A Picture of What Now?

‘What if I got another job? A different occupation to the mundane task of shooting people all day everyday?’ Bonnie pouted her lips as she pondered the thought. It was a typical day in the office, the usual hive of activity buzzed around her, but Bonnie couldn’t be less interested in the work of ensuring true love.

‘That’s a lovely idea, Bonnie. I’m not sure it would work though. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you sign an agreement that committed you to this role till you depart this earth?’ Richard smiled at her sympathetically.

‘Well, yes, technically, but there are always loopholes and ways to exploit the system. The problem is that there is no point doing that without something to fall back on.’ She twisted a pen in her hands and toyed with the career possibilities. ‘I could write another book…’

‘You could. The first one was lovely. Cheryl really enjoyed it. The only thing was that, well, it didn’t really sell that well, did it? So I’m not sure that would work out, is all.’

‘Richard, reality does a good enough job of killing my dreams. You don’t have to jump on board as well.’

‘Sorry, Bonnie,’ he said sheepishly and turned back to his computer screen. ‘Maybe we could talk some more about it later? New orders. Just emailed them to you.’

Bonnie’s eyes scanned the screen. ‘Are you kidding me with this?’ she spat.

‘I know it’s not your usual.’ Richard had lowered his tone.

There he was. The back-up plan, the man who had rejected her because he’d met someone else. Bonnie had been certain that as he hadn’t landed on her desk yet, this affair of his would amount to nothing more than a fling. Instead, she stared at their picture, the stats scrolling the screen beside it, feeling very much like her own heart had been pierced with an arrow. Okay, maybe not her heart, but definitely something in her torso. Or wherever it might be that the ego was contained anyway.

‘Fucking Tinder. As if Ok Cupid wasn’t bad enough. Now we’ve got stupid apps on phones making my job harder.’

‘If it wasn’t a genuine match it wouldn’t come through, Bonnie. They do check these things.’

‘No, they don’t. The get kind of a vibe and then they send it through to me. I had to weed out over 3000 matches they sent through last year that would never have survived the year. The year! Screw it. I’m not shooting him.’ She folded her arms, very much caught in the throes of a tantrum induced by the dire state of her love life.

‘Bonnie…’

‘No, Richard. That jerk has kept me waiting on a commitment for two years now. He wants a girlfriend? He can fake his way through a relationship with her and just pray that his love is pure enough to get them through. Ugh! Three weeks ago he was sending me penis pictures and now he’s apparently in love? No. He can do it without me.’

‘Bonnie,’ sweat appeared on Richard’s top lip. ‘Are you really sure about this one? I mean, I know you are the best-‘

‘The best in the world, Richard. The very best,’ she said, a smug look settling on her face.

‘Yes, but surely part of that is knowing when to make the match and when not to. You never let your personal feelings interfere before. I know it must be upsetting having to shoot all the men you’ve had feelings for, but surely you are mature enough that you wouldn’t avoid making a match just because of a few untoward pictures? Come on, let’s rise above this.’

‘No, Richard. Just no.’ Bonnie’s bottom lip jutted out stubbornly. She was not going to be swayed.

‘But you know what can go wrong,’ he protested.

‘Yes, I do. And you know what? I’m not sure I care anymore.’ She felt a tingle in the exact spot on her ribcage where she’d been branded a cupid. To unknowing eyes it looked like a normal tattoo, but an x-ray of her ribs would reveal it had been etched deep into the bone. The skin burned where the arrow marked her flesh, but Bonnie ignored it.

Richard, mouth agape in horror at Bonnie’s defiance, watched as a sly smile slowly spread across her face.

Fine, she thought to herself. If they weren’t going to let her quit her job, she would be the first cupid in history to get sacked.

And so it was that Bonnie Martin refused to set up a match because of a few penis photos and put herself at risk of becoming the first Cupid in history to be stripped of her arrow.

Stupid Cupid

The same weather was haunting her pizza place as the previous weekend. The clouds were rolling in, scaring the locals, but annoyingly providing the tourists with a brief respite from the heat and suffocating humidity which seemed to be drawing them out in larger crowds than the week before. The temperature had dropped several degrees as morning had turned to afternoon and the explosive cracks of thunder were making it next to impossible to concentrate. Each time she strung a few thoughts together and positioned her hands above the laptop ready to type, another boom would split the air, making her jump and threatening to spill her drink. The thought of placing the drink down had occurred to her, but unless someone was also going to bring her a straw, it just wasn't happening. The last boom in the sky had managed to somehow take the power with it, and now she sat in the darkened space of the open-plan restaurant, more comfortable without the redundant restaurant lights glaring down on her, and letting the wind off the ocean blow in and whip through her quickly-tangling hair. Every few minutes it picked up just enough to spray a few droplets of rain on her face, but rather than huddling away from it as the tourists did, she stopped and inhaled deeply each time, appreciating the cool spray.

