Mismatched in Manhattan: the perfect feel-good romantic comedy for 2020

by Tash Skilton

  Leanne must see the panic in my face, because she tries to soften the blow. “It’s no secret that you’ve always been my best employee, Miles. You were great at what you did. Nobody has as many success stories as you. How many weddings have you been invited to? Three?”

  “Four,” I mumble. Always as an old friend of the groom because, of course, none of them could bear to tell their future wives that their relationship was built on what is—let’s be honest here—something of a lie.

  “That’s incredible,” Leanne says gently, before her voice takes on the firm but fair tone that made her a superstar creative director back in her agency days, when I was working as a copywriter under her. “But I can’t rely on what you did; I have to rely on what you do. I have to know I’m sending someone out there who’s going to listen to our clients’ wants and needs and work his hardest to get them to meet up with their perfect match.”

  “Right,” I say, not adding that what Leanne needs is someone who actually believes in such a thing as a perfect match. Once upon a time, that was me. But not anymore.

  “So this is what’s going to happen,” she says, and I’m expecting her to produce—if I’m lucky—a severance package from within her desk to hand to me. Instead, she takes out her iPad. “You have one more chance to make good here. One more client who’s going to need the old Miles to reappear and give him the real Tell It to My Heart Experience™.” Obviously, she doesn’t say the trademarked bit, but I can practically hear it in her voice. Another one of Clifford’s brilliantly expensive ideas. “So, pick one. Go ahead. There are three to choose from.”

  I reluctantly take the tablet from her, and flip through the familiar file format of our clients: a smiling photo and the answers from the initial questionnaire. This one ideally wants to be married within two years. That one is new to the city and wants someone to “eat his way through New York with.” (His words, not mine. And obviously we are going to have to do something about them if I take him on.)

  And then there’s Jude Campbell. There’s nothing very special about Jude’s profile. He’s good-looking enough. His answers are normal enough. Or, I should say, there’s almost nothing very special about Jude’s profile.

  Jude apparently moved here from Scotland a couple of years ago. Which means Jude has an accent. And if I am going to stake my whole career on one guy’s love match?

  I’m picking the dude with the Scottish accent.

  CHAPTER 2

  To: My rock stars

  From: Clifford Jenkins

  Re: Ch-ch-ch-changes! (New Company Name)

  What up, my dudes? That’s what Justin Bieber said when he met President Obama, according to eyewitnesses at the time. But I don’t want to discount our hard-working dudettes, of course! So. Here’s the deal. We are dunzo with Best Foot Forward. Erase it from your hard drive, remove it from your e-mail signatures, bleach it from your brains. It’s gone. Let’s all agree it never happened, right? New URL, new e-mail domain, new start, new name.

  We are now officially called Sweet Nothings, LLC, and we’re going to kick all manner of butt with this.

  IF YOU CONTINUE TO GET CORRESPONDENCE FROM FOOT FETISHISTS, DO NOT RESPOND. Forward it immediately to customer service (heyyyy Crystal) and delete it. Simple as that. Crystal will take care of the particulars.

  I’ll be happy to answer any questions at the monthly meetup, but in the meantime, scrub any and all references to BFF (and YOB for you seniors among us) and replace them with Sweet Nothings. Our portal will reflect all changes within the week.

  Smell you later,

  Clifford

  CEO, Best Foot Forward fka You, Only Better

  ZOEY

  Get across the street. That’s all you have to do: Get across the street.

  Except of course it’s not that simple, because it’s not a normal street and it’s not a normal city, and before I can cross the street I have to leave my apartment. “Apartment” being the ohso-hilarious code name for rathole. Although I guess for actual rats, it would be a palace. Actual rats are out there, by the way, waiting to run across my shoes and up my legs, little rat teeth chittering, dropping diseases on me, plumes of germs surrounding them like a deadly cloud around Pig Pen.

  Okay. It’s okay. Just because the “apartment” is half-a-room total, and the couch doubles as a bed, and the shower is in a corner of the kitchen, and you have to climb over the furniture to go anywhere, is no reason to get upset. You’re having a new experience! Still, if I don’t escape I’ll go mad, so here we are.

