Arranged Page 2

  Should I call and find out what they do? If it’s a dating service, should I use it? No, that’s silly. Didn’t I just decide I needed to be alone? That’s right, I did. So, I’ll be alone. And then I’ll find a new man, the right man, on my own.

  I throw the card in the direction of the wastebasket in my old bathroom. It hits the tile with a sharp click. I pick it up and read it again. I feel the same thrill I did earlier. Something about the card feels lucky, like the fortune cookie I once got that said, “You were born to write,” which is now hanging, framed, in my cubicle at Twist magazine.

  I need something lucky right now.

  I tuck the card into the black rim of the mirror above the white pedestal sink.

  It couldn’t hurt to keep it for a while.

  Chapter 2

  Just a Little Bit of History Repeating Itself

  I call Blythe & Company two months and seventeen days after I find their card on the street.

  Why oh why do I do this?

  Well . . . remember all that wishing and hoping I did on the North Star? Turns out it did change my luck. For the worse.

  It all started when I ran into my ex-boyfriend, Tadd.

  It was about six weeks after the breakup. Through a supreme act of will, I hadn’t spoken to Stuart since I left. I’d worked my way through the first three stages of breakup grief—Good Riddance; I Did the Right Thing, Right?; and Maybe I Should Call Him to See if He’s Okay?—and settled on I Should and Will Be Alone Forever.

  I spent the weekend revising the book I’m writing, after receiving a bunch of comments from my literary agent. I was having trouble making the changes she wanted, and by Sunday, I was feeling down on myself and disconnected. The cold, steady rain—and the fact that I’d spent the entire weekend in pajamas—wasn’t helping. When the weatherman said it might snow, I decided to go shopping for a new winter coat. My old one seemed to have gone missing in the move. Hopefully, this was the last time I’d have to send two burly men to pack my stuff in absentia.

  Strike that. I will never have to do that again. You got that, Anne? Good. Continue.

  Anyway, I was walking through Banana Republic when I smacked right into Tadd. Winded, I looked up into his blue, blue eyes. I took in his features, the way the gray crewneck he was wearing hugged his straight shoulders, and I felt my stomach whoosh. Then I realized who it was. Or, to be honest, I realized who it was when Tadd said, “Anne, hi!”

  How did this beautiful man know my name? I looked closer. “Oh. Hi, Tadd.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  It had been. We’d met when I was twenty-four. I was working at a small weekly paper. The owners hired Tadd as their lawyer when a large company offered to buy him out. Tadd spent a couple of days at the paper to learn the business, and I was assigned to show him around. He was the best-looking thing I’d seen since I graduated from college, and I made sure he knew I was interested and available. We dated for over a year, and then I broke up with him, though the precise reason why was fuzzy to me at that moment.

  “Yeah, it has.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So,” I said after an awkward pause, “what have you been up to?”

  “Life . . . work . . . working out . . .”

  As Tadd droned on, I remembered why I’d broken up with him. He’s the most boring man on earth. In fact, if I’m being totally truthful, the only interesting thing about Tadd is how good-looking he is.

  Oh my God, how did I go out with him for over a year? Was there really nothing that connected us except his looks? What the hell was wrong with me?

  Through the haze of his boringness, I heard him say, “And I got married last year.”

  “What was that?”

  “I said, I got married last year. My wife’s trying on clothes back there.” He motioned toward the fitting rooms.

  “You’re married?” I felt funny, like I’d been winded again.

  “Are you all right?”

  I tried to seem calm. “I’m fine.”

  “You look pale.”

  I guess I failed. “Just store disease, I guess. I hate shopping malls.”

  “You do?”

  Crap. Tadd loves to shop, and in the first flush of love, we spent many weekends in stores like this one, trying on clothes and smiling when the shopgirls said how good we looked together. Tadd looks even better in a store mirror than in real life, and I loved looking at him in that slightly distorted way. But there was no point explaining this to him. I can’t even explain it to myself.

  “I do when I’m tired. It’s been a long week.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “So, how did you meet your wife?”

  His face lit up. “She’s a lawyer in my office . . .”

  I tried to look interested, but all I could think was that the King of Boring was married and I was still single. Well, maybe she was into his money. Oh, right, she was a lawyer too, she had plenty of money of her own. Well, maybe she was equally boring and didn’t know any better. Yeah, that had to be it!

  Not wanting to find out, I said goodbye to Tadd and left the store in a daze, forgetting all about my new winter coat.

  I still felt unsettled later that night when I met my friend and editor, William, for a drink at a divey bar downtown. He lives a few sketchy blocks away from the bar in an ultramodern condo built in an old meatpacking plant. He keeps insisting his neighborhood is about to change for the better. Since it hasn’t yet, I made sure the cab dropped me at the bar’s front door. I tried to ignore the slouching teenagers in oversize sweatshirts and droopy pants as they scanned the street for the Five-O.

  Inside, the bar was dark and slightly honky-tonk. A Steve Earle song was playing on the fifties-style jukebox, and the tables were made from rough-hewn pieces of wood. A beefy man in his fifties with a full sleeve of blurry tattoos was tending bar. There were a few half-empty bottles of hard alcohol on the ledge behind him. The air smelled like peanuts and stale beer.

