Wishing for Wonderful: The Serendipity Series, Book 3

by Bette Lee Crosby

  The funny thing is that what Eleanor wrote wasn’t simply wishful thinking. Lindsay did all those things. Unfortunately, like many humans, the girl is so focused on what is missing from her life that she’s blind to what she has. That’s a major design flaw in humans but not one I can fix.

  Life Management can be blamed for a good part of Lindsay’s problem. This lack of confidence started right after Bethany’s accident. John tried to make up for her loss, but males are extremely inept when it comes to mothering skills. They’re okay with handling a scraped knee or a broken arm but draw a complete blank when it comes to emotional needs. John is no exception. With humans the male and female units don’t just look different, they also have different operating systems. Males are designed for doing and fixing, females for feeling and sensing.

  Here’s a perfect example. Two days ago Lindsay complained that the outfit she was wearing looked hideous. Instead of telling the girl she was beautiful in whatever she wore, John offered to buy her a new dress. See what I mean? She didn’t need a new outfit, what she needed was to know that somebody thought she was special. Eleanor tries, but Lindsay closes her ears to most of what the poor woman says.

  I lost track centuries back of the number of successful matches I’ve made, but this I can tell you. None have been quite as complicated as this Eleanor-John match. Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re gonna bring up the Romeo-Juliet thing, aren’t you? Well, they weren’t in my jurisdiction, so I’m not accountable for that fiasco.

  Cupid

  The Distraction Attraction

  The laughable thing about humans is their gullibility. Even when a human is down to their last dollar, they read a horoscope promising a large sum of money and expect it to be forthcoming. The realization that the horoscope has been written by another human with no more knowledge of the future than the reader never dawns on them. Little wonder my tricks work as well as they do. Lindsay is high on the gullibility scale, so she’s easier to maneuver than most. While this often works in my favor, I’m a bit concerned when it comes to her expectations about the new resume.

  I probably should remind you that employment is not mine to do or undo. Lindsay is on her own unless she’s got a friend in Life Management, which, I can assure you, is an extremely rare occurrence.

  ~ ~ ~

  On Sunday afternoon I watched Lindsay settle onto the sofa with the Courier Post, a ruled tablet and a ballpoint pen. She almost bristled with the renewed certainty of finding a job. Starting at the top of the listings, she read through them one by one. Automobile mechanic, babysitter, bakery assistant, cook, copywriter. She circled the copywriter ad and moved on. Delivery driver, engineer… After she’d read through every listing, she realized that even with the new resume her qualifications were suitable for only two of the jobs listed: copywriter and sales person for the Baby Boutique. She wrote both telephone numbers on the tablet and then colored in a star next to the number for the copywriter position. It didn’t take an all-seeing eye to recognize that was the job she wanted.

  Tomorrow morning Lindsay planned to call both places, but until then there was little she could do. She set aside the Classifieds and picked up the weekend section. A Macy’s ad triggered the thought that if she got the job as copywriter, she would need a few new outfits for work.

  Suits, she wondered, or dresses? She was flipping through the pages when she saw it in the upper right hand corner of the seventh page: the ad for Heavenly Acres Animal Rescue Center.

  “It’s my dog!” Lindsay shouted and jumped to her feet.

  With the folded back newspaper in her hand, she dashed into the kitchen where Eleanor and John were working on a crossword puzzle together.

  “Is it okay if I get this dog?” she asked, waving the newspaper.

  Paying little attention John mused, “A seven letter detective show starting with m-a…Matlock, that’s it!”

  “Nope,” Eleanor answered. “The k has to be an r.”

  “Oh,” John said disappointedly. He then turned to Lindsay. “What’d you say, honey?”

  “This dog,” she repeated, handing him the newspaper. “Is it okay if I get it?”

  “Since when do you want a dog?” John asked quizzically.

  “I don’t just want a dog, I want this dog. It’s been following me everywhere.”

