Chandni the Matchmaker

Beats me where she was from. India, probably, but maybe Sri Lanka or Pakistan or some other country in that region. Maybe she was Turkish or Persian or even Arab, but she sure as shit wasn't Australian and when she realised she'd been caught staring at me, she smiled, revealing a mouth of slightly bucked, very white teeth.

I looked away from her and back towards my kids. Owen was six, nearly seen and Willow was ten, so they weren't really at the age where I could take my eyes off them for too long, least of all in a public park. I had the kids every second weekend on what I called the divorced father schedule. They were in my custody for just over sixty hours a fortnight, from Friday after school to when I took them to before school care on Monday, and during this time I attempted to make up for my lack of presence the other eleven and a half days.

Willow looked like her mum, tall and fair and skinny, whereas Owen took after me, with the same dark brown hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin. Isabelle, my ex, is five foot eight, a good two inches taller than me, and you could already see Willow was going to be taller than her brother.

'Your children are very beautiful.'

I turned to my left. The woman had somehow crept up and sat next to me on the bench seat without me even noticing. She was older than I'd initially though, probably in her late fifties, but slim, and definitely Indian or something, not Persian. She had a sub-continental accent. Trust me on that, I watched a lot of cricket and played in a social team made up mostly of men from that neck of the woods.

'Thanks,' I replied, once more averting my gaze. I wasn't really interested in conversation with a random woman and didn't want to say anything that might engage her.

'How long have you been separated from your wife?'

That got my attention. I squinted at her, trying to figure out how she knew.

'Three years,' I replied, my curiosity evidently more powerful than my desire to be left alone. 'How did you know?'

'You seem lonely.'

She delivered this assessment in a matter of fact tone, as if it were perfectly acceptable to sidle up to a random bloke and start making wild assessments. I turned away, shaking my head slightly at her rudeness, and wondered if her behaviour was some sort of cultural thing. Mind you, while I'm not usually the greatest at understanding accents, but hers wasn't overly strong. She'd obviously been in Australia quite some time, and one would have thought if she'd been here long enough to pick up a local twang, she'd been here long enough to know what was and wasn't kosher.

The woman laid a hand on my arm. 'My name is Chandni. What's your name?'

'Cody.'

'How old are you?'

'Forty-three.'

She smiled. 'Young.'

Young, fuck, I sure as fuck didn't feel that. I felt old and tired most of the time. I kept waiting for a break that never seemed to arrive, some reprieve from the daily grind and the anxiety that I medicated into a small a bundle as possible but which never truly left me.

'Did your wife find another man?' Chandni asked.

'No, I don't think so. The kids haven't mentioned anything.'

'Would you ever get back together with her? Reconcile?'

I shifted uneasily, unhappy with the conversation. 'No. No, that ship has long since sailed.'

'That's a shame.'

'It is,' I agreed. 'But it is what it is.'

We watched the children play. I shifted away from her a bit, uncomfortable with how physically close she was sitting next to me.

'My mother was a matchmaker,' Chandni said. 'We came to Australia when I was seventeen, and she taught me what she knew.'

'That's interesting,' I said, even though I thought it was nothing of the sort. 'Maybe if you had match made me or my ex-wife, you would have found us better choices.'

Chandni didn't miss the jibe, but nor did she react to it. 'I have a woman in mind for you. I think you'd like her.'

I'd had enough of this bloody twit and the nonsense she was spouting. 'I need to check on my kids,' I said.

'Your children can wait,' she said.

Her hand was still resting on my arm and as she spoke, her fingers curling around my forearm, gripping me tight. She was fucking strong, strong enough to make it impossible for me to simply shrug off her arm. I could either wrestle her off and create a scene, or I could sit myself back down and think of a new method of escape.

I checked to see if the kids were okay - they were - and chose option two. I sat myself back down with as much dignity as I could muster, and waited to see what would come out of her mouth next. I also took a good, hard look at her, just in case she was going to appear in tonight's news as an escapee from a secure mental health unit. She looked sane enough, though. Well dressed, too, and there was something about the cut of her clothing that suggested she wasn't short of a quid. But jeez, she was rattling on with some crap.

Chandni smiled beneficently. 'I must sound crazy.'

