the world, sweetheart. It’s just that each of us is better at certain things. And you . . . emotional involvement is not your thing. It upsets your equilibrium, you get anxious, you try too much and too intensely. Not that I’m such an expert on the subject, but that’s how it looks from the sidelines.”

  “You arrange dates for yourself all the time,” Emily said.

  “Yes, true,” Eric said. He was a bit embarrassed, to the extent this was possible for someone like him. “But we’re not the same. My emotional approach to this whole matter is different. I’m a bit, um, how should I put it . . . I go with the flow. You’re a bit more, let’s say . . . dramatic.”

  “I’m not dramatic!” She stamped her foot.

  He pointed at Guy, who was still sleeping next to them. “Do you see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a classic coincidence matchmaker. He doesn’t believe in the perfect woman, but is unwilling to accept anyone but her. He’s a real romantic who doesn’t expect love to exist in the world. This is precisely the right combination for someone who wants to connect people without getting overly anxious about it. You are not. Don’t try to arrange a coincidence for yourself. It could be very problematic.”

  “Okay, okay,” Emily said. “I heard you. Now shut up.” A part of her was beginning to plan something. A real romantic who didn’t expect love to exist? Perhaps she could use this. . . .

  “Where did you put my notes on synchronicity?” Eric asked.

  “Don’t you ever dare look in my trash again, understand?”

  9

  Somehow, he always ended up at the boardwalk.

  Guy didn’t have many vacation days. It was one envelope after another, and only on the rare occasions when he had finished a case of coincidence making early in the morning did he have the chance to just stroll around and enjoy the possibilities of idleness—until the next morning’s envelope. These vacation days could be counted on one hand.

  For starters, he went back to bed for about two hours. Then he found a good steak restaurant and later rediscovered the ancient pleasure of sitting in front of trees that swayed in the wind and swept the thoughts from one’s mind. The small club he had discovered two months ago was the next stop, with a quiet and dreamy-eyed pianist and a glass of red wine that did all it could to make him feel like a sophisticated young man. And finally, of course, as always, somehow he ended up on the boardwalk, to watch the sun nestle into its horizon bed and let the salty breeze tousle his hair.

  He sat on one of the benches and looked at the sea, allowing the wine to wear off a bit and the scent of the cool evening to penetrate his clothing. There was almost no one on the beach. Only a teenager and his dog jumped and frolicked at the waterline, right in front of him, displaying how Friendship: The Director’s Cut, might look.

  Perhaps the time had come for him to get a pet too. It didn’t have to be a dog. It could be a cat, or a ferret, or even a goldfish. For crying out loud, he’d be willing to compromise with a bonsai tree, if there was no alternative. The boy and the dog on the beach teased each other in a way that you only do with someone you really love. He felt a light twinge of envy that quickly passed through him and then disappeared. He took a deep breath of the sea air and released it with a small, bitter smile. Maybe it was good that he didn’t have many vacation days. They reminded him that he was alone.

  Guy got up slowly and started to walk home.

  Someone at city hall had convinced someone else, after a lively discussion in the corridor, that summer nights were the time to get people out into the street, and the trees along the boulevard were checkered with small, colorful lights that turned nightfall into a sparkling carnival.

  He let his eyes wander along the road, his body soaking up the atmosphere
while he wandered. A few minutes passed before he noticed, but from that moment he could no longer ignore it. A couple, embracing and smiling, walked ahead of him; on a bench beside him, an elderly couple sat, holding hands; a boy and a girl, no older than ten, ran and cut in front of his path.

  It was apparently his imagination. Like pregnant women who see baby carriages everywhere, like ex-smokers who see only cigarettes: people who feel lonely apparently see couples everywhere.

  Guy looked in all directions, trying to find someone else walking along the street without a partner. Nothing. Only couples, of all types, walking quickly and focused on their destination, walking slowly and embracing, skipping, dragging their feet in unison, standing and whispering in a corner.

  Yes, he needed a dog.

  Among all of these couples, he suddenly saw, finally, someone walking alone, in quick steps, hurrying somewhere. Guy almost thanked him in his heart that he wasn’t the only one here walking around independently, when the man bumped into a woman coming out of a small toy store, sending all of the boxes she was carefully balancing in her arms flying into the air. Guy couldn’t help hearing the voice of the General echoing in his head.

  “I know most of you have been anxiously anticipating this lesson,” he said to them. “Students always think that Matchmaking 101 is a very romantic course. They also think it will be very simple. All you need is a young man, a young woman, and a street corner, right? Have the man walk from one direction and the woman walk from the other, let them bump into each other exactly at the turn, and voilà—books fall, eye contact, love at first sight, blah blah blah. The quantity of bullshit in this scenario could solve the problems of third world hunger.”

  Guy chuckled to himself as his new friend apologized to the shocked woman and hurried to run off on his way. This type of encounter succeeded once in a thousand times; in all of the other 999 times, you had to work a little harder. He hoped what he saw wasn’t a coincidence someone had created. This low level of professionalism would be quite embarrassing.

  But Emily was right in what she had said to him this morning. He really did love matchmaking coincidences. Not because of the romance. He didn’t buy into romance. People treated love like something you “believed” in, as if it were a religion. And in this religion, you accepted the belief that somewhere there was a sort of cosmic connection between people that was different in essence from any other type of connection, and that in the framework of this connection you devoted yourself to worshipping someone else. People had to believe in something larger than themselves, he pondered. Religion didn’t always provide them with this, so the concept called love gave them what they were always looking for—profound meaning that wasn’t rational and transcended regular life. Without realizing it, love became just another thing you needed in a world that had replaced giving with possessing. A big house, a beautiful car, a great love. You didn’t love? Your life was wasted.