  Eleanor leaned in and looked at the newspaper. “Following you?” she said. “How can the dog be following you if it’s locked up in the shelter and—”

  “Not following me physically,” Lindsay replied, “but its picture is popping up every time I turn on my computer, and I hear it barking in my ear, things like—”

  Both John and Eleanor were eying her strangely.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked. “Is there something you’re not telling—”

  “There’s nothing to tell! I’d just like to adopt this little dog and I thought since it’s your house, I ought to at least ask before I do it.”

  Eleanor reached across and patted John’s hand. “Honey, I think having a dog would be good for Lindsay. If this beagle is the one she wants then—”

  “It’s not a beagle,” Lindsay said. “It’s a Maltese or Bichon maybe.”

  Eleanor and John looked at the advertisement for a second time. “It looks like a beagle,” they replied in unison.

  Lindsay pulled back the newspaper. “How can a beagle be long and shaggy?” she said, but when she looked at the ad, her jaw went slack.

  “This is the wrong ad,” she said and began leafing through the other pages. There were no other Heavenly Acres ads in the weekend section. “It must have been in another section.”

  Lindsay turned back to the living room muttering something that went unheard…at least by human ears.

  She searched every section of the paper, including the comic pages and real estate listings. The ad she’d seen was nowhere to be found. For a good hour, Lindsay sat there looking at the same pages over and over again. Finally, she came to the conclusion that she had somehow developed a strange new ability to see things and remember things that never were. It was, she decided, an extrasensory perception of both past and future. The high school incidents she’d shared with Traci were definitely from the past, but this dog had to be from the future, and Lindsay had a feeling he was an important part of her future. She had to find that dog!

  Monday morning Lindsay called the Baby Boutique first.

  “Sorry, honey,” the woman said, “that job was filled two weeks ago.”

  “But I just saw this ad yesterday,” Lindsay replied.

  “Yeah,” the woman said, “running it for a month was cheaper than two weeks. We’re still getting calls, and I’m thinking all this aggravation wasn’t worth the difference.”

  Lindsay hung up and dialed the number for the copywriter job.

  A woman answered, “Good morning, Genius Advertising.”

  “Good morning,” Lindsay replied. “I’m calling about the copywriter position listed in yesterday’s newspaper.”

  “Mister Morrissey is handling that,” the woman said. “Hold on, please.”

  Lindsay waited for what seemed like an interminable amount of time until finally a gruff voice said, “Morrissey.”

  He did not sound one bit friendly, which made Lindsay nervous right off the bat.

  “Um,” she stuttered, “I’m interested in the copywriter position you advertised.”

  She’d barely finished speaking when he shot back, “You got any experience?”

  Glancing at her new resume, Lindsay answered, “Yes.” The word came out weaker than she’d hoped for, but at least it was a yes.

  “Well…”

  “Well?”

  “Go ahead,” he said, “give me a rundown of your experience.”

  “Oh.” Not expecting this turn of events, Lindsay paused for a moment then began picking words off the resume.

  “I worked at Gift Industry News,” she said, “and I was responsible for the development and organization of editorial
content, proofreading…”

  As Lindsay read the words, her confidence seemed to grow. It became fatter and bolder than it had ever been before.

  “…and at Seaworthy Insurance, I wrote the documentation for coverage of fishing yachts…”

  She continued for almost two minutes and after she’d used up all the words on her new resume, she tossed in the fact that she’d gotten a bachelor’s degree in communications from Rutgers.

  “Rutgers alum, huh?” Morrissey said. His voice now had a considerably more friendly sound. “I’m Rutgers too.” He went on to say that to his way of thinking the football lineup for the coming season meant several sure wins.

  “I think so too,” Lindsay replied, even though she hadn’t read a word about the Rutgers football team in more than four years.

