Chapter 3
NOW
3
I’m woefully late to my day job after a long night of matching the lost, star-crossed and broken-hearted of Paris. The early July summer sunshine boosts my mood and makes the long walk to the market an enjoyable one.
I find myself thinking back to when my little side business came to life. That wintry day when I met with a despondent émilienne who had all but sworn off love.
Her sadness felt like a plea for help. A call to arms. And it gets me thinking: why do we get punished when we set standards for love? It’s not as though émilienne was asking for too much. All she wanted to find in a relationship was kindness, monogamy and the hope of building a future together. And now she has, thanks to the art of love-letter writing.
Since that fateful coffee catch up, Paris Cupid has flourished although I’ve had to keep my role anonymous. My name is still mud after le scandale. Not everyone has forgiven me, despite my protestations of innocence. And it didn’t help matters when Frederic recently visited the market and told me he still loved me. I had to resort to using my broom to drive him away and it dredged up the whole scandal again. There were whispers that I must be secretly seeing him otherwise why would he drop by like that? The market is like a petri-dish when it comes to gossip, and left unattended it grows, multiplying until everyone hears an exaggerated version of the story that just isn’t true.
Having Paris Cupid to pour my time into has been good for me in more ways than one, since men aren’t exactly beating my door down to ask me on a date. Love has truly blossomed for a number of my matches, including émilienne. Her kindred spirit is a man named Remy, who I found to be sensitive and soulful. He has a good understanding of healthy boundaries which, according to her application, had been an issue with men in her past. émilienne is the type of woman who needs her space, quiet time to retreat and reflect, and Remy agreed that was important to him too.
It’s been a whirlwind since start up six months ago and it warms my heart that future generations might one day unearth these Paris Cupid love letters, sit with a mug of tea, settle in and read a sweeping romance, just like in the books. The only problem is, these days my bespoke little matchmaking biz is taking a big chunk of my time and I’m finding it hard to balance both worlds, my market stall and my secret Cupid life, hence my lateness this and every morning.
Matching lovebirds also makes me yearn for my own love affair, but I still feel at odds with how to go about it for myself. Short of the universe throwing a man in my way, I don’t see how it’s ever going to happen now that I’m working more than ever. To get enough matches so I could faithfully promise people a chance at love, I’ve had to come up with all sorts of advertising campaigns for social media. It’s where most of my clients have found Paris Cupid, and I’ve tried other avenues of advertising like letterbox drops, podcast ads, even a tiny little billboard at a Montmartre bus station and posters glued up around Saint Ouen Flea Market. Word of mouth referrals have been big as well. The income Paris Cupid is producing has really helped when I have slow weeks at Ephemera, so I remind myself the extra work is worth it when I’m feeling the pressure of keeping everything afloat. As I increase my pace, I pass un kiosque à presse and catch sight of a magazine headline that stops me in my tracks.
TV star Emmanuel Roux is engaged – thanks to Paris Cupid!
What! My heart leaps into my throat. I dig through my handbag for my purse and hand over some euros with a shaky ‘Bonjour, Monsieur’. Once I’m far enough away from the kiosk, I duck into an apartment doorway to read the article.
Self-confessed ‘Playboy of Paris’ Emmanuel Roux from Twilight Dream TV fame has found ‘The One’ and proposed atop the Eiffel Tower. ‘She’s not from show biz,’ he says. ‘We were matched on a new underground site called Paris Cupid.’ We asked Emmanuel why the Playboy of Paris would need to use a relatively unknown matchmaking site to find love. ‘For anonymity,’ he claims. We did a little digging into Paris Cupid, a small Parisian start-up that claims to find love for the lost, the lonely and those who feel they’re unlucky in love. This is no insta-date hook-up site. Members commit to writing love letters and getting to know one another slowly by good old-fashioned courtship. ‘My days as a bachelor are over,’ Emmanuel says with a determined set to his jaw.
This cannot be! I vet every single member as assiduously as possible with the skills I have at hand. I search their social media accounts and their online presence. So it comes as a nasty shock to find that I’ve matched the so-dubbed Playboy of Paris without being aware of it.
I’d never approve membership to a man who dates and dashes like Emmanuel Roux famously does. Did he use a pseudonym? Photos can easily be doctored these days, but I wouldn’t have paid much attention to his pictures anyway. I’m more interested in what they write about love than their physical appearance. Whatever social media accounts he’d given me must have appeared legitimate when I did my first round of checks.
My mind spins with worry. Who did he claim to be, and worse, who did I match him with? For all his protestations, I don’t believe for a minute that Emmanuel Roux’s playboy days are over. This is an unmitigated disaster for Paris Cupid, which I genuinely built for those who had given up on finding love. I also kept it exclusive so I could cope with the workload. I quicken my pace and head to Paris Saint Ouen Flea Market, to my stall Ephemera, where I sell my love letters, prayer books and scribed diaries.