“You’re absolutely right Fleur.” She picked up a silver hairbrush. “I don’t know why I’m lying around when Cupid promised me he’d take care of everything. He’s right; I’ve got to learn to trust him instead of checking up on him all the time like he’s still a little boy. Besides,” Venus pressed the button beneath her bedside table that raised the blackout blinds to reveal a brilliant sunny day, “I should indulge a bit. It’s been a rough season.”
Fleur nodded.
“All right, let me guess. Renaldo thinks I should spend a bit of time floating around the Dead Sea.”
“But of course. It’s excellent for the circulation.”
“Then please draw me a citrus infused bath, Fleur. And tell me, what does one wear to go below sea level at this time of year?”
Chapter Thirteen
“I must have a virus attacking my e-mail again; I’ve gotten twelve messages from people canceling their accounts with Happily Ever After By Amelia.”
Amelia was hunched over the computer in the corner. She was still wearing the raincoat she’d purchased in the boys’ department at the Burberry outlet in the desert that Stella had insisted they visit on their way home from Palm Springs. It was one of those rare rainy days in L.A., when mudslides threatened the hilltops that had been denuded in last fall’s forest fires and there was the sense that anything could happen. A boulder had even tumbled onto the Hollywood Freeway earlier in the morning. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it had started the day off on a very odd foot.
“Maybe I can help you,” Jennie said, shaking the rainwater from her hair.
“I hope so. I noticed this problem late last night, when the storm system rolled in. I figured it was just bad reception, but now I’m not so sure.”
Jennie dragged a café chair over to Amelia’s desk and looked at the inbox. It was true; there were a dozen cancellation notices. She frowned. “You know better than me that this can’t be the result of a computer error.”
Amelia looked at her, wide-eyed. “It has to be some kind of computer glitch. I mean come on. Why would twelve people cancel on us at the same time?”
“Did you check who they’re from?”
“Not yet. I was too busy trying to detect a virus.”
Although all clients used their real names when they filled out their personality profiles the vast majority of men and women preferred to communicate with Happily Ever After By Amelia via private e-mail accounts that their assistants or roommates could not access.
Amelia was sensitive to the stigma that employing a matchmaker held for many of her clients. Because she understood that speaking about one’s latest cosmetic surgery therapy session, divorce, or even stint in rehab was much more socially acceptable than admitting to an inability to attract the perfect mate, she suggested that her clients create these secondary e-mail accounts. The result was that she had no idea who she was communicating with unless she had her cross-referenced client list in front of her.
“Maybe you should check the list, just to be sure there’s not some common thread among these posters.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Amelia opened a new document. “Oh no. Oh no!”
“What’s wrong?”
Amelia looked up. “It’s Randi. All of the cancellations are from members of her production team. I don’t understand this. There’s nothing here from her. Not a word of explanation. Guess that’s what I get for trying to cater to her. I should’ve known better.”
Amelia grabbed her purse and peered at her cell phone. "Nothing. Not a missed call or a message or even just a text.”
“This calls for double reinforcements. I’m thinking chocolate and glazed donuts, along with lattes. I’ll be back in ten and we can start figuring out what to do about this.”
Although Amelia and Jennie sent out dozens of e-mails and left multiple messages on the answering machines of each woman and the one man who had cancelled their contracts with Happily Ever After By Amelia, they received no responses from any of their former clients. Amelia and Jennie spent the day trying to distract themselves, cleaning up old files and sending out a flurry of e-mails to ensure that current clients remained satisfied. Finally, they turned to cleaning up the back room.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this sideboard so empty. I can’t believe we don’t have any new offerings. It’s positively depressing,” Jennie said.
Amelia crossed her arms and studied the pine piece. “You’re right. I guess I just didn’t notice since so much of this stuff is nonperishable. Geez, I really have been distracted.”
“Why don’t you let me clean up here while you take a ride over to the studio and try to talk to Randi.”
“I can’t do that, Jen. You know I’ve promised all my clients I’d never break their anonymity.”
“We’re not lawyers or doctors. Or A.A. for that matter. But I know what you mean. People have that privacy expectation, like when they’re going to a therapist.” Jennie sank down to the floor and wrapped her feet over her thighs in her favorite stress-relieving yoga posture. After a few moments of contemplation, she exclaimed, “I’ve got it! You tell the receptionist you’re there to pitch to Randi, to see if she’ll consider including Happily Ever After By Amelia as a backdrop in her next L.A. based project.”
“Okay. That’ll work. I’m gone.”
Jennie was still sifting through paperwork in the back room, the window open so she could enjoy the sound and smell of the dripping rain, when Amelia stormed back into the shop.
