That’s right. I’m getting paid to do this.
My boss, Greg, got a new account for online dating service evaluations for his company, Consolidated Evalu-Shop, and I’m currently on the prototype date. I have to create the series of questions that future mystery shoppers will answer when they go through all these customer service shops to determine whether the dating service works as the owners expect, and to help improve customer service, client retention, and overall efficiency.
I’m the sacrificial virgin.
Okay, not technically a virgin, but...you know what I mean.
“DoggieDate: The place where dogs find love” is an online dating service for dog lovers.
Snort. Go ahead. Say it.
The motto needs some work.
I’m mystery shopping DoggieDate’s entire customer service and online algorithm matching system. This is my first date. According to their system, Amanda Warrick, age twenty-seven and noneofyourbusiness pounds, with a college degree, an interest in Chihuahuas and labradoodles, the owner of Spritzy the teacup Chihuahua, and a lover of seafood, is an eighty-three percent match with....
Mr. Anal Gland Hands, forty-nine, thrice-divorced, a triathletic vegan, an Internet Marketer, owner of Maisy the schnauzer and...
Unpause.
“You know, Amanda,” he says, grabbing my hands again. Ron. His real name is Ron. He has a comb-over and arms like cords of steel, tanned deep and hairless. “If you’re anything like me, you’re sick of this dating game. How about we strip off all the bullshit layers and just get right to the heart of seeing if we’re compatible?”
Pause again.
This isn’t the first time I’ve done online dating. It’s just the first time I’ve done it professionally. I’m not invested in the outcome here. I’m just doing my job.
But.
I know what Ron’s about to say, so pull up a chair. This’ll be a doozy.
Unpause.
“So tell me all your secret sexual fantasies.”
I totally called it.
“All of them?” I ask, leaning forward. “Because I’m not sure we have enough time for that.”
His eyes light up. They’re the color of the bay after a big storm, the kind of brownish grey that only comes from stirring up a lot of crap.
I sniff the air. You smell that? It’s the scent of desperation.
Or Maisy’s anal glands.
It’s hard to tell the difference.
I need to focus on work, though. This isn’t a real date. If it were, I’d trigger a rescue text from my best friend Shannon and claim she’s in the ER and take my escape. Given how often Shannon really does end up in the emergency room, I’d have about a one in ten chance of not lying.
“Tell me all about Maisy!” I say, suddenly chirpy.
Poor Ron recoils. “She has nothing to do with my sexual fantasies!”
I didn’t imply as much, but the fact that he’s so quick to say that freaks me out.
“No, no, of course not,” I say in a soothing voice. The waitress brings my beer and I drink half of it in one long ribbon of alcoholic perfection.
Ron unclenches. He has super-short hair (except for the comb-over right along the bangs) and is clean shaven. Those grey-brown eyes are framed by nothing but loose eyelid skin.
And then it hits me.
He has no eyelashes. No eyebrows, either. That’s why he looks like he’s so interested in everything I say.
“I just meant,” I continue, “that I love my little Spritzy. That’s why I joined DoggieDate. I’m wondering what Maisy’s like.”
Ron relaxes. “Actually,” he says with a conspirator’s grin, “she’s only half mine.”
Half? How do you have half a dog? Is Maisy a made-up dog? Does Ron use a fake dog to troll for women?
Or worse, maybe there really is half a dog somewhere. In a freezer. Like Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims.
“My ex-wife and I share custody.”
“Ohhhhh,” I say slowly, tipping back the second half of my beer. The waitress notices and before I’ve put the bottle down she catches my eye.
The Sisterhood Of The First Date Code is enacted. Third beer on the way. Good thing I’m taking a cab home. On my boss’s dime, no less. There is no way I’m going through twenty dates like this without beer and a cab.
That’s right. Twenty. I have to date twenty dog lovers, male and female, in an effort to create as thorough a survey as possible for the hundreds of mystery shoppers nationwide who will evaluate DoggieDate.
Anal glands be damned.
