As an old-fashioned matchmaker, Samantha Givens found the present conversation distressing, but perhaps this is what she deserved for turning the art of being a busybody into a lucrative consulting business. Traditionally, in the African-American community, hooking young singles up was charity work, something the matrons on the block did to get the “good “ girls onto the Mommy track with a halfway decent man. If that was at all possible. It had suddenly gotten harder to butter young black men up with the idea of being genuinely dedicated to one girl when the natural order of the urban environment has so conveniently arranged it so that women outnumbered men ten to one. And what kind of fucking (no pun intended) parity was that?

Anyway, that was when it had all become political to Samantha. Since there would never be parity in the urban dating scene and since men in the hood would never opt to become the sole support of a household, Samantha had decided upon something revolutionary. Why enlist her services pairing the golden girls of urban America with less ambitious black men? Especially when there were alternatives. No doubt, these up and coming black sheroes had to, by now, be dissatisfied with thugs who felt privileged to do no more than to wait until one of these “prized” good bitches fell into their laps. Perhaps these niggas needed to be taught a lesson.

Samantha was, however, pulled back to her current dilemma when Oren Hall, the man in her office, started uttering weary threats. “I want results”, he pleaded. His tone was desperate.

Samantha experienced a tightening in her throat, but still spoke calmly. “I feel that by maximizing the value of the entire class, I better all the girls’ chances of success”

“Fuck values”, Hall spat, “let’s talk results. My daughter’s, in particular. How about that?”

It would have been both unprofessional and unladylike to curse back so Samantha held her tongue for a split second while she weighed her options. Instinctively, she knew she could not afford to lose Oren Hall, but it pained her to know that his daughter just might be the one most likely not to succeed. “I think you’re going about this entirely wrong”.

“I am, am I?” Hall took a chance and peeked at Samantha’s large breasts, but once he realized he wouldn’t have time enough to give them the proper eyeballing they demanded, he looked away. More or less, what he saw in Samantha’s chocolate-colored face was mixed signals, but he, quite actually, wasn’t thinking about them. Although, he wasn’t sure why, he found he was trying to reach a conclusion about why he found her so appealing to him.

Finally, after a few, slow seconds had passed, he unconsciously nodded his head in awe. Samantha Givens was absolutely beautiful. Suddenly, he felt like he was dreaming, and he vaguely wondered how she would react if she knew what he was thinking. He shook his head to clear it.

Samantha smiled. She always did when men stared at her and the sweat popped out on their brow. She knew the smile only added to the illusion, but she also knew that the longer they ogled her, the easier it would be for her to defuse them.

At 45, she was a dazzling combination of natural beauty and “store-bought” perfection, everything so flawlessly sculpted that no matter how penetrating the scrutiny or how direct the examination, no man could discern where one ended or where the other began. She smiled once more.

And without preamble, Oren Hall wished Samantha Givens was a hooker. He certainly would pay for her, but when he thought about it, he’d already paid her a huge sum of money although for an altogether different cause. And that was the reason for his visit.

“What the hell has gone wrong?” he asked, the muscles in his dark face tightening.

Samantha didn’t admire him for asking that question because in her business she always tried to ignore or dismiss the fact that something could go wrong, but, in reality, it had. She was an expert, obsessed with projecting the right image, but his daughter represented a problem. Samantha’s lip curled up into a smirk. She sighed. “I’ll schedule her for another strategy session.”

“They’re worthless”.

Samantha sat at her desk, tight-lipped, allowing the queasiness in her stomach to recede before she glared at her visitor. “I know what I’m doing”. She held her breath and when Hall didn’t explode in anger, she touched the portfolio in front of her gently. “The greater your reach”, she explained, “the greater the risks of something going wrong”. Samantha received another shock when her visitor remained silent. “You do understand, then, don’t you?”

Hall’s dark, brown eyes widened. “What I do understand better than most, Samantha, is that a man should always get what he pays for”. He glared. “And there is nothing sophisticated about that”.

Across the desk, Samantha gasped. “Oren, please”.

“Then what will it take to get things right?”

That blunt announcement embarrassed Samantha, but still she refused to stumble into a truth-or-consequences type conversation with the blue-chip father of her most problematic student. That would remind her of failure, and the one thing she didn’t ever expect to experience was missing the mark, although now she was close. “May I be honest?”

“Why not?” Hall made an exasperated gesture. “Go for it”.

If anyone had wanted to know, Oren Hall’s strong, handsome face looked as if it belonged on a plaque or a bronzed bust outside an African palace. But he was by no means nice. Not even close. And that much was certain. Then there was his daughter.

Paris Hall.

