The Reluctant Matchmaker

by Shobhan Bantwal

  Nonetheless Pinky and I made sure Paul took all his supplements religiously. Keeping Paul in good health meant peace and quiet for the rest of us. Jeremy was forty-eight and going through a midlife crisis. As long as things were going well at home, Jeremy’s calls to our office were limited to about two per day.

  I disposed of my foam cup in the trash and glanced at my watch again. Paul’s unexplained absence was beginning to trouble me.

  Chapter 2

  I returned to my desk to await Paul’s arrival. Both my incoming e-mail and hard mail baskets were bulging. My day was going to be packed.

  Any girl’s first year in a job is challenging enough, what with attempting to be sweet but diplomatic, curious but not nosey, friendly but not sycophantic, helpful but not pushy—and all the while trying not to step on some important and sensitive toes. Combine that with the serious marketing efforts of my employer, an aggressive, high-tech company, and I had a tough job.

  The business was growing despite the shaky economy, so my life was full—and then some.

  I worked hard to make the company look good. I handled their marketing campaigns, press releases, newspaper and magazine ads, charitable events. I edited and published the quarterly newsletter, and I did anything and everything that involved dealing with the public or the press.

  My title was marketing and public relations manager. Sometimes I felt like the janitor, because I was expected to clean up the public relations mess if someone from the company made a faux pas.

  Whenever the proverbial crap hit the fan, I ran for my bucket and mop. There was never a dull moment. Nonetheless I loved my job—most of it, anyway.

  Rathnaya designed and developed advanced software for NASA, the United States Armed Forces, many federal government agencies, and some state and county governments.

  Working with the Feds, the military brass, and an assortment of other bureaucrats on secret projects was a complicated job, and once in a while Rathnaya’s top executives made the mistake of giving too little or too much information to the media, and the backlash had to be handled by Paul and me.

  Although Paul, whose title was marketing director, was a nice guy, he was a bit on the laid-back side and tended to push things my way—especially the sticky, messy issues that he didn’t want to soil his large fingers with.

  That was precisely why he’d hired me, a woman with an MBA from Cornell, two years experience working for a midsized Jersey newspaper, and three years with a prestigious Manhattan public relations firm—until they’d laid me off when the economic crisis hit. Then there was my brief volunteer stint working on the last governor’s political campaign.

  For my age I had a pretty impressive work history. My job with the gubernatorial campaign hadn’t amounted to much more than placing election posters in strategic locations and answering phones while I looked for a paying job. But it looked good on my resume.

  I glanced at the digital clock on my desk. Paul still hadn’t shown up. Our meeting was in twenty minutes. I didn’t mind going to meetings without him, especially now that I’d become accustomed to this place and the various personalities. But I still disliked the thought of going to this particular meeting alone.

  It would be unnerving to meet the CEO without Paul beside me. Although I was the one who did most of the routine work, Paul was the guy who had the final authority to sign off on it. Plus he was an excellent talker—he made the simplest projects sound impressively complicated. That’s why he was the director and I the underling.

  If Paul was sitting in traffic, he should have called by now. A horrible thought struck me. Could he be the one involved in that accident, like Jeremy feared?

  Paul walked in just as I was about to share my disturbing thoughts with Pinky. “Morning, ladies,” he said absently, stopping at Pinky’s desk.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, I raced to greet him. “Am I glad to see you! We were worried about you, Paul.”

  “Some guy got rear-ended by a cement truck, so I had to sit in traffic for nearly an hour,” he grumbled. Most people would have been irate, but Paul was treating it like a minor inconvenience.

  “Jeremy called,” Pinky announced. “He’s convinced you were the accident victim—a statistic.”

  “I had a feeling he’d be upset,” said Paul as he strode toward his office, carrying the hunter-green insulated lunch bag Jeremy had packed for him. “My cell phone had to die on me today of all days.”

  “You have a car charger, don’t you?” I asked his retreating back.

