Leanne must see the panic in my face, because she tries to soften the blow. “It’s no secret that you’ve always been my best employee, Miles. You were great at what you did. Nobody has as many success stories as you. How many weddings have you been invited to? Three?”
“Four,” I mumble. Always as an old friend of the groom because, of course, none of them could bear to tell their future wives that their relationship was built on what is—let’s be honest here—something of a lie.
“That’s incredible,” Leanne says gently, before her voice takes on the firm but fair tone that made her a superstar creative director back in her agency days, when I was working as a copywriter under her. “But I can’t rely on what you did; I have to rely on what you do. I have to know I’m sending someone out there who’s going to listen to our clients’ wants and needs and work his hardest to get them to meet up with their perfect match.”
“Right,” I say, not adding that what Leanne needs is someone who actually believes in such a thing as a perfect match. Once upon a time, that was me. But not anymore.
“So this is what’s going to happen,” she says, and I’m expecting her to produce—if I’m lucky—a severance package from within her desk to hand to me. Instead, she takes out her iPad. “You have one more chance to make good here. One more client who’s going to need the old Miles to reappear and give him the real Tell It to My Heart Experience™.” Obviously, she doesn’t say the trademarked bit, but I can practically hear it in her voice. Another one of Clifford’s brilliantly expensive ideas. “So, pick one. Go ahead. There are three to choose from.”
I reluctantly take the tablet from her, and flip through the familiar file format of our clients: a smiling photo and the answers from the initial questionnaire. This one ideally wants to be married within two years. That one is new to the city and wants someone to “eat his way through New York with.” (His words, not mine. And obviously we are going to have to do something about them if I take him on.)
And then there’s Jude Campbell. There’s nothing very special about Jude’s profile. He’s good-looking enough. His answers are normal enough. Or, I should say, there’s almost nothing very special about Jude’s profile.
Jude apparently moved here from Scotland a couple of years ago. Which means Jude has an accent. And if I am going to stake my whole career on one guy’s love match?
I’m picking the dude with the Scottish accent.
CHAPTER 2
To: My rock stars
From: Clifford Jenkins
Re: Ch-ch-ch-changes! (New Company Name)
What up, my dudes? That’s what Justin Bieber said when he met President Obama, according to eyewitnesses at the time. But I don’t want to discount our hard-working dudettes, of course! So. Here’s the deal. We are dunzo with Best Foot Forward. Erase it from your hard drive, remove it from your e-mail signatures, bleach it from your brains. It’s gone. Let’s all agree it never happened, right? New URL, new e-mail domain, new start, new name.
We are now officially called Sweet Nothings, LLC, and we’re going to kick all manner of butt with this.
IF YOU CONTINUE TO GET CORRESPONDENCE FROM FOOT FETISHISTS, DO NOT RESPOND. Forward it immediately to customer service (heyyyy Crystal) and delete it. Simple as that. Crystal will take care of the particulars.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions at the monthly meetup, but in the meantime, scrub any and all references to BFF (and YOB for you seniors among us) and replace them with Sweet Nothings. Our portal will reflect all changes within the week.
Smell you later,
Clifford
CEO, Best Foot Forward fka You, Only Better
ZOEY
Get across the street. That’s all you have to do: Get across the street.
Except of course it’s not that simple, because it’s not a normal street and it’s not a normal city, and before I can cross the street I have to leave my apartment. “Apartment” being the ohso-hilarious code name for rathole. Although I guess for actual rats, it would be a palace. Actual rats are out there, by the way, waiting to run across my shoes and up my legs, little rat teeth chittering, dropping diseases on me, plumes of germs surrounding them like a deadly cloud around Pig Pen.
Okay. It’s okay. Just because the “apartment” is half-a-room total, and the couch doubles as a bed, and the shower is in a corner of the kitchen, and you have to climb over the furniture to go anywhere, is no reason to get upset. You’re having a new experience! Still, if I don’t escape I’ll go mad, so here we are.
Laptop, check. Purse, check. Keys, check. Unlock the chain and the deadbolt. Slowly open the door the tiniest crack.
“Coming out,” I yell, the warning I was taught to use on the day I moved in, by a neighbor I haven’t seen since. I used to hear her, the way I assume she hears me, announcing her movement into the hallway. There’s only room for one person to use it at a time, and if you don’t announce yourself and there’s someone already there, you risk bodily harm, and one of you will have to retreat to give the other person room to finish using the hallway. When no one responds, I open my door all the way, briskly exit, and relock it behind me.
“In the hall,” I yell, updating someone who might not even be there. For some reason my voice is a baritone when I do this. I want to make sure she hears me. My combat boots guarantee the people on the floor below hear me, at any rate.
New obstacle: the stairwell. I’d use the elevator, except the last time I did, someone was asleep inside. (Mary, my former boss and current landlord, was unsympathetic: “In my day, they’d have been passed out in their own vomit.”) I have this fear there will always be someone asleep inside, and that the next time I go in, the person’s eyes will pop open and they’ll grab my ankle.
In LA, I worried someone might be hiding under my car to slice my tendons, so this is not an unfamiliar fear of mine. Once I’m outside in the “fresh” air though, all similarities, real or imagined, to the City of Angels evaporate.
Honk! Screech! Beep! Sizzle! “Hey!”
I’m assaulted by noise. Smells. Garbage, floating in the air and piled outside front stoops. Cacophony. I fight the urge to cover my ears, close my eyes, and pray for a teleportation device. Does it have to be so loud? Does there have to be unidentifiable steam shooting out of a nasty-ass grate in the middle of the sidewalk? Does everybody have to hustle past me, elbows knocking me, at such a frenzied pace? At least my boots will protect me. They don’t help with speed, though, that’s for sure.
Get to the corner. Just get to the corner, so you can cross the street.
I understand the appeal of newsstands; really, I do. And food carts. Sure. It’s just that now I have to move around them without accidentally bumping someone or getting grease on me or smelling something I’d rather not smell this early in the morning.
Jesus, I’ve only gone half a block and I’ve been glared at, eyefucked, stepped on, jostled, and surrounded. What I wouldn’t give for the peace and tranquillity of my car in California. I know, I know, we have the worst traffic in the world, but you know what else we have? Space to ourselves. Temperature control. Room to breathe, the option to listen to whatever music or podcast or radio station we want, and the ability to HEAR IT in the quiet of our cars, while we sip an iced latte or brainstorm a line of dialogue.