"You're kidding, right?" Stelios replied, unable to quite believe his ears.
"I'm afraid not," Zoey replied sullenly.
"Well, I appreciate you being honest with me," he said, getting to his feet with a somewhat bemused expression on his face.
Zoey let him out of her office, and in a moment or two, he had left the building altogether.
Triumph blared through her heart for a few seconds; for the first time in more than a year, she had gone against her mother, and spared someone weeks-months, even-of bitterness and disappointment. But it all came crashing down the moment her mother opened her office door.
"Zoey, what in God's name have you done?" Melinda asked, struggling to keep her voice under control. "You simply needed to match him with any one of the women on our rolls. That's literally all you had to do, Zoey. It isn't complicated, which is why I want to know why the receptionist saw him leaving here so quickly."
"Well, Mother," returned Zoey, "there was no one on those rolls he could have had any sort of relationship with. Those women would only use him for his money. They wouldn't care about anything else."
"I'm using him for his damn money!" Melinda returned hotly. "We aren't running a charity here. When someone comes through those doors, they need to leave with a date. That's your job, Zoey!"
"I thought my job was ‘Relationship Services Expert'," she said sarcastically, "helping people to find actual love. And yet so far, no one I've matched has lasted longer than a year!"
"Darling, actual love is for fairy tales, songs on the radio, and nitwits with small brains and huge bank accounts. You're not nine years old anymore, so don't give me that talk about true love. You've just let millions of dollars' worth of business, advertising and influence walk right out of my door! Why did you do that? Because of some stupid fantasy?"
"Because I didn't want to be as cynical as you!"
Zoey didn't know where the words had come from, or why she had shouted them with such ferocity, but Melinda moved toward her so quickly, the woman might as well have been gliding. She lowered her voice and glared at her daughter with cold anger in her eyes.
"Let me tell you something. This ‘cynical' woman is the only reason you have anything right now. Every scrap of food that passes down that disrespectful little throat of yours is there because I allow it to be, and unless you want me to throw your lazy ass out on the street, you're going to wrap up this sentimental nonsense and do your job!"
Zoey thought she could hear people gathering outside the door, but her mother didn't seem the least bit worried about who could hear what she was saying.
"Not another word, girl. I'm your mother, and I'm not asking, I'm telling you what you're going to do. You're going to call Zakiridis back, and you're going to tell him you've found a woman good enough for him to marry. If you haven't done that by noon today, you'll be gone. Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal!" Zoey growled through clenched teeth.
Without another word, Melinda stormed out, leaving her daughter seething in her wake.
Zoey's insides were writhing with hatred, and the worst of it was, as much as she hated to admit it, her mother was right. If she was fired, she only had enough saved to last her a few weeks. After that, if she couldn't find work, things would get difficult for her extremely quickly. Every cell in her body was against calling Stelios back, but in lieu of a surprise lottery win, she simply had no better options.
"Let's just get this over with," she said, picking up the office phone. Checking her records, she found the Greek's number and dialed, swearing liberally as she did so.
"Good morning, Mr. Zakiridis," she said when he answered. "This is Zoey calling from Melinda Forde Singles. Sir, after our meeting this morning I went through our records with a fine-tooth comb because I simply hate to have to disappoint our clients. I discovered that I was wrong earlier, and that I do in fact have a woman that matches your profile. Her name is Brie Hudson. She was formerly a backing singer for the rhythm and blues group Nu Vogue, and now she's an up-and-coming reality star. Brie exudes each of the qualities you listed," Zoey lied. "I think you'll make an excellent match."
"Well, okay, that's an unexpected development, and she sounds very interesting," Stelios replied. "I look forward to meeting her. My car has internet access. Let's set up the details, and then I can pay you online."
"That will work perfectly, Mr. Zakiridis." Zoey said, struggling with all her might to keep her voice light. She kept reminding herself that she had no choice; that it was either this or unemployment.
After hanging up with Stelios, Zoey tried to drown out her guilty thoughts by wrapping herself up in her other cases. It barely worked, and ten minutes later, her mother returned to her office, wearing a huge false smile that made Zoey feel sick to her stomach.
"That's my good little girl," Melinda said in saccharine tones. "Now, honestly, Zoey, that wasn't so bad, was it? I have a great deal more money than I had this morning, and thanks to my forgiving nature, you still have a job. You should really be thanking me for keeping a cool head and looking after the both of us all this time."
"Were you like this when Dad … " Zoey began, fighting down her emotions.
"You leave your father out of this!" Melinda returned harshly, looking as if she had been stung with a whip. She headed back out of Zoey's office, giving her daughter a dirty look as she did so.
Zoey sighed in defeat before returning to her computer and the rest of her workload for that morning, trying not to think that all of that fuss had been over one client and that she had several more left to match before lunch.
THREE
Five hours and nine clients later, Zoey boarded a subway train and headed for home. She took it as a good sign that this time round she had room to sit, without having her body shoved against anything. She needed every good sign she could get.
Zoey sighed deeply as she told herself that the day was finally over, and she was going to put every thought of it out of her mind. There was a date in three hours that needed her undivided attention, after all. It was going to be her first one in months, and she was determined to enjoy it.
Halfway back, Zoey spotted an adorable little girl in a pink and white dress. She couldn't have been a day over five. Her bushy brown hair flew in all directions as she ran around her mother's legs. Every so often, she'd grab at a pole to steady herself, or else teeter into her mother's arms. She was peppering her mom with questions at auctioneer speeds, and the overload of cuteness swelled in Zoey's heart. Almost before she knew it, a smile was playing on her lips, and all her problems seemed to recede to the edges of her mind.
"CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays. Two for twenty," a voice suddenly called out, and Zoey could only laugh at how spectacularly its owner had ruined the moment.
The trip back felt shorter than the one she had made that morning, and in not too long Zoey was back in Brooklyn, at the door to her apartment building, a five-story, brick affair. Zoey took the elevator straight up to the fourth floor and made a beeline for her apartment.
Inside, she went to her bedroom and began peeling off her clothes. Her room featured a wall unit on the wall opposite the door. It had a small wardrobe on each side, and a chest of drawers in the middle. A thirty-two-inch television sat on top of the drawers, and a mirror was fixed to the wall above that. To the right of the door, as Zoey came in, sat a small nightstand, and a queen-sized bed stood directly beside that.
Wearing nothing but her underwear, Zoey went to the bathroom and filled the tub with bath soap, beads, and soothing hot water. When she liked the temperature, she shed her underthings and dove in, shutting her eyes and allowing herself to relax.
For the first time that day, she felt completely at peace as the beads invigorated her body, and the water drew the tension out of it. Her disgust with her mother and hatred of her job seemed to evaporate, leaving only blissful silence. The water enveloped her like a blanket, and the longer she lay in it, the longer she wanted to stay. But Blake was meeting her at Big Tony's in a little under two hours' time, and she could barely remember the last time she had been on a date. That fact barely bothered her now, but Zoey knew that would change when she was out of the water.
At last, she grabbed a nearby loofah and began washing in earnest. Soon, she added the spray of the shower so that she could give her hair a thorough washing. In minutes, she emerged from her bathroom feeling refreshed, but whatever spell the bath had put her under was broken, and her stomach was working itself into knots.