Where Bears Roam the Streets by Jeff Parker

Author:Jeff Parker [Parker, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443415859
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

I had initially wanted to meet with some of Anatoly Ivanovich’s male clients, but he tried to arrange several meetings and they all fell through. During another visit, he showed me the profile for Natalya, someone he’d been working with for several years and hadn’t yet found a match for. I was intrigued why someone would stay with the same matchmaker for several years if the matches he brought in kept not working. So I asked if I could meet with Natalya.

Anatoly Ivanovich seemed suspicious that I wanted to meet Natalya. And with good reason. She was gorgeous and, according to her profile, she seemed smart—a biology teacher. But he arranged it anyway.

As I walk to the small café near the Pushkin statue in downtown St. Petersburg where we are supposed to meet, I imagine a grand Anatoly Ivanovich chess move: suspecting me of trying to get around the agency’s aversion to foreigners with this elaborate writing-about-love-in-Russia thing, he acceded to my request to meet Natalya because he had a hunch that she and I might just be a good match. And maybe this fantasy of mine is right. Maybe on some level I am hoping to meet Natalya and to fall in love with her.

Natalya has a perfect French manicure, a fresh bob, a stylish black and white skirt. She looks nothing like anyone I might imagine needing Anatoly Ivanovich’s help in finding a partner.

So, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, the first question I ask is why she utilizes him.

“Anatoly Ivanovich is the kind of man who is really interested in his work,” she says. “He really wants people to find each other, and is ready to teach them what’s necessary. Usually a person has a problem, that’s why they can’t find a partner. Anatoly Ivanovich helps to solve that problem. For me, my goal was not to necessarily find a husband but someone who will be a good match for me, with whom I can feel comfortable and confident. That didn’t happen. Other people find their second half. He marks them with hearts.”

“If he is such a good matchmaker, isn’t it surprising that you’ve been with him for several years and haven’t met someone?” I ask.

“I met different people and sometimes maybe from the first time you meet, that’s not someone you’re looking for because something in the person’s behaviour may be crude. One time is enough for me to understand that I don’t want to see this person again. If you find someone normal who you can hang out with, then maybe they have their own reasons or fears not to like me. Maybe I’m not who they’re looking for. Sometimes there are people who I met six months or a year ago through Anatoly Ivanovich and from time to time they get in touch and give me a call. They are good people, but I didn’t have any feeling in my heart.

“And this is only one of the ways of going through this process with him. I’m still in control, and I make the decisions whether I like this or that person or not.

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