More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) (20 page)

Ding—

Message from Rocknrack: You encourage people to lie. It’s a scam.

“That said,” Wilder continued, out of synch, “we continue to strive to make our site and services better attuned to the needs of our customers. But thank you for that question,
RocknRack
. So going back, if a profile leaves out some things you’d like to know about a potential match, the best way to address this is to message the person you’re interested in getting to know better and ask.”

Ding—

Message from Rocknrack
: If Facebook knows what drugstore we go to and what we just bought off eBay, there has to be a way for NowLove to expose a guy who claims to be 30 and single when he’s actually 45 and married.

“Unfortunately,
Rocknrack
, we’re barred from doing that kind of surveillance on our members,” Wilder said as
Rocknrack
typed some more.

Ding—

Message from Rocknrack
: That’s a load of crap. Is it because everybody on your site, including you, is a freakin’ liar? You’d think your management would be interested in customer satisfaction. NowLove might find itself with a class-action NowLawsuit.

“Here at
NowLove
,” Wilder said, as he tried to manage the escalating vitriol coming from
RocknRack
while simultaneously punching in a number on his phone—an effort, most likely, aimed at blocking
RocknRack
from further comments— “we like to believe that...

Ding—

Message from Rocknrack
: A good friend of mine went on a date Saturday night with a total loser who she would not have gone on a date with if she’d known certain things that a “smart system” would have revealed. She ended up at a fancy steak house with a guy who could barely speak English, and he immediately starts talking about women’s vaginas!”

Whaaaht
? How did RocknRack know that?

“We like to believe our members can talk amongst themselves and make intelligent choices,” Wilder persisted.

Meanwhile,
Rocknrack
kept on writing. Whoever he or she was,
Rocknrack
had just described my date with John, though countless other bad dates had probably gone the same way mine had. Did I know this person?

I started typing.

Ding—

Message from Miss_Quinn: W-h-o-a-r-e-y-o-u?”

I was pretty sure
RocknRack
was referring to my date with John, and the only way whomever it is would know about it is if she was a member of the Muffia.
But which Muff?

Ding—

Message from Miss_Quinn
: Are you a member of the Muffia?

Ding—

Message from Rocknrack
: Butt out, Miss_Quinn. I’m doing this for you.

Okay, one question answered.
Now which Muff?

Wilder was on the phone with his mic off on the webinar, but now other people were responding to the thread between
RocknRack
and me.

Ding—

Message from Toweloneon:
What’s the Muffia? Is that another dating site? Or another Ashley Madison?

Ding—

Message from Robert 87650
: Sounds kind of fun.

Ding—

Message from SittinPretty:
The Muffia is a lesbian porn site!

I couldn’t let that comment go by without setting
SittinPretty
straight.

Ding—

Message from Miss_Quinn
: The Muffia is a book club.

Ding—

Message from Rocknrack
: It’s not lesbian porn, and it’s not militant English mothers, either. We used the name first.

Ding—

Message from BodyBlzer:
What kind of books do you read?

Ding—

Ding—

Ding—

The computer kept dinging with messages appearing in quick succession, randomly replying to one message or another, in no coherent order, having to do with pornography, dating a lesbian, how to keep from dating a lesbian, joining The Muffia, book recommendations, and other topics. The webinar was fast turning into a free-for-all, and Wilder’s loss of control was evident. Given the quality of my computer’s Retina display, I could make out the perspiration on his brow.

The box onscreen, where the questions and answers were displayed, started to glitch.
Saw that one coming
.

“We seem to be having some difficulty with the message and response features of the webinar,” Wilder said, his eyes repeatedly shifting from the camera lens—presumably to facilitate the glitching. “But feel free to continue submitting your questions and… ”

The constant dinging ended, along with the message box going completely blank.

When Wilder found the lens again, his expression had changed. “...we’ll do our best to get to most of them,” he said, all happy-faced. Clearly,
NowLove
had turned us off.
So much for member input.
“Now,” he continued, “where were we?”

