Cupid's Christmas (2 page)

Eleanor nodded and off they went.

The lunches and afternoon meetings became a regular thing, and then three weeks later he invited her to dinner.

I didn’t have to lift a finger on this match, all I did was step back and let love take its course. Eleanor and John were matched thirty years ago and watching them now was like watching a crocus spring forth from the snow covered ground. After three months they were seeing each other every evening, and after six months they were talking marriage.

You’d like to think a relationship such as this would be nothing short of wonderful, but remember even a rose has thorns.

Although Ray Junior is married and has a life of his own, he bristles at the mere mention of Eleanor dating. “A woman your age,” he says, “Are you out of your mind?” Like so many young people, Ray fails to realize that love knows no age. Inside of every heart there is a tiny spot that remains forever young. That’s the spot where love grows, where hope never dies and miracles can still happen. I’ve been around for more centuries than you can count, and not once have I encountered a person too old to love—too hard-hearted perhaps, but never too old.

A person doesn’t have to be all knowing to realize Ray Junior is going to present a challenge for Eleanor and John, but I’ve looked into the future and I can tell you that right now he isn’t their biggest problem, Lindsay Gray is.

Cupid…Here’s the Problem

L
indsay had been living in Manhattan for almost two years when she bypassed her second perfect match. After she ignored the English major, I figured I’d go with a more business-minded type, so on seven different occasions I arranged for her to be in the elevator with Christopher Roberts, the financial planner in apartment 7B. He was good to go, I could tell by the way he watched her from the back and offered to carry her groceries to the door.

“No thanks,” she said, “I’m okay with it.”

Lindsay’s tough to read. I can never tell if the spark is there or not, so I keep watching. The second time they meet, she gives him a big smile and he asks if she’s new in the building. This time she doesn’t turn her back.

Now it looks like she’s picking up on his lead, “No,” she says, “I’ve been here for two years.” The third time they meet, the elevator stops on three and he gets out when she does.

“Didn’t I see you at the Starbucks over on Second Avenue?” he asks.

She nods, “I stop there every morning, it’s close to where I work.”

“And…” he gives her a sexy little smile, “where’s that?”

“The Big Book Barn, on Seventeenth.” She tilts her head, looks directly into his eyes for thirty seconds and then turns back to the keys in her hand. Perfect. An invitation sprinkled with a touch of shyness. This is how it’s supposed to happen.

He asks if she likes Italian food and tells her about Antonio’s. “The Veal Parmigana is unbelievable,” he says. “The place is not much to look at from the outside, but inside it’s like an Italian trattoria. There’s this little courtyard where they have outdoor dining...”

“Sounds charming,” she says looking up again.

He can sense the way she’s eyeing him, so he asks if she’d like to have dinner this coming Saturday.

She, of course, answers yes.

Now I’m doing a happy dance, thinking my Lindsay troubles are over. But after four dates—excellent dates, dates with wine, music and dancing—she stops returning his calls because of a musician she met on the subway. 

When Lindsay started gushing about how much she was in love with that musician, I was sorely tempted to have her step into a pothole and break an ankle. Nothing serious mind you, but enough to keep her at home so she could have some thinking-it-over time. She was definitely in need of it, because she was way off track. That musician was scheduled to marry the second violinist and move to Paris.

The breakup was inevitable, but it didn’t happen immediately—it never does. Lindsay and that guitarist spent seven months together. Seven months of arguments and apologies, more arguments and more apologies, until one evening he stomped out never to return again. Even though that relationship was not of my making, I had to feel for Lindsay. Love is the most complex of all emotions. Hate is clean and uncomplicated, but love will turn you inside out and when it goes awry you’re left wondering what you did wrong. You always blame yourself even though the only wrong you’ve done is to give your heart to someone who was not part of your plan. The musician was never part of Lindsay’s plan, but that didn’t ease the pain of his leaving.

After the musician there was a banker, a wannabe model, a dentist, and a handsome lad who walked dogs for a living. None of them were part of Lindsay’s plan and they all went the way of the musician. The banker and dentist she simply tired of, the dog-walker moved away because the landlord raised his rent and he could no longer afford to live in Manhattan.

With Phillip, the wannabe model, Lindsay convinced herself that she was fully and completely in love. Yes, she knew Phillip was haphazard, but she told herself that he would eventually settle down. In time, he would give up thoughts of being a model and find a job suited to his talents. He would one day ask her to marry him and she, of course, would answer yes. She remembered how she’d let herself be goaded into argument after argument with the musician and she was determined not to let that happen again. When Phillip showed up hours late with an excuse so lame that a steel brace couldn’t make it stand, she accepted it. When he swiveled his head to turn and look at women with short skirts or cascading cleavage, she chalked it up to nothing more than harmless ogling. Then one day he left his cell phone on the desk and she happened upon the text from Krystal. Only then could she see the foolishness of her ways.

“How could you?” she screamed.

“She means nothing to me,” he pleaded. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You’ve slept with this girl, that’s obvious!”

“One time. It was a one-time thing.”

“A one-time thing?” She picked up a bookend and heaved it across the room. “Get out,” she yelled, “…and don’t even think about coming back!”

In the time it took for him to ride the elevator down three floors and cross the small lobby, his modeling portfolio, the framed picture he’d given her and the gym bag he kept in the apartment had landed on 23
^rd
street.

Phillip was just the last in a long string of romantic disasters. He is what he is and Lindsay was foolish to think otherwise. I can say for a fact, she was never in love with the man, but try telling her that. Her friend Amanda even warned her.

“Lindsay,” Amanda said, “Phillip is nothing more than a gift box, gorgeous on the outside, but totally empty inside.”