Like fuck was I going to say or do anything that was going to get her offside. 'Nah, not really.'

Chandni's smile widened. 'You're lying. You think I'm crazy.'

I scratched the back of my head and wondered what the fuck to say.

'You'd need a haircut,' she said. 'You'd also need to let your guard down. Give her a chance.'

'Look, lady, you probably mean well, but you're wasting your time. I've got no money. I live in a rented house out past Ipswich. I work in a landscape supplies yard. My ute is twenty years old.'

'You take very good care of your children.'

'They live with their mother. I only have them every other weekend.'

Chandni removed her hand from my arm. 'You're very uptight.'

'Well,' I said. 'I have my reasons.'

She stared at me expectantly.

'No,' I told her. 'Just no. Go and, go and do whatever it was you were doing before you came to speak to me. I'm not the sort of man your woman is after.'

Chandni placed her hand on my lower back and gently rubbed. I froze. The contact was completely unexpected and although I wanted to push her away, it felt good. Really good. Really, really, really good.

'Two hundred and fifty dollars I charge,' she whispered. 'Cash. You can pay me after your date.'

The spell broke. I stood up, grabbed Willow and Owen's bags. I didn't even glance at Chandi as I marched my way to the playground. The fucking scammer. Or lunatic. Or just a simple, run of the mill, crazy bitch.

I wasn't interested in dating. Wasn't interested in women. Wasn't interested in any of that bullshit, and I sure as shit wasn't interested in spending money to alter what was a perfectly comfortable home life. 'Lonely' my arse. Everyone got lonely sometimes. It didn't mean a fucking thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would have chalked Chandni up as a scammer and forgotten all about her if I hadn't found the note.

After Isabelle and I had split, I'd started smoking again. I know, it's a terrible habit and I'm going to die, but who gives a shit. We're all going to die sooner or later. The catch is that the kids aren't supposed to know about it, which means I normally get up early to have a ciggie, try and sneak out for five minutes at some point during the day, and then catch up with a couple after they've gone to bed.

At twenty past nine, both were asleep. I grabbed my cigarettes and lighter from the top of the fridge, shoved them in my side pocket, and went outside to have a smoke. It was when I pulled the cigarettes out that a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. I leant down and picked it up.

Chandi the Matchmaker

95% success rate

Below it was her phone number.

It wasn't even a proper business card, just a scrap of paper with her details written on it in Biro, which is pretty fucking cheap considering the number of printing stores that will sell you a thousand cards for a hundred bucks. Surely if she was scamming people for $250 for each date, she could afford Vistaprint.

I sucked down the cigarette in record time as I stewed over her impudence and tried to figure out how she'd managed to get it into my pocket without me noticing. I can't tell you how fucking annoyed I was. I'd been single since Isabelle and I had split. I'd had sex with two women since that day.

The first had nicked the eighty or so dollars I had in my wallet and my cigarettes as she left. In hindsight I'm probably lucky she didn't take my kidney, because she was a down and dirty bitch, but enough alcohol and you get to the 'any port in a storm' stage and I'd just wanted someone to fuck.

The second had been a woman I worked with. A nice enough girl, but young and neurotic, and when I'd caught her going through my phone I realised I just didn't like her enough to deal with her insecurities. Besides, my marriage had taught me a valuable lesson; just because you're prepared to help someone through tough times sure as shit doesn't mean they're going to help you out. I wasn't yet ready, and Kelly needed someone stronger and more stable, someone more able to reassure her, than I was. The sex was great, and I liked her well enough, but as for a relationship? No.

Besides, my marriage had fucked with me. Isabelle and I had been together for a decade when, after years of IVF, Willow came along. Isabelle suffered horrible post-natal depression but still wanted a second child, so back to IVF we went. This time conceiving was easier, but the PND came worse than ever. My wife spent six months in a mother-baby unit.

When Owen turned two, Isabelle decided she wanted a third baby. I said no, absolutely fuck no, no way, you have got to be goddamn kidding. But, in hindsight, that was the beginning of the end, because when you want a wife, and she wants a baby, you've already got problems. She was resentful. She wasn't on birth control and she told me that if I didn't want another child, it was on me to stop it from happening. I bought condoms and started using them. Ridiculous really, because history had proven we couldn't conceive without help, but she wanted to take every chance she could, and I didn't want to run any sort of risk. The rift deepened.

