Chandni the Matchmaker

'Cody,' Gary greeted, walking over. 'How's it going?'

'Yeah, good mate. Need a hand with a anything?'

'Nah, I've got my apprentice with me,' he said, turning his head towards the shed.

I followed his gaze and spotted the woman in question. The club had a women's team, who played on Sunday, and she was one of their star players. Unlike most club cricketers who like to believe that if things had been different they could have made it big, this lady probably could have done great things if she'd wanted to. I could never remember her name but she was easy to spot, even in whites, because of her fluidity of movement and playing style.

She saw us staring at her as she drove a mower out of the shed. She waved and smiled, her teeth a blinding flash of white against dark brown skin, her black hair tied back in a ponytail. She can't have been young; she had two kids in their mid teens, a boy and a girl, but she had a slim, almost skinny, figure. Not Aussie born, judging by the accent, but she'd obviously spent the majority of her life in Australia. I'd spoken to her father before, when I'd come down on a quiet Sunday to help out at the bar, and he'd said she was his only child and he'd taught her to play as soon as she could walk.

I smiled and waved back. She was a nice woman, quirky I suppose you'd say, with an odd sense of humour, but I've always admired skilled players and she was certainly one of those.

'How'd you end up with her helping, anyway?' I asked Gary.

He lit a cigarette. 'Someone whinged about the front line not being visible by Sunday. Del cracked the shits and said she'd repaint it before their game each week to shut them all up.' He shrugged. 'My missus is in the running for a job up North. Good money. If she gets it, we'll go, and they'll need to find someone else to take over. I figured if I train Del, she can keep things chugging over until they find someone.'

'Maybe Del will take it on full time.'

'Nah, it'll interfere with her playing,' he said. 'Besides, she's got a plum job with the government.'

Del rode past us atop what was really a suspiciously new and expensive machine for a local club, but the previous local government - and the one before it - had been corrupt as fuck but someone had obviously known someone at the right time because lo and behold, some of John Deere's finest had appeared at the club.

Gary and I stopped talking as Del went by. She had earplugs in, and with the noise of the mower wouldn't have been able to hear us anything, but it seemed impolite to gossip about her while she was three metres away.

'Hard worker, that girl,' Gary mused, watching her drive off. 'She had to be, though. Other than marrying her, getting her pregnant, and playing shithouse cricket, her husband is as useless as tits on a bull.'

'Why'd she marry him?'

'She said it was an arranged marriage.'

'Jesus.'

Gary sucked on his smoke. 'Fucked hey? But you can't say anything to them otherwise it sounds racist.'

I'd kind of been planning to ask some of the blokes in my team about Indian matchmakers, but Gary raised a good point. What if I sounded racist? Or they thought I was giving them shit? Our team mates all got along alright, but let's not pretend this was some love-fest; the Indians hung out with each other, the Sri Lankans hung out with each other, the two Pakistanis hated each other's guts and would sit on their phones and text their girlfriends whenever they weren't actively training or playing, and us white guys hung out together.

Dr Singh approached, making a direct beeline for Gary. Both Gary and I knew what was coming. Dr Singh was a low order batsman with a thousand dollar bat, and he was convinced that if he wasn't continually being interrupted by being called into work he'd be a top order player.

'Fuck me,' Gary swore under his breath. 'Another bloody Indian who's convinced he could've been Tendulkar.'

'Ten bucks says he's going to ask you to hold the keys for his Merc,' I muttered. 'And if he's on a run and he gets paged, he wants you to get his car out of the carpark, and everything packed up, so he can stay at the crease as long as possible to try and squeeze out a few fours or sixes.'

Dr Singh was now far too close for Gary to respond, so Gary settled for shooting me a poisonous look and reaching for another smoke.

