“Good at what exactly?” She smiled, and I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not leaving this house until you tell me where we’re going.”
“To the park, darling. Honestly, do you think your parents would send you down here to do something sinister?”
I didn’t tell her that I had tried the doors upstairs. They were all locked other than mine and the bathroom. And mine didn’t lock.
We started down the block, Ada’s heels clacking loudly along the sidewalk, her pace betraying her New York roots as she zigzagged around slower walkers and narrowly avoided the careening trolley cars.
“Do you get used to the trolleys?” I asked.
“I never got un-used to them.”
After four blocks, we came to a park—large by New York standards if you didn’t count Central Park. Tiny compared to that. There were several paths, and Ada chose one to the right. Rounding a grove of trees, we came upon a tennis court, where a group of young men played, a half dozen others watching.
“This is where I leave you,” Ada said, handing me a small pad of paper and a pen.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Get names, phone numbers, and ages. Get their heights too. Some girls are picky about that.”
“Of who?”
She gestured toward the court. “As many of them as you can.”
“Ada, I’m confused.”
She turned to me, hands on hips. “Good grief, girl. You go, you bat your eyelashes a little, and you get their information so I have young men to set girls up with. It’s not complicated.”
“But how do you know they’ll make good matches?”
“That’s where we see how good you are. Rate them. One through ten. Ten means marriage material.” She looked me over again. “One means someone you’d sneak out of synagogue with.”
“And you won’t do this yourself because . . . ?”
“Because I already have. But when they see you, they’ll see the kind of girl I’m offering.” She gave me a little push. “Now go. I want at least six men.”
Well, if I wanted to go home, a single letter to my father detailing this part of my stay would do it. He would have me packed and back in my childhood bedroom in no time flat. But this definitely sounded better than going home. So I sauntered toward the court, swaying my hips and waiting for them to notice me.
Which would have been a lot smoother if I hadn’t tripped over an errant rock in the path and tumbled into a bush with a yelp.
As I tried to disentangle my hair from the branch it had gotten stuck in, a pair of hands reached in and helped. “Allow me,” a male voice said. I became distinctly aware that my dress had ridden up significantly.
“Heck of a way to meet someone,” I said, letting him pull me to my feet. He smiled, and I dusted off my dress, then held out my hand. “Marilyn.”
“Freddy.”
“Freddy, I’m afraid I have a favor to ask you.”
His eyes twinkled merrily. “Ask away.”
“I need you to introduce me to your friends over there.”
“I was hoping it was more along the lines of dinner.”
Under normal circumstances, I would have said yes. He had rescued me from that bush after all. And it didn’t hurt that he stood six feet tall, with a jawline that would have made Gregory Peck jealous. But Ada said no men, and I didn’t plan on staying here long enough to form an attachment, even if it was just for a little fun.
“Maybe another time.”
He offered his arm and I took it. Apparently that path was treacherous. We reached the court, and he called out to the other men. “Hey!” The players stopped and turned to him. “This is Marilyn. She wanted to meet you all.” He turned to me. “Anything else?”
Now what? I thought as they all stared at me. “Right. Not how I wanted to do this, but here goes. My name is Marilyn, and I’m here to help you find the girl of your dreams.”
“Looking at her,” one of them called out, then let out a wolf whistle.
“Cute. I’m not available though. I mean, I am, but not like that. But I’ve got . . . friends.”
“You don’t sound so sure about those friends,” the one with the tennis ball said. He bounced it impatiently. “You working for that Ada woman?”
“Working implies getting paid. No.”
“Then what?”
“Listen, I’m not the kind of girl you want to marry. I can’t cook, I’m a mess, and I got sent down here because I got caught making out with the rabbi’s son during services.” A couple of them laughed. “I wish that were a joke, but it’s not. We crashed through a stained-glass window and everything. Then he asked me to marry him—I don’t think he’d ever kissed a girl before. But Ada’s got nice girls who will actually take care of you. That’s what you really want in the end, isn’t it? Someone to come home to?”
“I don’t know,” Freddy said. “You sound like more fun.”
“I tell you what, you give me your info and agree to go on three dates. And if Ada doesn’t find you the perfect girl by then, I’ll let you take me out instead.”
“What if none of us find girls we like?”
“Then I will have quite a reputation, won’t I?” Three of them chuckled. “Come on, fellas, help a girl out here. She said I need six names and that I’d better get them in time for her to get back and watch Ed Sullivan.”
They all checked their watches.
“Have you got paper and a pen?” Freddy asked. I pulled both out of my dress pocket and passed it to him. “I’m game.”
“Freddy, you’re an angel,” I said and told him to put his height down as well. “Who’s next?”
With eight sheets of information in hand, I walked back to where Ada sat just around the corner on a bench, throwing a quick backward glance at the boys, who were all watching me walk away.
“Done!” I proclaimed, holding the papers out toward her. “And with twenty minutes until Ed Sullivan.”
“Eighteen,” she said. “You’re cutting it close. Good recovery from that fall though.”
I was hoping she hadn’t seen that. “Men like a damsel in distress. Even if they’re just saving her from a bush.”
“I know. That’s why I threw the rock.”
“You—what?”
She grinned. “Don’t ever think that I don’t know what I’m doing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back in my sterile room after a “really big shew,” I pulled a notebook from my trunk and sat at the dressing table. Daddy always said my writing was a waste of time—he wanted me to learn to cook and keep a house and become a good little wife. But Mama encouraged it. She was the one who pushed for me to go to college too. Every spare moment, she could be found with a book in hand, often even while standing at the kitchen counter stirring a pot. Daddy bought three different ovens over the last decade, never realizing that the burned meals came from her being engrossed in a good story, not the malfunctioning stove that she blamed it on.