Thank God this shift is almost over with, Jane thought as she saw another woman come storming up from the back of the restaurant and head for the front door without slowing down, something that had happened repeatedly over the course of the afternoon. Whatever that’s all about, she thought, it sure doesn’t seem to be going well.

Jane was only mildly curious about whatever was going on in the back booth of the Mountain Grove restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. The only reason she was mildly curious about it was that earlier in the afternoon a solid-looking older woman with salt-and-pepper hair had come in. Being the on-duty hostess at the Mountain Grove, Jane had gone right over to the “Please Wait To Be Seated” sign with an armload of menus and asked, “How many in your party, ma’am?”

“That’s a little complicated,” the older woman said. “I need a seat in the back where I can have things a little private, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t seat anyone close to me.”

“We’re not busy this afternoon, and I doubt we will be,” Jane replied. “That shouldn’t be any problem.”

“One other thing,” the woman said. “I’m going to be holding several preliminary interviews this afternoon. There should be several women coming in asking to see Sophia Rosenvold. You can send the first one right back, but don’t bring the next one back till I’m done with whoever I’m talking to.”

Jane was about to protest that it was a little out of her job to do that, but the woman pressed a bill into her hand. Jane only got enough of a glimpse of the bill to see that it was a hundred. “Here,” the woman said. “Perhaps this will cover the extra trouble.”

“Thank you,” Jane replied, more than a little surprised. Being the hostess, she rarely got any tips – the wait staff got those, and while they were supposed to give her a cut, somehow it never seemed to happen. A hundred bucks seemed like manna from the heavens, she thought as she took Sophia back to a table in the back, near the women’s room. It was about as private a table as could be managed in a place like the Mountain Grove.

Jane wound up bringing Sophia a carafe of decaf, then went back about her business, what of it there was; it was more a case of trying to look busy rather than being busy, with just enough traffic to make looking busy not very hard. It was only a few minutes before the first of a series of women looking for Sophia showed up. Jane found herself not paying a lot of attention to them, other than sending the women back to Sophia one at a time and keeping an eye open for one to leave so she could send another to the back of the room. She noticed that most of the women didn’t stay back there long; while some were back out in twenty minutes, a few only made it five minutes or so, and many of them seemed more than a little upset when they left. No one left a tip, of course.

To the extent that Jane thought about the series of women, she was a little jealous. At least they seemed to be interviewing for a job; good jobs weren’t always easy to get in a popular college town and Jane knew it better than most. She had a job, of course, but it wasn’t a very good one, and it certainly didn’t take a bachelor’s degree to qualify for it. Jane had a degree in art history; that and a buck would get her a cup of coffee. Well, eighty cents at the Mountain Grove – she got an employee discount – but otherwise all the work she’d put into her degree over four years was proving to be absolutely worthless.

As the afternoon and her shift wound down, Jane was looking forward to it being over with, although she wasn’t sure why. There wasn’t going to be much to do this evening other than to go back to her apartment and listen to Madelyn, her roommate, spout off about whatever she had a hair up her butt about this evening. She didn’t particularly like Madelyn, but they got along well enough, and at least the two of them sharing the rent made it possible for her to stay in Boulder, rather than have to head back to small-town Hartford, Nebraska, in pure defeat. If she did that, she’d have to sponge off her folks to survive, since there wouldn’t be anything like a job for her there. Jane knew she’d hate it; her folks and her grandmother would really enjoy rubbing her nose in her defeat. Jane hadn’t struggled through four years of college and a lot of college loan debt to live that kind of life, not that she was doing much better now.

But, in the short run, Jane’s back was stiff and her feet hurt; she was looking forward to sitting down, taking her shoes off, and trying to look over the help wanted ads in the Daily and the Post. There might even be something new there she could qualify for, and at least it would be a few quiet minutes before Madelyn showed up and disrupted whatever peace she might be able to accumulate.

Finally, not long before it was time to clock out, Jane noticed that there was no one else waiting to go back and see Sophia. Considering the hundred bucks Sophia ought to know that fact, so Jane went to the back booth. “That was the last one, I think,” Jane told the older woman. “At least there’s no one else waiting. Can I get you something?”

“Right now, a double bourbon on the rocks would be perfect,” Sophia said. “But I don’t think you serve that here.”

“Afraid not,” Jane sighed. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Not hardly,” Sophia shook her head. “Not even close. Ten candidates, and six of them didn’t meet the simplest qualifications I asked for, so there was no point in getting down to business with them. Of the remaining four, two laughed in my face when I started to explain what I’m looking for, and I didn’t feel like the other two would have worked out, anyway. So now, I get to start the search all over again. Maybe I’ll have to take a different approach. I don’t know.”

“Well, if at first you don’t succeed, and all that, I guess. Was there anything in specific you were looking for?”

“Well, yes and no,” Sophia shrugged. “I thought that in this town I ought to be able to find a woman with a few simple qualifications and a desire to try something unusual with the chance of making a pretty good amount of money. All I can say is I guess I’m going about it all wrong.”

Jane couldn’t help but be a little intrigued, especially the part about making money. “So what is it you’re looking for?”