  Morrissey mentioned the names of two players he figured for a lot of promise, and then he asked Lindsay if she could come in at two o’clock for an interview.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered. “Yes, sir, Mister Morrissey. I’ll be there…”

  When she hung up the telephone, Lindsay spent twenty minutes on the Rutgers website researching the past four years of football performance and then spent another ten minutes looking at stats for the basketball team in case Morrissey happened to be a fan of that sport also. When the stats of one season began to collide with stats of another, she turned off the computer and got dressed.

  Lindsay wore her good navy blue suit. It was wool and a bit warm for the day but definitely more business-like than anything else she owned. She left the house at five minutes after eleven but didn’t go directly to the Genius Advertising office. Instead she drove to Heavenly Acres Animal Rescue Center.

  “I’d like to look into adopting a dog,” Lindsay told the woman behind the counter. Then she described the dog she was looking for. Growing more uncertain as to what she’d seen or not seen, Lindsay hedged her words and mentioned that she thought she’d seen this particular dog in the Sunday newspaper advertisement.

  “Oh.” The woman smiled. “That dog is still here.” She led Lindsay into a back room with rows of cages. “This is him,” the woman said, pointing to a beagle.

  Lindsay sighed. “That’s a beagle. I’m not looking for a beagle.” She went on to again describe the dog: small, scraggly, sad eyes.

  The woman shook her head. “Can’t say I recall having such a dog, but we’ve got nineteen cats. One of them is a Himalayan with the prettiest face I’ve ever seen. You think you might want a cat?”

  Lindsay answered no and explained that she was looking for one particular dog. She again described the dog and gave the woman her telephone number in case such a dog should show up.

  ~ ~ ~

  If you were to ask Lindsay why it was she wanted that one particular dog, she’d be unable to tell you. That’s the beauty of what I do. I make love unexplainable. Humans fall in love with someone and claim it’s because of a special smile or the crinkle around their lover’s eyes, but the truth is they’re clueless about the magic that brings such thoughts. The only one who knows the secret of pairing up lovers is me. Well, me and The Boss. He knows everything.

  ~ ~ ~

  At ten minutes before two, Lindsay pulled into the Cherry Hill parking lot in front of the address Morrissey had given her. It was an office park with a dozen or so buildings, each of them surrounded by several others that appeared identical. She crossed the lot, double-checked the building number, and then walked into the lobby. A glance at the directory told her Genius Advertising was the only tenant on the second floor.

  She stepped into the elevator and pressed two. When the door opened, she sank into a burgundy carpet so soft it was like walking on a cloud. In the center of the room a receptionist who looked to be Eleanor’s age sat behind the mahogany desk.

  “Are you here for an interview?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lindsay nodded.

  Handing a clipboard across the desk, the woman said, “Fill out the application. Mister Morrissey will be with you shortly.”

  Shortly turned out to be nearly a half hour. During that time a young woman carrying a portfolio came out, crossed the reception room and disappeared down the elevator. Minutes after she left, a round red-faced man walked out.

  “Lindsay Gray?” he asked.

  She stood, extended her hand, shook his and then followed him through a maze of cubicles to where his office was located.

  Once seated in front of his desk, Lindsay proudly handed over her new resume.

  “Thank you for seeing me, sir,” she said. “I appreciate the opportunity, Mister Morrissey.”

  Without looking up from the resume, he replied, “Just Morrissey, no mister, no sir.” After almost five minutes of what to Lindsay felt like the silence of rejection, he looked up.

  “Good resume,” he said. “I like that you went to Rutgers. Great school.” He explained that the agency had three new clients coming on board as of January fifteenth, and the position wouldn’t be funded until the first of next year.

  “So if you are the candidate selected for the job, you wouldn’t start until January third,” he said. “Would you be okay with that?”

  “Yes…” Lindsay started to say “sir” but caught herself in the nick of time. “Yes, I would.”

  Morrissey went on to explain the copywriter hired would be working on two of the new accounts—a dog food manufacturer and a dinnerware company—but he couldn’t as yet divulge the names. Although she’d never given dinnerware a second thought, she claimed to be interested in both and told how she was currently in the process of adopting a rescue dog.

