I finish washing up—one cup, one plate, one fork. I’m passing by the door on my way to watch TV all by my lonesome when I hear voices. The words are muffled, but the tones are unmistakable: exasperation and persuasion. I fetch my trusted ear-cone and press it to the door.

“What are you doing here?” Rhiannon’s tone carries clear as a bell. She used to sing in a popular choir until she quit it a couple years ago because she was working so many evenings.

“One last chance, babe. Hear me out.” Eddy’s voice is half-comfortable sweater, half-existential questioning.

“Isn’t Jordan expecting you for dinner?” she says sardonically. I can picture Rhiannon tossing her head in that see-if-I-care way she has.

Eddy rumbles. “It’s not that Jordan. We broke up ages ago. The name you saw is my work Jordan—a guy.”

“Huh. A likely story.” Her keys jangle against the door. “Hit the road, Jack.”

“I could ask,” he says delicately, “why were you snooping on my phone?”

“Why haven’t you deleted old Jordan’s number?” she asks.

Verrrrry interesting. Rhiannon tells him to leave but keeps asking him questions as if wanting to prolong the dialogue.

Time to unlock my door. I step out, my pink fur-covered mules venturing onto the blah gray carpet, craning my head in the direction of the laundry room. “Oh hi,” I say casually. “Hmm, I guess that guy is still using the washer, is he?” This is my favorite pretext for opening the door.

“Evening, Mrs. Mulligan,” says Eddy, dipping his head respectfully. “Yes, I saw him go in there ‘bout an hour ago.”

“An hour ago?” Rhiannon says. “How long have you—? Oh, never mind.” Enveloped in a cloud of Givenchy "Irresistible" perfume, she is wearing an ooh-la-la red clingy dress with low-cut neckline and random sequins all over. Her feet are in those black, high-heeled bootie shoes. Her outfit screams “date.” I wonder, though, if she came back alone because she was stood up. Her eyes are reddened, and they are devoid of makeup, as if she splashed her face with cold water.

“I thought I’d catch you right after work,” Eddy confesses. He’s still in his work clothes, his pants dirty with sawdust and paint smears, his plaid shirt half-open and showing a tight white T-shirt underneath. I detect a trace of sweat mixed with Irish Spring soap. The pockets of Eddy’s pants have handles sticking out here and there because he keeps his tools handy. He has tightened the bolts in my cupboard door. Unjammed a bent curtain slide. And even installed a new light fixture with a fan. All because he’s the neighborly type. Okay, maybe my gray hair had something to do with it too.

Rhiannon arches an eyebrow. “And you were here outside my door the whole time?”

“I didn’t mean to be. I came to pick up my book… okay, and I came to see you. Then my sister wanted to FaceTime, so I took the call over there.” He points to the alcove at the end of the hall. “That’s how come I was hanging around so long.”

“And how is your sister?” I jump in. I hope Rhiannon remembers this fact about Eddy. Unlike the busy-busy types all over the city, he will stop to lend an ear. When you are blue like I was just after John died, Eddy spared the time to chat.

“She’s recovering,” he says, wincing, “but still can’t walk.” His sister was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gust of wind blew down a big plywood Chick E. Delight sign. One of those freak accidents that’s had lots of air-play on local news.

Rhiannon looks concerned.

Eddy turns to her. “By the way, she says to say hi and thank you for the donation to her Go Fund Me page.”

“She’s such a warrior,” Rhiannon sighs, “and it is totally undeserved.” The sign that fell was advertising BBQ chicken, and Eddy’s sister is president of the local PETA chapter.

A door opens down the hall and the face pokes out. “Hey! no hall parties,” he shouts. Mr. Giesbrucht, a retired school principal, scowls at us from down the hall.

Rhiannon lowers her voice. “Wait here, I’ll get your damn book. Given the hour, I can’t invite you in.” She is blushing. Perhaps she is recalling what usually happens after Eddy crosses her threshold.

I know I am blushing—these apartments have thin walls. Too thin to conceal a headboard rhythmically knocking against the wall and muffled noises in the bedroom. She fumbles her keys, drops them, and Eddy hands them back to her, with a look of abject longing in his puppy-dog eyes.

“I can’t invite you because some of us have to work tomorrow.” She speaks harshly, like throwing icy water in the face.

Eddy looks chastened. Irregular work is a given when you’re a carpenter in the theater district.

“Ahem!” Down the hall, Mr. Giesbrucht glowers at us. We all nod sheepishly and try to lower our voices.

I tug at Eddy’s sleeve. “Come inside for a minute. You too,” I say, touching Rhiannon’s wrist. “I need some sharp eyes. I dropped a box of pins on the carpet, and I don’t think I got them all.” I lead the way in my pink fur-covered mules.