Sophia shook her head. “I know this is going to sound a little strange, but I’m looking for a wife for the guy I work for.”

“Huhhhh?” Jane frowned. “Are you trying to fix him up with a girlfriend or something?”

“Not really,” Sophia shook her head. “I’m looking for a woman to be his wife. Don’t get me wrong, if I was thirty years younger and single I’d take the job on myself. Rick is a nice guy, but he’s very shy, especially around women, rather introverted, and well, not very social. I don’t mean anti-social, it’s just, well, he doesn’t have a lot of people skills. He can make a computer do tricks you can’t believe, but he doesn’t have the social self-confidence to be willing to go to any effort in looking around. I’m of the opinion that he needs a wife to bring out the person he could be.”

This sounded pretty strange to Jane, but at least intellectually her curiosity was aroused. “So he asked you to find him a wife?” she smiled.

“Well, no, not quite like that,” Sophia smiled. “It’s more a case of I talked him into letting me look for one for him. You know that in the past and still in some cultures today, an arranged marriage is a common thing? You know, where a matchmaker or relatives get together and set up the marriage, and the bride and groom don’t meet until they get married?”

“I guess,” Jane shook her head. “You mean sort of like Fiddler on the Roof?”

“Right ‘Matchmaker, make me a match.’ Sort of like that.”

“It seems pretty strange in this day and age.”

“Oh, it is, no doubt about it,” Sophia smiled. “But the fact of the matter is that my grandfather and grandmother had a marriage like that. It lasted sixty-five years until he died. As far as I know, everybody who ever knew them said that they were perfect for each other. Now, granted, they were in a culture where that sort of thing was the accepted practice. They were Estonian Jews and came to America as kids before World War One. Their parents retained a lot of that culture, so it was the normal thing to everyone.”

“But those days are long gone,” Jane protested mildly.

“Yes, they are,” Sophia sighed. “But, the more I think about it, I’m wondering if maybe something valuable was lost along the way. Look, in this day and age, two random kids fall in love and get married. What are the chances that marriage is going to end in divorce? About half, mostly through incompatibility, unwillingness to tolerate differences, immaturity, and things like that. In other words, very often things those kids ought to have seen in each other but were too blinded by what they thought was love or sheer desperation to make a connection despite obvious differences.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that happen. It could have happened to me, except I was lucky and managed to avoid it.”

“Right. It happens a lot. I can’t believe that the chances of having a successful marriage as a result of a reasoned independent consultation in this day and age are any worse than the pure random choice most people go through. In fact, the chance of a successful marriage could be better. They usually are in the cultures where it’s practiced today, but if there are any similar data on arranged marriages in the general American population today, I’ve been unable to find it.”

“Well, you could be right,” Jane countered. “I certainly don’t know of it happening, but I do know I’ve seen marriages of kids who are an awful mismatch, and everyone seemed to know it but them when they got married. Usually they didn’t last too long.”

“So have I,” Sophia sighed. “I guess I can’t blame Rick for being reluctant when you look at it that way.”

Jane glanced at her watch. She knew she’d been talking about this for far too long; she had to keep an eye out up front, even though the place hadn’t been busy. “I’d like to talk about this some more,” she said. “It sounds interesting. I need to be getting back to work, but if you can stand to sit around here a little longer I’ll be clocking out soon.”

“Sure, I’d love to talk with you some more. Maybe you can refine my thinking a little. You’re the first person who hasn’t laughed in my face today when I’ve brought the idea up. But let me make you a counter offer. I still could stand that double bourbon on the rocks and there’s a decent bar right up the street. How soon do you clock out?”

The two of them quickly made arrangements to meet at the Silver Rail, a couple doors up the street, within half an hour. As Jane headed back toward the front of the building, she noticed Sophia heading toward the ladies’ restroom, probably not a surprise considering that she’d sat there drinking coffee for the last few hours.

There really wasn’t much activity in the front. Jane had to seat a couple of businessmen, but they were just getting in the door as she walked to the front desk. It only took a minute or two to take care of them; then she had to cash out three different customers, the last of them Sophia. “It shouldn’t take long,” Jane told her, “so long as Rebecca gets here to relieve me on time.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Sophia told her with an enigmatic smile.

Business usually perked up about this time of day at the Mountain Grove, but it often came in spurts, and for whatever reason, it turned dead slow for the next few minutes. Jane had to fall back into “trying to look busy” mode, but mostly gears were turning in her mind as she considered Sophia’s idea. Her thinking about it was really an intellectual exercise at this point; she wasn’t actually considering it for herself, but she did want to know more about the concept, mainly how Sophia thought it could possibly work. To Jane there was no way it could. In one sense it seemed interesting, but at the same time the idea seemed pretty scary. She just couldn’t put herself into the picture of getting married like that! There were so many ways it could go wrong . . . no wonder the idea hadn’t gone over very well with the women Sophia had been meeting this afternoon. Sophia thought this could work for the mystery man, but Jane couldn’t see how it could work for anyone brought up in the American culture, and all those women who rejected the idea should be a hint to Sophia that it couldn’t work.