“She’s off on some film shoot, and they refused to tell me where or give me any way to contact her since she’s not accepting my calls or texts or e-mails. And get this! Remember Melanie, that woman with the obsession with macramé and corn dogs who said she wouldn’t date any guy who didn’t know how to whittle wood? Well, she was the one who refused to help me! After the match I made for her. Can you imagine? Some people have no heart.”
Amelia sat down on the settee and buried her head in her hands. “Why is it,” she said, inhaling the fragrant wet air, “that it can’t just rain, it has to flood?”
****
Cupid’s date with Randi had made him more determined than ever to win Amelia over. He shuddered as he recalled some of the evening’s uglier moments.
Randi had refused to eat anything but steamed vegetables despite agreeing that they would meet at a steakhouse. As Cupid’s entrée was served, she’d launched into a graphic, loud anti-meat rant that ended only after the little girl at the next table began to cry. Randi had refused Cupid’s attempts to engage her in conversation, preferring to study herself in the reflection of the blade of her unused steak knife. When the evening was finally over, she’d thrust her plump plastic lips at him as though she was a sailor tossing out a life preserver.
Cupid scratched his chin with a silver pen. He was sitting at a sidewalk café on Third Street Promenade, studying all of the couples wandering around the shops and restaurants. He’d decided to make a study of mortal courtship rituals since he’d obviously done something terribly wrong on his date with Amelia. Why else would she have set him up with that odious woman?
“Top off your coffee?”
The waitress tucked a blonde curl behind her ear and smiled with those abnormally white teeth everyone in Los Angeles seemed to have. Cupid ran his tongue over his enamel, wondering if his teeth marked him as a foreigner.
When he looked up the waitress ran her tongue across her teeth and winked at him. She leaned further forward than necessary to reach for his coffee cup, giving him a view of the contents hidden beneath her skimpy blouse. Cupid felt the blood rush to his face.
He shook his head. “Just the check thanks.”
Although it meant leaving the waitress a fifty percent tip, Cupid hurried from the café rather than wait for his change and another encounter with the woman.
It was too bad Inuus hadn’t seen that exchange, he thought wryly. He frowned as he realized it had been a while since he’d seen his fri
end, which was highly unusual. Then again, Inuus was extremely thorough. He was probably double-checking that all of the arrows he’d shot on Cupid’s behalf had landed on their targets.
Cupid wandered up the pedestrian thoroughfare past a rap artist who performed handstands, a white dog wearing an orange ballet tutu as she sat in a baby stroller, and a juggler unable to keep his novelty sized bowling pins off the ground.
The air was cool and tasted faintly briny. He dug his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket. Quickly he ducked into a three-story bookstore full of people carrying cloth shopping bags heavy with fruits and vegetables from the farmer’s market, where groups of photographers waited to snap pictures of celebrity shoppers.
A man near the escalator was holding a large plaid covered book called “Engineering Know-How for the Stupid Set”. Beyond him stood an entire kiosk of “Stupid Set” books, including one entitled “Dating Dos and Don’ts for the Stupid Set”.
Cupid picked up the book and leafed through its table of contents. There were whole chapters dedicated to dating etiquette and mating rituals. He groaned. The book was over three hundred and fifty pages long. By the time he read it through, translating it into Italian in his head, Amelia would no doubt be married. Better to just learn by observation. That’s what he’d been doing since he arrived in California anyway.
He ambled down to the Santa Monica Pier and walked along its thick wooden planks, looking intently at the numerous couples, in search of a common denominator. After about twenty minutes he realized there was no such thing; there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why certain people were together. He looked out over the Pacific. All these years, he’d clearly underestimated his mother’s formidable matchmaking skills. And Amelia, being mortal, must be even more intelligent since she’d somehow unlocked the key to making perfect matches without having the powers of a goddess. He became even more concerned that she would never find him attractive.
Behind him a bell clanged and a man yelled out, “We have another winner!”
Cupid followed the noise to a block of booths offering various games of chance.
****
“Glad I caught you.” Justin pushed a curl behind his ear and smiled.
Jennie smiled back faintly. Much as she hated to admit it there was no escaping the fact that Justin was a handsome man, even in his worn black and red jacket. Jennie had grown up with parents who wholeheartedly embraced the self-help notions that had arisen in California in the 1970’s and led to a belief system that said people chose their destinies. When she was small and she heard about an earthquake or a sick child or a fatal fire, her mother and father assured her that she would never suffer such a fate unless she chose it for herself. As a result, although she wasn’t proud to admit it, Jennie had the tendency to blame people for their misfortunes. This meant that Amelia, with her forgiving nature, and her own family became virtually the only people able to tolerate Jennie’s company for a prolonged period of time.
“We haven’t seen you in a while.”
