Dead Connection

“If Stern sees me talking to you, I’ll lose my job. He’s a total control freak.”

“He won’t see us. I can come to your house. I can meet you on your break. Your lunch hour?”

“One o’clock. There’s a noodle place on Rector and Broadway. Much too lowbrow for the boss.”

Ellie took down the intersection and thanked Christine profusely. Then she climbed back into bed and shut her eyes. She left the bedroom door open so she could hear Jess come home. Once he did, she fell into a deep slumber.

11

IN THE MORNING, ELLIE FOUND JESS LOUNGING ON THE SOFA, her laptop open on his chest.

“You seem bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning,” she said. “One might even say you appear fully employable, and it’s only eight a.m.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m still up from last night. I figured I’d take advantage of your computer before catching some z’s.” He eyed her with obvious amusement, apparently waiting for some response.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I’m just glad to see you getting out into the world, El.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Welcome to FirstDate? Sorry, but I noticed the subject line in your in-box.”

“Get out of my e-mail!”

“Um, hello? Who’s got their computer set up to open e-mail automatically when you log in? I couldn’t help it. Besides, I think it’s cool. It’s about time you started getting laid again. You’ve got to be the only attractive woman in Manhattan who’s not getting her freak on.”

“I’m sure having you on my couch will be very conducive to that. And, I hate to break it to you, but my participation on FirstDate is part of that case I mentioned.” She told him about Flann McIlroy and his theory about FirstDate. She could sense Jess wanted to say something about the wisdom of her assignment, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

“Well, I hope he’s kissing luck’s butt for handing him the only cop in New York who works cases off the clock. The last cop I’d want on my ass is Ellie Mae Hatcher.”

“I am the cop on your ass.” When Ellie first joined the department, she and Jess struck a deal meant to balance the obvious differences, and potential conflicts, in their lifestyles. Ellie made sure Jess knew the difference between keeping bad company and becoming a criminal accomplice. Jess made sure he never crossed that line. Tolerating his intermittent presence on her sofa was one way Ellie helped him to keep his end of the deal.

“Maybe there’ll be an added benefit to this FirstDate research. Maybe you’ll actually find someone decent while you’re at it.”

“I told you. It’s only for the case.”

“Um, maybe not anymore. I sort of flirted with a few guys who looked good for you.”

“You did what?”

“The e-mail from FirstDate had all your account info, and I got curious. The next thing I knew, I was sending flirts to people. I finally had to stop because it was feeling a little gay. But, trust me, I picked way better guys than the ones you flirted with.”

“Jess. I picked those men because they seemed like people who might be homicidal maniacs, not because I thought they were dreamy.”

“Sorry. My bad.”

When Jess continued to insist that there might be a personal upside to Ellie’s research, she finally fessed up that her curiosity was piqued. She showed him the profile for Chef4U, the thirty-eight-year-old Upper East Sider she first noticed in Caroline Hunter’s FirstDate account. He had sandy blond, wavy hair and smiling eyes.

Jess took one quick look. “What a cornballer.” He read dramatically from the screen: “Brainy women are sexy. It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Because if he has to say it out loud, he doesn’t mean it. Trust me. I’m a guy, I know how we operate. It’s just a line to lure in women who don’t think they’re pretty enough to do better than him. He cooks Julia Child recipes? In Manhattan? I bet you fifty bucks he doesn’t even own a frying pan.”

“As if you’ve got fifty bucks.”

Still, Ellie reread the profile and saw it in an entirely different light. In every other part of her life, she trusted her instincts. She never hesitated about moving to New York. She never second-guessed her decision to bypass her school plans to study criminal justice at John Jay. On the job, she read suspects, witnesses, and supposed victims better than officers with decades more experience.

But when it came to men, Ellie was as naive as she’d been in the ninth grade when she accepted her first car date with the high school quarterback Gil Morton. He opened the passenger door of his pickup and asked her what she felt like doing. Whatever. He suggested ordering pizza and renting Lethal Weapon. Fifteen minutes later, she found herself on his sofa, with no pizza and no movie, beneath one hundred and eighty pounds of sloppy kisses and groping. She walked to Quik-Trip and called Jess for a ride before things passed the tipping point, but she had never quite absorbed the lesson.

Ellie was a woman who expected men to value the same things she did. She expected men to want not just a lover but a friend, a challenge, and an equal. The problem, Jess always told her, wasn’t in her expectations. Plenty of men out there met them. The problem was that Ellie, despite all her intuitive strengths, had absolutely no ability to distinguish the poseurs from the real thing.

“Here, give me that,” Jess insisted, reaching for the laptop. “I’ll find you a worthy suitor.” Jess began clicking away, and Ellie found herself involuntarily intrigued. These men were total strangers. She could develop relationships with them without ever telling them what she did for a living. They might get to know her without the hindrance of the immediate “female cop” stereotypes. Online, she could be a completely different person.

Jess grabbed a pen and a crumpled paper napkin from the coffee table and scribbled down the names of what he called “the keepers,” men with good jobs, at least one creative comment in their self-descriptions, and absolutely no disqualifying bullshit. Ellie snatched the running list from him and began crossing names from it.

“What are you doing, El? Those are perfectly good prospects.”

“I’m scratching out the ones who fail my litmus tests,” Ellie replied. “Let me ask you something, Jess. You’re thirty-five years old. If you were to fill out one of these surveys, what would you put down as the age range for your ideal mate?”

“For me? Um, I guess twenty…-four to thirty-five.”

Ellie made a noise of disgust and swatted her brother across the shoulder. “Even you? My own flesh and blood? You are a thirty-five-year-old man with a birthday in four months, and you’re telling me that you wouldn’t even consider going out with a woman who turned thirty-six yesterday?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t consider it. Obviously if I met a woman and I liked her, and she turned out to be a little older, I wouldn’t care. But if you ask me who I picture in the abstract, then yeah, I guess I picture someone my age or younger.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Well, at least you include your own age. My litmus test – the men I’m crossing off – are the ones who cap their age range below their own age. Half the men on here, no matter how old they are, say their perfect woman is somewhere between her midtwenties and exactly one year younger than he is.” She continued crossing off names, clearly disgusted. “I mean, what is it about the midtwenties?”

Jess’s eyes glazed over as he hung his tongue from his mouth in mock bliss. Ellie pretended to shoot a roundhouse kick in his direction.

“All right, Gloria Steinem. But I bet you a million bucks that the women on there are just as superficial. They’re just screening for different qualities. Money, power, prestige. It’s market forces, little sis.”

“On that very romantic – and totally depressing – note, I think you’ve convinced me that my online surfing should remain strictly professional.”