The Side of the Angels Read Free Page B

appeal that comes with being blond, petite, and reasonably stacked—but those whose type I am, I am
indeed
, if you know what I mean. Surely fate had something better in store than Louise’s wifty maneuverings.
    â€œYou promised me that you would think about dating in the fall,” said Louise.
    â€œIsn’t it against your yenta code of ethics to rush me?”
    â€œSometimes we all need a little karmic shove.”
    â€œSpare me, Louise.”
    Louise knew that I didn’t fall for her pose of New Age nanny to the lovelorn. Having survived the brainwashing of the Catholic Church, I wasn’t about to succumb to the mush of self-help lingo, Horatio Alger pep talks, and warmed-over Transcendentalism she served up to the despondent and discouraged who sought out her advice. What’s more, Louise and I had had the same English teachers. So I could spot every borrowed line in the superficially profound patter that worked with her clients. With me, she couldn’t get away with cribbing from Matthew Arnold or Edna St. Vincent Millay, or, God help us, Christina Rossetti. I knew all her sources.
    â€œThis karmic shove is coming from my mother, isn’t it, Louise?”
    Louise does not like to lie, so her avoidance of this question was all the corroboration I needed.
    â€œWhat if I at least prepared a roster of possibles for you? I’ve had some great men sign up recently. Good, solid men. Men you could count on.”
    â€œI’m still convalescing, okay?”
    Louise assumed the expression of the sympathetic Mother Superior counseling Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music
, and said, “ ‘Let us grieve not, but rather find strength in what remains behind.’”
    â€œLouise, that’s from Wordsworth, whom you know I can’t stand, and it’s ‘
we
will grieve not,’ and that poem is not about breaking up with someone who screwed around on you, it’s about Wordsworth’s stupid childhood.”
    â€œIt still applies,” said Louise.
    â€œYou know, your clients may think you’re so wise, but really you’re just exceptionally well read.”
    Louise looked hurt, but shelved her feelings for the moment.
    â€œYou don’t have to go through the preliminaries,” she said.
    â€œBoy, my mother must really be in a hurry to get me on the market.”
    This ready-set-go approach was a departure from Louise’s usual playbook. Louise normally put her clients through an intense “pre-dating” course of preparation. I wondered why her customers put up with it, but I guess they figured that Louise was like a personal trainer: anyone who made you work
that
hard
must
be good.
    Louise’s methods had proven so successful that, had she wanted to, she could have bought a nice Edwardian condo in Kalorama, rather than the seedy apartment she rented on Capitol Hill. She could have afforded a reliable car instead of the old Chevy Cavalier that broke down six times a winter. But Louise was uncomfortable with her comparatively recent security. She still feared that Custom Hitches would collapse, or that the IRS would find fault with her scrupulously honest tax returns.
    Louise had nothing to worry about. She had found her vocation and would continue to thrive on her uncanny intuition for what made one poor slob right for another poor slob. You had only to look around her office to know that she was a natural for her job. The rooms (the third floor of an old storefront in Woodley Park, above a yoga center and a florist’s shop) were painted a dusty, womblike pink. Wedding invitations and engagement announcements lined the windowsill. See, they mutely testified, this could be
you
. Dim lighting, bowls of potpourri, and faded rose brocade curtains turned the office into a scented, firelit cave, a refuge where you could confide the ridiculous dream of finding someone to love you who’d actually love you back.
    I had no interest in