“Excuse me, waiter?” I say, catching a busboy walking by with a tray of empty dishes. “Drink, please? Double whiskey, straight up. Raylene, do you want anything?”

“You drink?” She makes a face like I just told her I’m a pedophile. I must look terrified because she hurries to say, “It’s okay, it’s okay. We all have vices, right? Nobody’s perfect. Open, open!”

I reach into the bag and pull out wads of tissue paper, half expecting to find a horse head or maybe a boiled pet rabbit, but it’s just a small box. I take it out and open it, and inside I find silver cuff links, similar to what Adam wears.

I’m feeling a little dizzy at this point, but I can handle this. I have to.

“Raylene . . . These are great, but I can’t accept them.”

“But you have to! I can’t return them.” She takes them from me and holds them close to the candle. “They’re engraved, see? EJV. Ethan James Vance. That’s you! Aren’t they the best? Here, let me put them on you.”

I can’t find a single thing to say, so I sit there, watching her long, shaking fingernails clip the cuffs onto my shirt.

“They look soooo good on you,” she says once they’re on. “My gawd, you are so handsome. I was so worried, signing up for a dating site, but you are such a catch. Gawd, I bet you’re good in bed. Do you love them?”

“Um . . .” Still nothing. No words. My mouth is starting to fill with warm saliva. I feel like those animals that chew off a limb to free themselves from a trap. I would give my right hand to not be here.

“You can kiss me now if you want to,” Raylene says. “I’m just saying it would be fine with me, as a way of showing your gratitude. I wouldn’t think it was too forward.”

Her hand comes down to my thigh, moving higher, and my dick literally retreats.

Right at that moment, Mia looks over to our table for the first time.

 Chapter 25

Mia

Q: What’s your idea of a perfect date?

My brain attempts to absorb the picture in front of me. Ethan and his date sit side-by-side in the booth, about as close to each other as paint to a wall. And on the table in front of them is a box from Tiffany’s.

I can’t quite put it together.

Did that ginger giant propose to Ethan?

Taking a long and much-needed sip of my White Russian, I lean forward for a better view. Because judging from the location of her hands, she’s not trying to put the ring on his finger.

“Oh, girl, look at you,” says my date, eyeing my breasts with all the bug-eyed subtlety of a cartoon wolf.

I straighten sharply and exhale away my urge to stab him in his Bettie Page tie with my fork. One thing he’s got going for him: he’s not afraid to make a statement.

And that statement is: I am gross.

Robby leans back and does this weird chest-massaging thing he’s done about sixteen times in the last half hour. Like, look at my shiny shirt, girl. Let it hypnoooootize you.

Which would be effective. If I was Baudelaire.

“So, tell me,” I say, working to get my mind off Ethan and Ms. Handsy giggling nearby. “Why’d you pick Boomerang instead of another dating site?”

Adam drilled into us that we’re not allowed to let on that we work for the company, so I have to be careful about interrogating my date. Still, I need to get something out of this evening—other than a headache and a case of contact chlamydia.

Robby snaps his fingers at our server, and I want to leap across the table and break them off at the knuckle. “I’ll take another one of these,” he tells her, circling the ice in his glass. “What about you, sweetheart?”

“God, yes,” I reply and down the rest of my drink in one gulp. “So, Boomerang?”

“Well, you know . . .” His eyes bounce around from my chest to his drink to a trio of girls crossing behind me to their table. He’s been doing that all night, too—this weird visual triangulation, as though he has to remain ever alert for a more interesting opportunity. Like when he receives an invitation to some nearby orgy. “The DTF doesn’t stand for ‘Desiring True Friends.’

“Got it.”

The server comes with a plate of pot stickers, and it dawns on me that we’ve only launched into the appetizer portion of the evening. A quiet groan of panic escapes me, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Go on, honey,” he says and pushes the tray over to me. “You look like a girl who can eat. Am I right?”

I freeze. “I . . . What?”

