Make Me a Match

by Diana Holquist

  “I think it’s nuts—no offense.”

  No offense. Was he kidding? She had spent a lifetime being teased and bullied and mocked because of her powers. If he didn’t believe, then to hell with him. He asked, after all. She didn’t force anything on him.

  Jack leaned in close to her. His voice was a whisper. “Make me believe, Amy. Convince me.”

  Oh, she did want to convince him. She loved convincing non-believers. She could convince him—blow his mind. She had heard his Name at the engagement party. She just had to remember it.

  Anyway, Cecelia would kill her. Amy struggled to find a reason to deny him. “This isn’t about great sex, is it?” she blurted. “Men sometimes think that True Love will be an incredible erotic experience. It can be. But that’s not what it’s about.”

  “That’s not what I’m about.”

  “Jack, this is a mistake. You can love Cecelia even if she isn’t your One True Love. There’s all kinds of love.” Amy’s stomach sank. What nonsense.

  She should tell the truth. Then, she could get rid of Jack. Then, Cecelia would consider Finn. Then, if he was the right Finn (Amy still couldn’t read Finn without Cecelia around—and the three of them together hadn’t happened since the ball game, when Finn was too far away) Cecelia would finally know True Love. She’d forget about her silly, contrived life of penthouses and doctors, see there was no greater calling in life than helping people find their One True Love, and join Amy in her quest. They’d have their old life back and Amy’s powers would work again like before. Amy was sure of it. Things had been good when they were together, bad when they were apart.

  And here was Jack, handing it all to her on a platter.

  “Make me a believer, Amy,” he repeated.

  Amy let her future play out before her. She could deal with Cecelia. It was love that mattered. Everything else was secondary. Love was the key.

  Cecelia’s image conjured itself in Amy’s head. Her set brow, her scowling lips. She’d never give up her fancy doctor’s life. “I can’t, Jack.”

  He hesitated. Then his blank lawyer face was replaced by angry, flashing eyes. “Amy, prove your power to me or leave. You’re destroying Cecelia. You’re destroying us.”

  “Funny. You’re the second person who’s kicked me out today.” Amy closed her eyes. Okay, maybe she could do it. She was, after all, doing this for Cecelia. “Hell. I’ll try. But this might take a while.” Amy took his hand in hers and was shocked by the warmth of it. Well, this was her sad fate, wasn’t it? Holding hands with men who would never be hers. Uniting lovers, yet always alone. Oh, if Cecelia only knew how good she had it.

  Amy took a deep breath. Could she get a first letter? Anything to help her remember the name she had heard at the engagement party?

  Maybe being in Cecelia’s apartment, with so much of her essence around, would make the voices work. She prayed for a clue, then cleared her mind.

  She closed her eyes.

  Chapter 21

  Cecelia opened the front door and was struck with a chill. “Jack? I’m home!” she called.

  Silence greeted her. A full silence. The kind that made her shudder. She looked around for signs of Amy. The silver candlesticks that had been in the center of the dining room table were gone. Good. Amy had left with everything she could pawn.

  Cecelia breathed a sigh of relief. It was her and Jack now. Back to normal.

  But why wasn’t Jack answering? She had seen his briefcase lined up neatly in the closet. Maybe he was mad that she was so late. Cecelia had gotten stuck at the hospital with a patient coding just as she was putting her white lab coat on the hanger to leave. Now it was past eight o’clock.

  She heard noises from the bedroom.

  She called a hearty “Hello?”

  No answer. She felt the chill again, but shook it away.

  She lined her shoes carefully in the closet.

  Her skin was clammy.

  Something was wrong. She felt it to the core of her bones. She tiptoed cautiously to the bedroom, aware of the absurdity of her stealthy approach. The door was open. She peered in and froze.

  Jack sat on the side of the bed, his head hanging. He had an envelope in his hand. He looked up, and stared at her with the same look he’d had at the banquet. As if he had no idea who she was. She came gently into the room.

  He handed her the envelope.