“How do you share custody of a dog?” I ask, intrigued. My third beer appears and I stifle a belch. Only men can burp on dates.
Women have to slowly leak out their CO2, like a deflating float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. God forbid you let one rip.
“She gets Maisy every other week. We trade off holidays. We each get her on our birthdays.”
He’s serious.
“Who pays doggie support?” I joke. “Do you meet in a McDonald’s parking lot to hand her off in neutral territory?”
“No. Whole Foods. And I make more, so I give Alicia eighty-two dollars a week to help cover Maisy’s Reiki treatments.”
Oh, God.
“Okay, great,” I mumble, nodding vigorously. Okay, great is code for You’re batshit crazy.
It then occurs to me: this is the entire point of these mystery shops. DoggieDate is designed for dog freaks.
If Ron is the norm, then I am, technically, the freak here.
I’m borrowing my mom’s teacup Chihuahua, Spritzy, for the dates where the men and women want to have our dogs meet. Ron didn’t want that. He said the humans needed to make sure we were compatible before taking the very serious step of letting the dogs meet.
Dog Reiki? The man pays eighty-two dollars a week for dog Reiki but he sticks his hands all over his dog’s brown starfish to save money?
And I’m the freak.
I guzzle the third beer and the waitress gives me a look. She comes over with the check. Ron ignores it.
Oh, Ron.
“I’d like an orange-flavored seltzer,” I ask the waitress. She nods and walks off.
Ron snickers.
“What’s funny?” I ask.
“Flavored seltzer. You know what they use to flavor those.” One corner of his mouth hooks up as his hand brushes against the check folder. He still doesn’t pick it up. I’m on an expense account, so it’s no big deal. Plus, technically, this is work, so why do I care that the guy won’t get the check?
And yet this is a little too close to a date for my comfort.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t been on a real date—one I’m not getting paid to attend—in months.
Not a thing.
“Amanda?” Ron gently nudges my hand.
“Oh, yes?” I’m in la la land, already distracted.
He smiles. “Beaver anal glands.”
“Beaver huh?”
The waitress sets my bottle of flavored seltzer water on the table. Ron points to it. “The flavoring. They express beaver anal glands to make most of those flavors.”
I pour the bottle into the glass of ice and laugh.
As I take a sip, our eyes meet.
He shrugs. “Look it up. For real.”
I drink the entire glass in one long motion.
And then I burp the ABCs.
2
To my utter surprise (not), Ron ditches me, his phone buzzing suspiciously about two minutes after my spectacular belch. I’m not being hyperbolic: that burp was so good that some frat boys at a nearby table gave me a standing ovation.
Ron’s rescue text is so obvious it might as well have had flashing red and blue lights attached to it.
He leaves me with the bill. I pull out the company card and give the waitress a fifty percent tip. She deserves it.
Three beers pool in my bladder and taunt me as I try, repeatedly, to make quick notes about the date to help me write
up my survey.
No luck. Can’t write. I need to evacuate the beaver funk.
Wait. That sounds very, very wrong....
As I weave to the bathroom, I run through the date in my mind. Dog lovers have different needs from your average desperate single looking for love. Because I am your average desperate single looking for love, I know what I’m talking about.
And DoggieDate has definitely figured out a distinct niche of the dating pool.
A pool I plan never to swim in.
This restaurant is on the Boston waterfront, right along a string of buildings that face the seaport. The bathroom is marble-lined and covered in fake Tiffany lamp fixtures, with glass beads and lots of prism reflections throughout the little enclosed room. I finish my business, scrubbing my hands extra hard as I wash them, and wonder if Ron was telling the truth.
Beaver glands for fruit flavoring in water? Now I’ve heard everything.
I waltz out of the restaurant, a little loose from those beers. The frat boy table gives me scattered thumbs up, one of the guys following me with his eyes the entire way out. I know this because the double glass doors show his reflection as I walk toward them.
I still got it.
At least, when it comes to impressing twenty-year-old college boys with my belching techniques.
