by Amanda Brown
“He’ll be back,” Marla shrugged. “And I’m going to charge him a hundred-dollar reenlistment fee. Chippa, would you mind taking Brad’s place on the hot seat?”
Pippa unenthusiastically sat on the warm cushion.
“Miss Flushowitz,” Marla continued pleasantly. “Before I find your perfect mate, we need to get a few things straight. Number one, do you have a police record of any kind? That means arrests, convictions, current or pending DUIs, spousal abuse, pedophilia, restraining orders, kidnapping, or just plain spitting in public.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I think you’re lying to me, Chippa.”
“I was just trying to absorb that list of criminal offenses.” Pippa saw that wasn’t the correct answer. “I did get a speeding ticket a few weeks ago.”
“Ah! I knew it!” Marla turned to the class. “Speeding indicates aggressive behavior.”
“I wasn’t being aggressive, I was just listening to the stereo and lost track of the speedometer.”
“So you were being careless! Daydreaming! Arrested juvenile development,” Marla crowed. She smiled sweetly. “Chippa, do you have any sexually transmitted diseases?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s an outrageous question,” Patty sputtered. “You can’t be asking people that.”
“Why not? It’s a legitimate concern, isn’t it? After ‘are you rich?’ it’s the next topic on most people’s minds, if we’re honest about it.”
“I don’t think it’s constitutional to ask medical questions,” Sal said. “If people like each other, they’ll find out soon enough.”
“Chippa, what is your sexual orientation?”
“For someone who left sex off the happiness iceberg, you sure are nosy,” Helen sniffed.
“A matchmaker has to know a client’s sexual bent or there will be disaster. Look what happened to that jock in Texas. Jilted at the altar. Millions of dollars wasted because he never realized his fiancee was a serial fornicator.”
“The guy is gay,” Patty snorted. “You can tell just by looking at him.”
“She led him on,” Aram said. “Gold digger.”
“She did not!” Pippa shouted. “She had just as much money as he did!”
“Enough! We’re not here to talk about a couple of buffoons in Texas,” Marla cut in, waving her hands. “Chippa, just answer the question. What is your sexual orientation?”
“I believe I’ve made that clear.”
“Oh, yes. The chauffeur,” Marla drawled. “Well, I won’t be setting you up with any college professors. What is your annual income?”
The room became very still as Pippa did a few calculations based on passing the matchmaking course. “Eighty million dollars.”
Everyone burst out laughing. “This just goes to show how outrageously people exaggerate,” Marla said.
“Take it or leave it.” Pippa shrugged.
Marla left it. “What do you require in a mate, Chippa?” “Character, integrity, ambition, intelligence, wit, discipline, talent, patience—”
“Whoa! Whoa! We’re looking for a mate, not Superman!” Marla shook her head. “Do you notice what Chippa left out, class? Loads of money and great sex. The first two requirements on everyone’s list. This client is a problem. Do you consider yourself good in bed, Chippa?”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. How can I match you with someone if I don’t know you like it? “
Pippa sighed. Two more days and she’d be out of here. “I suppose I am good in bed.”
Aram raised his hand. “Do you really expect me, a doorman, to ask people in my building, female investment bankers and the like, if they are good at blow jobs before I set them up with their neighbors, also investment bankers?”
Marla covered her face with perfectly manicured hands. Maybe she was just showing off her eight turquoise Navajo rings. “I am trying to teach you how to conduct a meaningful interview. Online dating services ask much more invasive questions and people answer them without batting an eyelash.”
The door burst open: Brad had indeed returned, with a gun. He proceeded to shoot every heart-shaped balloon and cuckoo clock in the room to smithereens. As the class dove for cover he obliterated every dish on the buffet table. “How’s that for inadequate!” he shouted before flipping the table over and leaving.
Marla watched his truck fishtail out of the parking lot. “I had no idea hunters were that neurotic. Get off the floor, everyone. He’s gone.”
“What if he comes back with reinforcements?” Aram cried. “He wouldn’t dare. I know the type. I married five of them.” Sal cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, Marla, I’d like my money back.”