  “I’ve been meaning to buy one ... but haven’t gotten around to it.” He stuck his head back out the door. “Pinky, could you please call Jeremy and tell him I’m fine, but I can’t call him right now?”

  “Sure thing.” Pinky was already grabbing the phone.

  I made a mental note to buy Paul a cell phone charger for his car as a Christmas gift. I’d have to find out the exact make and model of his phone.

  A few minutes later, having gulped down a quick cup of coffee, Paul stood at my door, portfolio in hand. “Ready to go, Meena?”

  His wide body practically filled the entire doorway. The bald patch on top of his head gleamed under the fluorescent lights. What was left of his hair was combed neatly. His latest cologne, a gift from Jeremy no doubt, drifted up to meet my sensitive nostrils. Very pleasant.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, and grabbed my notes and pen.

  CEO Nayak, who generally divided his time between the Washington, DC, area and India—either wooing customers in Washington, or meeting with his subcontractors in India, was going to address the managerial staff this morning. I’d never met him in the eight months that I’d been with the company.

  I’d met his partner, Nishant “Nish” Rathod, several times. Nish was the chief financial officer. He was housed in our office, so he was a familiar figure around the place.

  Nish was a decent guy—friendly, cheerful, entirely different from my image of the usual accountant type. Although a smart and disciplined man when it came to fiscal matters, he didn’t seem obsessed with the bottom line like some CFOs I’d come across.

  He didn’t dress like an accountant either. A stocky man in his late thirties, he generally sported twill pants, colorful Indian cotton shirts, and no tie. He laughed and kidded a lot. Nish was a likeable man.

  And the company name—Rathnaya. Couldn’t they have found a simpler name? But the two partners’ names, Rathod plus Nayak, had turned into Rathnaya, Inc.—a very strange handle that I personally thought was bad for PR. Most people referred to it as Rat-Naya.

  Who knows, maybe a weird name like that worked in highly technical circles, where guys wearing pocket protectors discussed computer codes and discovered ways to build the most hacker-resistant firewalls in the universe.

  My job was simply to make Rathnaya look good—outlandish name and all.

  Although not nervous by nature, when I got tense, like I was at the moment, I needed to go to the bathroom. “Paul, you go on ahead,” I said. “I’ve got to run to the ladies’ room.”

  Paul shifted away from the door. “No problem.” He flicked his cuff back and looked at his watch. “We’ve got about ... four minutes. I’ll wait. You run along.”

  Paul had come to accept my pre-meeting trips to the ladies’ room with his usual calm.

  Inside the restroom, after getting the essentials out of the way, I stood for a moment in front of the mirror. The auburn highlights in my shoulder-length hair gleamed. My makeup looked fresh.

  The suit looked pretty good, too. It was a soft, copper-colored material with a skirt that showed about three inches of skin above the knees, creating the impression of longer legs. Every millimeter of leg was important when one stood barely five feet. The suit went well with my cream blouse and pearl earrings. I wanted to look my best for the meeting.

  Irrespective of my mother’s aspirations, and who or what Prajay Nayak was, first impressions were still vital.

  Returning from the ladies’
room, I nodded at Paul. “Let’s go.”

  We got into the elevator and headed for the ninth floor—the penthouse. Rathnaya occupied the top four floors of the building. The second through fifth floors were taken up by a number of small businesses, while the first floor housed various doctors’ offices.

  “Don’t look so anxious,” Paul said, briefly taking in my appearance. “You look fine, prettier than usual.” His hazel eyes twinkled with teasing admiration.

  “Thanks, Paul. You’re good for my ego.” If any other fifty-year-old man had given me that look, I’d have wondered about his intentions, but Paul was overtly gay. I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Do I really look that nervous?”

  “A little.”

  I caught him checking his own appearance in the smooth chrome wall and patting his tie. I smiled to myself. I’d often wondered how a guy like Jeremy, with his classic good looks and impeccable taste in clothes, had fallen for a plain, rotund guy like Paul. But Paul had a sense of humor and integrity, so the physique could be overlooked. Also, he handled Jeremy with infinite patience and tenderness.