Needless to say, I didn't breathe a word of Chandni to my workmates.

~~~~~~~~~

On Friday afternoon, Chandni texted me to ask if I'd given thought to her proposal.

Fuck, I thought to myself. What do I do? Why am I even at a point where I'm contemplating this? Who is she, do I want to spend two hundred and fifty bucks on a fucking introduction, and is the person she's planning on setting me up with Indian or white?

'You look stressed,' Kelly remarked. 'It's home time. The weekend.'

'I'm working tomorrow,' I said. I worked every second Saturday. It was a good way to earn a bit of extra money and besides which, I didn't actually have a choice. I was told to work, so I did. The boss said 'jump' and I jumped. It was the way every employer-employee relationship worked.

'That sucks.'

'How about you? You rostered on?'

She shook her head. 'No, I've got the day off. I'm going back to the farm at lunch time tomorrow to see my perfect sister and her perfect fiancé, and pretend my life just isn't one great clusterfuck.'

'Asian mate going with you?'

'No.'

'No?' I asked, raising an eyebrow.

'Fuck no,' she said. 'After his little efforts last time I took him home, he's lucky he's still alive.'

'Want to have a drink at the pub and talk about it?' I asked.

She considered my offer, then with a shrug and a sigh, said. 'Sure. Why not?'

We drove to the local, where Kelly ordered something pretty with an umbrella and I ordered a beer. Because we live in a nanny-state, we had to go to the smoker's pen so I could have a cigarette. I apologised to Kelly for the inconvenience, but she waved my apology aside and asked if she could bum a smoke.

'Sure,' I replied. I handed her a cigarette, and when she'd placed it between her lips, I lit it for her. 'So, you want to tell me about your bloke and what he did when you took him home?'

'Mmm,' she mumbled, taking a deep draw. She exhaled, blowing a long stream of smoke towards the sky. 'Okay, let me set a scene. Slutty older sister - me - who is best known for sleeping with half her class during her awkward, insecure teenage years when she felt the only thing she could offer people was sex - has returned home to the family farm with her Vietnamese-Australian boyfriend, for her perfect younger sister's engagement party.'

'Sounding good already.'

'Oh, don't worry, everyone treated him well, my father saw to that. Dad's one of those salt-of-the-earth types who'll put on the kettle and talk things through if you have a disagreement with him, and most people are far too lazy to actually state their case logically and coherently.'

'Had any vegans visit?'

'Fuck no, luckily for them. He'd be good to them. I'd drive out and start shooting.'

I went to say 'you wouldn't', but then I remembered the postcrete incident. Postcrete is non structural concrete, and you use it if you want to put up a letterbox or whatnot. We sell it in twenty kilo - forty-four pound - bags. We had a grub come in and ask Kelly for six bags of it, then claimed he couldn't lift it into the boot of his car. She packed the bags into his boot of his car and he left.

The customer returned two days later, claiming she intentionally slit open a bag, spilling the postcrete everywhere, then opened a bottle of water he had in the boot. It hadn't caused any real damage, just made a bit of a mess, but he was ropable.

Kelly, forced to explain herself at the sales desk, coolly said that the customer had watched her very carefully while she was loading the postcrete, even apparently taking a few photos of her arse, so when would she have even had the opportunity to open a bag and tip open a bottle of water?

Now maybe it was just a beat up, or a coincidence, or maybe even the customer had done it himself to try and get something free out of the landscape yard, but I have my suspicions that Kelly was very much involved in making the mess. And if the scenario played out the way she described, and I've never known Kelly to be a liar, then he bloody well deserved it.

'Anyway,' Kelly said. 'There we are, all enjoying a lovely, scenic engagement party in country Queensland, styled the way my sister manages to expertly style everything, including herself, while I think to myself how great it is I've finally managed to find a bloke who isn't a complete fucking dickhead.

But pride, as they say, comes before a fall. Jack's one of those roadside workers, you know, the kind that navigates people around roadworks and puts up all the safety signs, and one of my Dad's oldest friends' wives, having asked Jack what he did and been told, laughs and jokingly says 'Jeez, that sounds like the kind of job they give people when they get out of jail'.'

'Ouch,' I replied.

'Oh, she was only teasing him,' Kelly assured me. 'Everyone laughed, and I waited to see if Jack would come up with a smart comeback, when instead he freezes for a bit and says 'well, as a matter of fact, that's how I got the job'.'

I nearly choked on my cigarette. 'He's been to jail?'

'Served four fucking years,' she replied viciously. 'He then proceeded to give everyone I've ever met over the course of my life all of the details. He was dealing drugs, stealing, had a few firearm offences, all the good stuff.'

'What the fuck was he thinking? Was he drunk? Why'd he go and tell everyone? And I presume you didn't know?'

'I had no fucking idea! And he wasn't drunk, and he had no reason to say anything, and needless to say, I was furious but what could I say? I'm the town fucking slut, Cody. That's all anyone ever remembers about me. And in what I thought was my goddamn moment of redemption, I manage to get embarrassed all over again.' Kelly sucked vigorously on her cigarette. 'And nobody is ever, ever, going to forget.'

Kelly looked like she didn't know whether to scream or cry, and given the circumstances, I didn't blame her. Frankly, I wanted to find the little Asian cunt and bury him. What a fucking jackass. What a fucking weak little cunt, choosing a grossly inappropriate moment to 'fess up, no doubt knowing Kelly wouldn't make a scene.

'If I find him, I'll break his legs,' I promised.

'I appreciate that,' she said. 'Fucking men. They're the most bloody useless things to be put on this earth.'

I didn't argue as I felt she made a fair point.

Kelly sighed. 'Sorry. I should at least pretend to like you lot seeing I'm probably going to try and crack onto you later tonight and take you home for a 'make me feel better' fuck.'

'Nah, you're good. I was just thinking what a cunt I was for wondering what my chances were, when you've clearly had a rough time with another bloke.'

'Fuck, Cody. I'm counting on you to say 'no, Kelly, it would be a bad idea. We're fundamentally unsuited to each other and this will only complicate things'.'

'Sorry.'

She sucked on her cigarette, pulling the final draw, before crushing it out in an ashtray. 'Fucking goddamn.'

'You want another drink? Cigarette?'

'No, I want you to tell me about what the deal is with you and the Indian matchmaker.'

'Why?'

'For shits and giggles, and so I don't have to feel so bad about taking home a tosspot who decided an engagement party was the best time to tell his girlfriend and her family, as well as half the local community, about his criminal record.'

'Oh well in that case,' I conceded. 'Sure. Chandni the matchmaker texted me again this afternoon. I haven't responded yet.'

'Does she want to set you up with someone Indian?'

'I dunno.'

Kelly stirred her drink, swirling blue and pink and purple layers of cocktail all together. 'Would it bother you?'

'Maybe. Not in a skin colour sense, but in a 'I'm used to Australians' sense.'

'I used to stare at Jack sometimes, just stare at his eyes and hair and stuff. I never thought I'd date an Asian man, because I wouldn't have thought they'd find me attractive or anything, but after a while, I stopped over thinking it, and it was really normal.'

'But he was fairly 'Aussie' wasn't he?'

'He was more Aussie than a lot of Australians. His family had been here for generations. Some were newer than others, but one of his ancestors came here for the gold rush.'

'Did you ever meet his family?'

'His Mum came up from Victoria - that's where he's from, Melbourne - a few weeks ago and he introduced me.'

'He must've liked you.'

She sighed. 'Yeah, he did. He did. Goddamn. Can you give me another cigarette please? And let me take you home before either of us come to our senses and realise this is a stupid idea?'

