School of Fortune (17 page)

Probably had to do with her green card. “Please! Sit! Did you remember to bring your resume?”

Pippa concentrated on a sappy Valentine poster as Marla read her resume three times over. “So you have a degree in cheerleading from the University of Krakow?”

“Their course is world-famous.” That didn't make a great impression so Pippa added, “I always like to see couples at sports events, cheering together.”

“Then why aren't you a professional cheerleader?”

“I broke my hip doing a triple flip on the final exam.”

“And you have a degree in pickling from the University of Warsaw?” Marla continued.

“Correct.” Pippa had no recollection of having written this resume. However, she'd have to live with it now. “Many cultures equate food with love. And Poles love pickles. So I thought I'd help people meet through food.”

“What happened?”

“All of eastern Europe suffered a cucumber blight.” “Where'd you get the black eye?” “I was in a car accident.” “Were you driving drunk?”

“It was nine o'clock in the morning.” Marla still looked skeptical. “No, I was not drunk.” “Aha. Got a lover?”

Pippa's quicksilver repartee screeched to a halt. “Excuse me, but what does that have to do with a matchmaking degree?”

Marla removed her heart-shaped reading glasses and focused on Pippa. “People looking for life partners are in dire need of your help. They're sad. They don't need any more competition.”

Pippa needed a few moments to even comprehend what that meant. “I'm not here fishing for a boyfriend, if that's what you're worried about.”

“Many women come to do exactly that.”

Through the pink gauze curtain Pippa happened to notice her chauffeur unzip his pants and furtively relieve himself on a nearby tire. “If you must know, I'm involved with my driver.” What the heck did he say his name was? “Mike.”

Mollified, Marla let Pippa's résumé slide to her lap. “How did you find us?”

“In a poker magazine. Quite a unique place for an ad.” “Do you play?”

Disconcerted by Marla's hawkish stare, Pippa blurted, “Mike does. He's the Polish champion. In fact he's playing six games simultaneously as we speak. On the Net.”

“I see.” Something didn't add up here. Chippa reeked of garlic yet had a chauffeur. Why go to Krakow to study cheerleading? Pickles? The hair? If Marla didn't desperately need two thousand bucks for LASIK eye surgery, she'd reject this nutjob at once. “Have you brought your tuition?”

Pippa forked over two thousand dollars, for which she received a name tag and a one-page syllabus on purple paper. The course looked wonderfully flimsy. “I can hardly wait to get started.”

The bells above the door jangled as Marla was stowing the cash in her safe. A buxom woman in a snakeskin miniskirt crashed in. She wore an almost vaudevillian layer of makeup and a Dolly Parton wig. Her white shaggy top would probably have looked better on a bathroom floor. “Morning,” she called, going directly to the breakfast buffet. After piling her paper plate high, she nestled next to Pippa.

“Chippa?” she read between mouthfuls. “That's a doozy I'm Patty.”

The bells tinkled as a man evidently blowing through the final stretch of male-pattern baldness bounced in. He wore plaid pants, a polka dot shirt, and green socks with his sandals. “Hi, girls. I'm Sal. Single and available.”

A Jewish grandmother marched in on Sal's heels. Her red polyester pantsuit fit perfectly with the cupid dēcor. “What? No more bagels?” she cried, observing the table. “I want a rebate.”

“Pipe down,” Patty bellowed. On her plate were all three. “Get here on time tomorrow.”

A small, swarthy man in a dark wool suit entered last. He poured himself three cups of coffee before settling onto the cushions. “Hi.”

“Everyone's here,” Marla chirped, distributing name tags. “Helen. Aram. Meet Chippa, Patty, and Sal. I'd like everyone to introduce himself or herself and explain what brought you to matchmaking school. Aram, please start.”

The diminutive fellow in the dark suit said, “I'm from Armenia. I'm also a doorman at a very prestigious Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York. There are lots of investment bankers in my building, including women. Since I know everyone, and they've already passed background checks, I had the idea to set them up on dates with each other. It's easy to walk home afterward, no drunk driving. People are spending more time in, what with gyms and gardens in the same building, so what better person than myself to get paid for a high-quality dating service?”