Samantha mumbled the name silently, her tongue rolling clumsily over the curves of each alphabet, falling off the last letter like it was a lop-sided Tower of Babel.

As she observed Oren Hall, she was tempted to tell him the truth, but decided against the idea. He probably already knew that his daughter was the problem. How could he not know?

“MatchMakers, Incorporated, as you know, did not find its fame by accident, and the reason is simple. We take our responsibilities seriously and we deliver”. Samantha’s voice grew more confident as the sincerity of her conviction helped work the butterflies out of her stomach. “We represent people, such as yourself, who want only the very best for their beloved daughters, and I find nothing complicated about that at all……..”

“I’m only concerned about Paris”

“So am I, Oren, and to my last breath I’m committed to finding the perfect match for her”.

Hall smiled. “There is only one match for Paris. The big one”.

“But don’t you think…….?”

“Dammit!” Hall took a deep breath. “I want my daughter matched up and married to the white boy most likely to have his ass sitting in the White House.

Samantha’s head began to throb. Terribly.

MatchMakers Incorporated was discreetly located on the seventh floor of the Wallace Brown Building and could be easily mistaken for any business other than what it was, which was precisely the point. Even though “The Match” had been operating for almost ten years, it required a special recommendation from someone in the know to be granted the privilege of becoming a client. Outside of these few people, no one knew anything. And it was best kept that way.

Everything about “The Match” was awe-inspiring, carved whether rationally or irrationally, from Samantha’s prized obsession which would one day result in the ultimate pay-dirt for one fortunate client. Samantha didn’t however, think it would be Paris Hall. Unfortunately, that would be no surprise.

Inside the opulent office, every piece of furniture reeked of spectacle, quite a difference from what Samantha had known growing up in Arkansas, but even at this level of having-it-all, she still possessed doubts. She squirmed in her expensive, leather chair.

She finished her spring water. She was doing far better than any of her sorority sisters from college, most of whom had been plucked up by niggas with attitude. God, Samantha winced. NWAs had always been too heavyweight for her, the combination of needing to feel important and the raw talent for getting into trouble was a sort of racial insanity she had been determined to avoid.

But along came Tyrone. And when Samantha discovered she lacked the ability to get past his head-turning good looks, she was too lost in his dynamic personality to decide whether or not it would be wise to allow herself to function under the control of his single redeeming asset: his sexual prowess.

Then the physical abuse started, but long before the external bruises there had been the common sense warnings from both friends and strangers who felt it necessary to remind her that she was much too smart and beautiful to stay with a man so good at kicking her ass. Abruptly, she left and everyone was certain that it was jut in time.

Granted asylum in a friend’s cramped apartment, and propped up with painkillers and Mountain Dew, MatchMakers Ink grew out of the screams of those unfriendly memories. Still she hadn’t figured on her little scheme turning into the thrilling enterprise it had now become. And she absolutely refused to apologize for it.

First and foremost, The Match, when stripped of all its pretensions, was nothing more than an agency to assist the romantic plight of ordinary, black women, but then with an air of feminist bravado, it had taken on a new direction, had grown a second head. One much more sinister than the initial, more noble one.

Discovering that she was as natural a matchmaker as her mother had been was not at all startling. Hooking people up was an inherited skill, she reasoned. However, it would not be until she was hired as VP of Development and Marketing at Brown Lady Industries that she became impressed with how dumb and unambitious it would be to simply pair beautiful, black women up for love when she was in the position to reward them with real trophies: rich, white men who ran the country. What an once-in-a-lifetime payoff it would be to snag a President and as a result to put a sista in the White House.

Samantha assessed her chances and found that her scheme was not that far-fetched. Already, she had hitched many beautiful, deserving sistas up with prominent white lawyers, doctors, and congressmen. A President was not out of the question, however it wouldn’t be Paris Hall who would marry him.

It was a fact that Paris Hall was the most beautiful young lady she had ever seen and sure enough the girl was brilliant, but deep down Miss Hall had all the markings of a cookie-cutter, ghetto Hoochie-Mama. Samantha grew weak in the knees. Imagine a bitch like that on Pennsylvania Avenue. Taking everything into account, her good looks and her schooling aside, Paris Hall was the absolute antithesis of what would be expected of a First Lady. As if being black would not be enough.

Other than Miss Hall, though, the rest of her clients were the crème de la crème of black America, hand-picked urban divas who were trained to track white men of wealth and social influence. And all of them, Miss Hall included, were supremely capable, high-class political groupies. That elicited a wide smile from Samantha. She understood that she had produced a designer line of living, breathing, black gold-diggers; female predators, who when married to the right man, would be in a position to rule the country.

And to Samantha, there was no better plan than that!