Nowhere. I logged off and considered, for a moment, which of the Muffs was most likely to put herself out there on the topic of dating site abuse. I assessed each in turn: Vicki was my online dating go-to person, the one who was intimately involved, but she and I had talked about this already, and I didn’t see her as the culprit. Madelyn might hold the opinions
RocknRack
expressed, but she wouldn’t behave the way
RocknRack
had. It wasn’t Sarah’s style, nor Kiki’s, and it definitely wasn’t Lauren’s. Jelicka wasn’t good with computers, so I doubted she’d be able to figure out the webinar function. And though I could imagine Paige doing something like this, she had been out of the Muff loop of late, and I didn’t think she’d make her presence known this way. That left...

“Rachel, it’s Quinn.”

“Hey, Quinn. What’s going on?” Her tone revealed nothing.

“Are you
Rocknrack
?”

“Am I what?” She feigned innocence. “What’s a...?”

“You know what I’m talking about.
NowLove
?” I was more curious than anything else. “I’m not mad at you,” I added.

There was a pause. Finally, she sighed.

“Websites charge a lot of money, and it pisses me off. They should do more for their customers. Did you know there are computer algorithms now that can tell online shoppers when stuff for sale has been stolen?”

“Really? No… ”

“Yes, there are. And if they can do that, they can tell female shoppers when a guy is already married, don’t you think? Or when he’s a conniving, lying, duplicitous dick.”

“I’d settle for knowing even one of those things,” I said. “But Rachel… ”

“We’re better than that, Quinn!” She was ranting. “We deserve better. I mean, I know you want to be with somebody; we all want to be with somebody who loves us. Who doesn’t?”

It seemed to me now that her last break-up had been more devastating than she’d let on at book club.

“It’s a scam!” she shrieked. “I mean, Maddie told me about that creep you went out with. If you want to go out with somebody so badly, let us find you someone.”

“You know what, Rachel?” I said, calmly, trying to talk her down. “I get your point, but there’s no reason for you to lose it on
NowLove.com
.”

She just kept going. “Did you know that
ItsJustLunch
sends friends of friends of friends of management to go on fake “dates” just so they don’t get sued by all the lonely women who’ve signed up believing the ads! It’s true; check “The Haggler!”

Notwithstanding the fact I didn’t know who The Haggler was, it was quite clear Rachel felt wronged by the dating industry. Or maybe it was just men she had a problem with. But since my date with John, I had a different perspective on the whole process. Like the virgin who just wants to get the first time over with, now that I’d been officially deflowered of my first-timer online dater status, I was okay with whatever course my dating life took and however long it took.

The culmination of my soul-searching and self-analysis at this pivotal moment in my life, with my career threatened by persons unknown, was that finding a partner wasn’t worth worrying about—certainly not worth spending hours online looking. If it was meant to be, it would happen eventually. But the process of being online and having exchanges with a few guys had yielded one giant benefit: I no longer felt that Steven was the only man for me; I felt cured of him and almost hopeful. That alone had been worth the price of admission.

“You don’t have to find me anybody,” I said. “I’m good. I realized that yesterday. If I meet someone, great; if I don’t, I’m not going to force it.”

“Okay, good. I’m probably not the best person to help with dating advice anyway.”

“Are you giving me the reason behind your ‘Nude Men Without Faces’ series?” I asked. “I never would have guessed. But if selling out is any indication, you’ve struck a nerve.”

“Yeah, lucked out there.” She laughed, one big, ironic outburst.

“You want to talk about it?” I asked. “You haven’t given us many of the details about your last breakup. I’m happy to listen. Unless, of course, you need to remain pissed off and miserable for the sake of ‘Nude Men Without Faces II.’ ”

She laughed again. “He’s not worth discussing. But thanks anyway.”

“Well, if you ever want to, I promise it will stay between us.” I waited another beat to see if she’d change her mind, then thanked her again for looking out for me. One thing I could always count on was a Muff watching another Muff’s back.