“Sorry,”she murmured, inspecting a muffin for bullets. “Tuition is nonrefundable.” “Since when?”
“I suppose you didn’t read the small print at the bottom of the noncompetition clause. Is anyone going to help me clean up this mess?”
Day one of matchmaking school didn’t adjourn until six because of the precious time lost cleaning up the buffet table. In addition to covering Legal Risks of Matchmaking, Handwriting Analysis, Pros and Cons of Sleeping with Clients, Raising Fees Without Raising Eyebrows, Developing Client Dependency, Decorating Your Office, and That Winning Smile, Marla had passed out homework that would count for thirty percent of the final grade. The assignment dealt with client development, an area Marla harped on throughout the afternoon because, obviously, a successful matchmaker lost cash cows at a terrifying rate. Each student was to go to a bar of his or her choice and strike up a conversation with the first individual seen sitting alone. With the help of Marla’s “conversation compost,” as she liked to call a list of leading questions, the student was expected to harvest new fodder for matchmaking school by the end of the evening.
To prepare for this assignment Pippa lay in her bubble bath sipping Champagne as she studied Marla’s suggested lines. When she felt confident with them, she dressed in a pink Prada suit and doused herself with the Thayne perfume she had brought in her purse to Phoenix. Hoping to counteract the negative visuals of a black eye and yellow hair, she donned a pair of stacked heels, a pillbox hat, and long gloves matching her pink suit. She had no jewelry, which made her feel naked, so she applied extra-thick lip gloss and mascara. At the stroke of ten she walked into the bar of the Ritz-Carlton.
There was only one lone man sitting amid the couples at the bar. Pippa quickly acquired the vacant seat next to him, noticing too late that he was the quintessential tall, dark, and handsome male of the species and would need a matchmaking service about as much as he needed a third testicle. Dont be fooled, Marla’s voice reassured her. Any guy who frequents a bar at ten o’clock needs help.
“Hello.” Pippa smiled. “What’s that you’re drinking?”
“Plantation rum.” He tried not to stare. She looked as if she had just wandered in from the Macy’s Easter parade, circa 1960, except for the hair and shiner. Nice perfume. “Care to join me?”
“I’ll have a rusty nail,” Pippa told the bartender, slapping a fifty on the bar. Under no circumstances was she to allow a prospective client to buy her a drink.
“Love the hat.”
“This old thing? Thank you.” He was disconcertingly handsome. He wore a gorgeous shirt and a Breguet watch with many complications. To Pippa’s dismay, her mind went blank. She couldn’t remember the first line of Marla’s spiel if a billion bucks depended on it. And it did. To pass the time she laboriously adjusted her long gloves.
“What brings you to Phoenix?” he asked after what seemed like eons.
What would a matchmaker say? What what what? “I’ve been mating people.”
“Really! How many people have you been mating with?”
If they get personal, change the subject. As her rusty nail arrived, Pippa finally remembered Marla’s opening line. “My name is Marla.” Shit! “I mean Chippa.”
“Sure about that?” She was too busy chugging her drink
to reply. “I’m pretty sure my name’s Cole.”
Pippa remembered Marla’s second line. “How’s your love life?”
“That’s what I call direct. It’s fine. How’s yours?”
A wildfire blush overtook her face. “You’re supposed to say something like ‘could be better.’“
“Okay, it could be better. How’s yours?”
Like a drowning rat Pippa leaped to the third line of Marla’s scenario. “Are you presently married?” “No. How about you?”
“Will you stop asking personal questions?” she snapped. “I’ve had a long day.”
Cole watched her order a second rusty nail. Guys at the bar were beginning to notice her little pillbox hat and long gloves. With the hair and black eye, the combo was a huge turn-on. He sat for a long while simply inhaling her perfume. Every ten seconds a torrid blush swept across her cheeks. He watched her heavily glossed lips close around the tiny straw when her cocktail arrived. “Nice weather we’re having,” he said.
