An Ex to Grind Read online

  “You got it,” she said. “But I’ve had hundreds of couples get married in the fifteen years I’ve been a heart hunter. Without any divorces, knock on wood.” She knocked on the side of her head.

  “You must be very adept at what you do,” I said. Well? Maybe matchmaking was a talent, just like ice-skating, and Desiree had it. I reconsidered my initial impulse to bolt.

  “I’m the best,” she said without a hint of modesty. “And not a single complaint from the Better Business Bureau, which is unusual for a matchmaking service. There are plenty of shady organizations out there, taking people’s money and then pairing them with ex-cons. I’m strictly on the up-and-up. I don’t pull any shenanigans.”

  “What’s the secret of your success as a matchmaker?” I said, deciding I’d stick around after all and see if it made sense to pull my own shenanigans.

  “Part of it is that finding matches for people is my passion.” She pressed her hands together in the prayer position. “I consider what I do a mission from God.”

  “That’s very spiritual,” I said.

  “And my background checks contribute to my success,” she said, returning to earth. “I prescreen my clients so that there are no surprises.” She patted the folder on her desk, the one that would be full of surprises.

  “And I make a special effort to recruit men,” she said.

  “Why men?”

  “Because they’re in short supply, compared to all the available women on the prowl. If there’s an eligible bachelor out there, I’ll bag him.”

  I smiled. I had an eligible bachelor she could bag. He didn’t have a job, but he wasn’t an ex-con.

  “Oh, and there’s one other reason I’m successful,” she said. “I understand what makes a good relationship.”

  Blah blah blah, I thought. Here comes the Dr. Phil crap. Just sit there and listen politely.

  “It doesn’t begin with the first date,” she said. “It begins with two people who are well adjusted. When a match is truly a match, it’s because each person has faced up to something that scarred them—some baggage—and gotten past it, before they came together. Like, if you’re still caught up in the bitterness of a breakup, you’re not match material.”

  “No?” So I wasn’t match material. Big deal. I wasn’t there for myself.

  “No. Being overly critical of an ex during your first meeting with the new person isn’t exactly a turn-on. Besides, the critical ones are usually the people who have low self-esteem. I can set them up on a million dates, but they’ll never be satisfied until they look in the mirror, take stock, and learn to love that reflection shining back at them.”

  Okay, yeah. I was critical of my ex to anyone who would listen, but who wouldn’t be? He was a jerk.

  “That’s very interesting,” I lied. “I’m also curious about the financial terms. You charge five thousand for a year’s worth of dates?”

  “Right. You become a client, you’re guaranteed a minimum of one date per month for twelve months. But a pretty girl like you? The odds are you’re gonna meet your dream man within the first six, Melanie.” She opened my folder and started reading my biography.

  “Actually, Desiree,” I said as her eyes widened, “I should probably clarify—”

  She held up a finger to silence me—a finger with a two-inch-long, acrylic, fire-engine-red nail that curled downward at the tip and looked like it could hurt somebody. “What’s with this? I’m a little confused,” she said. “Who’s Dan Swain and why is this a biography of him?”

  “That’s what I wanted to clarify.” I cleared my throat. “I came to you so you’d find a match for Dan, my ex-husband, who deserves the kind of happiness I wasn’t able to give him.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Let me explain.” I assumed a Mother Teresa look, a look that would appeal to Desiree’s delusions of sainthood. “Dan is a wonderful human being. We had our problems, but we parted amicably. And now that he’s newly single, my mission from God is to find him a woman to replace me in his heart.”

  She looked skeptical. “If he’s such a wonderful human being, why’d you divorce him?”

  It was time to launch into my act. I lowered my head and fake-cried for a few seconds. She asked me if I wanted a glass of water. I told her I just needed to be able to tell my story to someone with her vast experience and gift for empathy. “Oh, Desiree,” I said. “Sometimes people just aren’t meant to be together. Dan and I were very young when we got married—too young to make such a commitment. As time went on, it became all too clear that he was the caring one and I was the workaholic who cared only about climbing the corporate ladder. I wasn’t cut out to be the kind of wife Dan needed, so I made the ultimate sacrifice: I set him free so he could find a woman more suited to the nurturing individual he is.”

