Page 18 of Love's a Script
Hattie laughed, the sound almost unbridled. “Baby, is this not a dramatic situation?”
“Why don’t we talk to Dad first?” Mary said. “Tell him our concerns and give him a chance to clear things up?”
“I already asked him all the questions. It was like pulling teeth getting that Reddit information. This will save us time and stress.”
“I hear you, but can we at least try talking to him together? Please?”
Mary didn’t want to go behind her father’s back to investigate him like he was incapable of running his own life. He’d raised them mostly on his own after the divorce, and he built a respectable academic career as a mathematician. Surely he could account for his girlfriend’s existence.
“Fine, okay,” Hattie said. “But if things still sound sketchy, we’re going with the PI.”
Chapter Eleven
File no. 13 – Interview with Monica Reed, dating coach
MONICA REED: There’s a belief that many of my clients have before working with me that finding love should be effortless and spontaneous. That it should find them wherever they are even if that’s locked up in a princess tower. But that’s hogwash, okay?
CHESA SALVADOR: How so?
MR: Intentionally and repeatedly putting yourself out there will yield better results than simply thinking about the love you want in your life. I’m not saying love can’t be whimsical and surprise you, but it’s more true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
“The nature of this process doesn’t allow me to dwell on a failed date for too long,” Ruben said into his recording device. It was early in the morning at the radio station, long before any of the staff were set to show up, and Ruben was at his cubicle dictating a reflection he’d use when it was time to draft the script for the feature. “Matchmaking encourages optimism,” he continued. “A hope that The One is around the corner as long as you keep going. It almost sounds like the mindset of a gambler, but where slot machines are all luck, matchmaking feels dynamic, responsive. Winnable.” He leaned back onto the hind legs of his chair, pausing to think. “I’ll need to see if there’s data to support this impression. Maybe the hope is an illusion but required if you’re going to engage in a Sisyphean sport like dating.”
Some movement to Ruben’s left yanked him from his focused musings. Chesa had quietly arrived and was watching him over the partition that separated their workspaces. He startled, jerking forward to avoid falling backward in his chair, but in the process, he tipped over his mason jar of water.
“Sorry! I didn’t want to interrupt you,” Chesa said as they both rushed to clean up the spill with tissue and scrap paper.
“I’d have preferred the interruption over the nefarious ghost approach.”
“I didn’t think you’d be here this early,” she said once the desk was dry. “Didn’t you have a date last night?”
Ruben sighed, retaking his seat. “Yeah.”
“Bad?” she asked, finding a spot against the wall of his cubicle to prop her shoulder against. The workday hadn’t officially begun, but a pencil had managed to find its way behind her ear already.
“No, the date was fine. She was nice. But we mostly talked work.”
“Fun, a networking event.”
The observation wasn’t far off. Minutes after Ruben had met his date, Felicia, at an indoor ice-skating rink, she’d said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
It was the worst thing someone like Ruben could hear. He met new people at an unimaginable rate, but he had all sorts of tricks to remember them. He’d tried running through the possible contexts he could’ve known Felicia from, and it turned out that they’d taken several English courses together as undergraduates.
“It’s okay,” she’d said. “It’s been, like, over a decade. I didn’t really expect you to remember me. I only do because you were always one of the smartest ones in class, and I thought you were cute.”
For the rest of their time together, they put their mediocre skating skills to work and detailed their academic and professional pursuits.
“So what is this?” Chesa asked. “Zero for three?”
“Yeah, I suppose it is.” He pushed against the impulse that wanted to take her words as an indictment. “What about your end?” he asked. “Any updates?”
“I scheduled an interview with that queer speed dating organizer I told you about, so I’m looking forward to that. Also, Hugh is asking about the sex robots again.”
“He’s obsessed, and it’s getting uncomfortable,” Ruben said.
“Do you want me to relay that verbatim?”
“Sure, if you think it would stop the badgering.”
