for a dating website.
“There,” said Claire, beaming with satisfaction at her work when she finished. “Doesn’t that look better?” she stated out of politeness as a question. Bill had no mirror to see for himself. He looked at Matt’s reaction. Matt thought it best to stifle his opinion and bobbed his head without nodding yes or no. Katie kept looking at her cell phone to see what time it was.
“Now we can take the picture,” Claire trumpeted. She put Katie in the right spot to take the photo. Claire and Matt stood behind Katie.
“Wait, Katie,” Claire said. “One more adjustment. Cross you legs, Bill. You’ll look more like a gentleman, a cultured man of the world.” Bill crossed his legs.
Matt objected. “No. Don’t cross your legs.” Bill uncrossed his legs.
“Tilt your head a bit to the right,” Claire directed. Bill did.
“No, to the left,” Matt urged. Bill obeyed.
“The right side shows your softer features,” Claire explained, insisting. Bill turned there.
“Your face has a more masculine look when you turn to the left,” Matt responded.
Tired of turning his head from left to right and all the other preparations, which he did not think were going to help him in his online wooing, Bill looked straight ahead. “Katie, take the picture.”
“Smile,” Claire said. Bill crinkled his face into a fake smile with his teeth showing.
“No teeth,” Matt said. Bill sealed his lips.
“A genuine smile shows teeth,” Claire observed. Bill’s teeth reappeared.
“His teeth are bad,” Matt replied. Bill’s teeth disappeared. With a strained, half-smiling look on his face, as if he was walking into a wind storm, Bill held his body rigid in its staged casualness, looking as comfortable as a monkey in a medical experiment.
Claire had another idea and burst out, “He would look better with a facial. He has so many blackheads on his face, and they’re so big, he seems to have a rare form of chicken pox.”
“His hair should be dyed,” Matt added. “There’s too much grey in it. Dark hair would easily take twenty years off his appearance.” He gave Bill another look. “Well, at least ten.”
Bill was fed up with such helpful advice. “Katie, I’m ready.” Katie took three photographs. The first two times he blinked with the flash.
As Katie photographed him, Claire remarked to Matt with a lowered voice that Bill could still hear, “He has a fifteen percent chance of succeeding with these photos, I think.”
“You’re optimistic,” Matt replied. “I think it’s less than two percent. He’d probably have more responses without posting any picture at all.”
“Thanks, Katie,” Bill said, relieved that the ordeal was over and he could finally relax. “If you could send me those photos, that would be great. I’m going to stay here and make some calls.”
“Sure, no problem,” Katie said, fleeing back to her desk and all her electronic socializing that had been interrupted.
Claire and Matt looked at each other, certain that one of Bill’s calls would be personal. They had both known him for a while—three years for Claire and a year for Matt—which was ample time to understand the elementary workings of Bill’s mind.
“Is doctor Linda on that list?” Claire simpered.
“She must be wondering why you haven’t called yet,” Matt snickered.
“I have work to do,” announced Bill, appearing to be completely unruffled by their impertinent remarks. He didn’t even look at them, because he had already started to read through the messages on his Blackberry.
Claire and Matt walked down the corridor, back toward the office. When they thought they were out of Bill’s hearing range, peals of laughter broke loose. The merry sounds still reached his ears.
Chapter 7
When Bill could no longer hear his coworkers, he rose and looked down the corridor where they had gone. Then he looked in the opposite direction. Seeing no one, he pressed the up button on the elevator controls. When an elevator came, he quickly entered the cab.
He exited the elevator on the floor above and snuck into a small meeting room, which was empty. Inside, after he shut the door, he looked at his Blackberry and thought for a few moments. With a sinking feeling, he decided he would surrender himself to the hands of fate and make a call. A voice he recognized quickly answered on the other end, full of annoyance and accusation. “What took you so long?” it demanded.
As she spoke with Bill, Linda was busy with a patient in the alternative medicine clinic at her house. She wore a white lab jacket and stood near a male