Lindsay of course didn’t listen, which came as no surprise. As I’ve told you the girl is an incurable romantic. If she would have backed off and let me handle things, she’d now be celebrating her fifth anniversary on a Mediterranean cruise ship instead of sitting in a third floor apartment painting her toenails.

Everything happens for a reason. If humans could accept that, my job would be so much easier. After Lindsay hurled all of the never-to-be-seen-again model’s belongings out the window, she broke into huge shuddering sobs and telephoned Amanda. That break-up was slated to happen anyway, but the timing was my doing.  Since Lindsay had shown no interest in Christopher from 7B, he’d been reassigned to Amanda. That night Christopher was leaving the building as Amanda was coming in. When the plan works, that’s all it takes—a chance meeting, a fleeting glance and POW…love happens.

Eleanor

J
ohn hasn’t told his daughter about us yet. He doesn’t see it as a problem, but I’m not so sure.  He claims Lindsay is an open-minded person who’ll be happy for us. But I’ve come to realize kids don’t always take kindly to their parents remarrying. My Son had a conniption when I told him.

I invited Ray and his wife to dinner that evening, thinking a pleasant visit and a full stomach would make hearing the news a bit easier. It sure didn’t go like I thought it would. Before I finished explaining what a fine man John is, Ray jumped out of his seat and started peppering me with questions like he was the lead prosecutor.  “Don’t you see he’s after your money?” Ray kept asking. I told him I didn’t have any money for John to be after, but then he switched over to badgering me about John taking over our house. I was tempted to tell him it wasn’t
our house.
It belonged to his daddy and me.

Finally when I couldn’t take any more, I stuck my face in his and told him John and I were planning to sell both houses and buy a place of our own. Of course that opened up a whole new can of worms, and I’d never even mentioned anything about how we were thinking of buying that house in Florida. “Ah-ha,” Ray shouted, “You’ll sell the house, hand over the money and that’s the last you’ll see of that buzzard!”

I turned to Traci, his wife, thinking she’d jump in and give me some support. But one look and I knew she wasn’t going say anything. She was sitting there looking like she had a sour pickle stuck sideways in her mouth.

After two hours of such nonsense, I told Ray he’d better go on home and get used to the idea because like it or not, I was going to marry John. When Ray stomped out the door, Traci followed along. At the last minute, she turned back and mumbled, “G’nite.” That was the only word she’d spoken since the first mention of John’s name.

I’m praying Ray will simmer down and come to accept the idea. I’d like him to be happy for me, be glad I’ve found somebody, be glad I won’t grow old sitting here alone. Right now he thinks the worst of John, but I’m betting he’ll have a different opinion once he meets him.

Kids might think their parents are too old for love, but I can say for a fact it’s not true. John makes me feel something I haven’t felt for years. When he kisses me and traces the edge of my cheek with his thumb, I get a tingle that goes clear down to my toes. He feels exactly the same. I know because if we’re apart for one afternoon he calls to say how much he’s missing me. Ray’s daddy never did that, not even when we were first married.

Cupid…Mistakes & Misconceptions

L
indsay is not at all like her mom. Bethany was a practical woman who looked at life and saw it for exactly what it was. At the end of each day Bethany packed her troubles into a closet of forgetfulness and the next morning she awoke to a new day and another chance at happiness. Lindsay, well she’s another story.

After her breakup with Phillip, she moved through the days like a person with no reason to live. Tuesday through Saturday, she left her apartment at the same time, stopped at the same Starbucks and worked at the bookstore from nine until six-thirty. Day after day she returned home carrying an armload of books. In the evening she read until her eyes were weary and then went to bed. On Mondays she cleaned the apartment then went right back to reading.

You might think that after centuries of dealing with humans I would be accustomed to their peculiarities, but certain ones, like Lindsay, still boggle my mind. The end of a love affair is always cause for a certain amount of despondency, but this girl carried it to the extreme.

While she was at the bookstore Lindsay spent most of her time walking from aisle to aisle, looking for books that had nothing to do with love. She avoided the romance section and took to browsing the exotic cuisine and travel shelves, even though she had little appetite and nowhere to go. One evening as she staggered in with an unusually large armload of books, Walker, the building doorman, lifted several from the top of the pile and followed her to the elevator.

“Thanks Walker,” she said, “I think they were about to fall.”

He nodded, “Seems you’re doing a lot of reading these days.”

“I am,” she replied, “It helps pass the time.”

“Pass the time?” He set his pile of books down on the foyer bench then took the remaining books from her arms and placed them beside the first pile. “Why would a girl pretty as you need books to pass time?”

“It’s a long story…” she gave sigh that came from the pit of her stomach and swirled through her chest, “I had this terrible argument with Phillip and…”

“I know,” Walker nodded, “I heard the noise. When I went to take a look at what was going on, I spotted him scooping his stuff off the street.”

“We’re through. He won’t be back.”

Walker smiled, “Good. You deserve better.”

“I do?”

“Sure. That guy was no gentleman.”

I could see the wheels turning in Lindsay’s head…She’d looked at eyes, muscles, even the swagger of bravado, but not once had she searched for a lover who was a gentleman.

 “How can you tell he wasn’t…” she asked Walker.

 “People don’t notice me standing here, but I see things…”

“What things?”

Walker went on to say how he’d seen Phillip walk through the door first and let it swing shut on Lindsay, how he’d let her struggle with packages and not offered to help, and how he’d openly flirted with the girl in 9A. Walker was a man who knew heartache close up. He’d experienced it in his own family, so he never mentioned that he’d also seen Phillip in Washington Square Park, kissing a woman who was old enough to be his mother.