Help Wanted

It's 7 p.m., and I'm standing near the hostess at Stir Crazy in Legacy Village, checking my cell for text messages. This takes little time, as I have no messages. The hostess, a teenager with oversized buttons pinned to her T-shirt, is busy adding names to the waiting list. She asks for the third time if my date is on his way.

For the third time I say, "Yes, of course my date is on his way," though I don't know for certain. The only thing I do know is that his name is Sam -- or is it Josh? Shit! He's 36 years old, 5 foot 11, with brown hair and blue eyes.

At 7:15, a man vaguely fitting the description appears. His hair -- or rather the little that's left -- is indeed brown. He looks older than 36, and his refrigerator-white skin seems as if it's spent years inside a windowless office. His hands are stuffed deep in his ski jacket. He looks as nervous as I feel.

"Becky?" he says.

"Josh?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Sam."

"Oops." I mumble an apology, muttering something about my nonexistent brother named Josh.

As we're whisked to our table, Sam unveils a Ziploc bag filled with tiny red capsules and pops them like Tic Tacs.

"Is everything OK?" I ask tentatively.

"I'm fine," he says. There's an uncomfortable pause. "I'm just a little bit worried that I might be catching something. I need to go see my doctor."

Great. An unattractive man who's likely an avian-flu carrier. I run to the bathroom and drench my hands in antibacterial soap. My eyes stray to the mirror. Well, at least my hair looks good.

When I get back, Sam starts complaining about all the awful dates he's been on in Cleveland. How there are no good-looking single women left in the state. How he might have to move to New York to find someone even slightly attractive. "You know?" he asks.

I grit my teeth and look at my faux Cartier watch.

My matchmaker is, like, so fired.

---

Since I moved to Cleveland, my boss has been concerned about my love life -- or lack thereof. He has five kids and believes I'll never be content until I find a nice strapping male -- preferably a Swede who owns an ice-fishing shack -- to have lots of babies with.

Still, he's sympathetic to my plight. "You know, Becky," he said to me one day, "I really feel for you. It's much harder to find a good-looking man than a good-looking woman. Men are such ugly-looking creatures. If I were a woman, I think I'd have to be a lesbian."

He left me to ponder these enlightening words as he went for a smoke.

The truth is, I'm extraordinarily picky. I go on a lot of first dates, but find many reasons to forgo second ones.

There was the guy who kept mixing up the spelling of "their" and "there" in his e-mails. As a former fifth-grade spelling-bee champion who still has the ribbons displayed over her desk, I decided we would never match.

There was the guy with the bushy, mammalian eyebrows. They twitched and danced when he talked. I stopped returning his calls. My hairstylist totally understood.

There was the guy who sent me half a dozen roses after a date. Too . . . um . . . okay, so I was clearly searching here for a reason to avoid him. But the roses were pink.

Of course, I'm not perfect. I try and fail to lose the same five pounds, which make my thighs look like Coast Guard-approved flotation devices. My apartment looks like it's inhabited by a drunken platoon from the Portuguese army. I speak fluent Valley Girl. No one understands a word I say. They just nod and smile.

Being narcissistic, I'm attracted to guys who are, well, like me. Since there aren't very many fast-talking 5-foot-2 Valley Guys who enjoy chocolate martinis and the word "like," this doesn't, like, work very well. My longest relationship was with my Pilates instructor, whom I saw three times a week at Bally's. But in October, she up and left me, saying that she needed to find a "real job" and get "closer to her family." Clearly, she was missing the main point: me. What about my needs? My wants? My abs?

As my quarter-life crisis approached, I decided to get some assistance. Since my personal matchmaker (i.e., my mother) lives in New Jersey, and all her potential choices tend to be guys I hated in high school, I decided to try some local dating services.

They say money can't buy love. But when it's on the company tab, it can't hurt to try.