He gets a panicked look, and a blush creeps up his neck, turning his complexion from pumpkin to tomato soup. “Oh, Jesus, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not saying you’re fat. You’re not. You got some meat on you, sure. But it’s . . .” He swigs his vodka tonic, like he can swallow down his stupidity. “I mean you just look like you know how to, uh, enjoy things. Like you’re not one of those skinny salad-eating bitches.” Another gulp, and his volume dwindles like a wind-up doll running out of crank. “Not that it’s, uh, bad to . . . like . . . salads.”

Would it be wrong for me to put my head in my hands and start keening? I hear Ethan cough and look over at his table to see the red-haired Mother Teresa brandishing a ceramic spoon in one hand and giggling.

“Oh my gawd,” she says, brushing at his jacket. “Was that too hot? Did I burn you?”

Was she feeding him?

“Uh, no . . . Just shoved that spoon in a little deeper than I expected.” He casts a look in my direction, but it’s too dark in here to really read it.

“Oh, poor baby,” she exclaims, and winds an arm around his neck. Lifting the spoon once more, she says, “Let me try again. I won’t put it so far in.”

Robby snickers. “That’s what he said.”

I rise from the table like I’m levitating. “I will return shortly,” I say in a weird formal tone, like I’ve suddenly become a dowager countess. I’m pretty sure my synapses have misfired and that I’m about two minutes away from being able to smell colors.

Moving away from the table feels like the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I want to stand in the middle of the restaurant and pump my fists at the sky like Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption. Even better, I want to bypass the ladies room entirely and head straight for my car, but I’ve learned exactly nothing from Boomerang Client #1, other than the fact that he, alone among males of the species, enjoys sex.

A giant woodcarving of Buddha hangs over the main dining area. I feel like lighting some incense and praying to him for a kitchen fire or an alien attack on the city. Instead, I move through the dimly lit space, passing one happy couple after another. The place is all sumptuous red upholstery, carved gold panels, and soft, sexy lighting, making everyone look absolutely fantastic and blissfully in love.

In the restroom, I snap open my purse and fish out my cell phone, hoping with every bit of me that I’ll find a “rescue me” text from Ethan.

Nothing.

And no surprise. I have a close-up and personal view of how well things are going there. She’s all over him, and he’s eating it with a spoon. Literally.

Staring at my sallow complexion under the fluorescent lights, I make a pact with myself. If I make it through dinner without vomiting satay or drenching my date in White Russian, I can spend all day tomorrow in my pajamas, bingeing on Dollhouse reruns.

The door swings open, almost clocking me, and in walks Raylene Powers.

“Oh, gawd, sorry,” she says, and flashes a bajillion kilowatt smile at me. She has pageant teeth and perfect alabaster skin, though under the unforgiving lights, I can see she’s way older than twenty-four.

“No problem,” I tell her, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I ask, “You having a good night?”

“Oh, I’m having the best time,” she says, moving into a stall and continuing to talk to me while she pees. “I got so lucky. You wouldn’t believe it!”

“Really?” I look around for something I can use to hang myself with but come up short. “How so?”

“I let my friends make a profile for me on some dating site. And my first time out, I get this absolute hottie. I can’t believe my luck!”

She keeps peeing, and I wonder if she has some kind of disorder.

“And he’s nice, too,” she adds. “A little quiet, but I think it’s because he’s into me.”

Finally, she flushes and comes out again. At the sink, she washes her hands meticulously, soaping up to her elbows like a surgeon. I hear her singing under her breath.

“Dr. Oz says to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice while you wash,” she informs me. Her eyes are a lively chocolate brown, but the whites glow a bit feverishly, like she’s just had a face-to-face encounter with God.

“Good to know.”

She eyes me. “You’re with that cute guy, right?”

“Me?”

“Yes!” She gives me a wink and then leans into the mirror, like she’s staring into infinity. “That good-looking guy in the purple shirt. You’re with him?” She inserts a fingernail between her teeth, and says, “Got it! God, I think that was there since lunch!”

“Umm . . . Yeah, that’s my date.”

“Well, I hope your evening goes as well as mine is.”

“And I completely wish you the same.”

“Oh, I’ve got big plans for mine,” she says and drills me once more with a look of low-level mania. “I’m going to drag him home and screw his eyes out.” She flutters her fingers at me. “Ta!”

“Ta,” I say, as the door swings shut in my face.

 Chapter 26