Road to Matchmaker_Matchmaker Mysteries Series Prequel

by Elise Sax

  After finally getting clean, I turned off the water. But before I could open the shower curtain, a large hand reached in and grabbed me hard. I struggled against the grip, but I wasn’t strong enough.

  I screamed.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nobody came to save me, which was fine because it turned out that it was only Nat Pendleton who was grabbing me in the shower. I had gone out with him two times, and I didn’t want a third date. I had gone through bad men like they were peanut M&Ms. I was a loser magnet. Unfortunately, I had gone out with Nat when I was having a particularly horny moment, so he had already seen me naked.

  But I didn’t want him to see me naked again. And here he was, standing in my bathroom with the shower curtain pushed aside, one of his hands clutching my arm, and his other hand holding a bouquet of birthday balloons.

  He smiled wide. His teeth were blindingly white. Twice as white as his eyeballs. I instantly regretted sleeping with him, even more than I regretted sleeping with him right after I slept with him. There was no attraction to him. None. I was so unattracted to him, that I didn’t even cover up my nudity when he surprised me in the bathroom.

  “Just me. Just me,” he said, still smiling. “No need to scream.”

  I stopped screaming. “Wha… Huh?” I said.

  “Surprise! Happy birthday, baby.”

  Ugh. Blech. I hated being called “baby.” Especially by Nat.

  “How did you know it was my birthday?”

  “I Googled you, of course. I know everything about you.”

  I shuddered and wrapped a towel around my nakedness. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of Nat cyberstalking me or breaking into my apartment. I was about to tell him off, pop his balloons, and kick him out on his ass.

  “I’ve come to whisk you away for your birthday dinner,” he continued.

  My stomach growled, betraying me. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since my bowl of Paleo muesli. I didn’t want to eat with Nat, but I was now unemployed, it was my birthday, and a free meal was a free meal.

  “Okay. Get out, and I’ll get dressed,” I said without a hint of excitement in my voice. Nat kissed my closed lips and skipped out of the bathroom.

  I got dressed in jeans and a sweater and tied back my wet hair. I skipped the makeup and the perfume because I didn’t want to encourage him.

  “All righty,” I said, picking up my purse. “I’m ready.”

  “You look nice,” he said. I guessed I wasn’t the only horny person in Los Angeles. Nat looked like he wanted to get down to business, but he had the good graces to feed me first. “You’ll love where we’re going to eat.”

  He wanted to surprise me, but it didn’t take long for me to find out where we were going. It turned out that Nat had reserved a corner table downstairs in the Italian restaurant under my apartment. Jordan was our waiter.

  “Back for that fettuccini with white truffles?” Jordan asked.

  “Not this time, Jordan. I’m sorry. I’ll have a salad.” The biggest struggle in being healthy and maintaining my health was good, old-fashioned peer pressure. It was like a global conspiracy to make me fat. But no way was I going to gain weight. I was never going to bow to the pressure to eat crap. I was in perfect shape, and I wasn’t going to go off track. Besides, I couldn’t afford new clothes.

  Nat ordered lasagna, making Jordan’s face drop. But half of the restaurant was enjoying his creation. Even though Jordan was a waiter, his food was a big hit. I wondered why he wanted to be a CPA when he had obvious talents as a cook. I didn’t have talents as a cook. I had worked in a Cheesecake Factory kitchen for two hours, so I knew. It didn’t end well. Cops were called.

  Jordan left to put in our order, and Nat leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his fingers interlaced with his chin resting on them. He had hair growing out of his left nostril, and I wondered why I had slept with him. He wasn’t the first man with hair sticking out of his nose that I had hit the sheets with, but I hoped to hell he was the last. I had been on a bad run with bad men for the past five years or so, and I was getting tired of them. My vagina was going to rebel at any moment. It was probably going to fall out and run for the hills if it saw one more man like Nat.

  Actually, that would solve a lot of problems. Men problems. Goodbye, vagina. It was nice knowing you. You did everything you were supposed to, and I let you down with loser men and plain soap instead of fancy vaginal wash.

  With all of my deep thoughts about my vagina, I hadn’t realized that Nat had been talking to me. “Huh?” I asked.