  She didn’t open it. Instead, she sat down next to him, too concerned with his pallor to investigate his offering. “What’s wrong?” It wasn’t possible that he had talked to Amy; Cecelia had noticed on her way through the apartment that three crystal vases on the front mantel, Jack’s collection of antique boxes, and the small Chagall print from the hall were all missing. Amy had definitely left for the long haul.

  Jack looked at her for a long moment and shook his head. Then he stood and walked stiffly to the end of the bed. He pulled a small leather duffel bag off the floor.

  Cecelia tried to swallow her panic. “What’s going on?” Did Jack move the Chagall print? How would Amy have known its value from among all the art that hung on the walls? Her fingertips began to tingle.

  Maybe Amy was so angry with Cecelia, she had gone to Jack. Maybe she had showed up at his office and told him all about Finn.

  “I talked to Amy,” Jack said.

  “No!” Cecelia jumped up. Hearing it was worse than imagining it. “Where is she?” Cecelia had the creepy feeling that Amy was under the bed, flat on her back, the bottom of the box spring just brushing her nose.

  Cecelia sat back down heavily on the bed.

  “But that’s not why I’m leaving,” Jack said as if Cecelia hadn’t spoken.

  “Leaving?” All the breath went out of her. “But—”

  Jack held the bag in one hand. In the other hand, he turned his keys over and over as if they were worry beads. He nodded at the envelope in Cecelia’s hand.

  Cecelia looked at the envelope for the first time. She didn’t need to open it to know what was inside. Was that what this was all about? Hope filled her. “Jack, I can explain.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  She tore open the envelope and the condom she had stolen from Camille slid into her hand. Extra-large. Ribbed. Maybe it would be harder to explain than she first thought. How had Jack found this? “I took it from Camille’s purse.” The thought repulsed her and she tossed it onto the bed where it smoldered between them.

  Jack’s face stretched like a rubber band at the mention of Camille’s name, then quickly snapped back.

  Cecelia shook off the image of his momentarily distorted features. Of course he was shocked. She was admitting to petty theft—value of stolen possessions under fifty dollars, punishable in the state of Maryland by a thousand dollar fine, if she remembered it correctly, although she doubted that would soothe Jack’s concern. “I don’t know why I did it. I was feeling weird at the banquet, and I stole it.”

  She might as well have said she murdered a waiter and chopped him to bits, judging by the look on Jack’s face. “I come to the banquet and you’re there with another man. Then, I’m looking for my passport and I find a condom in the drawer. Then, all this talk about True Love—”

  “What happened with Amy?” Cecelia asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. His passport? Her skin was alive with ten thousand needle pricks and her life was seeping out the holes.

  He turned away from her. “I can’t stand the lies anymore. My lies. Your lies. I’m going to Cincinnati. And then. I don’t know.”

  “Ohio?” Cecelia struggled to understand. His lies? “What about work?”

  “Can you for one minute think about something other than work?” he boomed.

  Cecelia shrank back, stunned. Jack didn’t yell. She felt what he must have felt when he saw her dancing: I don’t know this person. Maybe Jack longed to yell. Maybe Jack, the real Jack, was a raging, screaming maniac, fed up with the rules and restraints of his logical mind.

  Then he said quiet
ly, “I was having an affair with Camille. Our engagement isn’t right. I’m going to find my One True Love.”

  She wished he’d yell again. Yelling was better than this quiet, certain news. She felt the ring on her finger. “Was having an affair?”

  “Was. Now I’m going to Cincinnati. My One True Love is an old friend. We’ll talk when I come back.”

  Come back? Jack had cheated on her. Just when she had gotten rid of Amy. And Maya. And Finn. She felt flat.

  “Look, Cel. It’s not working.” He began pacing, like a lawyer in a courtroom. She stealed herself for his evidence. He pointed at exhibit A, the condom. “That’s the condom my fiancée pick-pocketed from her senior colleague—my mistress. This crime was committed right before her obscene dance for her colleagues and for her mysterious date who turns out to be her One True Love—according to her newly appeared psychic sister.” Jack pulled his bag onto his shoulder. Case closed. “I’ll be back in three days. You have my cell.”

