This Pen for Hire
Page 18
At the time, I assumed that they were all Joy’s satisfied customers.
Seated at a receptionist’s desk was a goth pixie clad in black leather and a tasteful assortment of body piercings, her spiky hair a blazing shade of purple. And hunched over a computer behind her was a skinny guy in black horn-rimmed glasses held together at the hinges with duct tape. In his white short-sleeved shirt and yellow bow tie, cowlicks running riot in his hair, the guy had Computer Nerd written all over him.
“May I help you?” the goth pixie asked, looking up from her computer, a steel stud glinting merrily in her nose.
“I’m Jaine Austen. I’m here to see Joy Amoroso.”
“Oh, right.”
Was it my imagination, or was that a look of pity I’d just seen flit across her face?
“Joy will be right with you,” she said. “Won’t you have a seat?”
She gestured to a row of plastic chairs lined up against the wall. I plopped down into one and checked out the reading matter on a tiny coffee table in front of me. Along with the usual dog-eared issues of People was a thick loose-leaf binder.
“That’s our Date Book, with pictures of our clients,” said the pixie, whose name, according to the ID bracelet tattooed on her wrist, was Cassie.
I opened the book, expecting to find a bunch of bald heads and stomach paunches, but the book was stuffed with stunners. One good looking prospect after the next. Joy certainly had a lot of hotties on tap.
Just as I was ogling a particularly adorable tousle-haired studmuffin, the door to Joy’s office opened and out walked the date-meister herself.
The woman in front of me bore little resemblance to the photo in her ad. That picture had been taken at least ten years and fifty pounds ago. Joy Amoroso was still an attractive woman with deceptively angelic features. Button nose, big blue eyes, and a fabulous head of streaked blond hair. But that pretty face of hers came with an impressive set of chins, and she was clearly packing quite a few pounds under her flowy A-line dress. Only her feet were tiny—slender little things encased in what looked like nosebleed expensive designer shoes.
“Jaine!” she cried with the same phony British accent she’d used on the phone. “So teddibly sorry to keep you waiting.”
She looked me up and down with all the subtlety of a New York City construction worker. I guess I must have passed muster, because she then asked: “Won’t you step into my office, hon?”
Tearing myself away from my tousle-haired dreamboat, I grabbed my book of writing samples and followed her into her inner sanctum.
Like the reception area, Joy’s office was filled with framed photos of happy couples. But unlike the no-frills furniture in the reception area, Joy’s decor ran to the antique and ornate. A Marie Antoinette-ish desk and chair dominated the room, along with an étagère crammed with fussy knickknacks. Over in a corner lurked the same statue of Cupid I’d seen in Joy’s ad, now shooting his arrow up at what looked like a water stain on the ceiling.
But what caught my eye most of all was an open box of Godiva chocolates on Joy’s desk, chock full of creamy dark chocolate truffles.
My taste buds, napping after the cinnamon raisin bagel I’d had for breakfast, suddenly jolted awake. A truffle sure would’ve hit the spot right about then. Of course, a truffle would hit the spot with me just about any time. But those velvety Godivas looked particularly mouthwatering.
Taking a seat behind her desk, Joy popped one in her mouth. My taste buds and I waited for her to offer me one, but alas, we waited in vain.
Obviously Joy was not a sharer.
She gestured for me to sit in one of the froufrou chairs facing her desk, and as I did, I felt a broken spring poke me in the fanny.
“Comfy?” she asked.
“Very,” I lied, still hoping for one of those Godivas.
“So,” she said, sucking chocolate from her fingertips, “Marvin Cooper tells me you’re a wonderful writer.”
I blushed modestly.
“But I’ll be the judge of that,” she added with a grim smile.
She held out her hand for my sample book. I only hoped she didn’t smear chocolate all over my Toiletmasters campaign.
As she leafed through my ads, I whiled away the minutes looking at pictures of the happy couples on the wall and trying to ignore the spring poking me in my fanny.
“Not bad,” she said when she was finally through.
Then she got up and began pacing the room in her teeny designer-clad tootsies, launching into what had all the earmarks of a well-rehearsed campaign speech.
“As you well know,” she began, “Dates of Joy is the preeminent dating service in Beverly Hills.”
I wisely refrained from pointing out that we were a good three and a half miles from Beverly Hills.
“I handle only the crème de la crème of the L.A. dating scene. Movers and shakers. And all sorts of celebrities. My fees start at ten thousand dollars a year. And go up. Way up.”
Wow. And I thought my Fudge of the Month Club was expensive.
“And I’m worth it,” she said, her chins quivering with pride. “I’m the best there is. That’s because I’ve got matchmaking in my blood. My mother was a matchmaker, and her mother before her.”
Not only that, according to Joy, one of her royal ancestors back in jolly old England was the one who fixed up Anne Boleyn with Henry VIII.
I nodded as if I actually believed her.
If this woman was English royalty, I was a Tibetan monk.
“Although I abhor the idea of self promotion,” she was saying, “I have to keep up with the times. So I’m looking for someone to write copy for a sales brochure. “So whaddaya think?” she asked, dumping her royal accent. “You interested?”
“Sounds very intriguing.”
Time to see how much gold was at the end of this particular rainbow.
“And the pay?” I asked.
“I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of three grand.”
Someone call the movers! That’s my kind of neighborhood.
And yet, a little voice inside me was telling me to run for the hills. I knew trouble when I saw it coming down the pike, and I could tell Joy Amoroso was trouble with a capital OMG! That bossy manner, that insane Queen Mum accent that seemed to come and go like an overbooked call girl on New Year’s Eve. The woman would drive me up a wall in no time.
Why not save myself the aggravation and just say no?
So what if I owed a few bucks to MasterCard? And Macy’s? And the Fudge of the Month Club? So what if the Fudge of the Month Club cut off my membership and I never got another box of fudge ever again—not even the white chocolate macadamia nut fudge I’m particularly fond of?
Surely I could live without white chocolate macadamia nut fudge.
Couldn’t I?
Oh, please. We all know the answer to that one.
“So,” Joy asked, popping another chocolate in her mouth. “Is it a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
And that, in a macadamia nutshell, was how I came to sell my soul to the Matchmaker from Hell.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2002 by Laura Levine
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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ISBN: 978-1-6177-3547-9
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