  That’s probably what kept the fastidious Jeremy and Paul together—opposites attracting and all that. Pinky had informed me that the two men had been partners for some eighteen years—a marriage made in heaven. In some ways I envied their happy relationship.

  The topic of looks reminded me of something. “Is the CEO really as tall as everyone says?” I asked Paul.

  Paul nodded. “Looks more like a basketball player than a computer geek.”

  Well, if Nayak was really that tall, then my mother’s hopes about him and me were groundless. I was a midget even by Indian standards. Besides, anything other than a professional relationship with him would be a direct conflict of interest.

  Oh well. I didn’t care one way or the other. As long as Nayak proved to be a good boss and I could keep my job forever and not get laid off like I did from my last one, I’d be okay. If he was half as decent a guy as Nish, then I had nothing to worry about.

  As the elevator headed for the penthouse, the butterflies in my stomach fluttered more briskly. I’d heard a lot of gossip about Prajay Nayak.

  Some of the younger women in the office seemed to get all starry-eyed when they talked about him. I wondered if he could be gay—like Paul. An Indian man unmarried at thirty-nine was a bit unusual.

  A large corner office on the top floor was set aside for him, but I had been told he hardly ever used it. I’d seen some pictures of him from newspaper clippings and company newsletters, but it was hard to see whether he was handsome or ugly or plain. He just looked taller than most of the men in group photos.

  He was considered a whiz, though. On that one point the verdict was unanimous. An engineering degree followed by a master’s in computer science, both with high honors, and both from MIT, said a lot about the guy’s intellect.

  The entire office seemed to be in awe of the man’s brains. Of course, the staff was eighty percent Indian-American, so getting a fair report on the man was a bit like asking the royal family how they felt about their reigning monarch. Apparently he was generous, too. He and Nish regularly rewarded their top salesmen with large bonuses.

  But the few men who didn’t care for him were unusually acerbic in their comments. That could be simple jealousy on the part of some guys in the same age group as Nayak—men who had ended up working for him instead of competing against him.

  And I didn’t know of a single businessman who hadn’t made a few enemies along the path to success.

  It was only natural for a woman like me, who weighed not an ounce over eighty-five pounds in my heaviest wool suit, to feel a bit anxious about meeting a big and powerful man. But I was ready. In fact, I told myself, I was looking forward to the meeting.

  The elevator doors opened. I forged ahead, my thoughts entirely occupied with what I was going to say in the meeting and how I would handle tough questions.

  In the next instant I collided with something that could have been the front end of a truck. Before I knew what hit me, my feet slid out from under me.

  Chapter 3

  I went down with a sickening thud. The breath left my lungs for a second. Agony ripped through my foot. “Ow!” I knew for sure that I’d broken it.

  God knows how long I lay there. It felt like a lifetime, while I heard shocked gasps and people talking all at once, footsteps hurrying from various directions, making the floor beneath me vibrate. Someone said something about the police ... ambulance. . . doctor. I was too stunned to pay close attention.

  I heard a deep, male voice yell, “Can someone call nine-one-one?”

  A female voice answered. “I called Dr. Murjani’s office on the first floor. The doctor’s on his way right now.”

  “Good thinking,” said the male voice.

  Suddenly a man’s face appeared above mine. The darkest, most penetrating eyes I’d ever seen peered down at me. His nose was huge, dense eyebrows drawn in a V right above it. The expression looked almost ferocious.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Shenoy,” the man said. It was the same deep voice I’d heard a moment ago. “Are you all right?”

  I wasn’t all right, but I blinked at the stranger, the pain and shock rendering me speechless.

  “It was all my fault,” he said.

  “It wasn’t all your fault, Prajay,” said Paul’s voice from somewhere nearby. “Meena kept marching forward without looking.”

  Thanks a lot for the support, Paul. I grimaced, trying not to dwell on the pain radiating from my foot. So this was Prajay Nayak, the guy I was supposed to meet in a formal conference room, with a professional handshake.

  I met him all right. In a collision.