  Jack and Camille.

  Jack and his One True Love.

  “Who is she?” Cecelia asked. When Amy pulled a Name from someone’s past, it was almost impossible not to believe. She’s not going to be what you expect, Cecelia wanted to warn him. But you couldn’t warn people. They had to learn for themselves.

  “Sharon Pranks. I told you about her once.”

  Cecelia felt like laughing. Sharon had been Jack’s date for the senior prom. “The cat lady? The kitty doctor?” She tried to keep her amusement out of her voice. “The vegan?”

  “She’s a veterinary acupuncturist with a specialty in feline oncology. I spoke to her this afternoon.”

  Cecelia let the news wash over her: she was being left for a woman with a cat fetish and a serious belief in the evil powers of cheese. Jack loves cheese.

  He loves me.

  Loved.

  Camille.

  Why did she feel so flat? Shouldn’t she be furious?

  “I’ll call you.” Jack’s footsteps retreated down the hall. The front door opened, then slammed shut like a gunshot.

  Silence.

  She fell back onto the bed. The condom was cold against her bare arm. She picked it up. The extra-large circle under the foil wrapper seemed to be saying, OOOOOOOOps!

  Extra-large? For Jack?

  She had to admire Camille’s sense of hope.

  Cecelia threw the offending square into the trash.

  She wandered into the living room and slumped onto the couch. She noticed a tiny white jewel box on the coffee table where the tiny gold candy bowls used to be. Damn Amy. Had she left anything of value?

  She opened the white box despondently, not caring what was inside. A turd? A diamond? The key to the meaning of life? There was no note. No signature of the person who left it. She rooted in the cushioning cotton, and pulled out a tiny, painted statue of Shiva, the god of destruction.

  Well, he had certainly done his work, hadn’t he?

  She put the dancing god in the center of the otherwise empty mantel, went back to her bedroom, and crawled under the covers.

  Chapter 22

  Jack and Camille. That, Cecelia could understand. But Jack leaving her for True Love. She burrowed deeper under the covers, becoming fetal. She had been tossing and turning in bed for two hours, trying to make sense of what had happened and how she felt about it.

  She replayed their relationship, over and over, moment by moment. Each memory was illuminated by a small light of hope—the hope that because they had so much in common, they would be able to one day love each other in the passionate, intense way that Amy preached. But now she saw that her hope was a candle, melting away with each day.

  They would never have loved each other that way.

  She pulled the covers tighter over her head and curled up, making herself as small as possible. She thought that she and Jack understood each other. They had given up passionate, destructive love for something more real, more lasting, more stable.

  Except that now, she was the only one who had given it up.

  She was completely alone in the world.

  The empty bed stretched forever around her. She couldn’t get warm. Each organ inside her twisted into a tight knot. She named them one by one: pancreas, spleen, right kidney, left kidney—

  Cecelia threw the covers off her, letting the cold accost her skin. The things she had worked so hard for surrounded her: real wool carpets, tastefully painted walls, a master suite that could have housed four families and their farm animals.

  She pulled off her ring and stared out at the view of the harbor, but it was shrouded in fog. She didn’t want love to matter. She had built a safe world where love didn’t matter—and now she had nothing but stuff.

  She left the window and paced the room. If love mattered, then her parents had done the right thing to divorce. If love mattered, then her father had done the right thing to drag them all over creation to find Jane. If love mattered, then of course Jack should have left her.

  If love matters, then Amy holds all the cards.

  True lovers had to have a gypsy soul. To find True Love, nothing else—nothing!—could matter. Not jobs, not homes, not even children. She felt a dull ache in the pit of her stomach.

  She was dead tired of wandering. A gypsy life was too hard.

  She opened her jewelry box and carefully put the ring inside.

  Jack had decided that love did matter.

  He had become like Amy.

  Jack, of all people, had become a gypsy.

  Two nights later, her cell phone rang, startling Cecelia out of a deep sleep. She fumbled for the receiver.

  “Jack?”