~~~~~~~~

We'd fucked, and it had been great, but now things were awkward. My inability to roll over - and the lack of desire to do so, even if it would have been appreciated - and cuddle Kelly bought a bitterness I hadn't realised I was harbouring right to the surface. I can't tell you what was going through her mind, but I knew what was going through mine. Would I ever have someone to love, someone I truly trusted?

In some ways, I wish Isabelle had just cheated on me. I could be angry about that. I could get sympathy. But to have someone simply withdraw love and support, not because they wanted to offer it to someone else, but because they no longer cared for you, cut deeper. It was a sign that your relationship had become transactional, and that you were no longer able to offer anything of value.

Maybe if I'd earned more money, or been better looking, or had a bigger dick or was a foot taller, she could have kept hanging on. Maybe. To this day, I'm not sure what exactly she wanted from me, only that I couldn't offer it, and she didn't believe I'd ever be in a position to provide it.

'I turn thirty next week,' Kelly remarked.

'Fuck. Thirty. You're basically an infant.'

She groaned with frustration and pulled the sides of the pillow over her face. 'Why can't I find someone? You're a man. You tell me. What am I doing wrong?'

'Kel, I'm single and forty-fucking-three. If you're looking for relationship advice, I can't think of anyone less well placed to offer it.'

'Shit.'

'Sorry.'

She let out a sigh. 'I don't even have Indian women trying to scam me.'

'I could give you Chandni's number if you want.'

'Give it another month. I might get desperate enough.'

'Me too.'

She rolled over, holding the doona over her tits. God knows why, I'd seen them plenty of times to know exactly what they looked for.