I admit, it’s a made-up excuse. I’m a dating doula, you see. Similar to a birth doula and a death doula, two professions that people turn to when they encounter the complicated phases of life. A dating doula helps people navigate the rocky coastline of commitment. A dating doula is not a matchmaker. No, a dating doula works with the newly attracted couples who are trying to steer their way through the demolition derby that is a love relationship.

Old-fashioned, uncharitable people would call me the meddler or busybody in the romance.

Back in my heyday, friends often turned to me for my eagle’s-eye view of where their relationships were headed. I’ve witnessed my share of disasters in the area: people with expectations too high, who gave up on each other without realizing the one cardinal rule: no love-match is perfect. In retrospect, I wish I’d said something. I wish I’d nudged the partners—just a little bit. After I retired, my nieces and nephews began coming to me for advice and before long, I could point to a dozen shining successes: happy marriages that I helped put together. Every one of these had small “trouble spots” early on. A date was a half-hour late. A date forgot to call the day after. A date’s eyelash fell off in the soup. People, these are minor things! So minor… don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! We hit “Cancel” when we should reflect on the last, wonderful time someone gave us a second chance.

Rhiannon smirks. “Nice try, Mrs. Mulligan,” she says. “But I see right through this.”

I smile sweetly at her. “Of course you do. You’re a legal beagle. You get to the heart of things. What I’m really doing is offering to provide a ‘third space’ so you don’t have to invite him into your apartment. Eddy here can plead his case without interfering with Mr. Giesbrucht’s beauty sleep and without making you feel you will have to do the horizontal mambo afterwards.”

Her blush deepens.

Uh-huh. My earlier guess was correct. She is thinking about how Eddy makes her feel all hot and bothered.

Meanwhile Eddy extracts the magnet from his left-leg cargo pocket and is carefully dragging it over the entry-hall carpet.

“You do know that was a ruse, right?” Rhiannon says to him.

Eddy shows me what he’s found. “Three staples, Mrs. Mulligan!” Two are benign paper staples, but the third has sharp, pointy ends.

When we pass into my living room, I have a moment of panic. It looks like a tornado hit a ladies’ clothing store. I was sorting my clothes this afternoon because the season is changing, so sweaters, skirts, and pants are spread all over the sitting room, even on the three-seater couch to which visitors normally gravitate. Only a love seat and an armchair are free of folded-up fabric. “Have a seat,” I say, “if you can find one.” I fetch the step-stool from my kitchen.

“I have a new batch of dandelion wine from my middle sister,” I announce, pouring out three cute little glasses before they can object. Lubrication loosens the tongue of love.

Eddy proposes a toast. “To good friends and second chances.”

Rhiannon ignores it. And to appear impartial, I do too. Eddy looks sad.

“How did you two meet?” I ask. “Carpenter and lawyer. Were you building a case?”

They completely ignore my pun.

“I needed to snake my drains,” Rhiannon says, swirling her wine. “I went to the hardware all stressed out about the whole plumbing situation. Not a clerk to be seen. Then I noticed this guy checking out low-flow toilets.”

Eddy’s face lights up. “My God, she looked so beautiful. Standing there like an orchid in the desert. But a little squinchy around the eyes, know what I mean? Like she was having a hard day and trying to keep a lid on it.” He tosses back his wine then licks his lips.

I nod. “Eddy to the rescue.” It reminds me of when Rhiannon introduced him to me. My knick-knacks shelf had collapsed two hours before the big Thanksgiving feast I’d prepared, and Eddy fixed it.

I love his generosity of spirit. This is a trait Rhiannon should not overlook.

I married a guy who had no generosity of spirit. John was totally Type-A. Driven. An I-won’t-share-the-pie kind of guy. I was very young and naïve, and he seemed like a good provider. But he wouldn’t even hold the door for someone with packages. It was downright embarrassing. I always had to slip money under the plate when we dined at a restaurant because he refused to leave a tip. (Side note: John’s austerity came from his dirt-poor childhood. I loved him despite his austerity.)

I understand where Rhiannon’s coming from. She’s in a line of work, criminal law, where she must prove herself. She can’t be a damsel in distress.

Rhiannon finger-combed her bangs. “I’d watched YouTube videos on how to snake a drain, and no way did I want to pay a plumber to come and snake them, then lecture me about long hair and how bad it is for drains.”

I blurt, “No, that guy should be shot. Your hair is gorgeous.”

Eddy mutters, “How rude of him!”

Rhiannon smiles, rolls her eyes, trying to hide her glee. She pulls at her hair.

“And I wouldn’t call that long,” Eddy says. “It’s only shoulder length.”

“I couldn’t reach the package of the last snake and there was no step ladder. I figured this guy,” and here she nods at Eddy, “was deep into family life if he’s checking out low-flow toilets on a Saturday night. Because I didn’t want this to look like a singles’ date-night ploy.”

“Because it wasn’t.” I add my vote of confidence.

“Exactly.” Rhiannon is so attractive she believes she must be constantly proving herself intellectually. I call it the Hedy Lamarr Syndrome, after that Hollywood actress who invented a refinement to radar. Rhiannon prefers to do everything from the ground up rather than let others do the hard work for her.

