Match Made In Heaven

Bernadette looked forward to a quiet night at home. Her favourite show was on, she poured herself a glass of lemonade and opened the pizza box that had been delivered just minutes before. That was when her hopes for a relaxing night were shattered. That’s the moment she found the note taped inside the lid of the pizza box which read “I know where you live.”

“Since I don’t owe money to anyone called Big Ed, it’s unlikely to be the mafia,” she thought after the initial shock wore off. “I’m not in the witness protection program either.”

Sighing she realised that it was probably one of three men: Patrick, Robert or Randall. Those were the undesirables, the ‘undateables’ at the match-making agency which she co-partnered with her brother James.

“A Match Made in Heaven” had been a success for nine years until James had come up with the daft idea of a guarantee to find everybody a partner. For fourteen months these three men had one unsuccessful date after another, until all possible matches had been exhausted.

“We found women who were more than 80% compatible with them,” her brother James said two months earlier. “Have a look at Robert and Simone. A perfect match with the same interests; they’re introverts and work with computers. But instead of a happy ending, Simone threatens to cancel her membership and Robert demands his money back.”

“You’ve got to find out what’s going wrong,” he’d said.

“What do you mean ME?” Bernadette replied, a horrified expression on her face.

“We can’t tell them we’re trying to find out what’s wrong with them, so I’ve organised for you to go on a date with each of them, starting tonight.”

Bernadette spluttered into her coffee.

What followed had been several hours of torture, three nights in a row. Bernadette had vowed to get even with her brother.

Bernie was not one to judge by appearances and was determined to like Robert despite that fact that he’d lost one ear, sported thick, black-rimmed spectacles and grew a patchy red moustache. Working as a computer programmer, he lived a quiet life and had moved out of home at her brother’s insistence several months before. Robert had also attended several communication classes to improve his social skills.

“He’s still a little shy at first,” James said, “But just getting him talking about advances in computing.”

It was on the first date with Robert that Bernadette discovered the depth of her brother’s sense of humour.

For two long hours, she asked Robert every open-ended question she could think of. The conversation went something like:

“So Robert, tell me more about your work.”

“Computer programmer.”

“Yes, what do you do?”

“Program computers.”

“And what does that involve?”

“Writing programs.”

“Ahem, and tell me about your last holidays.”

“Computer conference.”

“Tell me about the conference.”

“Computer programming.”

“And what did you discover there?”

“New computer programs.”

After an hour and a half of that, she began to wonder if stabbing herself in the eyeball with her fork would be less painful.

Date number two had been with Patrick. Seated across from him in the café, Bernadette glanced uncomfortably at his greasy hair and odd, crumpled clothing.

“What do you think?” he asked indicating his shirt. “It’s made from hemp and is 100% biodegradable, even my shoes and underwear. You know I’m an environmentalist?”

Bernadette nodded. On paper Patrick had sounded interesting but in person he was not. He monopolised the conversation, told Bernie she was a murderer for owning leather shoes, and scared the bejeebers out of her by suggesting she join a commune with him that encouraged the production of large numbers of children. The event that had brought their meeting to a close was the moment Patrick began flinging pieces of her salad around so he could rescue a small grub he’d spied in it.

“My good deed for the day,” he said after he’d placed the creature on a plant outside.

“But what about my salad?” Bernie asked, feeling the stares of the other baffled diners.

Picking up some lettuce from the floor Patrick dropped it back onto her plate saying, “A little bit of dirt is good for your immune system.”

He resumed eating his own meal and Bernadette asked the waiter for anything alcoholic as long as it was in a very large glass.

It was before the third date, that James advised her that Randall was no longer pretending to be a cowboy.

“Thank goodness!” Bernadette said, “His ‘Yeehaws’ were embarrassing enough in here. The man is 42 after all and has an IQ of 149!”

The first indication that Bernie was in for an interesting evening came when she met Randall at the restaurant door.

“Arrh, you’re a fine looking wench!” Randall exclaimed. He wore black clothes and a large black hat.

“Avast there me hearties!” he yelled to the waitress as she led them to their table, “Don’t forget me bottle o’ rum or I’ll make ye walk the plank!”

It wasn’t the eyepatch he put on half-way through their meal that made her walk out, nor even when he’d threatened to “Gut every lily-livered land-lubber in the place.” She departed the moment he’d pinched the waitress on the bottom and declared, “Arrh, you’re a fine figured lass, shaped just like a tankard of mead upon which I’d like to quench my thirst.”

After those disastrous dates, each of the three men began to relentlessly pursue Bernadette, convinced somehow that she was the woman for them. At work, she received flowers from Robert, a toy ship that played “Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum” from Randall, and an all expenses paid trip (by bicycle) to a “Save the Planet” conference from Patrick.

She insisted that Robert answer all agency calls until further notice.

And now it seemed, that one of them had found out where she lived. She was about to take a bite of pizza when the phone rang.

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1,000 words
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ID: 333655   (Rated: 13+) The Writer's Cramp  Write the best story or poem in 24 hours or less and win 10,000 GPs! by Sophy