  “Now that’s a switch,” she said. “Most women would rather see their exes dead than happy.”

  “Maybe, but Dan is a decent, loving guy and I really want you to find him someone equally decent and loving—the kind of quality person you seek out for your clientele; the kind that doesn’t have to take antipsychotic medication, for instance.”

  “Why can’t I just meet Dan and discuss this with him directly?”

  “Because he was a professional football player, Desiree. With the New York Giants.” I nodded at the folder. “It’s in there.”

  She gave the biography a cursory reading. “I thought his name sounded familiar.”

  “Yes, well he’s got a lot of macho pride, like most athletes,” I said. “He would never in a million years seek the services of a matchmaker. The idea of confiding his innermost feelings to a stranger would be mortifying to him. When we were married, he wouldn’t even do couples therapy.”

  “Then what do you expect me to do?” she said.

  “I want you to set Dan up with Ms. Right without his knowing about it. We’ll arrange for her to meet him and see what happens.” She started to protest, but I plowed ahead. “You just told me there’s a shortage of single men out there, right? Well, I’m delivering you one. He’s very handsome, as you’ll see from the photo in the folder, and he’s not even forty yet, which puts him in the most desirable demographic category. And here’s another thing that makes him desirable: he’s a celebrity. We all know how women love celebrities.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” she said.

  I was getting to her. I knew I was. “After a knee injury ended his playing days, he remained in the public eye by transitioning into broadcasting and doing on-air reporting for several networks.”

  A lightbulb went on then. She started nodding sourly. “Yeah. I remember him now. He was drunk on live television and insulted a female reporter. Not my kind of client, sorry.”

  She was about to get up when I fake-cried even harder—hard enough to get her to sit back down.

  “Wait, Desiree. You don’t know the whole story.”

  “What whole story?”

  “He wasn’t drunk that night. He had a stomach virus. An hour before he went on the air, the doctor gave him something to stop the nausea, and it made him a little punchy. It wasn’t booze, really. It was a pill so he wouldn’t puke all over his coanchors. You have to believe me!”

  “All right, all right. Don’t have a cow.”

  Sure, I’d gone overboard. Desperation does that to people. But I still had her attention. “And now he has a very active career as a goodwill ambassador for his sport,” I continued. Goodwill ambassador, my ass. Right before we split up, he’d been paid twenty-five hundred dollars to appear at the bar mitzvah of a kid whose father was a Giants fan. He stood next to the rabbi and made a little speech about how life was like a football game and becoming a man was like scoring a touchdown. Then he drank a few glasses of Manischewitz and beat it. “But being famous has made him cautious about women. Where can he meet them? He can’t go out with a groupie. And he can’t log on to some Internet dating chat room. He needs someone discreet to help him find a good w
oman, Desiree. Someone of your professional caliber.”

  “So he’s got money?” she asked. “That’s a big issue with my female clients.”

  “A lot of it,” I said, willing my eyes not to roll. “Just recently he chartered a private jet and flew off to Puerto Rico. He dresses beautifully, loves to dine at fine restaurants, and lives in one of the nicest apartments in Manhattan.” Yeah, so what if I was footing the bill for all of it? His dream date wouldn’t know that. Dan certainly wouldn’t tell her.

  “He does sound like a catch,” she said. “Almost too good to be true. But what kind of a person is he? You know, deep down.”

  I beamed. “The real deal, that’s what kind of a person. He was born and raised in Minco, Oklahoma, a small town where everybody knows everybody. His family lives on a farm and grows corn. It doesn’t get much more real than that, does it?”

  “It does if your ideal man has a family with a castle in Scotland,” she said. “A lot of women want a guy who comes from money.”

  “How shallow,” I said with an ostentatious shrug. “Dan is for the woman who wants sincerity, genuineness, and honesty. I’ll take that over family money any day of the week.”