Weather? By now she should be leading him through the ten points of the happiness iceberg! As she tried to salvage an interview worth thirty percent of her grade, Pippa’s straw began uncouthly sucking air at the bottom of her drink. Think like a Walker, you idiot! What would her mother do, backed into such a corner? Ah!
Pippa regained a grain of composure. “I have a proposition for you,” she said, scratching a phone number on a napkin. “Call this number at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and ask for ten sessions with Marla. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars.”
Was she into threesomes? Maybe she liked to watch. Nine in the morning was a bit kinky, though. “I’d prefer ten sessions with you,” Cole said. “Tonight. At the going rate, of course.”
“What? How dare you!” Pippa smacked the guy with her Prada purse and fled.
The next morning at 8:45 sharp, Mike the chauffeur was waiting outside the Ritz-Carlton with a homemade kielbasa sandwich, iced coffee, and frozen peas. The temperature was already ninety-five degrees. Where was Miss Flushowitz? He hated delivering people late to their destinations. Mike was about to ring her room when Pippa burst through the revolving door and dove into the back seat of the limousine. “Floor it!”
Mike did the best he could with his hands full. “Everything all right back there?”
Absolutely not. After a sleepless night, steeping in humiliation, the last thing she needed was to see Cole in the lobby. He even had the effrontery to blow her a kiss! “Couldn’t be better.”
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Let’s just say my homework finished me.”
“I brought a little breakfast for you.”
“Thanks.” Pippa chewed in silence until they arrived at Marvy Mates. “Here goes nothing.”
“You make those matches, now!”
Pippa’s classmates looked even less eager to start a second day of instruction than did she. Yesterday’s buffet having met an untimely end, there was no food on offer; in its stead Marla had inflated several dozen heart-shaped balloons and filled a bowl with cherry lollipops. Dressed in a turquoise pantsuit with one-inch pink stripes running horizontally on the jacket, vertically on the pants, she looked remarkably fresh. “Well! How did everyone make out last night?”
For his efforts Sal sported five stitches on his jaw. Aram had spent several hours in jail. Old Helen had gone to a McDonald’s and had forty eager clients lined up, all aged twelve. Patty had slept with both of her prospects, not on purpose. One thing just led to another. Marla was beside herself with disgust. “What about the Polish Wonder?”
Before Pippa could respond, the phone rang. Marla ran to her desk. “Marvy Mates! Leave nothing to fate, your soul mate awaits! Marla Marble speaking!” She listened a moment, put the caller on hold, and announced, “Listen carefully, class, we’re going on speaker phone!” She cleared her throat. “Ten sessions, you said? I’d be delighted! That will be one thousand dollars! A small investment in your happiness!”
“So I guess it’s a wash,” the fellow’s voice said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was referred by Chippa Flushowitz. Would you know how I might reach her? She’s a very persuasive saleswoman.”
Marla knew exactly where he was going. “For your information, Miss Flushowitz’s lover is the Polish poker champion. She is in the pickle business. Unless you’re a hairdresser, she has no use for you whatsoever.”
“Let’s talk about it over lunch,” the man said.
“Two thousand dollars.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Marla. Where would you like to meet?”
“Coup des Tartes. You’re buying.” Marla hung up. “Gotcha! Nice work, Chippa. Is he cute?”
Pippa had been up all night thinking about the man’s eyes, voice, mouth, hair, and hands. “He might be gay.”
Marla bounced to the whiteboard. “Where were we?”
“Dating Techniques,” Aram read tonelessly from the syllabus.
“I just love this chapter! Class, after you’ve racked your brain setting up your clients with a match, you’ll have to give them a few pointers on etiquette. I need volunteers.” No one moved. “Sal and Helen! Let’s pretend this is your first date. You’re both a little nervous. What’s the first thing you’re going to do?”
“Order a stiff manhattan,” Sal said.
“Are you out of your mind? Do you want to tell the world you’re an insecure zero before you even open your mouth?”
“But I would have done the same thing,” Helen protested.
