Turn Up the Heat

She punched off her phone. “That woman has gone out with and found something horribly wrong with practically every guy on our site. During our interview I thought she seemed a little wound-up, but I didn’t see this coming. She needs about a year’s worth of therapy, not a relationship.”

“Oof. Sorry.” Maybe Candy needed that, too. Or maybe she just needed another excuse to delay this moment.

“Anyway, this isn’t about her.” Marie came out from behind her desk and perched on the edge, beaming. “This is your time. We are going to find you someone absolutely fabulous. How did you do on the sheets I had you fill out?”

“Dismally.”

“Hmm.” She held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Candy pulled the papers from her briefcase. “I couldn’t decide between answers. I think I checked all the options practically every single time. Do I like staying home or going out? Yes. Do I like old movies or contemporary? Yes. Do I like restaurants, bars, clubs, movies, museums or lectures for a favorite night out? Yes. What is more important, career or family? Both. And on and on. I’m hopeless.”

“Hopeless?” Marie took the papers. “Let’s call you well-rounded. Adventurous, open-minded, cosmopolitan.”

Candy conceded the point. “Yes, better term than hopeless. But when I got to the introductory paragraph I splintered completely. I felt I could put up four different profiles.”

Marie looked up from the papers. “What would you call those profiles? I mean if you had to classify them. What would those four different parts of you be?”

Candy blinked. She’d expected Marie to laugh, not put on her psychologist hat. “Well. One part of me is playful. Like a kid. The part that dresses up as Sally the Silly Fairy at kids’ birthday parties. So one part I’d call goofy.”

Marie reached back for a pad and pen and started writing. “Child at heart. Go on.”

“Let’s see.” Candy sipped her tea, considering. “Another would be the part of me that likes to read, to do crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, play Scrabble, to curl up in front of a fire with a glass of wine and a good book I can later discuss, to take classes in things I’d like to know more about. Call her … the Professor.”

“Professor.” Marie wrote it down. “I like that. Next?”

“Next … is the ambitious side of me, the part that loves organizing, planning, waking up every day knowing what I want to accomplish and knowing I will do it. Continually conquering challenges, beating back problems, making sure everything flows smoothly.” She frowned, trying to come up with a title. “Battle-ax?”

Marie pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Superwoman.”

“Superwoman!” Candy laughed. “That works, too.”

“Is that it?”

“Well … no.” Candy felt herself blushing and held the cup of tea close to her face. “There’s one more.”

Marie’s eyebrow raised. “Ye-e-es?”

“It’s the smallest part. I’m not even sure it really is a part of me, maybe just a fantasy.”

“I’m listening.”

“The part that would like to get dressed up for an absurdly expensive restaurant, to travel to Paris, Monaco, ski the Alps. To wear hot lingerie every day, and have the confidence to seduce a stranger in a bar merely by giving him the right look.”

“Hmm, yes.” Marie eyed Candy speculatively. “I can see her in you, but I don’t think you’ve indulged her yet. Chuck sure didn’t let you.”

Candy’s mouth dropped. “Didn’t let me? What do you mean? Chuck was very supportive of whatever I wanted to do and whomever I wanted to be.”

For one unbearable moment Marie just watched her, and Candy started feeling anxious as well as angry.

“Yes, sorry. I crossed the line.”

Candy let out the breath she’d been holding. She had to keep reminding herself that her girlfriends judged Chuck unfairly, probably out of loyalty because he’d hurt her so badly. She didn’t have much nice to say about Marie’s ex-husband Grant, either, after he’d left her for some bimbo barely old enough to drink. “It’s okay. I guess Chuck is still a raw topic. I’m not even sure I should be here. How can I fall for another guy when this one is still so special to me?”

“Oh, honey. I know how hard this is.” Marie capped her pen, face radiating gentle sympathy. “Of course I don’t want to push you to do anything you don’t want to. But I think this is the right time and the right way. I guess I’ll have to ask you to trust me.”

“I do.” She drank more tea to keep herself from breaking down and bawling. “I do trust you. I’m just a little …”

“Conflicted?” Marie smiled warmly. “I went through the exact same thing after my marriage broke up and I was looking to date again. I had to force myself the first few times. Then it got easier.”

“But you never found anyone.”

“No. But looking did me a lot of good, made me realize that Grant not wanting me anymore didn’t mean no one did. And besides.” Her smile turned wicked. “I didn’t have Milwaukeedates, and you do.”

Candy laughed. “Of course.”

“So.” Marie uncapped her pen again and poised it over the pad. “Let’s call the fourth one Sexy Glamour Girl.”

“Okay.” Candy finished her tea, stronger already. Marie was really good at her job. “So that’s me. How do I put all that together in a couple of paragraphs?”

Marie sat, eyes narrowed in contemplation, tapping her chin with a professionally manicured fingertip. “I have an idea. Kind of a wild idea, but …”

“I’m all ears.”

“Why don’t you make four profiles?”

Candy let out a startled laugh. “Four?”

“I know, crazy, right? I’m thinking of it as an experiment to see which part of you men respond to the most. See which part you enjoy bringing to the foreground the most. It would actually be fascinating from a psychological standpoint.”

“I’m … I … I’m …” She made herself breathe. “I’m stammering apparently.”

“Take your time.”

“Would that be fair to the guys I was seeing? If I’m not really being me?”

“But you are being you.” Marie pushed herself off the desk, headed behind it and opened a file drawer. “It’s not like you’re changing any part of yourself, just emphasizing one in each case. If the guy’s got half a brain he won’t think he knows you entirely because of how you present yourself on the site.”

“I don’t know, Marie.” Candy was getting excited even as her sensible self told her there had to be disastrous aspects to this plan that she couldn’t see yet.

“This will give you a chance to explore certain parts of yourself that might have been …” Marie circled her hand, coaxing out her next word. “Underappreciated.”

Candy put her hands to her temples, ignoring the second unreasonable jab at Chuck. “I need to think this through.”

“Of course.” Marie pulled out several sheets from a folder. “I have four sets of profile sheets here, one for each of you. You’ll probably fill them out in half an hour this time.”

“I haven’t said I’d do it.” She was turning the idea over and over. Instinct was telling her she was going to say yes, but common sense wouldn’t let her yet. Four different women?

“Filling these out doesn’t commit you.” Marie held the papers across the desk. “You’ll have a blast, especially given your talent for performing.”