When Linda went to the Wednesday night Bible study, her friends were not there. She was supposed to meet Evan and she also expected Mary and Fred to attend. So she sat alone and did the lesson. The scripture was about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Eve was weak and was tempted by the devil in the form of a snake thus bringing sin and death into the world. After they ate the forbidden fruit and gained the knowledge of good and evil, God caught up with them and they knew they were naked and ashamed.
That is how she felt about her sexual sin because she could not control her lust and passion. That was all changed now that she was going to marry Evan. They would get married in church by Father Gilgo and bring their babies to Mass like she had seen the young families do. She was happy and she knew that Evan would be a good husband and father to her children. She knew she was not pregnant as she was still on the pill from when she was with Paul. She hoped that she did not pick up any VD from her other lovers that would spoil things with Evan.
Later that evening at home the phone rang and it was Mary in a very happy and excited mood.
"I am in love and he asked me to marry him. I said yes and we went all the way. We are going to announce our plans at church next week." she gushed.
"Mary that is great news, I am sure Paul will be a good provider, husband and father to your children" she said thinking of her intended Evan. She daydreamed maybe they could have a double wedding just like in the movies?
"Paul? I am not marrying Paul. You warned me about him and you were so right about him, he wanted only one thing and I made sure he did not get it! We broke up last Friday. I have really been interested in someone else for a long time and we dated tonight and it happened just like magic. I hope you were not getting serious about Evan - he said you were just friends. I know you dated him a couple of times but I have loved him for a long time. I would arrange double dates to be with him and get him jealous of Paul. It worked," Mary bragged.
Linda's safe world crashed around her. She remembered telling Mary how happy she was for them and getting off the phone as fast as she could. Then she cried for a long, long time.
The next morning she did not have classes so put on her jeans and a baggy college sweat shirt and went to the Essex museum to revisit the William Bouguereau art exhibit she viewed earlier with Uncle Walt. The paintings seemed to lack the same power over her that they formerly held. Maybe it was the champagne and Uncle Walt's masculine presence? As she entered the next gallery she recognized a gentleman sitting on a bench gazing at one of the paintings Boucles D'Oreilles (The Earrings).
In the painting the young woman is standing showing off her red earrings. She looks like a classical Greek goddess with her hair pulled up with a silver hair band. You can see the earring on her right ear - two small red globes - and with a tilted head she is looking at you putting on the ones on the other ear. The dress that she is wearing is white silk fastened at the shoulder on either side with a gold button. It has a sash under her breast showing the shape of her bosom. The dress falls on her body showing her form and hinting at the flesh beneath. The earring may have been a gift from a suitor and she has an innocent yet seductive look in her eyes. It reminded her of the photos of Uncle Walt fastening the gold anklet on her ankle.
She walked up behind the man on the bench and spoke his name, "Hello Mr. Phillips." He turned in surprise and smiled at her greeting.
"Oh hello Linda it is nice to see you again, please join me," touching the seat next to himself by invitation. "I did not know that you were a Bouguereau art lover like I am. What do you think about this painting?" he asked.
Sitting next to him she collected her thoughts then spoke, "It is telling me a story of a young girl, an innocent that is being seduced by the riches of the world by a lover or suitor. The red earrings represent her virginity to be given in exchange. She is dressed in white virginal dress. The gold buttons holding her dress up are like a wedding band, the promise of love and security that she needs. She is looking at her lover and deciding if he is the one."
"Which one of all of these in the gallery is your favorite Linda?" he inquired.
"The one in the other gallery called Girl-Defending-Herself-Against-Love with a cute little Cupid with wings wielding a gold arrow being pushed away. I wish I had done that last Friday night with Evan."
"Trouble with boyfriends dear?" he asked.
"Yes, we were going to get married and I gave my love and myself to him. Five days later he seduces and screws my girlfriend," Linda said angrily.
"Yes, love is like that you try to find the love of your life and get shopped along the way by those who 'woo but do not wed" he acknowledged.
"What happened with Celestial Escorts?" she asked.
"I was not a very good business man and borrowed money from the wrong people. I paid them off but I am almost broke," he confessed.
"Bill let's go to lunch" she suggested "but not Libos I can't afford it either."
They ended up at a small coffee shop where she bought him a coffee and a sandwich. As they ate the food she asked, "Now what are you going to do now Bill?"
"Shadchen," he said between gulps of his sandwich.
"A shad what" she inquired.