“Whatever. Let’s say you’re both slurping a couple of manhattans to get over the nerves. What are you going to talk about?”
“My husband Jerome.” Helen beamed. “He was a prince.”
“No no no! Do not talk about spouses living or dead! Do not dwell on the past! Do not discuss children, family, religion, sex, income, politics, your hip replacement, or any other hot-button topics on a first date!”
“So what’s left?” Helen wanted to know.
“Omigod! The weather. Sports. Vacations. Food. Small talk! And all the while you’re discussing your favorite denture creams and toupee glue, what are you really doing?”
Sal looked mystified. “Getting hungry?”
“You’re observing body language. Reading between the lines.”
“That’s pretty hard to do after a few manhattans,” Sal said.
“Which is why you Dont. Drink. Them. Chippa, what was this fellow’s name again?”
Cole. His eyes were kind of like coal, come to think of it. “I forget.”
“Did he look rich?”
All four feet ten inches of Aram shot off the couch. “Are we students or pimps? This course is a waste of my good time and two thousand dollars! You are pathetic, miss.”
“I agree,” Patty said. “No offense, Marvy Marla, but that outfit would scare a zebra.”
Marla’s lower lip quivered. “Is that the way you all feel?” Every head but Pippa’s nodded in vigorous agreement. “Fine!”
She opened her safe and withdrew a piece of parchment paper. Marla signed it, melted some red wax, stamped it with a heart, and tied it up with red ribbon. She flung it in Pippa’s lap. “This course is officially over. Everyone has failed but Chippa.”
Pippa unrolled her diploma. It certainly looked official except for one thing. “Where’s my name?”
“Fill it in yourself.” Marla headed for the door. “I’m going for a walk.”
“I want my money back!” Aram shouted. “Either my money or my diploma!”
Marla calmly took a big red hat from its red hook. “I repeat: you have all failed the course. You do not have the fundamental humanity to become matchmakers.” “I’ll sue!” Patty screamed.
“Be my guest. After five divorces, I know who the killer lawyers are.”
Little old Helen suddenly plastered herself to the front door, impeding Marla’s exit. “Make you a deal, miss. We’ll play you for our diplomas. One quick game set
tles it.”
Pippa felt the hair rise along the back of her neck as Marla’s face softened into an addict’s narcotic smile. “Play?” she echoed.
“You heard me. Poker.”
It all suddenly fell into place. Pippa nearly laughed at her own stupidity. “I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about poker,” she said with a winsome smile. “Maybe I’ll just leave and let you all sort out the refunds.”
Marla snatched Pippa’s diploma away. “You want your diploma, you play for it.”
“But I’ve only played once in my life!” With Andre in Prague. Strip poker at that.
“Then get your Polack boyfriend to play for you. I’ve always wanted to see how I stacked up against a champion.”
“Can I please have that back?” Pippa whimpered, on the verge of tears.
“No!” Marla pushed her out the door.
Pippa stood paralyzed in the blinding sunshine, staring at her empty hands. Just a few moments ago they had held a signed diploma, the passport to her new life. Now she was stripped clean. Looted! How could she have stood there, flat-footed as an oaf, as events spi-raled downward?
The limousine door swung open. “Taking a lunch break, Miss Flushowitz?” Mike unstrapped the water bottle lashed to his shin. “You okay? Here, have a drink.”
“Tell me something, Mike. Do you play poker?”
“Now and then, at family holidays. I’m not a habitual gambler or anything.”
“Are you any good?”
He hadn’t won a game in his life. All those combinations to remember plus smoke, whiskey, indigestion, football. “It depends on the cards. Why?”
“I’m going to ask a big favor. Five people are starting up a game. I have to play or I lose my diploma. I’d like you to play for me.”
He scratched a little sand out of his ear. “I thought you were all inside making matches.”
“That didn’t work out. I told a little white lie, Mike. I said you were the poker champion of Poland. Now everyone wants to play with you. Against you, actually. If you won my diploma back, I would certainly make it worth your while.”
He thought a moment. “Happy to do it! You got me 24/7, remember?”