  “Cel. It’s Finn.”

  “Oh.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The clock glowed 10:46 P.M. Why was Finn calling her? Was Camille on call tonight?

  “Meet me. Can you get away?”

  She struggled awake. He was whispering. Of course, he thought Jack was sleeping by her side. “Why? Is something wrong?” His voice sounded odd. Tense and nervous.

  “Just come. 2102 Renny Street.”

  “Renny Street? Where is that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Joe’s Pub. Just meet me.”

  “Why?” she asked wearily. Jack was gone. Amy was gone. At least someone was calling her. She was strangely grateful.

  “There’s a band,” Finn explained, still whispering.

  Poor guy, she should put him out of his misery of thinking he was tempting her out of her marriage bed.

  Then she thought of Camille.

  She didn’t say a thing.

  “They’re playing in ten minutes. How quick can you get there?”

  “You want me to come to a bar in the middle of the night to see a band? Um, let me see—no.”

  “The band is called the Finn Concord Five.”

  Now she was awake. She sat up in bed, the covers pooling in her lap. She was still fully dressed in her work clothes, which were wrinkled and stale. She hadn’t washed her face, and her makeup felt heavy on her skin.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “Is Camille busy tonight?”

  “What? Who?”

  He didn’t remember Camille? How casually did he sleep with women?

  “I saw an ad in the paper for this band—”

  “The Finn Concord Five.”

  “Right.”

  She climbed out of bed and looked in the mirror. Old mascara raccooned her eyes. Her wild black hair stuck out at alarming angles. She tried to smooth it to no avail.

  He cleared his throat. “Will you meet me?”

  She imagined the scene. A sweaty, dark club filled with drunk college students. In the back, on a tiny stage crammed with a drum set, stood a long-haired, ripped-jeaned, twenty-year-old gyrating over an electric guitar. My One True Love is a shaggy dude in a lousy band. The claws of her past gripped her tight, squeezing, tearing. A musician. A wanderer. Of course. The claws were pulling her back to her old life.

&n
bsp; Does True Love matter?

  She wandered into the living room and picked up the tiny statue of Shiva. She turned it over in her palm. Amy believed that True Love was everything. Amy possessed the single-minded blindness of a true believer: she did what she thought was right. Amy was—Cecelia took in a huge gulp of air to help the repulsive thought sink in—trying to help.

  Finn was too. Only he had no idea what he was dealing with.

  The Finn Concord Five.

  Finn broke into her thoughts. “You know what? Forget it. It doesn’t make any difference. I just thought I’d do you a favor and let you know.”

  Cecelia fell back in her bed. Maybe this was what she deserved. All her lying. All the scams of her past. It made sense that karma was paying her back. A shaggy dude with a bass guitar is my One True Love.

  Cecelia paid the cabdriver, then stepped carefully onto the trash-strewn sidewalk. She looked around her in disgust: was this Finn’s idea of a joke? She checked her watch. She was supposed to meet him in half an hour, the earliest she thought she could pull herself together. But instead she had thrown on dirty jeans, washed her face, and arrived early. She wanted to meet this new Finn without having to face the old Finn. Now, she wished desperately that he was there. Neon lights blinked all around her, beckoning her to “Girls! Girls! Girls!” A man with a dragon tattoo covering his entire face, the reptilian nostrils lined up with the human, stood in the doorway of an adult bookstore. Could you really tattoo an eyelid? He nodded at her and opened the door.

  No thanks, my destiny is waiting for me—a shaggy dude in a band playing the back room of a strip club. I’ll come back for my pornography later.

  She felt ill. She was on the sleaziest street in Baltimore. And yet, somehow, it made sense. Karma. She was getting paid back for the sins of her past. Paid back with a sleaze-bag True Love who played guitar in the back rooms of scummy strip joints.

  She spun away from the doorman, and retreated down the street. This was a mistake. A huge mistake. Just because Jack decided to throw his life away for love didn’t mean she had to. She would devote herself to work. Or to finding another man. No. Who needed a man? Work—that was the answer. More work.