Refusing to let it be a tiresome bother like everything else in her life seemed to be, she continued to breathe in the rain, feeling the magic of it dancing on her face.

A young waiter approached. 'Sorry, miss. The power is out-' Bonnie raised an eyebrow which elicited a chuckle from the girl. 'But I guess you worked that bit out. Anyway, generator isn't working yet so there will be a bit of a wait on food. Sorry 'bout that.'

'How long have you been here?'

'I started at eleven,' she said chirpily. There was no other way to describe it. She was chirpy. That didn't bode well for any interactions she and Bonnie were going to have.

'I meant, how long have you been working here? I haven't seen you before. And I'm always here.' The words sounded dry as they fell from her mouth so she took a long drink in the hope it would grease her words so they at least didn't grate on her own nerves.

'You say that like it's a bad thing?'

The response caught her slightly off-guard. This young woman, she looked to be only nineteen or maybe early twenties at the oldest, was trying to engage her in conversation when most people her own age or older knew to be intimidated. Once she cast her steely gaze their way they backed down. Bonnie eyed her intently. This girl was either stupid, or she didn't scare easily.

'This is my post-Valentine's Day treat. Not to be confused with the treat I had on Valentine's Day or the bottle of wine I drank last night in celebration of my sixth anniversary being a single woman.'

'Oh. That doesn't sound good.'

Bonnie shrugged. 'No, I pretty much did nothing for Valentine's Day this year. I just wasn't feeling it. It is what it is, right? Isn't that what they say.'

'They also say there are plenty more fish in the sea but when did that ever make anyone feel better?' The waitress laughed and Bonnie heard herself laughing in harmony with her. 'He, or she?' she quickly added and Bonnie gave a barely discernible shake of the head to clarify. 'They're out there for you somewhere, that person you're going to love.'

Bonnie cleared her throat. 'Actually they're not.'

'Oh don't be like that. You can't give up so easily.'

'Call it an occupational hazard, but it's next to impossible for me to fall in love. I more have to make do when or if the time comes with whatever the time decides to throw at me.' Her eyes lost focus as she gazed out over the ocean to the storm haunting it above it's depths, aware of how much sadder her reality made her each year that passed. Something that had seemed so trivial in her younger days now cast a shadow over much of her life.

'Oh, do you travel a lot for work.'

Bonnie smiled. This guessing game never ended well. 'No.'

'Do you work long hours?'

'No more than a normal person.'

'Oooh! A mystery job! I bet I can work it out.' The girls eyebrows slid closer together and she stared at Bonnie's face. 'Give me a clue.'

'I'm in the business of setting people up.'

'Oh you work for an internet dating company? That's so cool.' The girl was genuinely impressed, but Bonnie 'tsked' her disgust.

'Please, internet dating is nothing without me.'

'What do you like run the stats in the background or something.'

'Think of me more like the person who fires the arrows. And you can't fire arrows at yourself now can you?'

'You're like a cupid for a dating agency or something! That's so cute.'

A blast of air hit Bonnie in the face as the restaurant lit up again and the fans kicked in. The waitress clapped her hands. 'Yay! Let me see how long on your food,' she practically sang the words before turning and scurrying off, leaving Bonnie with an empty drink and the bitter taste of never really being heard.

It had been several years ago that Bonnie had started to resent her job, both because of how it cut her off from ever really forging relationships, but also because like being in the Secret Service, it wasn't something you were really supposed to lie about. Sitting in that restaurant watching the rain and sipping wine was not a woman who worked for a dating agency, or had an online dating business. This wasn't a woman who regularly ran stats or took guesses on who might work with who. That was child's play and was a job for salesmen and con artists. Bonnie was neither. No, the little secret that Bonnie was hiding it wouldn't even help to share because no one would believe her. She'd barely believed it herself when she had begun living it. But now here she was, more than ten years later, still single and with nothing but a slew of happy marriages behind her, none of which she'd been a part of. In fact, when it came to her line of work Bonnie was the best there was and no one could set up a happy marriage like she could.