Four days later, with still no update from Frank—
where-the-bleep-was-he?
—Sexton, I joined Jelicka, Maddie, and Rachel on a drive to Jelicka’s favorite shooting range up the coast in Oxnard. Paige had also been invited—Jelicka telling her that having a stalker mandated knowing how to protect herself—but she claimed to have a previous commitment, which Jel took to mean her plastic surgery scars hadn’t healed.

The plan, as Jelicka described it, was to go to the firing range and shoot at paper cut outs of “evil, horrible, terrible” men, aiming for their hearts, so that we’d be prepared if ever we were confronted by the real thing. According to her, one afternoon spent with her, and we’d all know how to shut such a guy down. Of course, Jelicka was the only one of us who owned a gun, so I don’t know how ready we’d be, but at least she felt she was giving us the mental ammunition to defend ourselves.

On our way back to L.A., after shooting up a box or two of ammo, we planned to stop at Kiki’s to see just how we might help with the problem occupants in the house next door. Jel was hoping that if we were riled up enough, we might storm the place and catch the neighbors in the act of shooting porn.
Not gonna happen,
I thought. Not with me, anyway. The last thing I needed was more compromising pictures.

Oxnard is a small seaside city with agricultural roots—it’s known for the freshest strawberries on the south central coast. If you’ve ever had reason to be driving the north-south route in the westernmost part of California north of L.A. known as “The 101”—we Californians being notorious for putting a “the” in front of any freeway number—you’ll likely have seen the miles and miles of strawberry fields that stretch across Ventura County. And if you drive through at harvest time, you can see hundreds of migrant workers, many of whom are illegal, out in the fields picking them.

Personally, I have no problem with this—people want strawberries, farmers grow strawberries. When the strawberries need to be picked, the only folks who’ll pick them for what the strawberry farmer will pay are illegal immigrants. What’s a farmer to do?

We need undocumented workers in America, no matter what Texas says. That’s why I find it ironic that the state of Texas, with all its bluster about shutting down immigration, sends its prize football team, the Dallas Cowboys, to Oxnard, California, the heart of illegal immigrant strawberry picking for summer training.

Oxnard is also home to an inordinate amount of shooting ranges per capita. With a population of 200,000 as of the last census, there are five shooting ranges within city limits. Perhaps not as many as in, say, Oklahoma City, but it’s still one shooting range per 40,000 people. Compare that to the city of Los Angeles where the population is almost four million and the total number of shooting ranges numbers sixteen; that’s 250,000 people per shooting range. People can say L.A. has a high crime rate, but chances are Angelenos aren’t learning how to shoot a gun in L.A. At least
we
weren’t. We were on our way to Oxnard, an hour north past the strawberries, the migrant workers, and the outlet center at Camarillo to get to Shooter’s Paradise. It was a dive of a place through a small, desolate warehouse district and down a back alley lined with abandoned pickups—trucks, that is, not hookers—though a few of
those
might have been nearby, too.

You might ask why, given all the mass shootings that have taken place in schools, movie theatres, and shopping malls in recent years, members of The Muffia—a sophisticated (arguably) group of women who should know better—were going to a shooting range when we might be fighting to get guns off the streets. So let me address that.

We
are
working to get guns off the streets. It’s not just political, but when you see some of the people who hang out on the streets of Southern California, you don’t want them anywhere near a gun; they can’t even walk straight. So the Muffs go to rallies and send money to lobby for greater background checks and mental health reform. We have been known to argue with many a blithe and blind espouser of Second Amendment hyperbole.

The second thing is, getting comfortable with guns—granted, this might never be possible—comes under the heading of common sense capability, right up there with knowing how to swim, drive a stick shift, and ride a horse. Now numbering in the billions, guns are not going to be wiped from the face of the earth unless there really is an apocalypse, in which case all of us—believers and non-believers alike—will get wiped out just like T-Rex and the Brachiosaurus. Knowing how to use a gun does not make a Muff an NRA member.