“You've come to the right place.” Marla smiled, although she would never in a million years heed advice from a doorman of such questionable origin. “How about you, Helen?”

The Jewish grandmother said, “I decided to take matters into my own hands when my daughter Sadie turned thirty and still had no boyfriend. I went online and pretended I was Sadie. Right away I found her a nice Jewish lawyer down the block from us in Los Angeles.”

“Wonderful!” Marla clapped.

“Would you believe my own daughter turned around and sued me for false representation? Then she married the lawyer! So I have talent. I know who fits who.”

Patty disentangled a raisin from her shag loops. “Did she win the case?”

“Yes, of course. I didn't set her up with a half-wit! Forty thousand dollars they cost me.” “How about you, Sal?”

Sal stood up, a riot of clashing plaids and dots. “I'm a used-car salesman from Little Rock. I have never been married. I guess I don't know how to look for a woman. When I started losing my hair, my customers stopped buying cars.”

“Sure it wasn't your outfits?” Helen asked.

“No, it was my negative attitude. Now I embrace my baldness. I'm going to set up a national baldies dating service.” He looked significantly at Helen. “That includes bald women, by the way.”

“I'm seventy-two years old! What do you expect, Rapunzel?”

“Patty!” Marla intervened. “Tell us about yourself.”

“I'm from Jacksonville. My rat bastard ex doesn't pay enough alimony to keep me styled as accustomed. So I need money. My idea is I read the obituaries and send the surviving partner a note that I know how to find a replacement quickly and efficiently.”

“You do that before the funeral?” Helen gasped. “Not very high class.”

“Oh! Pretending you're your daughter is?”

“Be nice now! Chippa, what about you?” Marla asked pleasantly.

Figuring her cheerleading and pickle fibs would never get past Helen, Pippa said, “I come from Poland, where many people are Catholic, meaning they can only get married once. So it has to be right the first time.”

Class waited. “You call that a colorful story?” Helen finally asked.

“Let's move on.” Marla strode to a whiteboard easel near a heart-shaped beanbag chair. “What sort of person becomes a matchmaker?”

A meddling control freak,
Pippa thought, but dared not say.

“A happiness enabler!” Marla wrote the words in tight, cramped block letters. “What sort of person needs a matchmaker?”

A stupid loser,
Pippa thought, but dared not say.

“A happiness seeker!” Marla scratched on the board. She drew four arrows going back and forth between the words and stepped back to admire her work. “There you have it in a nutshell!”

Everyone stared at the words, mentally calculating that, at two thousand bucks for twenty-four hours of instruction, they had just passed the one-hundred-dollar mark. It didn't seem like much of a bargain, even with breakfast. Thinking all the frowns represented profound appreciation, Marla plunged ahead. “How many people does it take to make a perfect match?”

“One,” Helen volunteered. “The matchmaker.”

“Two,” Patty countered. “The matchmaker and the matchee.”

“Three,” Aram said. “The matchmaker, the matchee, and the other matchee.”

Sal went with, “Four. The matchmaker, the matchee, the other matchee, and the mother-in-law.”

“Five,” Pippa said. “The matchmaker, the matchee, the other matchee, the mother-in-law, and the other mother-in-law.”

“We're getting warm,” Marla said. “Do you see how complicated it is? The match is only the tip of the iceberg of everlasting happiness.”

“What's the right answer?” Helen was still sure it was “one.”

“Ten,” Marla crowed, writing each word as she went down the list. “Matchmaker, matchee one, matchee two, mother-in-law one, mother-in-law two, domesticated animals, motor vehicles, matchee one's job, matchee two's job, and religion. Ten!”

“You said people, not things,” Helen complained. “Otherwise I could have told you that whole list. I was married for sixty years. I should know.”

Sal was aghast. “You got married when you were twelve? Rapunzel?”

“My parents and his parents fixed it in the old country. We were very happy together.”

“The laws of probability dictate that even forced pedophile marriages can work,” Marla assured her class. “Remember, if seventy percent of couples end up in divorce court, thirty percent do not! Chippa, may I ask what you're doing?”

