Shop and Let Die (9 page)

Without further word, I
read each problem to him and he easily answered correctly and made
the appropriate corrections on his paper, although each time his
erasures got more and more violent.

At last, Supermom status
buoying me, I hugged him. “You can do this honey, you just need a
little help. Ask for it, why don’t you?”

He nodded, but only to
escape.

I continued, “There’s no
shame in dyslexia, and your tutoring will get you up to speed soon,
so you won’t need to ask for help very much any more.”

He was making good
progress in his reading tutoring, and had brought his reading level
up from second grade to fourth grade level. But since he was in
seventh grade, that didn’t help him handle the massive amounts of
reading material he had to process. His coping mechanism was to
avoid reading altogether if there were more than three sentences on
a page.

He brought home more
papers with “F” on them than any child’s heart could stand. Always
in bright red and branded large on the paper. Every teacher
professed profound surprise that Ryan’s dyslexia was causing the
problem when I brought the issue to their attention.

It seemed impossible to me
that they missed the obvious. But then again, I only looked at
Ryan’s homework. I didn’t have to look at the homework of thirty
other kids.

School is tough on some
kids. Ryan’s friend Elliot is a very smart kid without the
self-preservation skills to keep his intelligence hidden. The
teachers visibly winced when he raised his hand because they knew
he was going to make a thoughtful, well read comment pointing out
how shallow the teacher’s own knowledge of a particular subject
was. They kept trying to put him in the gifted and talented
program, but his mother had had the good sense to refuse after his
first two weeks in it.

Elliot, a normally
reasonable child, came home ready to do battle with the world
because the school interpreted gifted and talented to mean the
child should have to do more and harder worksheets than the
ungifted and untalented kids, like mine. Discussion was frowned
upon, and competition was brutal.

Elliot made an eloquent
and articulate statement to his mother, the gist of which was that
he would become either a juvenile delinquent or mad as a hatter if
he were forced to spend even one more day in such a
class.

She, a true Supermom if
ever there was one, decided to keep him in school (but not in
G&T) part time for his socialization skills, and homeschool him
herself in the afternoons and on the weekends. I envy them the
afternoons they spend at museums, traipsing through the woods
identifying plants and animals, and photographing
nature.

Ryan envies him the
electronics and chemistry labs set up in their basement—although he
participates in Elliot’s experiments and projects often enough that
we have no doubt he’s a smart boy. We hope when he learns to read
at grade level he’ll begin to show the teachers. I try not to give
in to the fear that teachers pigeonhole a kid early on and the
label is almost impossible to shake.

Take me. Smart and quiet,
the teachers called me. Stuck up and Miss Know it All, my fellow
students said. Shy and paranoid, I labeled myself. Even today, I
can feel myself test out each label for truth whenever I make a
misstep in parenting, wiving, shopping, or life itself.

On my better days I reject
all the labels, like a true Supermom. Which, I suppose, is just
another label.

Of course, if I’m going to
brush up my resume, I’m going to have to embrace the labels. At
least the ones that would make me sound like a good
hire.

With both kids focused on homework, and Seth not due home for
thirty minutes, I picked up my latest library book—a tale of a
young woman who must decide whether to choose between her dream of
trekking in the Andes or to marry the man she was fairly sure she
loved enough to spend a lifetime with.

So far I had barely gotten
to the part where her dilemma began… asking her potential husband
if he’d mind if she wanted to trek the Andes. Since it was already
a week overdue, and the irate reminder from the library was due any
day, I had to finish it, or I’d never know if he let her go to the
Andes—or from his life completely.

A shrill voice inside me
screamed at her to head for the Andes without looking back. But she
was young and in love and she was still undecided.

The house phone rang and I
hurried to pick it up before the answering machine. Even talking to
a salesman or a pollster would be better than witnessing the train
wreck about to happen to this nice girl. Sometimes I wondered if
writers were undercover sadists—torturing their readers, along with
their characters, for the sheer satisfaction of seeing us
squirm.

“
Molly, sorry to call you
on the home phone, but you didn’t answer your cell.” Sue
again.

I mentally deducted a
Supermom point. I’d brought in my phone, but left it somewhere in
the kitchen, with the ringer turned off. The dying dinosaurs must
have rattled me. “Sorry.”

“
I need you.”

I had a momentary hope
that the job was something great. “Got my massage
already?”

“
No. Another dating
thing.” She sounded a bit hesitant.

“
Sue, I’m married. And I’d
like to stay that way.” Most of the time, anyway.

“
I know. I know. You and
everybody else. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t desperate. Job pays
a hundred.”

A hundred? I got a
headache imagining what kind of work the merchant would want from
me for a fee that big. Was it a twenty page detailed report? “Does
that mean I need to marry the guy and rate his
husband-ability?”

“
No. It’s not like that.”
Sue didn’t sound all that convincing. “In fact, it’s a real step
up. Two hours work, max. An hour to go through the interview
process, then some time on line to pick a man to contact—one email
and then one follow up. And you have to reply to three men who
contact you.”

I knew enough about
mystery shopping to automatically double the time she said I’d
need. Four hours. A hundred dollars. Still…. “I think my husband
might be a little unhappy.”

“
Tell him you’re getting a
hundred dollars and a really wild date night—then let him have a
little fun on your dating jag, too.”

“
He’s not a kinky man.” I
wasn’t a kinky woman, either, but between us, I think Seth would
win the unkinky award hands down. But then I remembered the Secret
Shopper Sisters boards. Other shoppers had had used the shops to
add a little spice. Why shouldn’t I?

