Through the Grinder by Cleo Coyle

palm begins to blink. So you have to report to this ritual they call ‘Carousel,’ where you’re supposedly ‘Renewed.’ But in reality they zap you with enough volts of electricity to light up Detroit.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “‘Run, Runner!’ doesn’t ring any bells?”
    “No.”
    “Forget it.” I sighed and found myself thinking, Quinn would have laughed.
    Brooks adjusted his pale yellow Armani sweater and looked around the room, his eyes snagging on the tight clothing of the model slash waitresses more frequently than my cat Java’s claws on my goose down duvet.
    “So…” said Brooks. “What’s it like managing these…I mean, this place?”
    “This place? I don’t manage this place,” I told him.
    Brooks frowned. “Your SinglesNYC profile said you managed Coffee Shop.”
    “Coffee house . I manage a coffeehouse. Of course, I didn’t put the name of it in my profile. The site instructions said not to put down any information on the public profiles that would give away your identity.”
    “Your profile said you managed Coffee Shop.”
    “I don’t see why it would say that. Does SinglesNYC.com change the profiles of people?”
    “No…but there’s an automatic spell check after you send. Didn’t you review the profile once it was posted?”
    “Not really.”
    “I see.” Brooks now made a show of looking around the room. “So you don’t manage any of these girls.”
    “No.”
    The atmosphere got even chillier after that. I politely asked about his work, and he talked about directing the fundraising campaigns for various charities.
    “There are myriad techniques,” he said, “depending on the not-for-profit’s history. Donation patterns can grow stale over time. So I can direct anything from phone solicitation blitzes and letter writing campaigns to gala benefits.”
    “Interesting.”
    “It can be.”
    Not to me. Not then. I couldn’t stop thinking about Detective Quinn. Since last week’s Chicken Francese dinner, he hadn’t been by the Blend. Not for his usual latte, not even to bolt an espresso. For a full week he’d avoided the coffeehouse entirely. I tried to tell myself it was his work, or his marital issues, which appeared to be as emotionally straining as mine and Matt’s had been.
    Still, I couldn’t help suspecting that he was intentionally avoiding me. Maybe he’d regretted opening up. Maybe he felt embarrassed on some level and was worried I’d put him on the spot the next time I saw him. I didn’t have a clue—but I refused to let it tear at me, which was another reason I’d gone out tonight after getting Brooks’s call. I needed to get my mind off the police detective. The still married police detective.
    After the food was served, Brooks bit into his vegetarian burger. He chewed, swallowed, and made that squinty face again.
    “What is that you ordered?” he asked, eyeing my platter.
    “The churrasquino carioca,” I told him.
    “And that is…?”
    “A Brazilian-style grilled steak sandwich.”
    “Steak?”
    “Yes. Steak. Beef. Cow,” I said, around a mouth of deliciously marinated meat. “Listen, Brooks, my profile never said I wasn’t a meat eater. There’s no spell check I know that would change ‘gourmet food lover’ to ‘vegetarian.’”
    “No, I know,” he admitted, his tone less chilly. “But I have found that everyone lies about something on these sites. One girl had this dominatrix vibe to her profile, but when we went out she mainly talked about her pain-in-the-ass parents, the sex was vanilla, and afterward she just wanted to play Scrabble.”
    “Brooks, let me be honest with you so we can both digest our food. The only reason I’m here is to see what this on-line dating thing is like. My daughter insisted on signing up, and I wanted to check out the site, see how it worked. I’m really not interested in…hooking up…or anything.”
    “Oh.” The man leaned back in his chair.