Someday My Prints Will Come

by Marilyn Baron

  “That’s my job,” she said. “Why didn’t the man come himself? This is highly irregular.”

  “As you can imagine, Adam Prinsky is a very busy man. He doesn’t have time for preliminaries. He runs an international conglomerate, and he’s rarely in this country. I’m going to help him narrow the search.”

  “That’s not usually the way I operate. I typically see the subject firsthand. Do you at least have a photograph?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Maybe not for you,” she mumbled under her breath, hoping he couldn’t hear her. “Hasn’t Adam Prinsky been at the helm of Prinsky Electronics for decades? He must be as old as—”

  “I assure you he is still a very virile and desirable man.”

  “Says you.”

  “Maybe you’ll meet him…in time. He doesn’t get out much.”

  “Is he an invalid, or horribly disfigured?” she whispered, drawing back and biting her lip.

  “No,” the man replied simply.

  “Well, then, what’s he like?” she asked.

  “He’s very rich and powerful.”

  “And does he have any other qualities to recommend him besides his material wealth?”

  “He lives in a castle,” the emissary offered.

  “Oh, then he must be a prince.” She laughed, but thought to herself, More like the Prince of Darkness. “Well, now, let’s see. We know he’s rich and famous and powerful and can give his prospective match anything that money can buy. Does that about cover it?”

  “Isn’t that enough for most women?”

  She bristled. “You obviously don’t know much about women, Mister—what did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t, Miss—”

  “Eva,” she said simply. The man was infuriating.

  “Just Eva?”

  “For now, yes,” she said. “What shall I call you?”

  “Mr. Prinsky’s emissary.”

  “Well, then, Mr. Prinsky’s emissary, what else can you tell me about this mystery man and what he is looking for in a woman?”

  “He’s looking to get married,” he said.

  “Oh, my,” she said, taken aback. Most people were looking for love, but not many came right out and said they were looking for a wife.

  “Well, that’s a positive development. A sense of commitment is an admirable quality.”

  “A man like Mr. Prinsky needs someone he can display in public, someone worthy of his position and…”

  “By display, you mean like a trophy wife? Someone he can trot out when the occasion demands, to impress his friends and business associates?”

  “Precisely,” he said, and she grew more furious. “Well, that and to bear his children, so he can ensure that—”

  “The dynasty continues,” Eva interrupted. “I think I’m beginning to get the picture. Mr. Prinsky doesn’t want a wife, he wants a beautiful, perfectly groomed…broodmare.”

  “You fail to see the urgency, the gravity of the situation. Mr. Prinsky can’t simply hang out at a local singles bar. This match has to be handled very discreetly.”

  “Are brains a requirement for the candidate?” she said, extending her lower lip.

  “It would be a nice addition to the package,” the man said.

  “Oh, the package. So you’re negotiating a takeover,” Eva said, growing more incensed as the minutes passed.

  “More like an acquisition and a merger,” he explained.

  “Let me ask you one more thing. Does this man have a single, solitary ounce of human kindness flowing through his veins?”

  “Is that a requirement?”

  “It would be a nice addition to the package,” she retorted.

  “There is one more thing,” the emissary pointed out. “Mr. Prinsky has been alone for a very long time and, well, what I mean to say is he… It gets lonely at the top. And he’s very selective. This can’t just be any woman. He’s been burned before, so…he has a particular woman in mind.”

  “He knows this woman?”

  “He used to. A very long time ago. He lost track of her. I don’t have much information to go on. He does remember one thing. Her kiss.”

  “Her kiss?” she whispered.

  “It still makes his pulse race and his blood boil. He still remembers it. At the risk of sounding crude, he wants to taste it again.”

  “Really?” It was as much a question as an answer. It told a lot about the man. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  “This woman, she may not be in any database if she’s as hot as he says she was. She may be married by now and unavailable.”

  Momentarily, the light in the emissary’s eyes was extinguished.

  “Of course, I will try to find her with the sketchy information you’ve given me. I’m very good at my job. As you can see, all these photos around the room were sent by satisfied clients.”

  His eyes followed hers to the walls, which were filled with wedding photos of happy-looking couples of all ages. And children—photos of children were everywhere.

  “Are you always successful in your line of work?” he asked pointedly.

  “Almost always,” she replied, and for a moment she was in another time and place. He nudged her gently and generated another spark.

  “About this kiss,” she continued, “how will you know if you’ve found the right girl?”

  “I will know.”

  “Will you be kissing all of the candidates, then, to make sure they measure up, like the Prince found Cinderella with the glass slipper?” She laughed nervously.

  “Would it be a problem if I did?” he said.

  “Can you tell me more about the kiss itself?” she asked, her body leaning toward his, trying to fight an uncontrollable urge to feel his lips on hers. “Describe it for me?”

  “I can demonstrate it, if you’d like,” he said, taking her into his arms without waiting for her answer. “It was very much like this,” he said as his mouth crushed hers possessively, opening her lips and plunging his tongue into it, searing her like a brand.