Early spring on the seaport in Boston is fabulous at night if the snow has all melted and you have a warm breeze, which I do tonight. I walk outside and stare at the rippling water, inky black with gilded tips, the moon shining on them, making the waves look like knife edges popping up to and fro. My thick sweater wrap is just enough to prevent me from freezing.
Not as warm as a date’s arm slung around my shoulders, but my sweater hasn’t recently wiped any dog butts, so I’ll take it.
I sit down on a small bench that runs perpendicular to the water and try to find a ride home with the app on my smartphone. I hate these devices. I want my old flip phone, but Greg insists we use these things now to do our mystery shops.
Greg also insists I pretend to date men like Ron.
One down, nineteen dates to go.
In the search for my phone, I find my lipstick. Plum Passion. Who names these things? For the hell of it, I re-apply the color. Not that it will do me any good. After a (fake) date like that, what I need to attract a dog lover is Biscuit Beige. How about Puppy Pink? Burgundy Beagle?
No. Wait.
Frosted Spay.
I lean back against the bench and close my eyes, enjoying a light breeze that lifts the ends of my hair. I’m back to my natural color—boring brown—after years of doing hairstylist mystery shops that involved coloring it. I want to kick off my high heels and throw on some yoga pants, but instead I wiggle to make my Spanx more comfortable and settle for just taking a full breath.
This fake-dating stuff is for the birds.
Er, the dogs...
My purse vibrates slightly from a text. I know I should read it, but I’m pretty certain it’s my mother, and right now, I just want to enjoy being unencumbered by anyone else’s expectations for a few moments. Nights like this require a breather, no matter how fleeting.
A man’s laugh floats on the air like a smoke signal, followed by the lilt of a woman’s giggle. I open my eyes and trace the source of the sound.
A man in a suit is at the stairs leading to the dock, where a smattering of boats are tethered. He’s turned away from me, one arm outstretched toward a woman a step or two below him. The cut of his suit in the moonlight screams expensive. He has a cobra back, wide at the top, with the broad shoulders of a swimmer. His jacket is open and I see a hint of his waist, his torso bisected by a thick alligator-skin belt looped into trousers tailored so well across a strong, well-defined ass that I could turn his butt into a work of art if I were a sculptor.
He pulls the woman up and turns. I see him in profile.
It’s Andrew McCormick.
Oh, sweet holy hell.
I haven’t seen him in months. Haven’t kissed him since we were in the emergency room after my best friend, Shannon, swallowed the engagement ring his brother, Declan, gave to her as he proposed.
(A tip: don’t bury a three-carat diamond ring in a piece of tiramisu at a fancy restaurant as a way of proposing to a woman. Any woman. Why ruin the dessert like that?)
I’m the maid of honor for the wedding. Andrew is the best man. We’ve managed to avoid each other so far, but the wedding is three months away. I knew this day was coming.
But I didn’t expect it to be today.
My heart starts skipping beats as I take him in from afar, shielded by the angle of my bench. He has no idea I’m watching him. Thick hair, cut short and with the kind of layered sophistication that only comes from a stylist who charges three figures. Shaded eyes that I know are sharp and smoldering, a blend of brown and honey that makes you melt inside. He’s in a full suit, tie still snug against his neck, the moonlight reflecting off a white shirt. His grin is contagious, making my own smile widen as I tilt my head and let myself get lost in wondering.
The woman with him climbs up the final step and moves away from him. Basic body language is easy to read. They’re not on a date. If they were, she’d move closer.
He’s grinning. So is she. Then I see the sheaf of papers in her hands.
A business meeting.
The relief that floods my body makes me looser than the three beers I just had. My heart continues an off-beat pattern more erratic than Red Sox pitching. I have no right to feel relief. I have no need to feel any of these outrageously inappropriate emotions I’m sporting right here, sitting alone, rejected by Mr. Anal Gland Hands and watching the man who secretly kisses me in closets seal some kind of business deal.
That’s right. Closets.