  “Good,” Morrissey said. “That’s good.” He scribbled something in the margin of her resume then stood. “I’ve got several other candidates to see, but I’ll get back to you within the next two weeks.”

  When Lindsay left the building, she sat in her car for almost ten minutes before she switched the ignition on. She was weighing the pros and cons of her interview. He seemed to like her; that was a plus. She’d gone to Rutgers; that was another plus. He’d liked her resume, and that was definitely a plus. The possibility that he might call some of the companies and ask if she’d done those things was a very big minus, as was the fact that he was seeing other candidates.

  Lindsay drove home with uncertainty riding on her shoulders.

  Cupid

  A Change of Plans

  The day after Lindsay’s interview, she took to carrying her cell phone around in her pocket. It went to the bathroom with her, it sat on the dinner table and although there was not even the slightest chance Jack Morrissey would call in the middle of the night, she slept with it held in her hand. She did that for seven days. Then on the eighth day she mistakenly left it on the breakfast table when she went upstairs to brush her teeth.

  When the phone rang, Eleanor looked at it and hesitated. Her relationship with Lindsay was tenuous at best, so she had to wonder which would be the lesser of evils: answering the phone or not. Answering could be viewed as an invasion of privacy, but she knew Lindsay had been nervously awaiting the call.

  The phone rang a second time.

  There was a possibility that she could grab the phone, run up the stairs and hand it to Lindsay before it stopped ringing, but that likelihood was slim. The arthritis in her knee forced her to take the stairs one at a time, slowly.

  The phone rang a third time. It was now or never; she had to make a decision and she had to make it fast. On the fourth ring Eleanor nervously lifted the phone from the table, pressed her finger to the call icon and said, “Hello.”

  “Lindsay Gray?” the caller asked.

  “No,” she answered, “but please hold on, and I’ll get Lindsay.”

  With the phone in her hand, Eleanor climbed the stairs as fast as her knee would allow and then rapped on the bathroom door. Lindsay knew who it was by the soft tap-tap-tap. When her father rapped on the door it was a loud knuckle knock. Eleanor’s was soft like a kitten scratching to come i
n.

  “I’m busy,” Lindsay garbled through a mouthful of toothpaste.

  “Your phone rang, and I thought you might be waiting for this call,” Eleanor said.

  Lindsay’s hands dropped to her pockets. She felt for the cell phone, but it wasn’t there. Spitting a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and not bothering to rinse, Lindsay opened the door and snatched the phone from Eleanor’s hand.

  “This is Lindsay Gray,” she said in a somewhat gritty voice.

  “Morrissey here.” Using an efficiency of words, Jack Morrissey told Lindsay she had gotten the job. He said nothing about checking her references but did mention that one of Rutgers’ new recruits had pulled a tendon.

  “Out for at least a month,” he said. He explained that Lindsay was to report to the personnel department to fill out the insurance forms at nine o’clock on January third. After that he wished her a Merry Christmas, said goodbye, and hung up.

  When the called clicked off Lindsay, ignoring the toothpaste grit stuck to her lips, kissed Eleanor’s cheek.

  “I got it!” she sang out. “I got the job, I got the job!” She grabbed Eleanor’s hands and danced her around until she remembered she wasn’t all that fond of the woman. Lindsay stopped suddenly and said, “I’m sorry. I guess hearing that I’d got the job made me so excited.”

  Eleanor smiled. “That’s quite all right, I rather enjoyed it myself.” The arthritic knee that had been troubling her for almost two weeks seemed somehow better.

  That evening Lindsay’s new job was the main topic of conversation at the dinner table. When she spoke of it her eyes twinkled. She told of the plush carpet, the numerous cubicles, the art decorating the walls. It seemed that nothing in the Genius Advertising office had missed Lindsay’s notice.

  “The only thing is,” she said, “I don’t start until January third, so I’ve three whole months to hang around and do nothing.”