  ****

  He hadn’t meant to devour her, but when her arms wound innocently around his neck, he suddenly lost control. He could think of nothing but her. He had to have her. Had to touch her. As she arched into him, he moved against her, responding involuntarily, leaning into her, swaying with her as she whimpered, aching with a need he never knew he had. He wanted more. His hands began to move over the front of her dress, to reach inside. Her breasts felt heavy and full. He heard her groan—or maybe that was him. He couldn’t be sure. Then he attacked her lips again. He had heard about the kiss dozens of times from his brother and his father. But the reality of it was so much better than the telling.

  ****

  Sparks flew. The kiss was electric, unlike any she had felt before, not since…

  The sudden memory jolted her back to her senses.

  “Mr. Emissary, or whatever your name is, I think it’s time for you to go,” Eva said, breathing heavily, trying to compose herself. “You paint a very passionate picture. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have some appropriate candidates.” Her voice was interrupted by a series of pings.

  “What’s that?” he demanded. “Is it a fire alarm? Bells are going off everywhere.”

  “You must be generating some kind of negative force field, like a magnet, that’s making the machines malfunction. Is your iPhone on? Do you have any other electronic equipment with you in that briefcase?”

  “No, I assure you I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Well, then, perhaps it’s my oven. I think I have a batch of cookies baking,” she said standing up on shaky legs and walking over to the kitchen. She pulled out a fresh batch of mandel bread, sliced it and offered him one.

  ****

  “What do you put in those cookies?” he said, standing up. “I don’t go in for all that hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo.”

  “It’s not a love potion,” she said. “It’s just a cookie.” She fed
one to him, wiping the crumbs off his lips with her fingers. When his tongue grazed her fingers, he shuddered, and she drew back in shock.

  He tried to compose himself. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and he felt as if his entire system had crashed. He felt his heart shift.

  “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Eva asked.

  “No. I don’t believe there’s only one person for everyone. That’s too romantic a notion. There’s someone for someone at age 20, and a different someone for someone at age 35. As you age and experience life’s changes, you become interested in different kinds of people at various stages of your life. You never get exactly what you want, but you can always try to change a person.”

  “That’s quite a jaded attitude,” Eva said. “The secret to a good match is a willingness to accept a person as an individual, and not to want to make that person over. Don’t take an ABC and try to turn them into a DEF. Instead say, ‘This is what I bring to the table; this is what you bring to the mix.’ Even if someone is finicky, or an introvert, or an impossible bore, if you can add something to the mix, you could be good together.”

  “Mr. Prinsky does not tolerate imperfection.”

  Eva nodded. “I see. It seems that you and Mr. Prinsky have a lot in common.” She shuffled some papers and faced him. “It’s like opening a package on Christmas. One package is wrapped in red-and-green paper and a big gold bow. You open it, expecting an ermine stole, and you get a pair of oven mitts. Maybe the ermine stole was in a plain brown bag. A person doesn’t have to be perfect as long as he or she has a good soul, is deep thinking, and has good character and values you can respect.”

  The emissary crossed his arms. “Things don’t always work out for the best.”

  ****

  While he was gathering his things, Eva checked her computer. It was going haywire. “Now look what you’ve done,” she lamented. “I think you’ve fried my equipment.”

  “Now, look here, Miss…Eva. I didn’t touch your equipment,” he said.

  “But you did touch me,” she said pointedly, “and I’m, that is, my equipment is very sensitive.” Tears began to form in her eyes. Don’t let me cry. Don’t let me cry. She prayed to herself, biting down on her lower lip.

  ****

  What the devil? She was beginning to leak. He was suddenly reminded of his mother. She had spent her whole married life, or what he could remember of it, in tears.

  “Now, don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I hate it when a woman cries.”

  “I’m not crying,” she insisted, pouting.

  “Well, you’re giving a pretty good impression of it.”

  He moved to wipe away her tears, and she drew back, settling in one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Don’t touch me again!” she cautioned. “Look what happened the last time you did. Now I’ll have to call someone. I can’t function without my computer. I don’t know a thing about how to fix it.”

  “Here, let me see what I can do.”

  “You? What do you know about computers?”

  Was the woman dense?

  “I run Prinsky Electronics,” he said, coming around to where she sat.

  “You?”

  “For Mr. Prinsky. He doesn’t have time for all the day-to-day operations.” He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and eased her out of her chair.

  “Where do you keep the equipment?” he wanted to know.

  “In there,” she said, pointing the way.

  When he walked into the equipment room, he was flabbergasted and impressed.

  “You have quite a setup here. With all this equipment, you could run the government of a small nation, actually a rather large one. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Where did you get all this hardware?”

  “It’s all Prinsky Electronics equipment,” she said.

  “I can see that, but this must have been a major project, state-of-the-art. Who set all this up for you?”

  “It was just here when I got here. I simply took it over.”

  “Why do you need all this capacity? Surely, not for playing your little matchmaking games.”

  “I don’t play at being a matchmaker,” she said indignantly. “I run a big business. I have clients from all over the country. And that’s not my only enterprise. I match lost prints.”

  “Lost prints?”

  “You know, when you go to pick up your photos at the store, and they turn out not to be your photos, I trace the order and reroute the proper prints to the proper people, reuniting them, so to speak.”