And yes—kisses. Plural. My relationship—or, more accurately, lack of a relationship—with Andrew McCormick, an executive at Anterdec Industries, the biggest client that my company services, is one filled with mystery, discomfort, complexity, and—
Closets.
Too many closets.
More than a year ago I stormed into his office and made him, his brothers, and his father see reason. I set up a hotel shop for Shannon that brought everyone together to make Declan and Shannon face each other and clear the air.
Andrew and I ended up making out in his office closet.
Three beers in me and all I can do is reminisce. Get a fourth in me and I’ll spill the entire story.
And then there was that tiny on-call room in the emergency room where we kissed while Shannon’s tiramisu nearly killed her last year.
I eye one of the boats. Boats don’t have closets, do they?
He turns toward me, as if that thought were spoken aloud. The clouds look like cotton candy, streaked across the sky. In the intermittent moonlight he looks like a painting, with shadow and light playing on his skin and clothes as if he were a canvas of delight. A playground.
“I’m sure you’ll love the houseboat, Andrew. It seems like a perfect fit for your new life,” the woman with him says in dulcet tones. Too bad I have hyperacusis and can hear dog whistles.
And secrets from men who kiss me in closets.
“Thank you, Marcy. I’m looking forward to this,” he replies. He sounds so smug. So confident. So panty-throwingly sultry with that damn voice that feels like silk being stroked across my neckline whenever he speaks.
“Having your father step down and make you the official CEO of Anterdec would make anyone look forward to—”
“Shhhhhhh,” he says, holding one finger up to his grinning mouth. “That’s still embargoed information. You only know because the boat is a business purchase.” He rests one palm on her shoulder. Her head tilts to the left and she tosses her hair back over her back.
I narrow my eyes.
She gives him a conspirator’s smile. “Of course.”
I dart to the left, my head hidden by a bush. I can still turn and see him, though. Andrew shakes hands with Marcy the Secr
et Broker and she walks off. He jolts a little, reaching into his jacket breast pocket.
Phone call.
As he talks, he pulls at the knot in his tie, loosening it. With two practiced fingers, he undoes the top button of his dress shirt. The wind picks up and sweeps his hair into a mess from behind, sending locks across his forehead. He shivers.
I can’t stop staring.
CEO? Andrew’s officially the CEO of Anterdec Industries now? Has his father really stepped down? I know from Shannon that Declan’s been resentful that James McCormick has been grooming Andrew for the position. The two of them posture and jockey for head alpha wolf of the McCormick clan like drunk eighteenth century Highlanders with something to prove and nothing to lose.
Shannon is going to freak out when she hears this.
And I, unlike Marcy, am not sworn to secrecy. Hah.
Andrew walks, pacing on the dock, taking three long strides, turning, then repeating the motion. Deep in conversation, he’s talking with someone in confident tones. This isn’t a business negotiation. Whatever the topic, it’s not a source of stress. Yet his voice is commanding. Controlled.
Assured.
Thick, muscled thighs carry him to and fro. I’ve seen those thighs in person, sweaty and tight, covered in Lycra. Bike shorts. Back in his office.
The day he kissed me.
The first day he kissed me.
I go loose as I watch him, then force myself to twist and sit with my back to him, molding to the bench. I look up at the sky. My eyes close slowly, lashes creating a venetian-blind effect as the stars poke in between layers of the night.
I breathe in the salty air, the waves lapping against the dock’s joists.
I breathe out frustration and regret and a kind of ennui that comes from being stuck in a life without...
Closets.
I shouldn’t watch. I know I shouldn’t. But my lashes pry themselves open as if called by an unseen force and I give in to impulse.
His call ends and he stuffs the phone into the inner chest pocket of his suit jacket. His back is to me now, his face tipped up. Is he taking in the stars? Ocean waves miles away lead to tiny ripples that lap against the wooden posts of the docks. A fake Boston Tea Party ship sways in the distance, looking about as drunk as I am, except I’m on firm ground.
Vote Then Read: Volume III Page 171