Justin ignored Jennie’s tepid tone. “I’ve been working, doing a bit of clean up for Esmeralda and some of her friends.”
Jennie nodded. “I’ve heard you’ve done that in the past.”
Justin smirked.
“I’ve always wondered what you think my ‘past’ is.”
Jennie blushed. “I don’t know. None of my business.”
“I think you might be really surprised at the lives some of us led before this,” Justin pointed at the street and the sidewalk, “Became our reality. Just something for you to think about.”
Jennie looked at the floor.
Justin continued, “I’m here because I wanted to warn Amelia, and you as well, that you need to be careful. I saw that guy back on the street again, the one with that bizarre story about the vengeful ex-client.”
“You know, when you first told us that, I pretty certain it was just some kind of crazy coincidence. Now, I just don’t know. I’m sure you won’t be surprised, because you know what a sweetheart Amelia is, but she’s got a bit of a history with Randi.”
Justin cocked his head. “Really?”
“Yeah. This isn’t the first time Randi was obsessive about getting her way with one of our clients. There was a guy she wanted to go out with a few months ago. She was sure he was right for her. She begged Amelia to fix her up. Before Amelia had the chance the guy took up with someone else.”
“I’d ask you why she keeps her on as a client, but I know how this town works. You can’t afford to alienate the powerbrokers.”
“Exactly,” Jennie replied.
Justin frowned. “Sounds like she could be your woman. Just be careful.”
Jennie looked at Justin. “Thanks.”
Justin grinned.
****
“I think our problem could be Randi,” Jennie said as she and Amelia sat at the little café table, eating vegetable tostadas.
“No. The timing’s wrong. And I know, based on our past interactions, that Randi’s not like that,” Amelia replied.
“Yeah, well a woman like her might have hit her limit. Think about it. What if she hired this guy the day she saw Colin sitting in the window and you refused to fix her up with him?”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would she become psychotic when she got what she wanted?”
“Got what she wanted?” Jennie snorted. “Hardly. She didn’t get Colin Cumin, did she?”
Chapter Fourteen
“This is Samantha Yolandez reporting live from the Angeles National Forest, where teams of research scientists from USC and UCLA have set up camp. These botanists, biologists, chemists and physicists will be trying to ascertain why the mating season for animals all across southern California has failed to commence.”
Amelia glanced over at her television screen. Samantha Yolandez, the KTLA news anchor, brushed a spot of dirt from the sleeve of her khaki safari jacket.
“I see you cleaning yourself off, Samantha. I assume you’re wearing ash that’s been in the air as a result of last fall’s fires?” The male news anchor asked.
“That’s right, John. It became airborne yesterday when we had those heavy wind gusts.”
“Any chance, Samantha, that all of these environmental changes are what’s behind the lack of baby animals this spring?”
“You’d think so, John, but apparently not. The natural world is used to our burn cycles here in southern California. As the people up on these slopes say, fire season is Mother Nature’s way of cleaning house. No, in the words of one of the research assistants up here,” Samantha arched her shoulder in the direction of a group of young men and women huddled over maps in the distance, “it’s like Mother Nature forgot to mark spring on her calendar this year.”
“Speaking of researchers, any comment from Dr. Gerard Coillard on the possible causes for this bizarre phenomenon?”
“We’ve got a field team trying to locate him but so far no luck. Word has it he’s either deep in the Amazon on a fact finding mission or cruising the Mexican Caribbean.”
Amelia looked up sharply at the mention of her father’s name and laughed. She’d been getting ready for work, towel drying her hair as she slid her narrow feet into a pair of walking boots. She’d been planning to visit her father after work today, and had considered offering to take him for a small hike since he was out of his wheelchair once again, but clearly she’d have to put that plan on hold. Gerard had obviously sequestered himself behind his high stucco walls. It was a habit of his that drove her crazy, this self-imposed exile whenever he needed time to think. He’d banished himself to his windowless study every night for a year after her mother had left, as though he could get her to return if only he could reason out the rationale for why she’d left.
“Not even eight o’clock and already this day is topsy-turvy.”
Amelia shook her hand playfully at the TV screen.
“You’ve made it a pancake day, Dad.”
****
High on the sugar rush she always got from eating a stack of silver dollar pancakes topped off with two scoops of whipped cream, Amelia made her way slowly down Hollywood Boulevard, stopping to watch a pantomime act that seemed to have real promise. She’d slept soundly the night before, as she always did whenever something was troubling her. The air smelled like cinnamon which reminded her she should use the exercise bike she’d purchased at that little shop next to that home fragrance boutique.
“Good morning.” Amelia called out with a smile as the pink and purple hearts banged against the glass door.
She crossed over to her armoire and pulled out her white lace sweater.
Matching Wits with Venus Page 10