Hi. Marry Me

by Kimberley Taylor

  “Thanks, man,” said Tony. “Okay. So—here it is: As—for legal reasons—we haven’t been able to get anyone to help out with providing a successful example for the app, a testimony we can tout on the website—I thought that I’d step up.”

  There was a silence in the room. And then:

  “You’d step up? You’d just—get married?”

  “That’s the service we’re promising to our clients.”

  “You’d be willing to do that, Tony?”

  “I have confidence in my work, and in the work of my team,” said Tony. “I think that I should stand behind that. And, hey, I’m single. I spend most of my time working on LoveMatches. How else is it going to happen?” He laughed weakly.

  The rest of the room slowly began to thaw.

  “Well, if you’re in, Tony, then I think you should do it,” said one of the members of the board.

  Danny grinned. “Do you have anything else you’d like to accomplish at this meeting?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” said Tony. He pulled open his laptop and typed in a line of code, then pressed Enter. “LoveMatches 2.0 is up and running. And—and, I just put myself in there as one of the first men on the site,” he said, typing furiously. He looked up and grinned. “Within twenty-four hours, I should be matched with my algorithmically perfect woman.”

  “Cheers to you, then, Tony,” cried Danny. “Here’s to the man of the hour, everyone! Dibs on being the best man at your wedding.”

  “I’ll let you know once we’ve set a date,” said Tony, drily.

  *****

  Diana woke up and winced. She'd reached that certain age where she no longer rose from her bed an ethereal picture of non-wrinkled youth. Now she peeled herself from her sheets, regretting every decision she had made in her life to bring her to that point.

  Case in point, Diana thought. Her pillowcase was streaked with eyeshadow, mascara, and blush. Diana rolled her eyes and slumped to the other side of the bed before forcing herself to get up, strip the sheets, and throw them in the laundry. She then scrubbed her face raw. She may as well have been inflicting punishment upon herself for sleeping in her makeup, Diana thought wryly as she touched her sensitive skin as it was drying. She had to learn to be nicer to herself.

  The more sardonic side of her brain laughed at this. Right, it said. Let’s put this on your to-do list. You know. After the 323 items that are already on it for you to get done. Today.

  Diana groaned and set about getting herself some breakfast. Her cupboards were bare. Yet another weekend had passed in which she'd failed to do much of anything adult with her life beyond partying with her friends and spending money which she didn't have. Would it have been too much for her to go grocery shopping, she wondered, rebuking her past self as she turned to stare into an empty refrigerator.

  At least it wasn’t Monday morning. It was midway through Sunday. She had hours before she had to do anything remotely responsible.

  Diana took a bag of frozen tater tots out of the freezer. She opened them, stuck them in the oven, and turned it on. There. That was something, she thought. I just cooked something.

  Even her sleepy brain couldn’t really say that without putting quotation marks around the word ‘cooked’.

  Diana yawned, went back to her bedroom to pull on a sweatshirt, and then came back out to brew coffee. Once that was complete and three sips had restored some semblance of her more responsible self, Diana thought about her day. Here she was gifted with eight or so fully productive hours with which she could make anything happen. She could write a book. She could cook all of her meals for the entire week. She could work out—get that bikini bod she notably did not think she currently had. She could do all of her laundry—you know, make sure that her bed had sheets on it by the time she was going to go back to bed.

  She slumped on the couch, pulled out her phone, and found that she had a notification from LoveMatches 2.0.

  We’ve found your man. Click to see more.

  Chapter 2

  Tony Miran was waiting by his phone.

  This was not an activity he routinely enjoyed. Of course, he was not particularly enjoying it now.

  Danny—what a guy—had spent the entire rest of the launch day sending Tony snarky texts. Most of these consisted of links to research and documentaries about arranged marriages and how they were typically quite successful. However, Tony was unsure whether his friend was honestly trying to be helpful or if Danny was just trying to accelerate his own status as best man. Danny had never been a best man before.

  Tony would have said that it was rather unfair of Danny to be so excited for an upcoming wedding that Tony had not yet decided what he felt about yet, but Tony had to admit: he had dug his own grave.

  Although, on second thought, that possibly wasn’t the metaphor he wanted to go with. He knew that the app would set him up with a lovely girl. There was all the math in the world to prove it. Tony was very confident in the design of his application and the algorithm he'd cooked up.

  He just hadn’t planned on being the first one to prove it.

  And not just prove it—but be the face of it. Whichever girl whose name the computer would spit out—any minute now, any minute now!—would have to agree to not only be his wife, but be the focus of an ad campaign. People would ridicule them. Psychologists would ask to examine them. They would be on talk shows. People would be sure they were doing it for the wrong reasons—which meant that he and his future wife would have to work together to prove that they were really in love, for the sake of his business. For everything he'd built.

  And also…for their own happiness.

  His wife, Tony thought. He shivered. He was about to get married.

  If the girl said yes. It’d be understandable if she didn’t. But that would make him and everything he'd built look awful. He’d have to be very persuasive. He couldn’t bribe her—LoveMatches’ lawyers would have a field day. No, he’d just have to lay out the logic, and hope that she was the type of girl who liked extremely well laid out PowerPoint presentations.