Sue pressed, “You won’t
really be dating these guys, just going through the
motions.”

I protested, “Isn’t that
what prostitutes do? Go through the motions for money?”

Without missing a beat,
she informed me, “Absolutely no cyber sex allowed on this site—in
fact, that’s one of the things they want to screen
for—perverts.”

Great. I’d be trolling for
perverts. “I’d have to lie. Unless you think that these guys will
want to date a married 37 year old whose greatest goal in life is
to be a supermom?”

Sue laughed. “Don’t worry.
The vendor has a persona for you—this is the closest thing to safe
dating ever invented. You’ll be someone else—the Mata Hari of the
online dating world.”

“
Why don’t you get a
single woman?”

For the first time, she
sounded evasive, “That’s a bit complicated. They’re actually quite
exclusive and they don’t want to take a risk getting an unqualified
woman hooked up with their men.”

“
Exclusive?”

Reluctantly, she admitted,
“No one in this service makes less than 10 mil a year.”

Ten million dollars a
year? Whoa. “What do they need a dating service for? The money must
be better than an overdose of pheromones.”

She sounded more confident
now. “Exactly—unfortunately it attracts the wrong sort.”

How did anyone know I
wasn’t the wrong sort? “I don’t know…”

“
I’ll toss in another
hundred as a bonus.” Sue pleaded.

Two hundred dollars. She
must really be desperate. I’d have to shop ten little shops to earn
that. Driving to and from. Working around the kids’ schedule.
Avoiding a serial killer.

I threw out my last big
obstacle. “I have a PTA meeting tonight.”

She didn’t say anything.
Neither did I. My silence brought out the big guns. “I’ll schedule
you the next massage shop.”

“
Promise?”

“
Cross my heart and hope
to have hard drive failure if I don’t.” I heard a rustle from her
end of the line, as if she had literally crossed her heart as she
spoke.

“
Okay.” I’d tell Seth,
convince him to play along, and then it wouldn’t quite be like
cheating. Maybe it would even revitalize our admittedly tired
romantic life.

I tried to picture the two
of us pretending to be a new person—a sexy single woman making over
10 mil a year. Maybe it wouldn’t be kinky so much as
necessary—after all it would take every scrap of imagination I had
to be that person.

Maybe Seth would have some
ideas. He certainly made closer to a mil than I ever would.
Especially if I went to work for the Admissions office.

I returned to the hapless
heroine of my novel, but it was a lost cause. No longer did I care
whether Natasha came to her senses and headed to the Andes. Now I
wondered what to do with the two hundred dollars I was about to
earn.

Ryan wanted guitar
lessons, but I didn’t see how he could fit them into his already
busy schedule. Anna had just had her birthday and was all set for
shoes and clothes, including the new purple jacket she’d been
asking for.

So, really, it would come
down to getting the new front door I’d been wanting for a while, or
the bookshelves. Both were problematic.

While the money would pay
for the door, or the wood for the bookshelves, it wouldn’t cover
manpower. Neither Seth nor I were handy, but only I admitted it.
Seth had installed our back door so well that it required two hip
thumps and steady knee pressure to lock and unlock it. I did not
want to see what he’d do with the front door.

I could always save the
money, of course. But I’m not that good at saving. That’s more
Seth’s department.

When Seth came home, he seemed a little surprised
to see that dinner was on the table. Or maybe he was surprised that
I had mascara on. Either one was unusual.

He slung down his backpack
and gave me a hug. “What’s the celebration?”

I hugged him back. “Big
job.”

A flash of hope shone in
his eyes. “A job?”

I realized my mistake and
pushed him away. “Don’t get your hopes up. Mystery
shop.”

“
Oh.” The light in his
eyes died. “So are you sneaking around a fast food bathroom, or
trying on glasses that you have no intention of buying?”

“
Someone has to do it.” It
was always a tactical error to sound defensive, but sometimes with
Seth I can’t help myself. “Besides, it’s none of those—and I’m
getting paid two hundred dollars.”

He sat down and gave me a
sharp look. “What do you have to do? Walk the Great Wall of
China?”

“
I have to go online as
Serena Smalley and be a good date.”

“
Date?” He
laughed.

Not quite the reaction I’d
expected. “Well, not actually, of course. I
am
married.” Where was the jealousy?
The momentary mental question about whether I was in the market for
a new husband?

“
Good.” He relaxed and
grabbed a breadstick. “I thought maybe you’d forgotten.”

So much for putting a
spark back into our relationship. “How could I when I’m getting
dinner on the table for you?”

He stopped munching,
looked at me, and then sighed. “Sorry. I had ten students in my
office today, crying about their grades on the mid-term. This
dating job idea is coming from left field.”

“
I know. Nearly outside
the ball park. But it won’t take much time, and it’s more money
than I’ve earned on a job yet.”

“
So, if you don’t date
them what do you do? Lead them on and dump them?”

Technically, I guess, the
answer was yes. Not that I would admit it out loud. “Exchange an
email.”

“
Awful high pay for what
sounds like little work. What’s the catch?”

“
The online site is very
exclusive and they don’t want to chance a single woman ringer
getting hold of one of their rich clients. Like with like, you
know.”

“
Sounds
strange.”

“
Very strange. I almost
didn’t take it, but the money is good and Sue suggested I should
invite you to join the fun if you want.”

“
Join you?”

I tried to sound sexy.
“You know, do it together, add a little spice to our
marriage.”

He cocked his head and
contemplated me for a full three seconds. “Are you worried you
might find someone better and be tempted?”