He goes still then holds his available hand out. “Let me give you my contact info, then.” Smooth and unbothered.
After he taps his number into my phone, he slips it back into my shorts pocket for me. It’s a little too familiar but also…it’s good. “Looking forward, Cassia.”
Things have officially been set into motion.
20
All the women of my family are at my house and Betty is about to punch a hole through the roof to escape them.
“Someone put this bird out of its misery,” Sunny says, covering her head when Betty swoops over her—purposely low, may I add.
It’s the day of the LACMA matchmaking event and everyone wants to make sure every part of my outfit, makeup, and hair is exactly right lest I show up looking like a bog woman and lose the love of my life before the romance has a chance to get started.
I’ve put on a Fleetwood Mac record to create the proper vibes for these boomers, and as usual Sunny makes fun of me for owning vinyl. I imagine it’s like when I make fun of a teenager for wearing a Nirvana T-shirt.
Several outfits are laid out on my bed, and my hair is in a towel turban, still wet from my shower. Emoni is in my bathroom getting my curling iron heated up so she can help me with my hair while Sunny and Halmoni survey my clothes and shoes.
“It’s not quite warm enough for this, but Iloveit.” Sunny holds up a black crotchet number with suede fringe.
“Too hippie,” Halmoni says dismissively. “What about this?” She’s pointing at a deep-blue knee-length dress that slips off the shoulders prettily and is cut on the bias.
I consider it. “It’s really nice but will make me think about how much I’m eating all night.”
“You don’t want that, you need to feel comfortable!” Emoni calls out from the bathroom.
“I agree,” I say. “Should I wear something looser?”
Both Sunny and Halmoni make disgusted sounds. “This is not the time to be avant-garde and all quirky Japanese street-style,” Sunny says. “You need to knock this man’s socks off. He has to know about this body.” She sweeps her arm over my general body.
“Yes, one look anddone,” says Halmoni.
Nothing like being decades younger than people to feel like a desirable little snack. “Let me see what I might be overlooking,” I say as I pull out my phone.
Sunny comes over to see what I’m doing. “Don’t tell me you have anappfor your clothes.”
“Of course I do,” I say. “Every single item of clothing I own is cataloged in here.”
“You have a disease,” Sunny says with a laugh. But then she stops as she sees the dresses populate on my screen. “Wait, that is amazing.”
“I know,” I say smugly. The app reminds me of a few dresses I have in a different closet. After a few more minutes of me hauling things out of garment bags, I lay out as many eligible pieces as I can on my bed.
Halmoni sits on the edge and runs her hand over the lacy sleeve of a butter-yellow dress. “Was this your mother’s? It looks familiar.”
“Yeah,” I say fondly. “I still have a few of her things, even if they’re all a bit too small for me.”
Halmoni nods but I see that her mind is somewhere else, somewhere in the past. It’s often painful for her to come to this house, the house her daughter made a home. And, critically, the home where she died. I feel the opposite. This house gives me comfort. The memories aren’t sad for me, because they’re all I have.
“I was so relieved that Daniel wasn’t already married with kids,” Sunny says as she pulls out a stretchy, acid-green dress. I make a face and a note to self to add that to my resale box.
“I knew he wouldn’t be,” Halmoni says firmly.
“How did you know that?” I ask with a laugh, shaking my hair out of my towel. “It happens.”
“Rarely,” Halmoni says. It’s true—in some cases, with older clients, their fateds have already moved on, or picked different paths. In those cases, we put them in the pool of candidates who are in similar boats: ineligible or dead fateds.
Sunny picks up another dress. “Oh, how aboutthis?”
It’s a long, silk fuchsia number that I wore to a friend’s movie premiere once. It’s got a high Katharine Hepburn–esque boatneck with loose, dolman sleeves. It cinches in neatly at the waist before flowing all the way down to ankle length. The back opens with a deep V, and when I wear it, I look ten feet tall.