  “No, it is mostly my fault,” insisted Nayak. “I was rushing down the hall, and the elevator opened suddenly. I couldn’t stop in time.”

  I was afraid to move my head, but I could see a bunch of people gathered around me. I knew my legs were completely exposed—nearly all the way to my crotch. My position was only a notch above lying on an examination table at the gynecologist’s office—with my feet in stirrups.

  Tears began to sting my eyes, and my lips started quivering. I bit my lower lip, but I couldn’t stop it from trembling. The pain in my foot was turning to agony, and the humiliation of falling on my behind in front of the CEO and every other executive and a couple dozen others was even worse. I wished I’d pass out so I wouldn’t have to see and know what was happening to me.

  The elevator doors behind my head whooshed open, and a man demanded, “Where’s the patient?”

  The doctor had arrived. Some in my riveted audience moved aside to make way for him. I’d seen Dr. Murjani in passing, since his office was located in the building. Nayak’s face was replaced by the doctor’s familiar, middle-aged one with its cocoa-brown skin, gold-rimmed glasses, and thinning gray hair.

  He squatted beside me and placed a bag on the floor. “So, young lady, you fell on the floor?”

  “Uh-huh,” I whispered. Wasn’t that as obvious as the mole on his cheek? Why else would anyone in his or her right mind be sprawled over the floor of an office hallway?

  “Can you count my fingers?” he asked, holding up three digits. When I answered correctly, he asked me my full name, which I managed to mumble. Then he inquired if I had blurred vision or a headache. When I said no to both he pulled out a penlight from his bag and gazed closely into my eyes.

  He nodded in satisfaction. “You don’t seem to have a concussion. Good thing this is a heavily carpeted floor.”

  Good thing, I reflected with an inward groan. I could have been lying there with a fractured skull if it weren’t for the lush, foot-sinker carpet.

  “I want you to stay very still while I feel your neck, okay?” said the doctor.

  I sniffled in response. My nose was starting to run, and the tears were sliding down my temples and onto the carpet. The onlookers had closed in again.

  He inserted his fingers under the nape of my neck and
moved them around. “Any pain in the back or neck?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He moved my head to one side while he felt my shoulders and arms. With my head turned I could see a bunch of familiar people staring at me with genuine concern on their faces. “Now, where exactly does it hurt?” asked the doctor.

  “M-my foot ... right foot,” I mumbled. “Can I have a tissue please?”

  The doctor stuck his hand in his bag and pulled out a tissue, then dabbed my eyes and nose. “Stay still. I don’t want you to move yet.” Then his exploring fingers traveled down my thigh and right leg, sending a fresh wave of pain through me as he reached below the calf.

  “Ouch!” I cried. “That hurts.”

  “Okay, okay, I see what the problem is,” he said. “I’m going to examine your foot. It might hurt a little more, but I have to do it, all right?”

  “Ow!” He wasn’t kidding about the pain.

  “Easy, young lady. Nothing’s broken. It’s just a bad sprain.”

  If this was what a sprain felt like, I wondered how a bona fide fracture would feel.

  “We’ll need to move her to a couch or something,” ordered Dr. Murjani. “Somebody get me a couple of plastic bags filled with ice.”

  “I have a couch in my office,” offered Prajay Nayak.

  “Good,” said the doctor. “I’ll need help moving her there.”

  “I can carry her, Doctor. Is that all right?”

  “Yah, sure. Go ahead.”

  The fierce face came back to hover over me once again. I felt huge, sturdy arms lifting me up ... up. In the meantime my injured foot was dangling in the air and causing me horrible anguish. I groaned.

  “Sorry.” His face was only inches from mine now and looked contrite.

  Someone lifted my foot and held it elevated, easing the pain a little. I was traveling high in the air, my eyes only a couple of feet below the ceiling while I was carried in a pair of arms that felt surprisingly safe to be in. They held me like I was a cloud. My head rested on a shoulder wide as a football field, and the fabric against my cheek was soft and fragrant with a manly scent.