  Laptop, check. Purse, check. Keys, check. Unlock the chain and the deadbolt. Slowly open the door the tiniest crack.

  “Coming out,” I yell, the warning I was taught to use on the day I moved in, by a neighbor I haven’t seen since. I used to hear her, the way I assume she hears me, announcing her movement into the hallway. There’s only room for one person to use it at a time, and if you don’t announce yourself and there’s someone already there, you risk bodily harm, and one of you will have to retreat to give the other person room to finish using the hallway. When no one responds, I open my door all the way, briskly exit, and relock it behind me.

  “In the hall,” I yell, updating someone who might not even be there. For some reason my voice is a baritone when I do this. I want to make sure she hears me. My combat boots guarantee the people on the floor below hear me, at any rate.

  New obstacle: the stairwell. I’d use the elevator, except the last time I did, someone was asleep inside. (Mary, my former boss and current landlord, was unsympathetic: “In my day, they’d have been passed out in their own vomit.”) I have this fear there will always be someone asleep inside, and that the next time I go in, the person’s eyes will pop open and they’ll grab my ankle.

  In LA, I worried someone might be hiding under my car to slice my tendons, so this is not an unfamiliar fear of mine. Once I’m outside in the “fresh” air though, all similarities, real or imagined, to the City of Angels evaporate.

  Honk! Screech! Beep! Sizzle! “Hey!”

  I’m assaulted by noise. Smells. Garbage, floating in the air and piled outside front stoops. Cacophony. I fight the urge to cover my ears, close my eyes, and pray for a teleportation device. Does it have to be so loud? Does there have to be unidentifiable steam shooting out of a nasty-ass grate in the middle of the sidewalk? Does everybody have to hustle past me, elbows knocking me, at such a frenzied pace? At least my boots will protect me. They don’t help with speed, though, that’s for sure.

  Get to the corner. Just get to the corner, so you can cross the street.

  I understand the appeal of newsstands; really, I do. And food carts. Sure. It’s just that now I have to move around them without accidentally bumping someone or getting grease on me or smelling something I’d rather not smell this early in the morning.

  Jesus, I’ve only gone half a block and I’ve been glared at, eyefucked, stepped on, jostled, and surrounded. What I wouldn’t give for the peace and tranquillity of my car in California. I know, I know, we have the worst traffic in the world, but you know what else we have? Space to ourselves. Temperature control. Room to breathe, the option to listen to whatever music or podcast or radio station we want, and the ability to HEAR IT in the quiet of our cars, while we sip an iced latte or brainstorm a line of dialogue.

  I’m at the intersection at last, and the walk sign comes on, but I know better than to step toe off the curb. The first three cars don’t stop. Two of them slide on through, and the third honks, like the car is swearing at me, ordering me to not even think about it.

  Know what else we have in California?

  Mountains. Trees. The beach. Grass. (Both kinds.)

  Before I know it, the red flashing hand of doom is back and I’ve lost my chance. I hang back, frustrated and embarrassed. Why can’t I get my feet to move? A few more people gather close and I tense up, preparing for full body blows as they fence me in. Then, as one unit, all of them cross the street! Even though it clearly says don
’t walk! Apparently, they all have death wishes. I should have grabbed a shirt corner, let them drag me along with them. It’s probably the only way I’ll make it to Café Crudité.

  Two more green lights and the walk sign comes back on. I force myself to dart, quick as I can, head down, barreling forward. Take that, mofos! Past the cheese shop and a Duane Reade and I’ve made it inside the café. I got off to a late start, but no one’s claimed the big table by the window, so the day is looking up. I promise myself I’ll be productive. I’ll spend the next six to eight hours toggling between my spec script and the Sweet Nothings portal to see if new clients have entered the system so I can nab one. The last four days I haven’t been quick enough on the draw, and my freelance checks are going to reflect it. I wonder if the other freelancers have installed some type of alert system and that’s how they’re able to beat me to the punch?