  “Later, after our dinner. Not leather restraints. Just silk scarves. You can trust me. We can give you a safe word. Not, ‘ouch.’ You’ll be saying that a lot. How about, ‘hot stuff’?”

  My eyes teared, and I realized that I wasn’t blinking.

  “Uh…” I said. “what did you say?”

  “S and M. Fifty Shades action. Bondage. Time to move this thing we got up a few notches. Raise the roof. Increase the decibels. Doesn’t that sound good? I knew from the first moment I saw you that you would submit to me. Total submission. Like a golden retriever.”

  He moved his eyebrows up and down. Ironically, Jordan arrived with the food just then, at the very moment when I had completely lost my appetite.

  “Here you go. Would you like anything else?” Jordan asked. “Fresh ground pepper? Parmesan?”

  I wanted to leave, to return to my apartment, watch TV, and fall asleep. I wanted to knee Nat in the balls and wash my vagina out with bleach. Blech. I was done with men. Men and me didn’t mix.

  I was about to ask Jordan to give me a box for my salad to go and to tell Nat goodbye, when a very thin woman walked into the restaurant and stopped near our table. She was all angles and pointy parts, her cheeks sticking out like they were trying to escape her severe face. Where I wasn’t wearing any makeup, she had painted her face with a large brush. Her lips had a purple outline and bright red interior, and her eyelids were black, rimmed with long, fake eyelashes. Keeping with the theme, her shoes were pointy and so was her purse. She was wearing a tight suit with a blue miniskirt.

  For a panic-filled moment, I thought that Nat had invited her to join us in his planned night of kinky debauchery, but she ignored us completely. Instead, she pointed her pointy nose right at our waiter, Jordan. She hooked her pointy finger at him, and he walked to her.

  “Don’t forget you have to see your advisor tomorrow and talk to him about your classes. I’m not sure accounting 206 is what you should do right now,” she told Jordan.

  He was like a deer caught in the headlights, and I got the impression that it was a regular thing for him. Poor deer. Even though he was a head taller than the pointy woman, he seemed to shrink down and look up at her in fear. “Yes, dear,” he said.

  “Don’t work late. Remember to keep the eye on the prize. CPA. That’s your goal.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “This is not real, you know. You can’t hang a life on pasta.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Remember that we’re going to buy a house in Bel Air in two years. Two years, Jordan.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “A house in Bel Air is a lot of pasta. You realize that, right?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “On second thought, I wouldn’t mind some Parmesan,” Nat called, interrupting Jordan’s conversation.

  Jordan blinked and did a little hop, obviously distressed that he had let a diner down. “Right away,” he said.

  While he jogged to the kitchen, the pointy woman crossed her arms in front of her and stared down at our plates. I took a self-conscious bite of my salad, keeping one eye on the pointy woman. The salad was delicious, but it was hard to focus on it when I had Nat and the pointy woman staring at me. Nat, in particular, was disconcerting. He kept winking at me, and smiling with half of his mouth, and I could practically see the images of my naked body in bondage playing in his brain like an old-fashioned porno playing in a dirty movie theater. Gros
s.

  Jordan returned and grated Parmesan onto Nat’s food. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  I felt a surge of protectiveness over Jordan, and I decided to butt in to defend him against a woman who wanted to chain him to a calculator for the rest of his life.

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Jordan, the whole restaurant is enjoying your truffle pasta. You must be very proud. You’re a natural talent. You’ll be a great chef someday.” I said the last bit while locking eyes with the pointy woman.

  Bully. She was a pointy, well-dressed bully. I hated bullies, probably because all forms of injustice got under my skin. Most people just tweeted about injustice, but I fumed and obsessed about injustice. I wanted a fair deal for every Tom, Dick, and Jordan.

  Poor Jordan wasn’t getting a fair deal. He had a gift for pasta, but he was being railroaded into doing math. I hated math.

  “Hey Jordan, I changed my mind,” I told him. “I would love some of your pasta.”

  His face brightened, but he shot a scared look at the woman. He swallowed visibly. “I’ll get you a plate,” he told me with a smile.