“Writing down the ten tips of the happiness iceberg.” Pippa was sure this would be a major exam question. “What did you say after ‘sex'?”

“I did not say ‘sex',” Marla said icily.

Patty was dumbstruck. “People have to be compatible in bed, don't they? I mean, most husbands want sex seven times a week. Most wives will tolerate it seven times a year. Shouldn't the matchmaker try to hook up the nymphos with the sex fiends and the frigid women with the numb nuts?”

Marla jammed the cap back on her dry-ink pen. “That would be futile. Women hunting for spouses always overstate their sex drives. Men always minimize it.”

“I thought the whole point of going to a matchmaker was to present an honest picture of yourself.”

“That concept is so off the wall I'm not even going there.” Marla laughed. “Here's the real situation: there are over
one hundred million
single adults in the United States, all searching for an ideal partner who doesn't exist.”

“Doesn't exist?” Pippa was aghast. “I had an ideal partner.”

“Is that so! What happened to him?”

“He died,” Pippa faltered.

“Consider yourself lucky. He punched out before the lights came on.”

“Such attitude!” Helen gasped. “I had a
‘marvy
mate' for sixty years, miss. It's not a fantasy.”

“Fine. I'll revise my statement: there are over one hundred million people out there searching for a needle in a haystack. I'm going to teach you how to line your pockets assisting them.” Marla passed out a sheaf of papers. “Sign this first, please.”

Aram couldn't get past the first line of legalese. “Could you translate this into English?”

“It's a noncompetition clause. I will be sharing my trade secrets. Therefore you will promise not to teach matchmaking within five hundred miles of Phoenix.” Marla dry-erased every word on her whiteboard as her students signed the contracts. “Let's get right down to interviewing techniques. Your road to riches begins with the interview.”
Bait the hook,
she wrote. “Patty, would you mind going next door and asking for a volunteer?”

“From the gun store?”

“Yes. The place should be crawling with bachelors.”

Marla sang along with “You Are My Sunshine” until Patty returned with a fellow in a plaid flannel shirt. “This is Brad.”

“Good morning, Brad! Help yourself to breakfast then come a little closer.” Marla studied her volunteer as he consumed a banana muffin. “Chippa! What do you notice about this person?”

“Ah—he's a male,” she said cautiously.

“Age?”

“In the prime of life.” “How is he dressed?” “For hunting.” “His physical condition?” Oh boy. “He seems hearty.”

“Very good, Chippa. You're trying to put a positive spin on a client who is sloppy, obese, and probably illiterate.” “That's pretty malicious,” Sal muttered.

“A good matchmaker is objective.” Marla scratched the word on the whiteboard. “Able to assess raw material quickly and accurately Sit down, Brad.”

He sprawled on a heart-shaped beanbag chair, smiling at Patty. She was a hot mama in his book. “What does his body language tell you?” Marla asked. No one wanted to touch that one so she continued. “Observe the knees apart, the genitals in your face. That means he's sexually insecure. Probably not well endowed. The poor posture means low self-esteem. Arms outstretched over the chair? Not at home in the corporate world. Probably destitute. Looking for a woman with money. What does the matchmaker do at this point?”

“I'd tell him to go home, lose forty pounds, get a haircut, and come back when he's more presentable,” old Helen said. “Otherwise there's nothing I can do for him.”

“I'm sorry, that's the wrong response. A loser like this is your best customer. He's going to come back ten times to get set up with a date. At one hundred dollars a shot, that's a thousand bucks in your pocket. Observe closely.” Marla warmly shook her specimen's hand. “Thanks for coming in, Brad. I'm so happy we'll be working together. Tell me about yourself.” She pulled up a chair and leaned forward, electric with curiosity. “Notice my posture, class. I want to telegraph that I
care,
but in a professional way. I want to telegraph that
I
find this tub of lard attractive, fascinating, and unique.”

To no one's surprise but Marla's, Brad ended the interview. “I'd rather date a muskrat than a bitch like you.” He left, slamming the door so hard that the bells fell off their hook.

“He'll be back,” Marla shrugged. “And I'm going to charge him a hundred-dollar reenlistment fee. Chippa, would you mind taking Brad's place on the hot seat?”