  Next time, I was meeting William in my neighborhood.

  I ordered a pint of Harp and carried it to William’s table by the jukebox. He was wearing a navy sweatshirt with white lettering across the front. As usual, his bright yellow hair was sticking straight up.

  “Yo, A.B., what up?”

  “Are you still allowed to talk like that at your age?”

  He rolled his kelly-green eyes. “Geez, thanks for making me feel all good about turning thirty-six.”

  “Shit, was it your birthday?”

  “Pretty sure I saw you eating two pieces of cake at my office party two days ago.”

  I smiled. “It was three pieces, actually.”

  “The girls must hate you.”

  “Sometimes.” I took a long drink and wiped the foam off my upper lip. I stared into the amber liquid, watching the reflected ceiling lights float gently on its surface.

  “What’s up, Anne? You seem . . . gloomy.”

  “I guess I’m feeling my own age these days.”

  “Because of the Cheater?”

  That’s his name for Stuart since the breakup.

  “That, and . . . I don’t know . . . do you ever feel like you’re going to be single forever?”

  William sighed. “I know I’m going to regret this, but . . . what’s really going on?”

  I thought about the disoriented, winded feeling I had when Tadd told me he was married. How I’d felt that feeling before. How maybe it was the reason I’d stayed with Stuart longer than I should have.

  “I guess I feel like I’m never going to meet the person I’m supposed to be with. I keep thinking I’ve met him, but it never seems to work out.”

  “How many times have you thought that?”

  “Four.”

  “That seems like a lot.”

  “I know, right?”

  William dug a handful of peanuts out of the bowl in front of him. “Can you explain something to me? Why do women always think there’s one particular person they’re supposed to be
with?”

  “Men don’t think that?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Huh.”

  “So,” he asked again, “are you going to enlighten me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what anyone else’s excuse is, but I blame my mother.”

  He laughed. “Of course you do.”

  “She is the one who named me after the main character in Anne of Green Gables.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . being named after a character in a made-to-be love story is a recipe for thinking that life should imitate art, particularly when you look just like her.”

  I said this in a mocking tone, but sad to say, it’s pretty much the truth. I do look just like Anne of Green Gables (red hair, green eyes, pale skin, a smattering of freckles across my nose), and I did grow up thinking the perfect man for me is out there, that it’s only a matter of time until I meet him.

  “It’s a book, Anne,” William said practically.

  “I know, but . . . don’t you think those kinds of things happen in real life sometimes?”

  “You’re hopeless, you know that?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Despite my best intentions, I never quite managed to shake the feeling that my life isn’t what it’s supposed to be. And it got worse when I ran into John, the guy I’d been trying to get over when I met Stuart.

  John and I met when I started working at Twist magazine six years ago. Twist is a monthly city-based magazine. John was the hotshot features writer. I was happy to have my own desk. I noticed him on my second day, when we crossed paths in the fax/copy room. He looked so much like the potential James Bond actor on that month’s cover that my heart skipped a beat. A few weeks later, I did some research for him on an article about the mayoral candidates. We hit it off, falling into an easy, flirty banter, and started dating soon after.

  He broke it off two years later. On my birthday. Apparently, commitment wasn’t his thing. In fact, he never dated anyone for longer than two years, his “best-before date,” as he so charmingly called it.

  It was a messy breakup, one of those heaving “But whyyyy???? I donnn’t underrrrstaannd!!!” moments. He didn’t have any answers other than “I told you I wasn’t into long-term relationships.” “Buuttt you saiidd you loovveeddd meee!!!,” etc., etc., until he convinced me he wasn’t going to change his mind, and I moved out and onto Sarah’s couch. Not long after, he got offered a column at the Daily Chronicle. I hadn’t seen him since.

  It was a few weeks after the Tadd sighting, and I was behind on a deadline. I got my own column a year ago, covering consumer products. The article was about the latest in ebook readers. I was having trouble finding an angle. Truth be told, I’m still waiting for life to look like it did on The Jetsons.

  I ran into John outside the coffee shop on my corner. I was wearing beat-up jeans, an oversize wool sweater (an old one of Tadd’s, I think), and a baseball hat. This time I was the one who did the recognizing.

  “John! Hi!”

  He took a moment to connect the dots. “Anne . . . I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  Why oh why did I have to run into him looking like this? Of course, he looked perfect in his camel-colored hunter’s jacket.

  I adjusted my baseball hat nervously. “Oh, I just popped out for a coffee. I’m in the middle of writing. Anyway, how are you?”

  “I’m good . . .” He raised his left hand to run it through his hair. He has great hair, black and thick. I followed the path of his hand through it. It was then that I noticed a glint of platinum.

  “You’re married!?”

  “Sure. Aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not married.”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought I heard you were.”

  He heard I was married! Maybe he heard that, and it broke his heart, and he married the first girl who came along, out of misery and spite, and—

  “Earth to Anne.” He waved his wedding-ringed hand in front of my eyes.

  “Sorry, I spaced for a moment. How long have you been married?”