  He also thought this way once. But things had changed since then. He had tasted this fruit and was familiar with it. And love wasn’t like that—it was much more. But he had already received his portion of love, and now it was gone. That chapter was closed and sealed. To his dismay, he’d accepted this long ago. Now it was his turn to take care of others. Thus, matchmaking was important to him. Perhaps when you helped someone to achieve happiness that you yourself would no longer experience, you also gained a small piece of that happiness. It was recorded under your name.

  He approached the woman at the entrance to the store and, with a smile, helped her collect the packages.

  “Thank you,” she said to him.

  “No problem,” he said.

  The pavement was strewn with small boxes of various sizes, classic children’s games in new eye-catching packaging.

  “It’s for my nephews,” she said, tucking strings of red hair behind her ear. “Twins. They have a birthday next week, and I decided to get them something that might tear them away from the computer.”

  Guy lifted a box of green plastic soldiers. “Yes,” he said, without really listening to her. The small soldiers in the transparent box looked back at him with an innocent gaze.

  “May I?” she said.

  Guy snapped out of his reverie. “Ah?”

  She stood there, smiling, the games again balanced somehow against her chest, and pointed to what he had in his hand. “The soldiers, may I?”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” He handed the box to her. “Sorry.”

  “Did you play with these when you were a child?” she asked. “Brings back memories, huh?”

  “No, no.” He tried to smile. “I guess I just got lost in my thoughts.”

  She thanked him again and walked away. Guy remained there for another few moments and then continued walking home along the street full of couples. He needed to buy bread and chocolate spread and sugar and coffee and a few other things that were surely lacking at home. He’d stop at the supermarket on the way.

  Emily sat in her living room.

  So this was how generals felt while waiting for news from the front, she thought.

  Months of planning, walls full of diagrams, weeks of anticipation, until she had a day when she could organize everything, and in the end she was sitting here and waiting for a telephone call.

  If she were at least doing something else in the meantime, it would be less pathetic. But she was simply sitting and waiting for the telephone to ring. And it had better ring.

  Guy roamed up and down the shelves, looking for where they hid his coffee.

  Yes, he knew exactly why those plastic soldiers had made the world stop for a few moments. It was embarrassingly clear. In fact, it was even documented somewhere, in some old dog-eared notebook.

  It had been just the second week of the course. The homework in Associations 101 was to map each other’s trains of thought. The General strongly asserted that only a few tools in their profession were as important as understanding the way in which “things remind one of things”—whatever this vague statement meant. Guy had to map Eric’s associations, who mapped Emily’s, and Emily mapped Guy.

  Mapping Eric was quite simple. Somehow, everything was associated with women, achievements, and Marx Brothers’ comedies. Sometimes Guy had to dig deeper to understand why a papaya drink reminded Eric of Vietnam, or why he thought “saxophone” when you said “chocolate.” But ultimately the explanations were reasonable and the map of his train of thought was at a level that satisfied the General.

  The idea of being mapped by someone else was particularly troubling.

  Emily was thorough. She didn’t allow him to get away with partial explanations. It was completely logical for you to associate the word “books” with “shelves,” she argued, but why in the world would “shelves” remind you of Die Hard 2? He had to explain the strange connection his mind found between slippers and hedgehogs, between a smile and bats, between floor tiles and pastel-colored robots. But, somehow, she was most intrigued to discover that toy soldiers reminded him of love.

  “You need to explain this to me,” she said with sparkling eyes. They sat on the floor in his apartment. An open box of fortune cookies Emily had found somewhere was at their side. Every time Guy felt he needed a break, they took a cookie, opened it, and tried to think about the coincidences in which they could use the note it contained. The box was half empty at this point.

  “It’s connected to a first date I had,” he said, trying to evade the question. “That’s all.”

  “Details,” she said, rubbing her hands, “details.”

  “Eric drove you crazy in his investigation earlier and now you’re taking it out on me, right?”

  She smiled mischievously. “I’m just trying to work hard on my homework,” she said with a raised eyebrow, betraying the falsehood.

  So he told her. About Cassandra, about how they met, about how they were separated, about everything that happened between these two points. Emily listened and occasionally asked a question in a hesitant voice
, curious, as if she knew they would never talk about it again.

  This was the beginning of a tradition. During the course, they would meet, often over a cup of coffee and a box of fortune cookies. Eric joined them sometimes but usually canceled with excuses like “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to get stuck in the elevator with someone, and so ultimately it became just the two of them. Complete discussions arose from a piece of paper enclosed in sweet dough. They didn’t speak again about Cassandra. They didn’t speak about Emily’s previous work. They really didn’t speak about the course. But they spoke about music, without touching upon its ability to stir associations in the client. They spoke about movies, without discussing scenes that aroused repressed emotions and without trying to discover which screenplays were written following the intervention of a coincidence maker. They spoke about their favorite television programs without mentioning the lesson in their course on “Building a Rating by Initiating Power Outages.” And they even spoke about politics, while ignoring what they both knew about the true way in which popularity is built.

  The truth was, he missed this. Since the end of the course, they no longer had much opportunity to speak, just the two of them. Their schedules were quite crazy, and somehow one of them was always busy preparing some new coincidence. They were new in this business and still didn’t know how to manage their time without being drawn into their coincidences. Two, three cancellations, and their tradition died off. After several months, when Eric insisted on establishing a new tradition of morning meetings for the three of them, and after they found a way to coordinate their busy schedules, those cookie evenings seemed superfluous. He thought again about the boy and the dog on the beach. He could actually use a friendship like that now. A glass of wine wasn’t always a satisfying friend.