  She’d signed up for the service, anyhow, whoever it was. That was a start.

  Tony opened up his laptop and clicked into his personal profile again. Still thinking, the cheerful text said. As he was watching it, the text changed to Almost There.

  Tony swallowed hard. He'd originally typed that text. He'd set up the programming so that when a match had arrived, that was the text that appeared on the soon-to-be-affianced couples’ profiles, alerting everyone that they had fifteen minutes to go.

  Fifteen minutes.

  In fifteen minutes he would know the name of his wife.

  Tony paced the confines of his small office. He vowed to get back at Danny. He was sure he’d be happy—he’d find a way to be happy, somehow—about whatever he was about to get himself into; but right now the not-knowing part was simply awful.

  He checked his watch. Fourteen minutes to go.

  His stomach rumbled. He found that he was starving. He whipped his coat over his shoulder and scooted out the front door. He’d get himself a bagel or something. That would help him figure out how he was feeling.

  *****

  There had been a bug, or something. There must have been. Diana had followed the prompts her phone had presented her with after it had notified her that they had found her perfect man. She was immensely skeptical of this, of course, but she figured that the unveiling of whatever man some computer had thought matched whatever she’d drunkenly put on her profile the night prior felt like a potentially hilarious thing to see. So she’d been disappointed when the app had spent ten seconds thinking about whether to show her her match, but then had come up with another push notification: Actually, a new man just joined LoveMatches, Inc, whom we think you’ll like even more. Stay tuned! At that point Diana had had a strong urge to simultaneously laugh and throw her phone across the room. She'd done neither.

  She was very hungry.

>   She didn’t feel like putting on real clothing, so she just stayed in her sweatsuit. She shrugged on a pair of Uggs, found her phone, keys, and wallet, and shlepped out the door. There was a bagel place downstairs. She was there so frequently that she never had to tell the person behind the counter what she wanted—they always knew. An everything bagel, toasted until it was almost burnt, with both butter and cream cheese. She would probably die of a heart attack. Or she’d eat a salad tomorrow and it’d balance out. She was young, she thought. She could afford to mess around with the probability. Plus, it was delicious.

  It was cold outside. Diana glared at the sky as she walked the twenty feet from her front door to the bagel shop. A man was going for the door at the same time. He was rubbing his hands together and blinking rapidly. He was walking so fast that Diana wondered if he was actually walking, or more just pacing, only in a straight line.

  They arrived at the door at the same second. The man held the door open for her. Diana grimaced as graciously as she could. Then, because she figured that she might as well pay a little bit of attention to karma, she turned back to him and smiled as he studied the menu. “You first,” she said. “I’ll be a minute.”

  Any minute here was a minute she didn’t have to spend in front of her computer upstairs, she thought. May as well make it last for ten minutes instead of seven.

  The man smiled and then proceeded to read every single item on the menu to himself three times in a row. Or, at least, this is what it felt like to Diana. Was he trying to waste time, she wondered. What was up with this guy?

  “Um. If it helps, their everything bagels are out of this world,” she offered, grinning at him.

  The man nodded. Diana suddenly wondered if she had anything in her teeth. Of course she’d have spinach or something in there, if she was trying to talk to a guy. It only figured. She stayed silent until—an eternity later—the man bought a multigrain bagel and walked away, apparently set on eating it dry. Diana’s face twisted. That sounded worse than anything. She walked up to the counter.

  “Hey, Diana,” said Ralph. He was one of the regular employees. Diana was one of the regulars. In a way, they had an easy friendship. Easy in that neither of them had to worry about it, and the two interactions they had nearly daily were simple and worry-free. He'd already toasted her bagel. Diana paid, grinned at Ralph, and trucked back up to her apartment. Slamming the door behind her, she unpaused the reality show she’d had running in the background all day and picked up a book to read while she chewed her bagel. She was all of three bites in when her phone pinged her.

  Sorry about the delay, the push notification read. We’ve got your man. Love’s as easy as 1-2-3; so, count down with us as you say hello to your future. 3-2-1….

  *****

  The fifteen minutes were up. Tony tossed his uneaten multigrain bagel to the side and grabbed his phone, diving onto the couch, clutching the slim glass rectangle in front of him. So close, he thought. So close.

  Hey, there, hot stuff, beeped a notification on his phone. Tony stared at it, and the exhilaration and anticipation forced a laugh from him. He’d forgotten that he’d programmed the thing to say that. It was probably more appropriate for—well—was it more appropriate for woman? As a guy reading that, he felt a little weird. He’d have to go into the build and update that for the next version. He refocused and read the tiny words on his screen.

  Your future wife is waiting just on the other side of this phone. We here at LoveMatches are so excited for the love that awaits you, and we cannot wait to hear all about it! Feel free to share video of your successful proposal—definitely tag us, and use the hashtag #LoveMatchesWinsAgain.

  This was surreal. He felt like he was congratulating himself—which, of course, in a way, he was. He impatiently swiped through. A small ticking circle appeared on the screen, and then a picture of a woman popped up.

  Tony brought his phone so close to his face that he bumped his nose into the glass.