There wasn't another Cupid on the planet who was as good as Bonnie Martin or who had a 99% score rate.

Cupcakes & Valentine's Day

The pounding in her head was not making it easier to concentrate. It was becoming a yearly tradition, one that she knew she was too old to continue indulging in, but which she indulged in all the same.

Last night had been the eve of Valentine’s Day and with her greatest prospect being a date with Darren on Sunday, it had seemed like the best way to celebrate the eve of having to endure the pain of falsified declarations of love was with a drink. Or however many drinks were contained in a bottle. When the desire to let a tear escape had started, Bonnie had dragged herself off to bed and passed out in a drunken stupor.

Dressed in a black peplum and fitted skirt, she stared at the whiteboard, analysing it.

‘Are you ever going to tell me what that code is?’ The bald man suffering from middle-aged spread who sat at the desk across her divider rarely spoke to her. For the most part Bonnie scared him. She came in dressed like a high-class lawyer, oozing the attitude and pout of Victoria Beckham, and hating on everything that the job had to offer. At 55 and with two teenage daughters damaging his sleeping patterns, Richard had no idea how to handle a woman like Bonnie who clearly knew exactly how to handle men.

‘No.’ Bonnie continued staring, but a flutter in the back of her brain made her rethink her position. ‘Yes, actually.’ She turned her head towards Richard. ‘It’s my lifeline. Once it’s gone, so am I.’

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Richard swallowed nervously and began to fidget, now uncomfortable that he’d been engaged in her stare. ‘Should I call someone?’

‘Do you need to call someone?’ she asked dryly. This was bordering on conversation for the sake of conversation and that never ended well. Bonnie heard herself though and felt something that closely resembled guilt. She didn’t have the most pleasant tone, at times she irked herself. It wasn’t that she wanted people to be terrified of interacting with her, more so that she needed them to give her some space and only talk about the things she wanted to talk about, and only talk about them when she wanted to talk about them.

‘Um, no, but I thought maybe you were feeling down. I don’t know. Do you even have that emotion?’ A row of sweat beads had formed on Richard’s top lip, just above where the quiver had started and his eyes widened as his brain comprehended what he’d just said to her. The sight made Bonnie giggle like a schoolgirl.

‘Calm down, Richard. I promise not to eat your heart out while it’s still beating in your chest.’

She actually saw the way he released his breathe, like for a second he had literally been fearing for his life. ‘I’m sorry you’re alone on Valentines Day, Bonnie.’

The smile disappeared and her voice developed a crisp edge. ‘I’m perfectly lonely, okay? I’m alone because I choose to be alone. People can throw all the roses around that they want on one day of the year, pretending that they’re more loved up than I am, but the truth my friend is that they are every bit as alone as I am. The difference is that I choose to be, whilst they have to lie next to the same person each and every night pretending that they can’t feel that emptiness inside that stems only from either choosing the wrong person or from falling out of love. So thank you, Richard, but let me assure you that there is nothing wrong with being alone.’

Turning back to her computer her fingers smashed at the keyboard  with a ferocity that threatened to send a few keys flying.

‘Well, anyway, my wife made some Valentine’s Day cupcakes for me and the kids and she thought you might want one. Just a bit of fun really, what with where we work. She told me to share them with my work friends, but really, you’re the only person who talks to me.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘You don’t have to have it if you don’t want to.’ Richard's face dropped in shame.

‘It’s a cupcake, Richard. Of course I want it. I mean are you serious that no one else talks to you?’

He didn’t need to speak. The crestfallen look spoke for him. Richard had always struck her as the type who would’ve been bullied extensively during his formative years for being a little too shy, a little too soft. His wife, every bit as gentle, had always struck Bonnie as someone who oozed all the nicety of a country comfort magazine. Standing tall, she took two long strides to cover the distance between her desk and his. She reached out and smiled with all the warmth that her cold heart could muster. ‘Thank you for the cupcake, Richard. I hope you and your wife enjoy some time together this evening. And these people?’ she gestured with a dismissive, backward wave of her hand. ‘Fuck them. You’re better than them. There’s a reason you’re the only person in this place that I let talk to me.’

Bonnie didn’t see it because she’d turned to walk away, but with those simple words she drew the first smile from Richard that had crossed his face in the four years since he’d been doing time in that office. And once she was out of his gaze Bonnie smiled too. Richard and his wife had just given her her first Valentines present in six years. Licking icing off her fingers she smiled devilishly and devoured the entire thing in two bites.

