Free Shop and Let Die by Kelly McClymer Page A

a true Supermom. Which, I suppose, is just
another label.
    Of course, if I’m going to
brush up my resume, I’m going to have to embrace the labels. At
least the ones that would make me sound like a good
hire.
     
    With both kids focused on homework, and Seth not due home for
thirty minutes, I picked up my latest library book—a tale of a
young woman who must decide whether to choose between her dream of
trekking in the Andes or to marry the man she was fairly sure she
loved enough to spend a lifetime with.
    So far I had barely gotten
to the part where her dilemma began… asking her potential husband
if he’d mind if she wanted to trek the Andes. Since it was already
a week overdue, and the irate reminder from the library was due any
day, I had to finish it, or I’d never know if he let her go to the
Andes—or from his life completely.
    A shrill voice inside me
screamed at her to head for the Andes without looking back. But she
was young and in love and she was still undecided.
    The house phone rang and I
hurried to pick it up before the answering machine. Even talking to
a salesman or a pollster would be better than witnessing the train
wreck about to happen to this nice girl. Sometimes I wondered if
writers were undercover sadists—torturing their readers, along with
their characters, for the sheer satisfaction of seeing us
squirm.
    “ Molly, sorry to call you
on the home phone, but you didn’t answer your cell.” Sue
again.
    I mentally deducted a
Supermom point. I’d brought in my phone, but left it somewhere in
the kitchen, with the ringer turned off. The dying dinosaurs must
have rattled me. “Sorry.”
    “ I need you.”
    I had a momentary hope
that the job was something great. “Got my massage
already?”
    “ No. Another dating
thing.” She sounded a bit hesitant.
    “ Sue, I’m married. And I’d
like to stay that way.” Most of the time, anyway.
    “ I know. I know. You and
everybody else. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t desperate. Job pays
a hundred.”
    A hundred? I got a
headache imagining what kind of work the merchant would want from
me for a fee that big. Was it a twenty page detailed report? “Does
that mean I need to marry the guy and rate his
husband-ability?”
    “ No. It’s not like that.”
Sue didn’t sound all that convincing. “In fact, it’s a real step
up. Two hours work, max. An hour to go through the interview
process, then some time on line to pick a man to contact—one email
and then one follow up. And you have to reply to three men who
contact you.”
    I knew enough about
mystery shopping to automatically double the time she said I’d
need. Four hours. A hundred dollars. Still…. “I think my husband
might be a little unhappy.”
    “ Tell him you’re getting a
hundred dollars and a really wild date night—then let him have a
little fun on your dating jag, too.”
    “ He’s not a kinky man.” I
wasn’t a kinky woman, either, but between us, I think Seth would
win the unkinky award hands down. But then I remembered the Secret
Shopper Sisters boards. Other shoppers had had used the shops to
add a little spice. Why shouldn’t I?
    Sue pressed, “You won’t
really be dating these guys, just going through the
motions.”
    I protested, “Isn’t that
what prostitutes do? Go through the motions for money?”
    Without missing a beat,
she informed me, “Absolutely no cyber sex allowed on this site—in
fact, that’s one of the things they want to screen
for—perverts.”
    Great. I’d be trolling for
perverts. “I’d have to lie. Unless you think that these guys will
want to date a married 37 year old whose greatest goal in life is
to be a supermom?”
    Sue laughed. “Don’t worry.
The vendor has a persona for you—this is the closest thing to safe
dating ever invented. You’ll be someone else—the Mata Hari of the
online dating world.”
    “ Why don’t you get a
single woman?”
    For the first time, she
sounded evasive, “That’s a bit complicated.