  “Three years.”

  “Three years!?”

  Several people on the street turned around at the sharp tone of my voice.

  “Anne, calm down.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I said, just as loudly as before.

  His powder-blue eyes clouded with annoyance. “What’s your problem?”

  “What’s my problem? Mister I-Break-Up-with-People-on-Their-Birthday is asking me what my problem is?” My voice rose with each beat of my heart.

  “Will you keep it down?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  He looked ashamed. “Look, Anne, I’m sorry if I hurt you, and I’ve had regrets about the birthday thing, but it wasn’t right between us. Not like it is with Sasha. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s true.”

  I knew immediately what he meant. I didn’t know Sasha or anything about their relationship, but we weren’t right together. Not past the surface. Which is my problem. Those damn handsome surfaces that make my heart race and my brain turn off.

  “So you met the right woman, and you were suddenly ready to settle down?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was that simple?”

  “Love doesn’t have to be complicated, Anne,” he said, trying to look worldly and sage.

  Hell, maybe he was worldly and sage. Or maybe he was full of shit. But his wedding band was real. He was really married.

  “There’s someone out there for you, Anne.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  His cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the number. And then he smiled this devastating, happy smile. I actually felt my stomach flutter, even though the smile was clearly not for me.

  He signaled that he’d be a minute. “Hi, baby.”

  My heart froze. He used to call me “baby” in that exact same tone of voice.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a few minutes. I ran into Anne, and we’re catching up.”

  I ran into Anne? No explanation of who I was, and no hiding it either. How totally annoying. Couldn’t I at least be a secret he had to keep?

  John closed his phone. “I’ve got to go, but it was great to see you again.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. I’ve often wondered what became of you.”

  “That sounds so formal.”

  “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

  I didn’t really, but I let it pass.

  “Well, I’m doing the consumer products column now, and I got a literary agent for my book. You know, the one I started writing when . . .”

  God, I sounded like a moron!

  “That’s great, Anne.”

  “And I’ve had boyfriends since you . . .”

  Amendment. I sounded like a desperate, pathetic idiot.

  “Of course you have.”

  “What I mean is, I haven’t been sitting around pining for you.”

  “Good. I was a jerk.”

  “You were.”

  He smiled. “You see, we can agree on some things.”

  “I guess.”

  “So, are we good here?” He shuffled his feet, eager to go.

  I met his oh-so-blue eyes, and I felt my anger melting away. Maybe it was a cop-out, but why not forgive him? It wasn’t really his fault we didn’t work out. He’d told me early on about his best-before date. I was the one who was stupid enough to think it wouldn’t apply to me.

  “Sure, we’re good.”

  He looked relieved. “I’m glad. Take care of yourself.”

  He gave me a brief hug, and I watched him walk down the street until the crowd swallowed him up. Then I went straight to Sarah’s office. I just managed to hold in my breakdown until she closed her door.

  “He dddin’t want to marry meeee,” I wailed quietly. “What’s wrong with meeee?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Anne.”

  I blew my nose. “So why do I keep ending up alone?”
/>
  “Maybe a better question is, why do you keep choosing the wrong man?”

  “Okay, counselor, why do I keep choosing the wrong man?”

  She made a face. “I don’t know why, but you do see that you’re doing it, right?”

  “It’s kind of hard not to, given that I seem to be caught in some kind of It’s a Wonderful Life loop.”

  “I never did see the appeal of that movie.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Sarah asked, ever practical.

  “Try not to leap the next time a black-haired, blue-eyed man smiles at me?”

  She laughed. “That might be a good start.”

  So now, a few weeks later, I’m at work writing an article comparing a new crop of cell phones that are apparently going to revolutionize communications. My beige fabric cubicle is littered with notes and discarded drafts. I’ve already had three cups of extremely strong coffee, and my left leg is jittering up and down. The air is full of the usual office sounds of phones ringing, keyboards clacking, and the jumble of my coworkers’ voices, a white noise I usually manage to tune out.

  My phone rings loudly, sending my frayed nerves over the edge. “Yello.”

  All I hear is gibberish.

  “Sarah, is that you?”

  More gibberish.

  “Sarah, are you okay? I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “I said, Mike and I are engaged. Mike and I are engaged!”

  I’ve never heard Sarah this hyper without the influence of a lot of alcohol. A lot.

  “Wow!” I say, sounding thrilled but feeling that same old queasy feeling.

  “I know! Isn’t it totally exciting?”

  “It’s so exciting. Tell me all about it. I want to hear all the details.”

  “Well . . .”

  I try to concentrate, but as she tells me about the most romantic moment of her life, my queasiness grows. I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever be calling Sarah and speaking incomprehensibly about the most romantic moment in my life.

  God, why do I care so much? Why do I need to be with someone, to be married? I have a career and great friends. Why isn’t that enough? But is it so unreasonable to want more from life? To want what so many other people have? I want a permanent connection with someone who loves me. I want to have kids. And not alone, in the sperm-bank-supermom way. I want by-products of me and the one I love. To see his elbow or the slope of his shoulder in miniature, whoever he is. If there ever is a he.