  “But you didn’t take it,” she pointed out. “You divorced him.”

  “I explained that. We had lifestyle differences.”

  She went back to reading the biography. “It says here he has a dog. A pug.”

  “Actually, he and I share custody of Buster,” I said. “Dan has him every other week and on alternate holidays.”

  “‘Client must not have allergies to or phobias of dogs,’” she read aloud.

  “Correct,” I said. “We keep Buster very clean, but pugs do shed.”

  She put aside the biography and went for the essay about Dan’s hopes and dreams. I’d had fun writing that one. I’d loaded it up with the same drivel you see in personal ads—how Dan wanted a woman who enjoyed walks on the beach at sunset and mugs of hot cider beside a roaring fire and black-and-white movies on rainy Sunday afternoons when there wasn’t a football game on TV. I added that he preferred a woman who was independent(i.e., had her own money), affectionate (was good in bed), witty (would tolerate jock jokes), and adventurous (would be up for expensive trips and paying for them too). Not bad, right?

  “So, will you help?” I begged. “Will you find Dan his soul mate?”

  She shook her head. “I could set him up with dozens of my clients, but I’d feel guilty about involving them in something as iffy as this. Like I told you, my business is on the up-and-up.”

  “This is on the up-and-up,” I maintained. “You’ll be offering these women a chance at ninety days of happiness.”

  “Ninety days?” said a justifiably puzzled Desiree.

  “Forgive me.” Talk about almost blowing it. Talk about tipping my hand! “It’s just an old saying of my mother’s: ninety days of happiness guarantees a hundred years of good health.”

  She chuckled. “Who makes those up, huh?”

  “Yes, well about the women. Just tell them about Dan and his celebrity and how he was too proud to sign up with a professional matchmaker. Explain that you heard from a close friend of his that he’s lonely and eager to be in a lasting relationship. They’ll understand, especially after they meet him and find out how great he is.”

  “But how am I supposed to set them up with him if he doesn’t know he’s being set up?”

  “No problem,” I said. “You and I will sort through your client list and pick out the women we want to set him up with. Then for each date we’ll send the client where we know he’s going to be at the appointed hour. We’ll put them in the same place at the same time and let nature take its course.”

  “So the client is supposed to—what?—pick him up? My girls aren’t sluts.”

  “Of course they’re not. They’d just be making the first move. This is the twenty-first century, Desiree. Women are allowed to go after what they want. It wouldn’t be all that different from your usual way of doing things.”

  “My usual way of doing things doesn’t involve tricking some-body’s ex.”

  “Tricking? Hardly!” I feigned indignation. “You would be putting the smile back on his face, putting the light back in his eyes, putting the glow back in his cheeks, putting the—” Yeah, I was overdoing it again, but it was amazing how quickly I’d gone from a reluctant participant in this scam to an eager one. I suppose it was Desiree’s success rate that had me revved up. I was a numbers person. Her numbers spoke to me. I became a believer once I’d heard how many couples she’d put together. “You can’t not do this,” I begged her. “You’d be depriving two exemplary people of what could be the romance of their lives!”

  She pondered a bit, then shook her head. “Can’t do it, sorry. It doesn’t feel right.”

  Okay, I thought. Don’t give up. You’re not a quitter. You’ve always got a strategy, so come up with a new one—fast.

  I remembered her living room, remembered the velvet chaise and the crystal chandelier and the enormous oil painting of two large mythical animals having sex, and it struck me. The new strategy. The last shot at reeling her in.

  Desiree had expensive taste. Bad expensive taste, but expensive taste nonetheless. Maybe it was time to put the emphasis on the money and forget the hearts and flowers stuff.

  “What if I doubled your fee?” I said. “Five thousand up front and another five after you’ve found the right woman for Dan.” Of course it pained me to offer her ten grand. It was a ridiculous amount. But I’d still be saving money in the long run if I could put an end to the support payments. “That’s a lot of money to turn down, Desiree. If I walk out of here, it walks out with me.”

