Chapter 3 Symmetrical Response #2
I shrug. Explaining that her world is small and selfish—and I’m evil and foster eidetic memory through journaling about the people I meet—probably isn’t comforting.
“I’m good with faces. Moving on,” I point at her, “why are you helping Stark-Benzin after everything Bernard did to you? And you can’t tell them it’s because you’re a good person. ”
More relief from the ballerina. Not beautiful enough to remember must be a death blow here, like it’d been at my modeling agency. “It’s closure,” she says, her voice distant. “A last good deed.”
It’s what The Nutcracker’s Clara would do. And the Sugar Plum Fairy. Probably the White Swan, too. I wonder if acting on her anger is harder than I thought for Imogen, a person raised to perform as these perfect, gracious heroines. Always saving the day with true love’s kiss or whatever.
I hope not. I file that thought away, though.
“Great.” I stand, suddenly feeling like I need to get out of here, for her sake. “Can you send me a list of things I should know about Bernard? Favorite colors, perfumes, painful childhood memories I can mimic, whatever would make the idiot fall in love with a con artist.”
“Ha. Sure.” She plays with the keychain hanging from her water bottle. It’s a fidget spinner, like the one Renata foisted on me last year as a “birthday present.” “Can I ask you something, Cat? If that is your real name.”
It isn’t. “Ask away.”
“How are you so confident this will work? You go on these missions knowing you can make a man fall in love with you. It’s just… tricky for the rest of us.”
“Missions” makes me sound like a spy. Cute.
“I have failed a few times, if that’s what you mean,” I remind her.
Prospective clients always get the same spiel about my four cardinal rules: no cops, no lawyers, no refunds, no boyfriends.
That last one’s for me, not them; they can rebound all their feelings away.
“But honestly? Falling in love is the easy part, and it’s even easier when you don’t actually care.
I don’t fight. I don’t disagree. I don’t try to make them see my point of view on marriage or politics or religion.
All their jokes are funny. All their stories are fascinating.
I only say no to sex and 99.9 percent of kissing, which actually works for the whole thing, because sex is as human as fighting about God or where to go for dinner.
And I’m a daydream that a lot of men secretly think they’re entitled to: the woman who isn’t human.
If he falls for this—when he falls for this—it isn’t because I’m better with men, or the better version of you. It’s because I’m not anyone.”
It’s all so easy. With a man like Bernard, you only have to become a mirror to shatter them.
“Damn,” Imogen replies, breathless. “I like you.”
Sure, I think, throwing her a smile. You don’t know me, either. But then she’s standing, too, something like determination in her pretty blue eyes. “He left three women at the altar before me.”
“Like… on three separate occasions?”
“Yes.”
I’m a professional who’s seen it all before, and even I say, “Goddamn.”
“Yeah. Wear white when you meet him. Might speed up the whole process for you.”
True to her word, Imogen sends me a get-to-know-Bernard list alongside her first payment.
He’s French, an F1 driver as you know he thinks he’s better than Stark-Benzin, but he’s the most painfully Stark-Benzin person.
Completely predictable. He’d wanted to paint our bedroom gray after I’d given him too many shades of off-white to choose between. What happens if you like him?
I won’t, I type back, then frown. She’s soft. She’d take that personally.
I don’t develop feelings on the clock.
But what if you do?
And what if Mars crashes from the sky?
I’ve seen a lot of things, Imogen. I’m not interested in dating.
A banker who left his wife while she was recovering from brain surgery.
A grandfather who took his daughter off his will after she came out to him.
A popular feminist podcaster I’d been paid to match with on Tinder, and who then asked me to send pictures of my socks—worn.
Not all men suck. But most outside of Waterfield do, and those are the ones I meet.
Plus, I’d need to be attracted to this not-sucky guy in order to date him, which is rare enough; I’ve had about five crushes in my life and three are fictional characters.
The curse of liking them weird and sad and smart saves me.
And… think about it. What decent man would willingly fall in love with someone whose life purpose is to break other people’s hearts?
Who lies as much as I do? Who would let me keep being me?
This good guy would either hate me or want to white-knight me, like some ’80s moral panic movie where the devilish vixen gets saved from herself thanks to a big strong man and homogenizing matrimony.
He’d make me pick between me—my work, my ability to support my family, my personality—and him.
That’s what a relationship would be for me: a stopping point.
A period after so many gorgeous sentences.
I’ve run the numbers. Seen my hypothesis tested in real time with Renata and what she’s felt like she needs to hide from her nice husband, for better or worse. And while I love her life for her, I don’t want it for me.
Also, a Formula 1 driver whose personality focal points are “likes dogs” and “yachting” would probably attempt an exorcism on the real me.
I put in my own time researching Bernard, too.
He’s interesting in how uninteresting he is, like a racing driver stereotype come to life.
Popular with fans, funny with press, has had trouble staying signed with teams. Thirty-six years old.
Largely grew up in England as a Stark-Benzin project; in Formula 1, the teams can sink their claws into talented children as young as six and seven.
Once famously cried after winning a Formula 2 race at seventeen—a lower series, still important—and got turned into a Twitter meme.
I’m so, so, so … [sob] happy. Currently, his teammate is slotted to be a nineteen-year-old American woman named Christine Fay—though she hasn’t signed yet, she’d be the first woman to crack into F1 in decades.
Good for her, worrisome for me. Women are smart, and she might keep an eye out for her teammate this season so her first year doesn’t go off the rails.
Think we need to worry about Christine?
She wouldn’t sacrifice her place in the sport to date a 36 year old man.
Again, I want to message back, duh, but hold off.
I agree. But Bernard might be distracted by *her.*
I can hear Imogen’s gentle voice when I read her reply.
Oh. Well.
Not comforting.
I click around Bernard’s social media more after I flop onto my pull-out couch.
This apartment is noisy. My whole street is.
And while some of that is my fault, and how little I’ve decorated beyond stacks of clothing storage bins, it’s like everyone in Jersey City is either driving to another city or coming home from another city or awake, late at night, on their phones—looking at life in other cities. Like I am.
Bernard’s a spon-con king. Up first’s a picture of him on the deck of a yacht, holding a cheap-looking book.
So painfully posed. Catching up on my reading courtesy of Aries Plus.
All I did was tell Aries I wanted a book about racing and Aries AI? generated a full-length boat read that my friends at Aries-Printers mailed to Monaco.
* (*Aries AI? is in beta. In the event of legal action, Aries users take full legal culpability.
Aries-Printers cannot currently print Novels? over 3,000 words long.)
Ew. And was calling his stapled-together, climate-wrecking plagiarism a “beach read” too girly for him? I read the comments, giggling. AI TRASH SLOP. UNFOLLOWED.
No brand partnership is too bottom of the barrel.
Around Christmas, he partnered with that “smart” light bulb company that got canceled for listening to people’s homes through their tiny Bluetooth microphones.
Make the season bright! Valentine’s Day, two years ago; he’s with Imogen in front of her ballet theater, handing her a bushel of white roses tied with a black ribbon.
She said yes! Think she liked the ring or Sephora gift card more?
Then I see it.
A picture of Bernard, smiling, next to a Botoxed white man in a white lab coat. Thank you Dr. Davidson for flying all the way to Brazil to double-check my wrist sprain. I love working with you & Lockland Public, my official healthcare sponsor.
My palms go clammy. My vision prickles with black dots.
I revise my earlier thought.
Pets, holidays, yachts, those aren’t the reasons I hate these men. I’d never fall in love with a Formula 1 driver—period. There’s nothing inside of them to fall in love with.