On second thoughts, maybe she was being smart. Maybe she wanted to have a conversation. I'd only just cum two minutes ago, but give it twenty minutes and I'd be able to get hard again if she was prepared to suck me a bit to give me some help.

'Are you actually going to call her and go on this date?' she asked.

'Maybe.'

'I think you should. At the very least, it'll give you a good story to tell.'

''I got fleeced of two hundred and fifty bucks' isn't really a story.'

'The woman she wants to set you up with might be crazy. That'd be interesting.'

'For you,' I grumbled.

Kelly laughed. 'Yeah, sorry.'

The doona slipped, exposing one of her delicious boobs. Kelly didn't adjust it and nor did she speak. She just lay there, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling, probably trying to figure out what sort of desperate woman would go on a date with me. She wouldn't have been alone in wondering that. I myself had devoted a considerable portion of my life to trying to conjure up an image and had so far been woefully unsuccessful.

Kelly turned over. 'What goes through your mind?'

I didn't want to talk about what was really bothering me, so I turned to something more simplistic that was also, not in fact, a lie.

'Your tits.'

Kelly eyeballed me. 'You want to go again?'

'Sure, if you're willing, but I'll need a bit of help to get hard. You okay with that?'

Kelly shrugged. 'You can make me cum,' she said. 'Let's face it; most men suck at sex. So yeah, sure, I'll suck your dick.'

I took that as a 'yes' and a compliment. The bitterness went, at least temporarily, as she slipped between my legs and gave me head until I had a full hard-on.

~~~~~~~~~

Kelly kicked me out after our second fuck, which was both depressing and a relief. I knew I shouldn't have even screwed her. We were nowhere near 'right' enough.

But, what was the alternative?

You know, I thought to myself, 'fuck it', let's see what this crazy Indian woman is on about, and on Saturday morning I texted her to say I was ready to meet her woman. And within an hour it was all organised. I'd be meeting her for dinner that night. Chandni told me where my date would be sitting, and that she'd be in jeans and a red top.

'A question,' I said.

'Of course.'

'Is she white?'

'No. Indian.'

I didn't reply because I didn't know what to say. What could I say?

Chandni seemed troubled.

'Is this a problem?' she asked.

'No,' I replied, wondering if I was telling the truth. 'What's her name?'

'Dalaja.'

'Has she been in Australia long?'

'Almost all her life. She moved here when she was a young child.'

Well, that was a relief.

'Dalaja,' I repeated. 'I'll see Dalaja tonight.'

~~~~~~~~~~

I texted Kelly to apologise for fucking her, and she texted back to say that she was equally to blame. We both agreed we'd never do it again. She didn't mention her Asian jailbird, and I didn't mention my sub continental date for the night. I was already regretting calling Chandni. I'd only ever dated white women, and I didn't know what they wanted from me, let alone what an Indian one might want.

Rather than stress out, or risk getting on the mysterious Chandni's bad side, I figured I'd just show up, have a drink, politely say this wasn't going to work out and leave. To guard myself from any accusations that I hadn't put it in any effort, I not only got a haircut, I bought myself a new shirt and a pair of shoes. Money wasn't really a huge issue. I didn't earn a great deal, but I didn't spend a great deal, either.

The day sort of frittered by, and an hour before I was supposed to meet Dalaja, I showered, shaved and got dressed. I made the fatal mistake of looking at myself in the mirror, thought 'oh, for fuck's sake', and went and had a cigarette. I was either stupid or desperate, and to make matter's worse, I was about to make a fool of myself. I should've just downloaded Tinder or better yet, not decided that I was at a stage where I liked women enough to want to have a relationship with one. I wondered when I'd stop wanting sex and company.

I drove to the hotel, parked my car, and had another smoke. My phone beeped with a message and I thought for sure it was either Chandni or Dalaja either cancelling or trying to scam me out of some cash, but instead it was Kelly, saying she'd decided to give her bloke another chance. I didn't know why she was telling me. Maybe she just wanted to tell someone, maybe she wanted me to be abundantly clear on the fact that I didn't have a chance with her.

I'm about to meet Chandni's mystery woman, I texted back.

Holy fuck! Good luck! Please tell me you got your hair cut today???

Hair was cut, bought a new shirt and shoes. Am about to look like a prize dickhead.

I'm sure it will be fine. Please ring me if you get a bad feeling and want me to come and help