Free Food Fight by Anne Penketh

for Jessica than for her.
    “I’ve got so much work on,” she said. “It’s pressure, pressure, pressure.” Jessica looked disappointed.
    She was a freelance interior designer, and not the slightest bit interested in politics, especially office politics, or the trials of working for a multinational. “I wasn’t talking about work. What else is going on in your life, Susie? Are you ready to rumble yet?”
    “Are you psychic? My daughter was just telling me I need to start trawling the Internet,” she said. “But I’m damaged goods.”
    “Damaged goods? Don’t be ridiculous! What’s wrong with finding a boyfriend online anyway? Less chance of running into them when you split up,” Jessica said. “You need a man, so check out the man store.”
    “Really? Have you?”
    “Of course.”
    She was dumbfounded. If the lovely Jessica couldn’t find a partner without going online, what hope was there for the rest of us?
    “I don’t know. Who’s going to fall for me and my spare tyre?”
    “Are you crazy? You’re hot to trot, Susie.”
    “Aren’t all the nice ones either gay or married?”
    “Well, you won’t know until you try.” Jessica looked over the menu. “How does the seared salmon sound?”
    For the rest of the evening, Susan probed her friend’s knowledge of the various online dating sites, from the specialized Jewish and Christian ones, the uniform fetishists, the bondage consultants, the fee-chargers and the free, the places where the dater’s profile is created by a friend, the marriage-or-your-money-backs, the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
    Jessica finally admitted she had met her (now ex) boyfriend Randall on ‘Partners 4 U’. Susan had never thought to ask her where they met, they seemed so natural together. And then Jessica volunteered that her sister, too, had found a partner in a chat room.
    She wasn’t expecting the first hurdle when she signed up that evening. She had to make up a name for herself. The ironic MsWhiplash? Already taken. The flirty MadamPerky? What, already taken too? The next task was to describe herself. This was going to take all night.
    Signed on as ‘Peek-a-boo’, which to her sounded light-hearted and flirtatious, Susan rested her head on her hands. It needed to be witty and cliché-free while conveying her personality and the reason she was even in this cattle market. They would be able to see her picture, so she wouldn’t need to describe herself physically. She carefully picked a photo from before Serge’s death, in which she was definitely a few pounds lighter. Oh no, that won’t do. She flicked through the few photos she’d taken in DC. Here was a nice one of her in the Botanic Garden, no cleavage in sight. With a click, it was up.
    As soon as she entered her date of birth, the pictures of ‘single’ men began floating along the top of the screen. That was already an achievement, she hadn’t expected any matches after entering her Washington zip code. Everybody joked that you had more chance of being shot by a terrorist than finding a soulmate in DC. When did hair make a comeback, she wondered as she examined the photos. She laughed out loud when she noticed the site was automatically putting her desired age match as from 50 to 100.
    She began, “Devastated by the death of my husband, 18 months ago” and paused. No, too tragic.
    Before she had time to find the Edit button, her words had gone live. A message from a lugubrious guy with a moustache in Ohio.
    “Hello dear, would you like to share your pictures?”
    She was not getting the hang of this. A few minutes later she found Edit and tried again. Who was she looking for? Someone who wasn’t frightened by freckles. Was that too flippant? She rubbed her eyes, wondering why she found this so hard. She was writing an ad, after all.
    Tell us something about yourself, the site said. She’d better be honest. So she told the whole world, or at least the single men of Washington DC, about how