  He stared at her like she was out of her mind.

  “I didn’t think anyone used prints anymore. Everything is digitized these days.”

  “Sometimes you have to do things the old-fashioned way,” Eva explained, lifting a sheet of stationery from a stack. “Someday My Prints Will Come, you see,” said Eva, pointing to the company name on her letterhead.

  “At any rate, let me see if I can’t get your equipment back in working order.”

  “Do you really think you can?”

  “I’m the best troubleshooter there is,” he assured her.

  “And the most trouble,” Eva mumbled.

  Ignoring the insult, he turned his attention back to her computer and began clicking away.

  “You are hooked into every database in the country,” he marveled. “Unbelievable. Looks a lot like lightning damage, but it’s not even raining outside. I don’t understand what could have happened.”

  ****

  He pulled out his glasses and continued to work for the next hour. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. If possible, the glasses made him even more attractive. She held a hand to her heart. It was still beating madly. He had created quite a stir inside her. She was going to have to analyze it later.

  “Here, I think I’ve got everything up and running again,” he said. “It should be fine.”

  “Thank you, Mr…Emissary,” she said.

  “Glad I could help.”

  He started to walk out without the canister of cookies.

  “You forgot something,” she said, and she handed him the tin container. “Don’t forget to take them to Mr. Prinsky.”

  Chapter Six

  Donna Rachel Solomon (DoRaSo), or Rachel, as her friends called her, logged on to her computer for the fifth time that evening. She was supposed to be studying. Her mother had bought her a subscription to the Internet dating service for Jewish singles as a birthday present. She should have known anything her mother had a hand in was doomed to failure. When she tried to refuse the gift, her mother told her that all her friends were subscribing to the service. Then she tried to throw a version of her mother’s “jumping off the bridge” speech back in her face.

  “Mom,” Rachel asked sweetly, “just because everyone else is subscribing to the service, does that mean I have to?” That managed to silence her mother, for all of five seconds.

  But since she’d already been through all the guys at work, had gone the fix-up route, made the rounds of singles bars, and come up empty, Rachel agreed to give it a try. Her roommate Wendi had hooked up with a pretty decent guy on the service—an investment banker—and they had gone out for four months, until she dumped him. It was a pattern with her. Wendi had no trouble getting dates. And those dates always seemed to blossom into long-term relationships. But she was always the one who let loose of the guy first, just as soon as things started getting serious.

  Rachel, on the other hand, was looking for a serious long-term relationship but couldn’t get beyond the second date. Rachel was never the dumper, always the dumpee. What was wrong with her?

  Rachel reviewed her profile: twenty-two-year-old female attending graduate school at NYU, grew up in Lobster Cove, Maine. Blonde hair, blue eyes, 5’4” tall, body style firm and toned. Drinks socially, doesn’t smoke, single with no children. Conservative, goes to synagogue on the High Holidays. Is interested in meeting someone between the ages of 22 and 26. Then she skimmed over her pers
onal essays where she was supposed to reveal more about herself, her perfect date, her perception of an ideal relationship and what she wanted out of life. That section was a big blank. She didn’t even know what she wanted out of life, so how was she supposed to recognize it when she saw it in somebody’s else’s profile?

  She had taken a couple of calls, answered some e-mails, and IMed a couple of guys. Actually went on a couple of dates. She still had hope, was full of it, really. Even after her last dating disaster.

  “This guy walks in with his friend to check me out, just in case I turn out to be a wack job or a freak,” she related to her roommate. “We have coffee, a mocha latte for me, which he doesn’t pay for. It’s a good thing he brought the friend, because I couldn’t have spent three hours talking to the vertically-challenged man who showed up instead of the tall, sexy-looking guy promised in the picture. In fact, I wish I’d gotten the other guy’s number. He was hot. And then, since Saturday was ‘date night,’ as Shorty put it, he invites me to a movie, which he also doesn’t pay for. When he makes me pay for my own popcorn, I am ready to give up Internet dating forever. Thanks a lot, Mom. When I get back from the date that evening, I’m on the computer rereading this guy’s profile to see where I had gone wrong. Then he calls and says he had a great time (were we on the same date?), and I agreed (so I lied), all the time thinking, delete, delete, delete.”

  Wendi wandered over to Rachel’s computer and looked at her roommate’s photo on the screen. “Not bad. I’d do you,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Rachel said dryly, thinking her picture was decent enough. Except that it was originally a picture with Wendi, in a revealing tank top, standing next to her. When her sister, her “married, pregnant sister,” as her mother was so fond of pointing out, scanned it, it showed her standing next to a picture of Wendi’s partially exposed left breast. Wasn’t there a movie with a title something like that? My Left Breast? Or was it My Left Foot?

  At any rate, that partially exposed breast generated more interest than Rachel herself did. Especially since it belonged to Wendi “DaKnockers” Davidow.

  The first e-mail she got was from a guy who said her “friend” looked familiar, he thinks he’s been out with her before. Loser. Then there was JoJo (one too many Jos for her taste). And a guy who said he worked in MarCom.