Settled at her desk, she made no special effort to check her e-mail any more quickly than she would have any other morning. She didn’t scan the new messages looking for any particular name, either. There wasn’t supposed to be e-mail from Linda and there wasn’t. Fine. Good.

She made herself focus on work. She’d been putting off studying the feedback from clients who dropped the program without finding someone they liked. The follow-up questionnaire could only provide so much information because if it was too detailed no one would fill it out. Which of the 700 questions didn’t ask the right thing? Which comparison didn’t screen out why someone hadn’t bonded with any of their 95 to 98 percent results?

“Oh, look, she’s studying our failures.” Ocky dropped into the empty chair, looking pleased. “The cable advertising rep just told me they were lowering rates in a couple of the markets.”

“Very cool.”

“You have the biggest frown line right now.”

Marissa groaned. “Yes, these are our failures. You know, Ocky, where do I—a virtual relationship virgin at the age of thirty-five— get off telling anyone who they are and aren’t compatible with? I can’t figure it out for myself, even.”

“You don’t tell anybody anything. Your program gives them potential. That’s all.”

“None of these people found potential. One of my dates said it was like a mini-therapy session. All I’ve programmed is an abstract exercise in personality analysis.”

“Hey. Don’t talk about yourself that way.” Ocky sat forward in the chair to put her elbows on the edge of Marissa’s desk. “Don’t start doubting what you know you know. You told me, when we first started—remember, I was the one with the string of relationships and I thought each one ended for a different reason. First, you pointed out that all my exes eventually held me in contempt for something I did to them. Every relationship ended for exactly the same reason, every time. And, you know, I took the very same exact psych classes you did and you got that point and I never did.”

“Maybe because you were having a life and I wasn’t. Remember, it was my junior year before I was no longer a theoretical lesbian.”

Ocky laughed. “Well, you obviously did something while dwelling in that ivory tower. You got very smart.” She crossed one excellent leg over the other. “So first you diagnosed my relationship woes—not that I ever changed a thing but at least now I can see the contempt coming and move on before she boots me out. Then you told me not to confuse anecdotes from real life with the analysis of data. Which at first I thought was the whole problem with logic because life is real and messy.”

“Tell me about it.” Marissa heaved an enormous sigh. “My work here has acted as if there is no mess in real life. That people will behave like preprogrammed puppets.”

“But ’Rissa, we all do. We’re all who we are. You figured a way to capture the essence of someone’s deep-down programming. Does she laugh when a bucket falls on someone’s head? Does he lie to please his mother? Does she want someone who sees her body or her brain? Does he want someone to take care of or someone to take care of him? You give the computer the outline of a puzzle piece and instead of our poor clients wading through the entire puzzle box looking for the possible fits, the computer does it for them.”