“Why?” Shreya looks at the photos and profiles, squinting as if trying to find the info herself.
“Noses.” I tap on them. “Not a good financial match.” It’s true, even though I am definitely looking for reasons to discount them.
With the five left spread out in front of me, I look at each of them intently. “Gemma’s jawline indicated a stubborn nature; she will need to match with someone more yielding.” I push two more matches out. “They’re not going to be that for her.”
Three are left. I pause, trying to weigh whether I keep my cards close or show my certainty. Shreya is so absorbed that I decide to keep it closer to the vest. “Let’s invite all three of these Peters to the next event for Gemma’s matches.”
Shreya nods, looking slightly disappointed. “So none stuck out as, like, ‘the one’?”
I shake my head. “They’re all good possibilities.”
When she gets up to leave, she rotates her head a little, as if getting out a crick. “Did you ever talk to that physical therapist?” I ask her in my sternest boss voice.
“Ugh, no. I haven’t had time with my parents in town,” she says with a grumble. Shreya’s parents moved to Canada when they retired, but they’ve been camping out at her place for the past couple weeks while visiting.
“Take it from me, you don’t want to mess around with your upper back,” I say as I start opening up a website. “Check your email in five minutes.”
She gives me a suspicious look. “Okay, boss.”
When Shreya leaves, the door is left open and I hear her talking to Matteo and Lily.
“Let’s send invites to these three guys,” she says.
“It’s totally this one,” I hear Lila say. “Biggest nostrils.”
“No way, it’s this one,” Matteo argues. “He’s tallest. The tallest guys always beat out the shorter ones.”
I smile to myself. The employees at One & Only believe in a mix of our fortune-telling and pragmatism. Like I would if I didn’t know about our ability to read past lives. During our hiring process, we read applicants’ faces and, depending on their reactions to it, we make our decision on whether or not to hire them. Because the main thing we are looking for are the believers. Not fanatical about mysticism, but those who believe in love. A love that can feel fated—that one person is out there for you. A couple of former employees have been successfully matchmade by us. As small as we are, I take the responsibility of our few employees and their livelihoods seriously, and I take a few minutes to buy Shreya a massage gift certificate.
I have two reading appointments that morning (a finance bro whose past love was a man bootlegging alcohol during prohibition; the other a woman in her fifties whose past love was a lover she had on the side as a duchess in Regency England), then I meet with Sunny to start planning for this season’s big matchmaking event—the one I’ll be sending Gemma and Peter to.
—
Sunny and I have kicked off our shoes and are sitting on the sofa in Sunny’s office. She has a diffuser and humidifier running with JoniMitchell playing in the background. Even though, on the surface, she and my mother seemed like polar opposites, so much of Sunny reminds me of my mom: their need to always have music playing, the way they cross their legs when sitting down, and of course, the way they laugh. That throaty cackle.
“LACMA confirmed the date,” I say as I scroll through my to-do list on my tablet. “We just need to put down the deposit.”
Sunny raises an eyebrow. “Good job, kiddo.”
“You can thank Connie, who’s pregnant with her second child,” I say with a wink. Connie was a client who we matchmade several years ago. She’s also the director of Curatorial and Exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Very handy.
We have our client list printed out and make sure that everyone has their fated matches invited. Double-check, then triple-check. We absolutely cannot get this wrong. Let’s just say it’s happened in the past and I still have wounds from the absolute burning we got from Halmoni.
“Open bar and catering, right?” Sunny says as she pushes her reading glasses up—a beautiful pair of oversized clear frames.
“Yes, and I have just the spot for the food,” I say. “Mar’s too busy this month so she gave me a good rec for a place near the museum.” Marcella runs a very popular oyster bar in Echo Park, and she’s opening a sister location in Venice. I make a mental note to get her a bottle of chill-out-don’t-kill-your-contractors wine because construction is the worst.
“Oh!” I sit up. “I forgot to say that Connie is going to hook us up with a couple open galleries. It’ll be a great way for couples to walk around fairly privately, and a great icebreaker.”
“Look at you,” Sunny says fondly. “You’re killing it.”
I bask in her compliments. “Thank you.”
“You really remind me of your mom sometimes,” she says witha bittersweet smile. “She was always so much more fearless than me—willing to put herself out there and get stuff done.”
“In so many ways she wasn’t eldest-daughter material,” I say with a laugh. “She didn’t listen to Halmoni at all.”
“Yeah, but she did all the bad stuff so that I had an easier go of it,” she says.