On the other hand . . . well, it would be nice to be married, she admitted to herself. She’d never had much luck with her romantic life; too many guys at Hartford had already been spoken for when she’d been in high school. The ones who hadn’t pretty well been taken by the time she left had pretty much seemed like losers, especially to a girl who wanted to get far away from Hartford to where there might be something interesting.

College hadn’t been much better. Her first year of college, fifty miles away at Greeley had gone all right, but she really hadn’t cared much for the campus or the school. For whatever reasons, most of the guys she’d met at Greeley had been ag students of one type or another. She’d had some fun with a couple of them, but getting past “a little fun” seemed to carry with it the chance of winding up in some damn place like Hartford again. Boulder at least was big, had interesting things, and interesting people – people who used their heads and were interested in something more than corn prices and feeder steers; no matter which way the wind was blowing, she never smelled manure. Everyone did all too often in Hartford.

But, for whatever reason, she hadn’t really clicked with anyone in Boulder, either. Some of them had their heads in the clouds and not much concept of the real world, and especially in her field there were a lot of gays running around, which reduced the ratio to a long shot. Probably the “Plain Jane” nickname she’d picked up along the way hadn’t helped either. Jane resented that nickname more than a little; she was obviously not ever going to be a Miss Universe contestant, but she thought she was reasonably attractive if not exactly the epitome of style.

Jane knew she wasn’t she shapeliest woman around; she usually didn’t wear much makeup because she felt she had plenty of contrast to her face. Her hair was black, chin length, mostly straight with a little curl inward at the ends. She had long bangs and square black glasses and had thought about growing her hair longer and getting contacts to improve her appearance, but it had seemed like too much trouble. She dressed, well, casually; while she wore dark slacks and a blouse on this job, off work she tended toward jeans and T-shirts or sweat-shirts, worn loosely enough to cover up her less-than-stunning shape. All that added up to an average appearance at best, and had at least something to do with why she was still single with no real prospects in sight.

There were times she figured she’d missed the boat by not pinning down a serious relationship before she graduated from college. There were girls she knew who had grabbed the gold ring, which for many of them was unofficially the reason they’d gone to college in the first place – and, for that matter, was at least part of her unofficial reason for doing it, too. For almost a year she’d given some consideration to trying the make-up round of grad school. She was reluctant, since she knew grad students usually weren’t as interested in relationships as undergrads, partly because of their studies and partly because from her experience they seemed to be even more broke than the undergrads. She’d figured that if she did decide to go to grad school it needed to be somewhere other than Boulder, and probably not next fall since it was getting pretty late in the application cycle. That was fine with her; whatever it was she decided to study, she’d made up her mind it wasn’t going to be art history.

Add it all up, and she knew she was marking time, not getting anywhere, and at least partly because she had no idea of where she wanted to go. Let’s face it, I’ve got to do something, she thought as she piddled around mindlessly helping get tables set up for the busy hours to come, a chore the waitresses ought to have started doing earlier instead of goofing off themselves. But what that something might be was escaping her. There had to be another job out there.

With that thought in mind, what she knew of Sophia’s idea now no longer seemed quite all that outrageous to her. It was still scary, still something she didn’t think she could possibly do – but there was still a little bell ringing in her mind telling her it was something that needed a little more investigation.

And what was that Sophia had said about money? “A pretty good amount of money” was all she could remember, and she had no idea of how much it could be or what she’d have to do to earn it. To top it off, while Sophia had said this Rick guy was pretty nice, Jane had no idea of what she meant by that. From what little Sophia had said he sounded like a pretty introverted nerd – in other words, not all that appealing, at least on the face of things, but again, Sophia hadn’t explained any details. The odds were pretty good that this idea was a nonstarter and would stay that way, but Sophia had piqued her curiosity, and their discussion, however brief, had been interesting in a way that discussions with Madelyn never seemed to be. Besides, Sophia reminded Jane a little of the idea of someone’s nice grandmother, although she didn’t seem to be that old, and it would be nice to talk to someone new. She hadn’t had a discussion like that in a while.

Well, all right, she decided. It can’t hurt to poke my nose into this idea a little more. After all, it’s not like I’m committing myself to anything.

Jane couldn’t actually cash out her drawer until Rebecca, her replacement, showed up, but fortunately Rebecca was on time, as she usually was. “Been busy?” Rebecca asked.

“Lunch was busy, but the afternoon has been pretty slow,” Jane reported as she started going through the drawer, totaling everything up. Fortunately, it didn’t take long; she went back to the office, put the drawer in the safe, and clocked out. Even if this deal with Sophia came to nothing, as seemed very likely, it was good to have this shift over with. With the exception of Sophia, tomorrow seemed like it would be an awful lot like today, which had been an awful lot like yesterday. If she didn’t do anything it could be the same thing forever.

It only took a few minutes to finish up, and soon Jane was walking out the door. She almost headed out to her car in the parking lot; it was tempting, since she couldn’t see how talking with Sophia could come to much of anything, and it had some obvious risks. However, there was an obvious risk in passing up what might possibly be an opportunity without bothering to find out something about it.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said to herself, and turned to walk up the street to the Silver Rail.

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