Bonnie Martin was nothing if not complex.

Bonnie's Going To Hell

Valentine’s Day loomed ahead of Bonnie like a flashing neon sign reminding her that at this rate there was a very good chance she was going to die old and alone. Rolling her eyes, such things never bothered her. If people felt a need to celebrate their love with flower deliveries in front of watchful eyes, and if they needed a date on the calendar just to go to a nice restaurant together, well, they probably weren’t going to make it anyway.

She smiled knowingly to herself and, as always, sipped from her glass.

Bonnie had once had a boyfriend who insisted on buying her flowers every week. Initially he’d told her it was because he wanted her to know how special she was. Then, as the weeks turned into months, he admitted it probably had a little more to do with him liking the way they made her bedroom smell so pretty, and then, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, he’d come clean and admitted that it had a lot more to do with his own personal love of flowers. In particular he was a fan of orchids and she’d recently learned that he had a whole section of the garden outside the apartment he shared with his boyfriend, Lawrence, just dedicated to exotic varieties.

Sometimes Bonnie missed him a little and wished they could’ve stayed in touch, but then her life was not Will & Grace, and even yearly Christmas cards were just a little too much commitment for her. There was only one person she was prepared to even attempt any level of commitment with and it looked like another day had passed without her having to make any moves to realising who that man may be, and for that she was thankful.

So thankful she took another sip from her glass.

It was a groundhog day of an evening that left her with two options: stare at the television or stare at Facebook. Years earlier she’d learned that growing up as part of the MTV generation meant she had no idea how to sit still and read a book; a shame given how much she enjoyed writing them.

The divorced plus age two friend of her brother’s was still waiting to hear from her but her mind was no clearer. She prayed that something would save her from having to give him an answer. As wrong as it would be for the mother to secretly snatch the child in the night, it would really suit Bonnie if that happened. Not indefinitely of course, she wasn’t completely heartless, but long enough for them to cement a relationship strong enough that she didn’t run away at the first hurdle. Like when the child started crying the first time. Bonnie trembled at the thought.

Like divine intervention the phone sang to life beside her and shattered her daydream.

Katy Perry ringtone, of course.

‘He’s done it again,’ the voice sounded frantic. Bonnie nodded. She handled these situations regularly, plus, she just kind of liked to nod knowingly at regular intervals. That and stare with a murderous queen-like rage like Charlize Theron suggested. Through experimentation Bonnie had established that equally desirable results could be obtained from each.

‘What did your husband do that could possibly warrant screeching down the phone at me like a banshee?’ Bonnie swung her ponytail side-to-side, bored.

‘He wasn’t listening when I was talking to him. Honestly, I was at work all day, I came home and he wouldn’t even listen to me.’

It was a conversation that Bonnie had had a million times. Julie was the closest thing that Bonnie had to a best friend and this very scene played out with alarming regularity. At first the phone calls had made her anxious, threatening to steal her calm with the desperation in Julie’s voice, but she’d since learned that as much as she loved the woman, the truth was that Julie was a drama queen who seemed intent on running her marriage to Jack into the ground for no good reason other than that she could.

‘What were you talking about?’

‘The kids.’

‘The school kids?’ Bonnie screwed her nose up, trying not to side with Jack but finding herself living with his pain. Julie was an artist who was currently trying her hand at running art classes with school groups.

‘I was telling them about our painting today.’

‘Okay. And what did Jack do today?’

‘How would I know?’ Julie cried frantically into the phone. She was not handling the line of questioning with the level of calm that Bonnie would’ve preferred.

‘Well, I guess if I was Jack and you hadn’t asked me how I was and then you started prattling on about finger painting six year olds, I’d probably stop listening too.’

‘That’s my job!’ Julie protested.

‘Sorry, sweetie. That doesn’t make it anymore interesting to anyone except an over-bearing, finger-painting enthusiast, stay-at-home mother with a child in your class.’

Bonnie supposed she was going to hell when she died.

‘You’re so infuriating sometimes!’

The phone went dead in her hands and Bonnie couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Infuriating she may be, but it was also borderline impressive how she had managed to avoid yet another opportunity to give her potential date an answer by filling her evening with staring at her laptop screen and consuming copious amounts of red wine.

The truth was, Bonnie Martin would’ve been infuriated with herself too, if she could have been bothered.