Leila’s laugh filled the line. “I’m sure your calendar is booked up with your new job. Are you ready to check your availability now? Your future in-laws have given us open dates for tastings in mid-August.” Her tone dropped on the last sentence, conspiratorial, as if we had an unspoken bond over the annoyance Wells’s mother could bring to a room. When I didn’t respond right away, Leila filled my silence. “In light of all that’s going on, we wanted to confirm.”
A wave of annoyance at this ask. This task. “You haven’t directly spoken to Wells, then,” I guessed.
“We spoke to his assistant. She referred us back to you.”
I clenched my jaw. It was so unbelievably like him to pawn our wedding cancelation off on his assistant.
“HeartString’s here,” Samantha mouthed in my direction.
I held up a finger. “Let me call you back,” I said to Leila.
“You need a touch-up,” Dola said after I hung up, her brows knitting together. “I just put that on you. Why’d you wipe it off?”
Samantha pocketed her phone. “Ready to go greet Enzo?”
“Huh.” My lips felt bee-stung, winter-chapped. I must’ve gnawed the pigment off. “I’ll meet you there in a minute. I forgot something in my office.” I ducked into in an empty officenook, seething, and waited for Wells to answer my fury-call. The line rang once, then punted me to voicemail.
Anger flared in my chest, wound through my shoulders. He’d iced the call. My stomach pinged with worry. Wedding plans were a domino anxiety, and if Wells hadn’t taken care of this, then what else had been left hanging? “It’s me,” I said after the prompt. “Just got off the phone with the wedding coordinator. For our food tasting. Thought you might want to know.” I jutted my jaw forward. “You know it’s off, Wells. Please take care of this.”
“Weallhave the brain neurocircuitry to see another person as more special than anyone else,” the dating website guru said from the brown-tan Du Jour set chair about an hour later. Enzo had tight curly hair and a very square chin. He turned to the camera. “That’s the definition of a soulmate. And now, more than ever before, finding that person is important.”
“And as a result of Soulmail, you’ve split HeartString into two sites now, Enzo?” I prompted, using his name to persuade him to look at me instead of the camera. Media training lesson two. “Can you tell me more about that?”
“I’d love to.” He leaned toward me. “Before Soulmail, HeartString had the best success rate in the country.”
“How does a dating website define success? Would that be marriage rates, number of dates, or something else?” My hunch was subscription rates, but that callout would be bad TV.
“Well.” Enzo rubbed his chin. “It’s self-reported, of course. There’s no way to track number of dates, and marriage isn’t always the best data point.”
“Right.” Off camera, a woman I vaguely recognized as part of the public relations department approached Samantha. She cupped a hand around my boss’s ear, speaking rapidly. As my guest launched into the meaning of strangers and soulmates, Icouldn’t help but clock Samantha’s eyebrows vaulting over her amethyst glasses. I shifted, uncrossing and then recrossing my legs to accommodate my twingy knee.
“...So now, we’ve created SoulString for the countless people who’ve opened their Soulmails to find a stranger’s name and date of birth,” Enzo finished, lighting his face with a bright smile.
Out of the corner of my vision, the PR person retreated. Isoftened my features, a trick I’d implemented to hide the blink I’d developed against the studio glare. “I’m sure our audience would be interested to know if there are any privacy concerns?”
He gave a vigorous nod. “An understandable worry. It’s a double-consent situation—first, by registering your Soulmail, you’re consenting to the data being shared; then, by searching, you’re acknowledging you want to be connected to that person. And from there, you meet on our secured chat site. Once we verify the users’ identities, they join the giant registration database thatstringstogether mates from around the globe.”
“So that’s where the name comes from.” I pretended to check the notepad on the bleached wood table beside me. “And that’s $14.99 perday?”
“A small price to pay for a guaranteed match, wouldn’t you say? And for those who already had HeartString memberships, for a limited time, we’re offering just $9.99 a day.”
“I’m guessing you’d say it’s a bargain for those already looking.”
“Hard not to.” Enzo chuckled. “Theoretically, of course, you could get everything squared away in just one day, so it’s like you’re having us do the detective work for the price of a couple coffees. I’ll also take this time to mention we’re, of course, keeping the original HeartString active, though it’s shifting its focus.”
“To what?”
“Well, there are people who haven’t opened their Soulmails...” He gave me an oddly pointed look, but I kept my face plain. “Those people want to live life the old way, still up to the game of chance. Or people whose soulmates aren’t romantically inclined. We want to respect that, so we’re reducing the cost for those who choose that path. Plus, there’s an option for people who are newly eighteen and haven’t received a Soulmail.” The growing number of people worldwide who had reached the age of majority in the last few weeks was loud on social media. Protests had begun outside of the White House, the aerial shots like a D.C.-based Coachella.
Polite face, I reminded myself, my jaw painfully tensing as I strove to keep a placid expression. Every one of my molecules screamed to retreat from this man. I suspected that if you took a human pH strip to him, he’d test as whatever color acid was. “Well, it was a real pleasure to have you here today—”
“And,” Enzo interrupted, jutting out his chin, “I have an announcement to make.”
Off camera, Samantha’s frown threatened permanent residence. A surprise announcement hadn’t been in the pre-show notes. “Is that so?” I said carefully.
Enzo faced the camera head-on. “I’m here to announce SecondString, a division of HeartString Corporations. Its goal is to re-create the online dating scene for people who’ve had the unfortunate circumstance of having their beloved Soulmails already pass away. Part ofthatmembership includes optional bimonthly sessions with grief counselors.”
I blinked. “Remarkable,” I managed.
