Nicholas Cabot and Lola Emms

"On the basis of genetic information extracted from hair, we
arrange introductions between databased individuals who
have impeccable DNA compatibility."

Nicholas Cabot, a wiry intelligent looking man with long fingers
and a long searching nose, was rigidly hovering over a
standard black plastic telephone.

His long fingers were pinching a glossy rectangle of paper with
writing on it, which said: Lola Emms liked poetry, and
traditional jazz. She had grey eyes and she worked in a book
shop in Burley. She had travelled. Her phone number was. Her
address was. She played some piano, but not much, and her
favourite book was 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'.

The logo at the top was called the Rainbow Heart. On the
shiny antique table was an old fashioned black plastic
telephone and a shining piece of promotion, a pamphlet for the
Clever Cupid Dating Agency.

Nicholas was stood rigidly by the telephone and he was going
to dial the number of Lola Emms, who lived fairly near - near
enough - and who would also have a glossy piece of paper,
which wanted to summarise him and said his name was
Nicholas Cabot and that he liked chess and traditional jazz,
that he had travelled and that he lived and worked in
Headingley, in his own caf?, which was frequently visited by
students, beats and woolly bohemians.

Now Nicholas Cabot was thinking: she might as well like damp
trance, or eke out a living playing the penny whistle in City
Market. I might as well be three foot four; I might as well
have no hands, no eyes. It would not make a difference, he
was thinking. He was going to call her, but not right now. He
was going to call her in a minute.

He lit a menthol cigarette, put down the piece of paper and
picked up the brochure. She didn't smoke. He walked five
steps away from the telephone and collapsed onto the autumn
leaf-pile coloured rocking chair of wicker inherited from his
mother, Anne Clarence. Sebastian Cabot, his father, had made
it himself during the time when he spawned things, the fifty
four delectable months of Nicholas' life that his parents had
lived in the same house and the nine inconceivable months
before.

If Nicholas Cabot walked past a regular customer on the
street they might acknowledge each other with a tight
extension of the corners of the mouth, or a soft, low sound
that would echo between his ears for hours afterwards.
Writing on the front of the brochure said:

Because love is a science.

This was late, late in the day, they say. Not an early stage to
be applying for what it is you know you want. If what people
said was as true as people were saying, he should have called
them, that first time he heard the TV showing the
advertisement, from the corner of his ear as he wiped
chestnut mocha waste from his coffee machine. A sullen girl
with long braids and a cheap ballpoint pen had stared at the
screen in silence from amidst her scruffy well-spoken friends.
She had written the number down as soon as the big beige
characters flashed up. The call was free: it was a freephone
number.

Nicholas inhaled smoke and rocked into a stand. He tipped
whisky from a crystal decanter and filled a matching crystal
glass that was akin to the glass his mother's father had held in
a vintage manner when he was a child. Holding it now
stimulated in Nicholas a nebulous sense of tribal security. He
sipped from the glass and stood still and sat down.

The call was free.

The girl had come back braidless in a week or a fortnight with
a lively, stocky red-faced man in a white shirt who would have
seemed so wrong for her if you couldn't see it in the
remoteness of their eyes: up-in-the-sky love. Nicholas had
served them fruit shakes, watched them linger patiently in
euphoric isolation and had put it down to the arcane
movements of the hyperreal. The adverts were joined by news
stories:

"New technology has led to a record increase in the demand
for wedding ceremonies..."

Nicholas had thought he detected a new intensity in the
newscaster's eyes and a fresh fizzy splash on his vocal
sobriety. A reckless hint of seratonin. He had mentioned this
to Wolfgang, a swarthy iron-haired journalist who came in
alone and wrote somber things down on an expensive notepad
with a weighty gold pen.

"You can't sell love like caf? latte, Nick. We know that, you
and I."

"...unprecedented drop in the abortion rate for women of all
ages."

"What made you run a caf?, Nick? What made you run this
caf??"

He had shrugged insouciantly and said,

"To see how people run caf?s."

Wolfgang had pointed pointedly at the television screen,
showing a luxuriant park full of couples like sullen-girl and
white-shirt, placid, vacant and elated.

"That's why I'm a journalist. To wake people up to themselves
and the social narcotic that separates them from reality.
What's Clever Cupid? Just a clever lie, like the Bible, the
scriptures, the Koran. Another Cartesian circle: love is truth
and truth is love. Nobody took my wife Juliette's hair and said
'Wolfgang, you're made for each other'. That's what's special,
Nick, you don't know till you know. You don't know till you
know, Nick. That's what's special."

Nicholas had reflected: why did you quiz me about caf?s? To
create the opportunity to inform me about journalism and
Juliette.

But he nodded his head solemnly and lit a menthol cigarette.