A year chugged by. I was involved in a fatal road accident. My actions hadn't caused the accident, but they'd contributed, and that had been enough to send me into a tailspin. An adult had died, a had child died, and I've never been the same since.

Isabelle couldn't cope with me not coping. The day I called her from an emergency breakdown bay and told her I just couldn't drive with the kids in the car, I was scared, was the final nail. She came, picked up the kids without saying a word, and drove off.

I had no issues driving without the kids in the car. I could cope with me dying, I couldn't cope with the idea that they'd be hurt. But I knew that my failings meant that my marriage was over, so I went home, packed up, and went to stay with my Mum and Dad.

Now that you know this, I'm sure you can see why I wasn't keen on another relationship. Why put in years and years of effort, believing you're building up some indestructible union, only for the other person to emotionally jettison you the second you can't be everything they want you to be? I wasn't interested in filling the role of sperm donor and model husband for another woman. I'd rather do what I wanted, when I wanted, and only worry about myself and my kids.

In between the cigarette I'd just finished the one I was intended to smoke next, I pulled out my phone and googled 'Chandni the matchmaker', her phone number, 'Indian matchmaker' and 'matchmakers in Australia', just because I wanted to figure out who the crazy bitch was. I came up with a whole lot of dating sites and not much else. Nothing informative, at any rate, nothing that identified Chandni and whatever scam it was she was playing.

I lit my second smoke. Something was bugging me, and after a few quick puffs, I realised what it was.

'You can pay me after your date.'

That wasn't how scammers worked, was it? They took your money and gave you nothing. Chandni was offering me something and asking for the money later. But how would she even collect? All she knew about me was my first name. She wouldn't have even had a good idea of where I lived, because the park I'd taken the kids to was a half hour away from both my house and their mother's.

I'll admit that curiosity got the better of me. I texted Chandni.

'Now that you've spoken to me, are you still sure I'm the right man for her?'

I just wanted to see how many blokes she was scamming, that was all.

Chandni wasted no time responding.

'I thought I had made a mistake, but now that you've texted me, I know I made the right choice. Tell me what day suits you Cody, and I will organise a date.'