  This time, the pointy woman followed him to the kitchen. I could hear her harangue him about focusing on self-employment tax as they walked. Nat leaned forward again and took my hand. “So…” he started.

  I pulled my hand back. “I’m not going to have sex with you, Nat. Never again. No more naked.”

  “We could do it without getting naked,” he said, reasonably.

  He was right. We could do it without getting naked. Then, I wouldn’t have to touch him…ish.

  No. What the hell was I thinking? I was done with losers. I was done with men who made me want to clean my vagina out with Clorox after I slept with them. Done. Done. Done. I was going to be a nun.

  Oh! That was a great idea.

  “I’m going to be a nun,” I told Nat.

  “I thought you were Jewish.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, as if an answer would fall from the stucco. “It’s a new branch of nuns,” I said, finally. “It’s like regular nuns, but light on Jesus and heavy on guilt.”

  “I like nuns,” he said, but thankfully, he didn’t sound entirely certain. “Well,” he said, looking down at his food.

  Jordan returned with the pasta that I didn’t really want, and the pointy woman sat at the bar. I had hoped she would leave so I didn’t have to eat the pasta, but now I would have to eat every last drop and gain five pounds.

  Jordan hovered over me while I took the first bite. “Holy shit, that’s the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth,” I moaned.

  Nat must have taken that as an insult to him because he muttered under his breath, “Just gets better and better.”

  We ate in complete silence. Nat had given up, thank goodness. He didn’t even look at my boobs again, even though they looked fabulous in the sweater I was wearing. I ate every drop of Jordan’s pasta. It was delicious. I could feel the cellulite breaking out on my ass as I chewed, but a little voice deep inside me told me that it was worth it. Besides, I was now a nun, so who cared about a little cellulite?

  After our pasta, Jordan suggested dessert, but Nat refused, even though it was my birthday, which didn’t upset me because I had already eaten enough carbs for the next week. But then there was the little issue of the bill.

  “I think we should split this,” he said.

  Since I had twenty-five dollars to my name, he would’ve had to split the bill into tiny little pieces. “This is my birthday dinner. You invited me.”

  “Listen, Gladie. I would never have invited you to dinner if I knew you were going to become a nun.”

  He had a point. “What’s your point? You only buy dinner for women if you know you’re going to get some afterword?”

  “Duh! I could’ve taken out at least five other women, you know. Or I could’ve sat home, eating takeout and watching the basketball game on TV.”

  “So you treat women like whores.”

  “I don’t buy whores dinner.”

  We went back-and-forth for a while, but in the end, I won, because you can’t get blood out of a stone or $22.50 from a woman who couldn’t hold down a cement truck cleaning job. Nat tipped Jordan ten percent and stormed out of the restaurant. I would have felt embarrassed, but the ball of pasta digesting in my stomach had a tranquilizing effect on me that was kind of like a good buzz.

  I stood up. It was time to go back upstairs and watch Murder She Wrote reruns, but I liked the ambiance in the small restaurant. People were happy, eating their carbs, and if anyone’s dates was suggesting bondage as a post-meal activity, nobody seemed upset by it. The servers seemed pretty happy, too, all except for Jordan who was being told off by his girlfriend at the bar.

  It dawned on me that if I worked there, I would have a four-second commute. And probably a free meal every day. My brain whirred into action. I went to the bar and leaned against it, as if I was cool and wasn’t about to beg for a job.

  “Hey, Jordan,” I said, smiling professionally. “Excuse me,” I added to the pointy lady because I had interrupted her monologue about the importance of summer school so that Jordan would get his CPA license faster. “I was wondering if there were any job openings here, and if you could put a good word in for me.”

  “Sure, I would put a good word in for you,” he said. “But we just hired someone, so there’s no openings.” My face must have dropped because Jordan leaned forward. “But I’ll drop your name the first time there’s an opening.”

  “If you’re still here, Jordan,” the pointy woman said. “Jordan’s going to be a CPA,” she told me.

  “Yes, dear,” Jordan said, probably out of habit.