I tried to tell her, “Be this way at work but in your personal hours let others do you a good turn.” For example, I once offered to lend her laundry coins so she didn’t have to make the trip all the way to the corner store, but she said no.

“Sometimes others take advantage of you,” Rhiannon says to Eddy. “Like that guy with the eight-foot skeleton.”

“Eight-foot skeleton?” To disguise my perplexity, I refill our glasses.

“Yeah,” Rhiannon says. “You know, one of those fully-poseable Halloween things? The guy said he had to go park his car. Said he was picking up the skeleton before the party for a friend. And Eddy watches it on his behalf for, like, hours. Thinking the scammer will come back to get his skeleton. Eddy feels he can’t just take off and leave it. We were supposed to meet for a date, but he asked me to bring take-out to him instead. To where he’s babysitting the skeleton.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

She chuckles. “He insisted we make a missing persons report.”

“It was a very cool skeleton, every bone just so,” Eddy interjects. “Why would anyone abandon it?”

“People abandon things all the time. He tricked you,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, pulling out a bag of pretzels to snack on. “Two different approaches to solving the same problem. Is that so wrong?”

“The problem is, I find myself taking advantage of him,” she blurts out. “And it scares me.”

“But you’re not,” he says. “I love solving problems. I love to lighten someone’s load, especially if that someone is so funny and charming.”

“Like me!” I pipe up.

But they do that couple thing—they talk across to each other, never mind the joke I was trying to make.

“I’ve heard this all before,” he says. “You’re worried you’re going to push me too far?” He digs into his windbreaker and pulls a wacky steampunk-looking gizmo out of his pocket. “This here is a push-O-meter. See, the needle’s in the green part. The yellow part is when you are asking a little too much of me. Like when you made me drive your friends around all day for the bridal party.” He presses and the needle flickers into the yellow.

There’s a red region. I hold my breath, wondering what would make him press the needle to red, but he doesn’t say.

“But then some morning,” Rhiannon predicts, “you’ll wake up and say, ‘I’m sick of always helping her. I’m out.’”

Boom! I’d heard this before from Rhiannon. I’m out. “I’m out,” that’s what her last boyfriend said. And it’s what her dad said when he left her mom.

I heard the saga that night when Rhiannon broke up with the guy before Eddy—the guy I will call Romeo because that’s what he drove. He had everything she wanted: the looks, the body, the flashy car. Then, after six months of dating, she admitted her period was late, and so that jerk dumped her. “I’m out,” Romeo said.

I found her stumbling about in the lobby downstairs with one shoe off. Likely she left the other shoe in the Alfa Romeo. She was a little tipsy and her make-up was all caked. I told her to call her best friend, but she said, “No, she’s a working mother of twins. I can’t ruin her sleep on this.” So although I’m twice her age, I gave her a good shoulder to cry on.

I squint at Kyle and wonder if Rhiannon told him about Romeo. Not yet, I guess.

And now both these dear young folks are ready to give up on each other? I push up the sleeves of my Lululemon tracksuit and give them a stern look. “So to summarize, the Jordan misunderstanding is all cleared up. Eddy’s sister is on the mend—but needs moral support from you both. There are three relationship problems. One, Rhiannon thinks Eddy is too nice and that she will be in his debt too much. Eddy says that can be solved by the push-O-meter. He will put it on full view in the main hall.”

They are both staring at me.

“Second issue, Rhiannon is afraid of getting too close. The guy will leave her like Dad left Mom. This is an ongoing problem, and it’s taken years of therapy to get this far. Third issue, Rhiannon doesn’t believe her good luck. She doesn’t believe a sexy guy wants to commit fully to her in the long term.” This brings on blushing in both. In fact, my face feels warm, too.

Then I dive right in with my Dating Doula boots. “Let me bring up something you didn’t mention. Careers. Eddy works with his hands. He’s a carpenter. He works from show to show. You, Rhiannon, are a lawyer. You earn your bread case by case. Isn’t the difference in careers the true elephant in the room? The pachyderm in the pantry that no one is talking about? Isn’t this the big thing you can’t really ignore?”

They’re looking at each other and shaking their heads. “Oh no, Mrs. Mulligan, that’s the best thing about us,” Eddy says, chuckling. “She is Queen of the Virtual World. She can skyrocket around all corners of the Internet with her files and her data.”

Rhiannon is laughing. “And Eddy the King of Real Life, his hands toughened by lumber, his muscles getting a workout every day, pushing beams into position.”

By now, they’re sitting on the love seat, holding hands. The dandelion wine is all gone. They think they know better than I do—and they do. That’s part of being a Dating Doula. Stir things up, remind them of their togetherness, and then as the romance kicks in, I slip away.

Or, in this case, we say our goodnights and, in my pink fur-covered mules, I escort them to the door.

The end