But, anyway, this nob has stayed away from this café lately because there were too many memories of grabbing a cup of coffee on mornings after spending the night, or sometimes loitering here after dinner because they were lax about that and we didn’t particularly have a hell of a lot of money. Which was why when the TITMH offices vanished in a poof of whatever Clifford was smoking, it was my go-to place to park my ass and get some work done. Even if it was a bit of a trek from Brooklyn, coming here kept up my daily routine of heading out to “the office.”

Which is why I’m here, now. This is the last place I remember actually giving a shit about my job. And if I’m now forced, by threat of professional disgrace and unemployment, to try and show up as some semblance of former Employee of the Century Miles Ibrahim . . . this seems like the logical place to go.

I open up Jude Campbell’s questionnaire and read it. Then I reread it, again and again, until I memorize it. No more string quartet surprises for me. I click over to the three dating website profiles he’s linked out to and peruse them. I start to make notes on what we can change. He doesn’t have a lot of info out there, which is a rookie mistake. You don’t want to write a dissertation, but you do want to have enough content to show that you took time to fill the profile out. That demonstrates follow-through and dedication to the cause. Of course, there is a fine line between being thorough and TL;DR, which is a lot of where I come in. The words should be carefully chosen to reflect our clients’ (enhanced and copyedited) personalities; they should sparkle . . . but leave you wanting more.

I e-mail Jude, introducing myself as his Tell It to My Heart writer and asking him when he might be free to meet, letting him know I could do it as early as today. I’ve just hit send when music comes blasting from a corner table, warranting a glance in that direction.

It’s I Am Legend, whose face has turned bright pink, Bambi lashes fluttering as she frantically hits keys on her laptop. I’m pretty sure that’s a song from Fifty Shades of Grey. Is that what she’s doing here? Does hoarding free food while she watches soft-core porn in public get her off or something? I watch her for a second, curious whether I can discern if she’s turned on. Then I catch myself. Under no circumstances am I to be checking out women again, even if it’s purely anthropological.