"Know who owns the Agency?"

"No idea."

"A well-known Japanese tennis racket, motorbike and electric
keyboard manufacturer."

Could Lola Emms play the piano well? He finished his whisky,
waited for the spread of distilled warmth then lifted himself
and returned to the telephone. He dialled the glossy number
and the phone rang. There was a clunk and the voice of a
woman, half diligent and half playful.

"Hello?"

"Lola?"

"Speaking."

"This is Nicholas Cabot. The Agency said I should call you
today. We should meet."

"Nicholas....It feels so strange speaking to you. If what they
say is... It's Wednesday. Do you want to meet tomorrow?"

Nicholas swallowed impulsively and peeked at the brochure.
Love is a science and traditional jazz.

"Do you know a place called the Underground? We could meet
there if you want."

"Jazz on a Thursday! Perfect. I...I'm really looking forward to
it."

"Is eight'o'clock a good time?"

"Sounds ideal, Nicholas. See you then."

"See you there."

He replaced the handset, allowing it to drop from his long
fingers of its own accord down onto the aged receiver. More
from Anne Clarence, the cheap 'ding' aroused a familiar ache
of nostalgia. Commodities, recollections, which made him who
he was, the grand total of his past. But if what they said was
true, Nicholas Cabot would meet Lola Emms the next day and
they would watch the jazz and fall in love: predictable
primates. Nicholas and Lola, Lola and Nicholas.

Dating agencies that were not the Clever Cupid Dating Agency
had no option but to die, irrelevant, but there are always
other jobs and it doesn't matter what we do as long as we've
got each other. Wolfgang had spent more and more of his time
pursuing anti-Agency stories, but he found himself confined to
attacking it from the position that it is unnatural for love to
be
privatised as if it was a rusty old inefficient national
industry.
For all his efforts, he could unearth no evidence of scandalous
abuse of trust, sleazy government bribes or concealed political
agendas. Nicholas suspected that he was becoming obsessed.
Take a break, he told him, spend some time with Juliette.

"There's not much time, Nick. You know how much it is to get
a date through them now. If you'd spent that much money on
a date, you'd say 'of course I love you', whatever your true
opinion."

Nicholas said, "what about the hair testing and the 100\\%
matching success? Not a single failed relationship?do you
really think it's just gullible leaps of faith?"

Wolfgang's woolly eyebrows went overcast and he raised his
palms to the same level as his shoulders.

"The science? Love as a patent? How can anyone believe in
something so weird?"

"Our beliefs aren't for us to choose, Wolfgang. How is
Juliette?"

"The last time I saw her, she was, you know, alright."

Wolfgang hadn't come back after that. Nicholas succumbed to
the evidence. Mesmerised pairs: man and woman, man and
man, or woman and woman. Five thousand. You'd pay it,
wouldn't you? If you could. On Monday he had called the
number and driven his small green car to the nearest office
and given them a piece of his hair. On Tuesday the glossy
paper had arrived in a pink A4 envelope with the Rainbow
Heart printed above his address.

He lit a menthol cigarette and turned on the television and
sipped whisky and watched a film about a girl who meets the
boy from next door and falls in love with him. As their eyes
met, she looked away. He sneaked through her father's
cornfield and knocked on her window. He was desperate to
see her. She looked so tired as she opened the window. We
were meant to be together, he said, our love is all we need.

Wolfgang came in the next day at about two, hung over,
unshaven and tearful.

He said, "she's gone. She left me for... Geraldine."

Nicholas lit a menthol cigarette.

"They've taken away our right to fall in love without them?
and stolen the legitimacy of our past."

Nicholas shook his head, deliberately masquerading the
impersonal demeanour of the disinterested stranger behind the
unfamiliar counter.

"My date is tonight, Wolfgang. Do yourself a favour. Give them
a call."

He shut shop early, shaved with the latest titanium triple
real-time action blades and showered with expensive
aromatherapeutic men's gel for showers. He dressed as well as
he knew how to without overstretching his earnest
sophistication. He smiled at his reflection in the mirror and
said
a few things. You must be Lola.

Nicholas Cabot sat at the table inside the Underground. Those
sounds of the traditional jazz seeping in through his ears
formed lumpy inhibiting shapes in his throat and below his
stomach, the scene too close, thorny and live for him, yet as
detached from his immediate concerns as the film-boy and
film-girl who live next door to one another. Fidgeting, straining
to sate the emptiness at his umbilical chord, he sipped whisky
and smoked a menthol cigarette.

"You must be Nicholas Cabot," said a voice from behind him,
half diligent and half playful. He turned abruptly and
understood her, instantly.

As their eyes met, she looked away. You're an angel, he
thought. An absolute angel.