  Diana Rohr, the profile said. Teacher. Twenty seven.

  He examined the picture. She was a beautiful black woman with her hair piled all on top of her head in a messy bun. She was smiling, wearing black glasses, and holding a flute of champagne. She looked a little tired.

  Tony found himself wondering if she was tired of the dating scene, too. He refocused. The screen was spewing more words at him.

  Congratulations, Tony! A framed shot of their two account pictures, superimposed onto the cartoon bodies of a bride and groom, wafted into view. Go get her! Pick up a ring and flowers on your way home from work. Your bride awaits. And then, because Diana had authorized it, a phone number appeared on the screen.

  He saw the numbers. He read them. Twice.

  It was a shock in every possible way. Not the numbers themselves. Merely the fact that this was happening—he didn’t know what to do or how to react.

  This woman.

  He was going to marry this woman.

  Okay. He had to prep. He had to figure out what he was going to do, what he was going to say.

  He had to figure out how to convince this woman to marry him—he, who was a complete stranger.

  He laughed. Tony didn’t even know if this woman was checking her version of the app. She might have set up a profile and then completely forgotten about it. She might have thought it was a scam.

  Well, he wasn’t going to help with that perception, he supposed. He was planning on calling her up and asking her to marry him. Nigerian princes were often more believable.

  Breathe, Tony, breathe. He spoke to himself as he would a friend undergoing a panic attack, mostly because he was in fact undergoing a panic attack. He sank, shakily, onto his leather couch. He pulled up his phone, dialed in a number, and put the phone to his ear—and his other hand covering his face.

  “Hello?”

  “Danny,” said Tony. “Danny—I got matched.”

  “Whoa, man,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “That was quick.”

  “I programmed it so that it would be,” Tony said, wryly. “So, I’ve gotta figure out how to get this girl to marry me.”

  “Well, she agreed to the terms and conditions of using the app.”

  “Which no-one actually ever reads, Danny, come on.”

  “Point.” Danny paused. “Hey, I’m free now. Want me to come over and help you process? Plan the proposal? Pout?”

  “Whatever, man, I know you just want to see the girl’s face.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  Tony pulled up Diana’s photo. “I mean, she’s beautiful, but that’s not the point.”

  “Isn’t it, though? Give me five. What’s her name?”

  Tony paused. “Diana,” he said, thoughtfully.

  “Interesting,” said Danny. “Well, I’m on my way.”

  “See you in a bit.”

  Tony pocketed his phone and looked up at the ceiling. Proposal, he thought. What a big word, packed into those eight small letters.

  *****

  Diana looked with not a little amusement at the small chiron gracing her phone’s screen.

  Tony Miran, Entrepreneur, it said. She squinted at the tiny picture of the man whom the app had just told her was her perfect match. He had high, thin eyebrows, an overlarge nose, and a mouth which looked like he was terrible at karaoke but persisted in gracing the stage anyway. None of these features individually would have sounded like they were remotely attractive; and this is accurate, for Tony was not.

  “Entrepreneur,” Diana said. “Isn’t everyone, though, these days?”

  The man looked vaguely familiar, but Diana couldn't place him in any of the normal buckets into which she could usually sorted people from her routine life.

  She swiped through the app.

  “He enjoys chess? Of course he does,” said Diana. “Looking for a woman…well, good…Netflix, wine, and cheese, okay…”

  She wasn’t feeling horribly about Tony Miran, b
ut she wasn’t feeling amazing about him either. Very little of what she was reading or seeing was enticing her to figure out how she could contact this man.

  “I’m also failing to see precisely why their state of the art algorithm, or whatever it is, is matching us up,” said Diana, re-reading his bio closely. “It’s probably just random.”

  She was about to click out of the app when she figured—why not—she’d see if there was a way to contact him, just to say hello. It was the polite thing to do. They could share a laugh about the fact that neither of them liked canoeing, or something. She’d liked people with uglier noses, anyway.

  But when she tapped around Tony’s bio and through the application itself, she found no obvious method for getting in contact with her proffered match. On Tony’s profile, where she would have thought there should have been some sort of direct message button, there was just a greyed-out box congratulating Diana on her quickly-found LoveMatch, along with a note that said that Tony would be in contact soon.

  “Oh, so it’s one of those apps,” Diana said, rolling her eyes. “One of those where the man has to get into contact first. Sure. Of course.”

  She tossed her phone on the bed next to her. She never expected to hear from Tony Miran. She looked around her small room and thought that she might go out and get some curry to eat while she either graded homework or watched a back season of America’s Next Top Model. Either way, a curry would get her out of the house, and that would do her some good. She found shoes and socks and tripped out of the apartment.

  *****

  Later that evening, Danny and Tony were sprawled on the couch at Tony’s place, sort of watching football—mostly handing Tony’s phone back and forth as they strategized how Tony should reach out to Diana.

  “I mean, you’ve gotta come on strong,” said Danny. “There’s really no way around it. You can’t be like, let’s go slow, oh, and here’s an engagement ring.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve got to go get one of those, haven’t I.”

  “If you’re coming on strong, you should. So. Yes.”

  Tony slid down into his chair and winced.