  I couldn’t stand the pointy woman. She was a bully, and she was turning Jordan into a miniature person. I was about to let her have it. It was the only way to deal with bullies. Be tough with them and take them down to size. I was ready to put her in her place and prevent her from ever making Jordan say, “yes, dear,” again.

  “If you’re looking for a job, I might know of one for you,” the pointy woman told me.

  Oh. Perhaps I had been hasty in my judgment of her. She didn’t seem so bad.

  “Really?”

  She took her phone out of her purse and tapped it. “I know someone with a used bookstore, and she’s looking for someone to do inventory. Do you like books?”

  I didn’t not like books. I wasn’t a big reader, but a used bookstore sounded like heaven after my day of cement trucks. “I love books,” I gushed at my newfound hero. “I like nothing more than reading.”

  Yes, I was a liar. Yes, I was a hypocrite. Yes, I was morally bankrupt, sucking up to the pointy woman because she held the promise of a job inventorying books. The truth was that I hadn’t read a book since I had stumbled on my mother’s copy of The Valley of the Dolls when I was fourteen. Sure, I had read a Grisham or two, but in school, I was strictly Cliff Notes all the way. All the way until I dropped out.

  “Give me your name,” she commanded.

  “Gladie Burger.”

  “What kind of name is that? Sounds made up.”

  “Uh…”

  But she didn’t wait for an answer. “Okay. I texted Francine. Be there at ten tomorrow morning. Corner of Black and Rose Avenues. Got it?”

  No. I had no idea where that was, but I would find it. “Yes. Thank you so much.”

  Just like that, I had a new job. It was like a miracle, and a pointy woman with a fetish for accountants was my Moses. Go figure.

  No matter how many jobs I got, I was always imbued with a sense of optimism whenever I got hired. It was a fresh start. The possibilities were endless. Each job could lead to wonderful things, like my soulmate of work. A lifetime of fulfillment and joy. It could have happened. It was possible. Julia Child had seemed happy with her job. Ditto Wyatt Earp. There were people who had jobs that they called “callings,” and they did them for their whole lives, and they couldn’t wait to get to work every morning. So, here
I was again, fantasizing that doing inventory in a used bookstore was my calling.

  I was excited.

  I was so pleased about that job that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep yet. So, instead of climbing the stairs to my apartment, I walked through the restaurant and outside to breathe in the night air. The pointy woman was leaving at the same time, and Jordan walked her out. I said, thank you to her, again, almost calling her pointy woman because I had never gotten her real name.

  Jordan kissed her goodbye with a peck on her closed mouth. “Don’t stay late,” she commanded as she left.

  “Yes, dear,” he told her back as she walked away.

  Instead of fresh, night air, there was a cloud of cigarette smoke, and it was coming from one cigarette. I recognized the outline of Nat in the shadows, and a small light by his face when he took a drag.

  “Coming back to beg me for a second chance?” Nat sneered at me. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his shoe.

  I froze and didn’t say a word. I hated conflict of any kind. I didn’t want to fight with Nat. I wanted to run inside and hide in my apartment, but Jordan was behind me, and I didn’t want to look like a chicken, either.

  “No second chances, baby,” Nat said, his voice rising an octave. He was being extremely aggressive, but he was backing up as he did it. “There’s plenty of beauties lining up for a piece of Nat. Believe you me!” The street light flickered, which gave the illusion that he was moving backward without actually walking. It also made it seem like the dog from before appeared as if by magic. The dog had probably come out to see what the yelling was about. Nat continued to back up. “You ate two entrees, and what do I get? Nothing. Well, you get nothing, too, sweet cheeks. And you’re going to be begging me later. You bitch.”

  “Hey, now,” Jordan said raising his hand up, like he was hailing a taxi. “No need for that kind of talk. There’s a lady here. Uh oh. Mister, you should probably stop backing up.”

  “I’m not scared of you,” Nat spat at Jordan.

  But he should have listened to him because Jordan was right. Nat should have stopped backing up, but he was so focused on his lack of nookie that he didn’t realize he was heading for the electric fencing that kept the dog in place. I didn’t realize it either until he suddenly stopped talking, his body went stiff, and he shouted, “I’m hot!” and collapsed dead away.