"A shadchen is a match maker it is a Yiddish word for a professional go between that helps arrange marriages between families," he explained. "Marriage is too important to be left to hormone crazed young people who marry the wrong person for the wrong reason. They need some guidance" he said.
"I could have used guidance with Paul and then that jerk Evan" she agreed.
Linda told Bill about going to confession and the spanking she received from the priest who then suggested that she go to the Bible study to meet a young man to help her walk with the Lord.
"It sounds like he is a Shadchen but you met the wrong one. The priest did not have the proper young man lined up for you it was real sloppy work. You need help - will you be my first client?" he requested. "I know a lot of families in this city with a lot of potential suitors. I can find the right one for you," he offered.
Linda thought about it for a moment and the disasters of the past months flashed past her eyes. What could it hurt?
"Ok I will do it. What does it cost? She inquired.
"You just paid it," waving his hand it his empty plate and chuckled. "I also need a business partner to help me run the business, you would be prefect it would be a fifty-fifty split," he offered.
That evening she called her mom and made a strange request.
"Mom, I want you to call Bill Phillips he is a friend of mine and a business partner. He is a Shadchen, a matchmaker and he is going to find me a match" she announced.
"You mean like in "the Fiddler on the Roof" her mom questioned?
"Exactly" Linda confirmed.
She wanted to be a good mom. If Linda really wanted to do this well why not.
"OK, I will do it," she agreed remembering her troubled courtships growing up.
Bill Phillips had an office set up and he and Linda started making the rounds of his friends handing out business cards and seeking clients. Business came hard and fast. The parents of slacker twenty something's that were annoyed by the failures of their offspring to tie the knot jumped at the opportunity.
Soon Bill and Linda had a large selection of soon to be newly weds to work with trying to match them up. The way it worked was they would meet first with the family and find out about the young man or woman and talk about them. The next step would be to meet the prospect for dinner in person and find out about their character, likes and dislikes. The hard part was the actual match but Bill's instinct and Linda's womanly intuition were nearly infallible. With the couple selected they would be invited to dinner at Libos. Bill would bring in the young man and Linda would bring in the young lady. It was like a chaperoned double date. There was usually a lot of coaching and suggestions about what to wear from the girls that Linda had to deal with. The prospects would have a lot of questions about the date and it did not hurt to exaggerate a little to move the process along. Bill and Linda used selective exaggeration to help things flow.
So, they would all sit down to dinner after Bill and Linda made the introductions. Over the salad, soup, main course and dessert they would sit back and carefully watch the interaction between the prospects steering the conversation as necessary. Mainly the idea was to put the prospects at ease and get them to open up to each other. The decision was always the girl's she could decide to accept or reject him. If she decided on the young gentleman, Bill and Linda got busy bringing the two families together without the young lovers present to work out the arrangements, collecting their final fee and leaving the rest to the wedding industry.
It worked like a charm and in the space of a few months they had a dozen successful unions to boast about. News of the service spread quickly but they kept the business small, exclusive and expensive. Quality not quantity was the motto. However, the first client was not yet married off. They had tried a couple of promising suitors but Linda rejected each of them so she put romance and sex on hold for awhile.
Then she met Tom.
Tom was a prospect from a pompous family whose ancestors made their money so long ago that the offspring really did not know or care how it was made. Tom was the black sheep and resented that he was to be married off but it came down to the trust fund. If he was not married with an heir by age 25 then the money stopped completely. He knew that his parents were up to something and spied Bill and Linda arriving at the house for the first meeting. It was sudden and total love at first sight like in those old tales of goddesses and mortals out of Bullfinch's Mythology he read in college. A goddess walked into his parents' house, she did not see him but he saw her. Linda's image burned in his eyes and soul. She and a gentleman with her- perhaps her father; they shook hands with his parents and went into the library closing the doors behind them.
Tom went to the adjoining room and released the hidden latch and stepped behind the full length mirror into the inner wall between the rooms. Quietly he walked to another mirror with one way glass that faced into the library. Over drinks the parents were talking to the couple and it looked like very serious business. The girl was taking notes and his mother gave her some photographs of him. Then they were looking at a photo album. What was this about? He could only look but not hear the conversation.
His father pointed in the album and the girl laughed nodding her head yes and shook her long black hair. She looked like Venus or one of the Greek goddesses wearing a peach satin dress, very modest, with white stockings and high heels. Her make up was tastefully done and she must be a Christian he thought as she was wearing a golden chain and a cross. She reminded him of all the girls that he had seen at church and desired for so many years. He wanted a wife, a help to make his lonely life worth living. Kids would be nice and the money would be good too.