Absolutely fucking not. I shoved the phone in my back pocket and finished my cigarette.

~~~~~~~~

I figured that now the crazy bat had my number she'd text me to tell me what she wanted me to do, but she did no such thing. By Tuesday morning there was still no response. Weird. Maybe she'd given up.

I wanted to talk to someone about this, and at lunch that day I had my opening. I was leaning against a storage bay and taking a moment to check my phone when one of the guys asked if I was looking at porn. That wasn't how he phrased the question, which I'm sure you already know, but it was the gist of it.

'Nah,' I replied. 'Just seeing if this scammer I met on Saturday is still trying to get some cash out of me.'

Damo took the bait. He was also bored because not much of fucking anything was happening. The last few days had been wet enough to put most landscaper's plans on hold and deliveries had been pushed back, so we were spending more time trying to look busy rather than actually doing anything. It wasn't fun. There's only so much breastfeeding a shovel one can do before you just want the weather to clear up, or for something interesting to happen.

'What's the scam?' he asked.

'Some Indian bird was telling me she was going to set me up with a woman.'

'For a root?'

'Nah, for a date.'

Damo was confused. He wasn't the brightest person and on top of that, it wasn't a typical sort of scenario, so I wasn't surprised.

'Maybe it was just her daughter,' he suggested. 'The ugly one she wants to move out of the house.'

'Nah, see this is why it's really weird. She reckons she's a matchmaker. Chandni the matchmaker is what she called herself. She reckons she knows a woman who will be a perfect match for me.'

Before Damo had a chance to respond, Kelly appeared. Kelly is the workmate I was sleeping with, and who went through my phone to - presumably - see if I was cheating. She's tall, solid and blond, with spectacular tits and the ability to operate a skid steer loader better than ninety-nine percent of blokes. While she's competent and a great woman in her own way, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted her hearing the story of Chandni.

'Hey Kel,' Damo said. 'Come and listen to this. Cody reckons some Indian woman is trying to set him up with a friend of hers.'

Kelly was startled. I could tell from the expression on her face she didn't know how to respond, and I understood that, I understood that well. She'd started seeing someone a while back and it had been strange, weird and hard. It wasn't as if there was 'something' between her and I, but there hadn't been nothing. And the sex - at least from my perspective - had been shit hot.

'Some random came up to me in the park and told me she could set me up on a date and it would cost me two hundred and fifty bucks,' I explained to Kelly.

'Oh.' She grimaced. 'Did she mean 'date', or did she mean, um, setting you up with a working girl?'

'Gotta be a set-up with a hooker,' Damo said.

'I dunno,' I shrugged. 'She said I could pay her after.'

'Stupid,' Damo said. 'What if the girl's a lousy shag? Why would you pay after?'

'Maybe it is a dating thing,' Kelly said. 'Maybe it's for reality TV.'

Damo snorted. 'They could find someone better than Cody. Someone taller than a garden gnome.'

'Hey, maybe they wanted someone with hair,' I argued, referring Damo's rapidly thinning pate. 'Someone with good looks.'

'If they wanted someone good-looking, they sure fucked up when they chose you,' he said.

'Mate, you're just jealous,' I argued. 'You know there's nothing in your future but Mrs Palmer and her five daughters. You don't even have an Indian chick trying to fleece you out of a couple of hundred bucks.'

'Guys,' Kelly interrupted. 'Is this going to turn into a dick measuring contest, or is Cody going to tell us if he's going to go on this date or not?'

'I'm not going on a date,' I said.

'He's not going on any dates,' Damo smirked. 'Too short.'

Kelly glared at him. 'Why is it always about his height with you?'

'Why do you care?' Damo responded. 'You still have the hots for him? Mr Asian boy not doing what you want him to do?'

Kelly didn't say anything, but she didn't really need to. Her face said there were problems, and not the sort she wanted to discuss.

I've worked with a lot of women before, but most are gay or rough as guts or both. Kelly was neither. She was hands down one of the kindest women I'd ever met, and it grated me that her guy wasn't doing right by her.

Damo got the hint that she didn't want to speak about it, and he said something about checking one of the bays, and I muttered an excuse, and we kind of just left her standing there.

Nothing about Chandni and the date had been resolved.

~~~~~~~~

I had cricket training that night.

I play in a social team with twenty other blokes, about half of whom are divorced fathers, FIFO workers and doctors, and the other half are Sri Lankan and Indian. There is one member who is both Sri Lankan and works FIFO, and a doctor who is Indian, but most of us fall into one category or the other.

As usual, I was one of the first to arrive. If you're not familiar with the game of cricket, it's played on a big grass field. In the middle is a wicket block made of a black, clay soil, which is mowed short and rolled until it's hard and flat, but not so flat that a cricket ball won't bounce off it.

Gary was the groundsman at our club, responsible for making sure two fields were up to scratch each week, the clubhouse was cleaned, and everything was in order. He and I got on alright; we were roughly the same age and worked in the same sort of field, so we appreciated that getting grass to grow involved more than just rain and sun, and keeping it growing and weed free wasn't a matter of luck.

Plus, I'd done some work at the club many moons ago, when I was young and had just left school with an abysmal attendance record and shithouse grades, and the only real option I had work wise was laying turf. Now that's a fucked job; hot and miserable, and you're always slogging your guts out because the team gets paid per slab laid and you don't want to be the slacker that's reducing everyone's pay for the day.

We turfed the fields on a hot summer's day, and I thought for sure I was going to keel over and die, but I kept pushing on, not wanting to be the one to let everyone down. Somehow I made it through. It was a Friday when we did it, and I stupidly went out on the piss that night, dehydrated to fuck and near delirious from the heat, but that's what you do when you're young and single and horny, isn't it?

So while other players can walk onto a field and remember sporting triumphs and tragedies, every time I walk onto the secondary oval - which is where our third rate team plays when we have home games - I can almost feel the baking heat of the sun, and feel the rapidly drying slabs of turf, and recall drinking a dozen beers that night before I finally regained the ability to piss.