  My stomach rumbles. All I have in my fridge right now are ketchup packets and half a bottle of Riesling, and I can’t spend my taxi money on an expensive quiche for breakfast, so it looks like another biscotti morning. (Café Crudité offers free “dayold baked goods” on a plate at the counter.) The place is mostly empty; just one person in front of me on line and no one behind. I watch in slow motion as the guy in front of me reaches his greedy hand straight for the free biscotti, aka My Breakfast. There are two left, enough for a sad, quasi-meal. I’m so hungry I feel saliva gathering in my cheeks.

  I need the biscotti.

  “Wait!” I bellow. It’s my “I’m in the hall” voice, weirdly resonant. I start over. “It’s just—those are mine, so …” I trail off in a normal voice.

  The guy’s hand pauses in midair and he turns to look at me. He’s tall and tan, like the California dreams of my past, but there’s nothing easy, breezy, or ocean-sprayed about him. His dark hair sticks straight up, intense and angry, he wears hipster glasses he probably doesn’t need, and the not-quite-a-beard on his face can’t decide what it wants to be when it grows up. He looks like if Zayn Malik were a stressed-out dental student.

  “How are they ‘yours’?” Zayn Malik, DDS, asks, complete with air quotes.

  “You can have the day-old muffins,” I say, pointing. (Heh. They’ve got vegetables in them, but Hipster Glasses may not know that. He may not know “crudité” is vegetables.) “They’re bigger, more filling, and I’m doing you a favor by letting you have those instead,” I add, my teeth gritted.

  “How magnanimous of you. They’re stale.”

  “That’s why they’re free!”

  “And they’re probably stuffed with zucchini or kale.”

  Oops. He does know.

  “The biscotti are already hard, they won’t taste any worse,” he snaps, reaching for them again. “The muffins will be CRAP. Besides, I was here first.”

  His raging case of bedhead is infuriating. Someone’s fingers obviously clutched his hair in a moment of passion last night and he hasn’t bothered to make himself presentable. He thinks he’s Bringing Disheveled Back, the morning after Sexy had its triumphant return; he probably slept in late with his loverrrrr, leisurely feeding her eggs and toast in bed, and now he thinks he can have my breakfast, too? Still, he hasn’t picked up the biscotti yet, so maybe he’s open to reason.

  “I always get the biscotti,” I mutter. I can practically taste them. “They’re saving them for me.”

  The barista appears and hands the guy his grande coffee. Her name tag reads “Evelynn.”

  “Are you saving the day-old biscotti for this insane person, Evelynn?” he asks.

  “I’ve never seen her before, and no. It’s first come, first served.”

  “I come here every day,” I protest. “Monday through Sunday, seven days a week.”

  Evelynn shrugs. “I don’t remember you.”

  “I bring you more business than he does,” I say desperately. “I’m a regular, every day since I moved to New York.”

  “When was that?” Hipster Glasses says.

  “A month ago.”

  “Oh, wow, gosh, yeah, you’re like a LEGEND,” he says loudly. “‘The coffee lady!’ An entire month, you say? Yeah, that’s impressive … except I’VE BEEN COMING HERE FOR ALMOST FIFTEEN YEARS.”

  He’s yelling at me. A complete stranger. In public! In LA, only celebrities could get away with that shit. The reptilian part of my brain shrieks, Retreat! but the hunger part of my brain replies, Don’t you fucking dare, so I stand tall. “How come I’ve never seen you, then?” I demand.

  “Probably because I spread out my visits like people are supposed to do.”

  “Maybe you could spread them out farther next time,” I reply. I know I sound crazy but he doesn’t need the biscotti the way I do. He’s a local, free to move about the city, whereas I’m stuck on this one block for the foreseeable future.

  “Wait.” Evelynn snaps her fingers at me. “I do remember you. Bottomless cup of coffee, no food.”

  “That’s not bringing them business,” Hipster Glasses points out. “It’s taking business from them.”

  “Evelynn, I’ll give you ten cents for the biscotti,” I blurt out.

  “Twenty-five,” the guy interrupts.

  Evelynn looks between us.

  “Seventy-five,” I counter.

  “The point is they’re free,” Evelynn says slowly. “Because they don’t taste very good.”

  “This’ll just be for you, Evelynn,” I remark. “Under the table. No need to declare it.”

