Page 29 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

It wasn’t the first time that a client had made such a request after being denied a second date.

In fact, one of the women I’d set Paul up with had done something similar.

The difference was that she’d sent a polite email.

When I’d told her no, she ended up canceling her Better Love membership because she was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to find anyone more suitable than Paul had been.

That was the power of romantic possibility.

It made people behave in all sorts of ways that they ordinarily wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry, Paul, but I can’t set you up with a second date at this time. How about some water? I could make you a cup of tea? Get you something to eat?”

One of the mistakes that Rebecca had made was that she’d given Paul her phone number.

That was something that we asked clients to reserve until the second date.

Before then, all communication was supposed to go through us.

I wasn’t surprised that she’d done it. After all, she had slept with him.

What was a phone number compared with that?

As stressful as the situation was, I looked forward to telling her about it.

Paul came into the office demanding to see you.

I think he loves you. Look at how powerful you are.

“No, no water. Why won’t you set up a second date? Why don’t you want us to be together?”

His face was stricken. I realized that he’d probably never been in that position before. He was the kind of man women became desperate for. He didn’t know what to do now that the tables were turned. He couldn’t fathom that Rebecca didn’t want to see him again. I almost felt bad for him.

The receptionist fetched Serena.

“Paul, I need you to calm down,” she said, coming up behind him.

He turned to her.

“I am calm,” he insisted, though he looked anything but.

He wasn’t used to being treated like that.

It was women who were hysterical, not him.

Everything that he did was right and just. It wasn’t his fault that women were always falling in love with him.

Honestly, it was an inconvenience, because it made him look like a bad guy when he wasn’t one!

He had been so convinced that if the situation were reversed he would behave rationally.

He would take rejection gracefully, insist upon remaining friends.

He hadn’t anticipated becoming the person who stood before me now, a man so desperate for love that he’d lost his shoes.

“Just give me her address.”

Paul lurched toward me. I clenched the letter opener more tightly; I was prepared to use it, when two police officers entered the room. The letter opener clattered to the floor when they told us to put our hands in the air.

“Nobody move!”

I froze. Had someone found the heart? Were the police there to arrest me?

When they grabbed Paul’s arms and secured them in cuffs behind his back, I realized that they were there for him.

Serena must’ve called them before coming in.

The bros at my corporate jobs made fun of the word “triggered.” They said it was a term for “snowflakes” who couldn’t make it in “the real world.” I never joined in, because I knew what it meant to be triggered.

The presence of police did it for me. Just the sight of the uniform brought me back to the day that my parents were arrested.

“I’m going to fucking kill whoever is responsible for this,” my mother screamed, and I buried my face into the legs of the female police officer who stood next to me.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s all okay now.”

I’d never been able to figure out why she would tell me such a blatant lie; clearly nothing would ever be okay again.

Luckily, no one seemed to notice my discomfort, as everyone’s attention was focused on Paul, who was yelling, “Let me go! You’re making a big mistake. You don’t understand. Rebecca loves me!”

I sank into my chair as the police pulled him out of the room. The firmness of the chair was reassuring. Serena escorted them out of the building, and then came back to find me. She took a seat across from me, in the chair ordinarily reserved for clients, a kind of role reversal.

“Are you okay?” Her face didn’t move much because of all the Botox she’d gotten, but I could tell that she was concerned.

“Yes.” It took more effort than it ordinarily did to work my tone into something convincing.

“Walk me through what happened.”

I told her about the date with Rebecca—leaving out key details, such as all the time that the two of us had spent together, and how she’d confessed that they’d had sex. I understand how she could make a person behave that way. There’s something about her.

“Paul isn’t used to rejection,” I concluded. “He expects women to become obsessed with him. He doesn’t know what to do when the opposite occurs.”

Serena sighed. It was the kind of sigh that mothers let out when their children make bad decisions. I created you, and this is how you thank me?

“The investors aren’t going to like this,” she said.

“Isn’t the deal closed?” I asked.

“Not yet. Fundraising takes a long time. We need to get more people on board to ensure that we have enough startup capital. It’s critical that we show our best face, so that the investors don’t get spooked. I’ve seen deals fall through over smaller problems.”

I realized then that there were things she hadn’t told them. She’d packaged matchmaking up in a cute little box with a bow on top. She hadn’t told them about all the psychopaths. They didn’t know about her son.

“She thinks it’s her fault that he turned out the way that he did,” Oliver had confided in me once.

“Why? What did she do?”

“She spoiled him. She couldn’t resist giving him everything that he wanted.”

“Is that enough to turn a person into a psychopath?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Why? How do you think it happens?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know. Genetics?”

Serena presented herself publicly as a woman who was in control of all facets of her life.

She had a marriage of forty years, an adult child with a thriving career.

She gave large sums of money to charity and spent her weekends going to galas.

I’d seen her as an aspirational figure. Even her toenails were spotless. She had nothing to hide.

Something that I hadn’t understood, something that was so easy to miss, particularly during this era of social media, was that everyone had skeletons in their closet.

Her son wasn’t perfect. When she talked about how she’d started Better Love because he’d had such a tough time dating, she made it sound like it was the dating apps’ fault, but maybe it was his fault.

Maybe the women he contacted could sense that something was off and they protected themselves.

No one could see clearly when it came to their offspring.

No one could believe that anyone would reject the person who was the most beloved to them.

While I was trying to prove to Serena that I was capable of taking on the director position, she was engaged in a performance of her own, trying to show that Better Love was a viable business. My psychopaths were getting in the way of that. My psychopaths turned love into a dangerous venture.

“Do we have to tell them?” I asked her.

I expected her to say something like We have to . She was the good and moral mother. Instead, she looked away.

“We’ll see,” she replied.

Serena stood up, her eyes following the trail of dirt that Paul had dragged in. She turned back to me.

“You’ll tell me if you need anything?” she said. “I’m sure that was quite a shock.”

Serena reached out and touched one of the flowers in the bouquet. I wanted to slap her hand away.

“These are nice roses. Did Noah get them for you? He’s such a good boy.”

“Yeah, Noah got them for me,” I replied weakly. I’d almost forgotten about the flowers during the uproar, but there they still were, staring at me from my desk. I grabbed the card off the desk as though Serena had X-ray vision and could see the text through the flap.

Again, that refrain— Noah is missing. What if he’s dead?

“What’s going to happen to Paul?” I asked before she left. In my experience, when the police took someone away, they were gone forever. Paul, however, hadn’t committed a crime, as far as I could tell. He was drunk and belligerent, but so were many men in bars.

“They’ll stick him in the drunk tank for a few hours, let him sober up. I informed him that he’s no longer a Better Love client, effective immediately, and that if I ever see him again, action will be swift. Don’t worry. He’s not going to hurt you.”

I wasn’t worried about Paul. He’d humiliated himself in front of a woman, the thing that men hated the most. I doubted he would come back even if Serena hadn’t banned him. He wanted Rebecca to love him—he didn’t want to hurt me. The problem was that someone else out there did.