  She was stunned. “Maybe you’d better tell me what’s really going on here.”

  Yes, I thought. I should tell her what’s really going on. I should also tell her how she could use it to her own advantage. She likes gold? I would suggest a way for her to strike gold. I hadn’t gone to business school for nothing.

  “Fine. I’ll level with you,” I said. “I’m proposing a brand-new division of Desiree Klein Heart Hunting.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You just said you didn’t want to trick my ex. But there’s a huge market for tricking exes, and you’d be the first to tap into it.”

  “Tricking them how?”

  “Finding them new partners, so former spouses like me won’t have to pay them alimony anymore.”

  “I—” She stopped, letting the notion sink in. “This is about alimony?”

  I smiled. “And the start of a profitable new venture for you.”

  She sat there for a minute, looking a little dazed. Then: “You want me to get him remarried, so you’ll be off the hook?”

  “We could go that route, but we don’t have to,” I said. “I have a cohabitation clause in my divorce settlement—he only has to live with a woman for ‘ninety substantially continuous days’ for the alimony to terminate—and there are plenty of others in New York with similar clauses. You could make a fortune off people like me, Desiree.”

  Next came a few more minutes of back and forth. She appeared to recoil from the idea at first. (There was her supposed guilt over the exploitation of her unsuspecting clients. There was her supposed standing with the Better Business Bureau. There was her supposed belief that love made the world go around, not money.) But gradually she warmed to it, especially after I made the pitch that liberating alimony payers could be another kind of mission from God.

  “You’re a tough cookie, Melanie,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said, assuming she meant it as a compliment. “Do we have a deal then?”

  We had a deal. I leaned across her desk to shake her hand, careful not to get scratched by her talons. “You won’t be sorry,” I promised her.

  “Let’s hope you won’t be sorry.”

  I laughed. “Why would I be sorry?”

  “Buyer’s remorse.”

  It was
an odd thing to say, I thought, but then Desiree Klein was an odd person. Oh, well. The good news was that progress had finally been made. I had taken action instead of sitting passively by while my life fell apart. I felt optimistic for the first time in a long time.

  Chapter

  8

  “Good morning, Ricardo,” I said to the doorman. I was dropping Buster off at Dan’s the Monday after my appointment with Desiree. She and I had agreed to speak again once she had compiled a portfolio of potential girlfriends for him and I had nailed down his schedule. He had become quite the creature of habit since we’d split up, so I expected my part of the assignment to be easy.

  “Hi, Melanie,” said Ricardo. “I’ll buzz Mr. Swain and see if he’s up for visitors.”

  “You do that,” I said, trying to keep my annoyance in check.

  After the usual humiliating wait in the lobby, I was finally permitted to go up to my own apartment. Dan was waiting in his bathrobe and moccasins, half-asleep.

  “Is there any chance you could stop dropping Buster off in the middle of the night?” he said, wiping the crud out of his eyes.

  “It’s eight o’clock in the morning,” I said as I brushed past him, Buster trailing after me. “Some of us have places to go, people to meet, salaries to earn.”

  “And some of us need our rest,” he said. “Being a single man in New York takes a lot of energy these days. Women have become very aggressive.” He shook his head in mock consternation. “They don’t understand that ‘no’ means ‘no.’ ”

  “That must be quite a burden,” I said, unhooking Buster’s leash so he could hop onto the sofa and, hopefully, drool all over it. “I’d love to hear more about your sex life, but there’s serious business I need to discuss with you.”

  The smirky attitude vanished. “You’re not sick, are you, Mel?”

  Weird. Just when I thought Dan had no redeeming qualities, he showed his concern for my health. Maybe I hadn’t been completely wrong about him in the early years. Maybe there was a decent, caring person hiding inside the jerk he’d turned into. And maybe I wasn’t lying when I’d told Desiree he would make one of her clients very happy. “No, I’m fine, thanks. This is about our schedules. I’ve decided that in the event of an emergency we should be accessible to each other at all times.”