  “Two dollars,” Mr. Moneybags says, pulling the cash out already. “Final offer.”

  “The point is they’re free,” I protest. I can’t compete anymore. I need the two dollars for my bottomless cup of coffee.

  Evelynn pulls the plate toward her.

  “Great,” the guy fumes. “Now no one can have them and no one’s happy ever again!”

  “Wow, okay. ‘Ever again’?”

  With gloved hands, Evelynn breaks both bars of biscotti in half. She swipes two broken pieces into my open hands, and two broken pieces into his. Why did she break them in half first? Was it the only way she had of showing her anger? Was it so we’d both still get two pieces, shut our mouths, and go away? Or was she reminding us who has the power in this scenario? (Irrelevant, I know. But those are the details that make up a character. I take note of them whenever I can.)

  Biscotti pieces and crumbs secure in my fist, I order a large Americano and place seventy-five cents in the tip jar since that’s what I’d bid during the auction. My cheeks feel warm and I avoid Evelynn’s gaze when she hands me my order. Dramatic Sex Hair McGee got to scurry off with his ill-gotten bounty after yelling at me, while I had to stay there and accept the annoyance pouring off Evelynn like a heat wave. I mumble a “thank you” and pivot away. I can feel her eyes on me as I walk to my large, lovely window table, and I don’t blame her. I set my coffee down and—

  Are you freaking kidding me? There’s a bag on the opposite seat, the nice long bench against the window. My window.

  It’s a messenger bag with a front Velcro flap, one of those bright, one-of-a-kind upcycled jobs from Switzerland or something, made up of rubber tarps and an old seat belt that goes across the shoulder and clasps at the collarbone. It’s morally superior to every other bag, which is the only reason to buy it, and now it gets my table, too. Whoever owns it is elsewhere, so I could technically … push the bag off the bench and pretend it fell and I never saw it. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I look left and right and lean over with my combat boot to tip it when …

  “That seat’s taken,” says a male voice.

  I freeze, caught.

  And of course, of course, it’s the asshole again. To prove his point, he moves around the other side of the table and makes a show of lifting the messenger bag off the bench and plopping it in the middle of the table.

  I pick up my coffee. “All right, geez. I’m going.”

  Evelynn squints at us and I refuse to make another scene, so, with as much dignity as I can mu
ster, I slink off to another table. He’d better not stay there long. He probably doesn’t even need it—he’s just one of those people who has to have the “best” of whatever’s available. It’s clearly the king table of Crudité, the rest of them surrounding it like peasant-subjects. The others are so tiny they don’t have room for my laptop and purse.

  I wouldn’t be this angry if I hadn’t been in the middle of another shit morning in this shit city, or if my script were going well, or if I weren’t so hungry for both food and clients, and, okay, if he were average-looking. With his scruff cranked up to eleven, his deep brown eyes, his slim frame, and his thick hair, he’s ridiculously attractive, which means he’s never had to work on his personality, so he probably goes through life showing up anywhere he wants and people just give him stuff. Well, not this girl. I come from the land of models-slash-actors, so his exterior means nothing to me.

  It’s the first time someone’s snatched the big table from me, but I’ll just have to wait him out. There’s no way I can work from my rathole; and there are no other cafés within my self-defined comfort radius.

  It’s been forty minutes and he’s still there, lollygagging, his long legs stretched out within tripping distance of anyone who comes near. My coffee’s gone and I need to pee.

  Leave, I order him telepathically. Leave! I get up to use the restroom, willing him and his stupid hair to be gone by the time I get back.

  He’s not, though. When I return, he’s typing madly on his laptop. He’s got the look of somebody who’s settled in for, like, the duration. I open my laptop (perched on my actual lap for the first time in its existence, probably giving me thigh cancer) and log in to Best Foot Forward’s—I mean, Sweet Nothings’—portal and get the dreaded message: There are currently no ghostwriting jobs. We are working to attract more clients. Your patience is appreciated. While you’re waiting, why not add a line to the Drop-Down Database? Smell you later!

  Beneath the message is the familiar logo of a sexy woman’s foot in a high heel. Guess they haven’t finished “scrubbing” the portal of all references to the prior name yet.