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My dad began calling my cell phone every night to talk about her. Upon my advice, he called my mother and asked her to get together. Not surprisingly, she declined. So, he called her again. Again she shot him down. After she said no a third time, my dad was a wreck.

“I have an idea,” I said to him over the phone one night, whispering because Helene was just a room away, “I can’t guarantee anything, but it’s worth a try.”

The next day, Laura and I checked into a room at the brand new
Sheraton
hotel in our area. We brought along a big basket of snacks and fruit, and a bottle of wine. We booked a couple’s massage for 6:00 that night. Then we took one of key cards over to our dad’s house. The other key card, we gave to Helene.

Dad was gung ho about the plan. Helene needed to be sold. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” she said.

“I can understand that, but you owe it to yourself to at least talk to him,” Laura urged.

I added, “Spending the night there doesn’t mean you have to get back together, but at least see how you feel.”

Our mother was skeptical, but I think in her heart, she knew her marriage deserved a fighting chance, so she agreed. “The only reason I’m considering this,” she barked as we were practically pushing her out the door with her suitcase, “is because I know everything is already paid for.”

“Whatever, Mom,” said Laura.

My parents ended up staying at the
Sheraton
for three additional nights after the first one, and by the end of their stay, it was safe to say they were back together.

As for my salsa business, it was taking shape at a rapid pace. I was spending every free moment working on my products and getting them ready to sell. Coming up with the packaging and general appearance of the salsa took a lot of time, and I had to experiment with many different kinds of ribbons and labels and colors.

I chose to put the salsa in 12 ounce glass jars I’d found at the dollar store. They were very plain and needed to be decorated to catch the eye of the buyer.

The final products ended up looking amazing. Each jar had two ribbons tied around it, just below its lid. One was yellow, one was red. The labels were bright florescent green and were shaped like jalapeño peppers.
Solo Chicka’s Salsa
is how they read. That was the name of my new company. Laura, myself and our newly back together parents had decided upon it late one night over wine and Kiwi salsa. Solo Chicka is “single chick” in Spanish. And that’s what I was, a single chick. The name was catchy and cutesy, and I felt like it would sell.

I decided to start out with four kinds of salsa. I chose my personal favorites, black bean, Fusion peach, Grape and Avocado, and a basic hot salsa I called
Hotter Than Bradley Cooper.

Yes, I thought Bradley was hot hot hot, but I also thought it would be a good conversation starter with store owners. Not to mention, Bradley Cooper fans were a good market for salsa consumption.

Alice helped me a lot with marketing strategies, pricing, and ways to find lists of grocery stores, gourmet stores, specialty shops, and fancy boutiques. We met for coffee a few times and I felt lucky to have this woman as a mentor and a friend. Each time I saw her, I found her strikingly beautiful, but I never had any desire to kiss her again. We were platonic. We were girlfriends. And that was perfect. And I could tell Alice felt the same.

When I was finally ready to hit the street and start selling, I was a bit nervous. But in an instant, sales came right back to me. In and out of stores I walked, prototypes in hand, asking business owners if they were interested in carrying
Solo Chicka’s Salsa
in their stores.

I got lots of no’s at first. “The economy’s bad,” “I just don’t think people would buy it,” “It’s too expensive,” and “It’s nothing special,” were some of the things I heard from people.

“What does being single have to do with making salsa?” a snooty store manager asked me one day.

“Uh…maybe when you’re single, you have more time to make salsa?” I answered in the form of a question, realizing that was a really stupid way to respond.

My favorite rejection came when I gave a guy a sample. When he began chewing, he said, “I have to be honest with you. This tastes horrible.”

My heart sank. Was my salsa horrible?

“That guy’s an idiot!” Laura said when I told her the story.

“What a creep!” said my mother.

In her true nature, Alice chose not to make a derogatory remark about the guy’s reaction. “It’s just one opinion,” she said with a gentle smile. This woman could motivate me to no end.

Into more stores I walked, rejection after rejection after rejection. I was dismissed and refused and denied and snubbed and rebuffed, to the point where I could almost no longer stand it.

Then one day, I took the jars into
Gifted
, a little gift boutique that carried fine china, crystal, stemware, kitchen accessories, and some gourmet food items. The owners were two older women, and when I say they freaked, I mean it. To say they were enthusiastic about
Solo Chicka’s Salsa
is putting it mildly, no pun intended.

“Wow!” said one of the women, after tasting the grape and avocado salsa, “Fabulous!”

“And what a cute name!” the other one said.

“Who’s Bradley Cooper?” said the first woman, as she perused the four samples I had set down on the counter.

“Oh, you know who he is,” her partner explained to her, “He was in that movie…
Valentine’s Day
.”

“And
The Hangover
,” I added.

“Oh, yes!” the first woman exclaimed. She turned to me and added, “How cute that you like him.”

I stood there smiling and adoring these ladies.

“So, how much?” one of them asked me.

I gave them the price. Then I held my breath while the two women looked at each other for a moment. They just stood there, each one waiting for the other to say something.

I was just about to tell them I’d give them a twenty percent discount, (I figured anything to sell something) when at the very same time, both women exclaimed, “Give us two of each to start.”

It was only eight jars of salsa, and I was only netting three dollars a jar. So I basically had just made twenty-four dollars, and that was before income taxes. Yet, still, I was so excited I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I had made a sale! It wasn’t the money, it was the fact that someone wanted to buy something I made! This was a moment of self-worth I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I was now Emma Bloom, salsa business owner, who had earned her first dollar in seven years. I was overjoyed.

The two God-sent ladies who ended my losing streak happened to be the facilitators for the turning point of
Solo Chicka’s Salsa.
From this point on, I began to sell with such confidence, such enthusiasm and such energy, that I became a sales machine on an endless roll. I almost never left a store from this point on without selling something. I suddenly knew how to handle every rejection I heard. If a store owner was lukewarm, I’d somehow find the perfect thing to say to get them interested.

I had a unique selling style. It made sense to not just sell the salsa, but to sell myself, the sole owner of a small business, a single mother, a once heartbroken, down-in-the-dumps, depressed and lonely women, and now, a happy, productive, inspired business owner.

I talked about my love and passion for making salsa, and how it was therapy for me. I told them about the fresh ingredients I used, and how there were no preservatives. I let them sample the salsa, so they could taste for themselves how good it actually was. But I also played up my personal life. I talked about being a single mother, and about dating, and about Bradley Cooper. And people listened. And they liked me. So they bought from me.

Even if an owner initially said no, I’d convince and charm them to buy just one jar, and then I would leave my business card, because I felt it in my bones that the jar would sell, and that they’d soon be calling me for more. And it was working!

I set up a website and began getting email messages for orders. It was completely insane, overwhelmingly unmanageable almost, but I was thrilled by it. Isabelle started helping me after school, and I found myself not only happy to be spending time with her this way, but also very proud to be teaching her about business and hard work and accomplishment. I realized I was being an amazing role model in this regard. I was showing my daughter ambition and achievement.

And late at night, while she slept, instead of spending my nights drinking wine and eating salsa with my sister, I was now standing at the kitchen counter making salsa half the night, while my sister sat at the kitchen table keeping me company.

“I’m so proud of you, Emma,” Laura said one night.

I looked at the successful doctor, whose professional life had always come so easily and who’d known she was meant to be a doctor from such a young age. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

“It’s true. You’re doing so well. You turned out to be such a great business woman, such a hard worker, so motivated.”

“You know what? I’m really happy, and for the first time in my entire life, there’s no man responsible for that.”

“It’s wonderful,” she smiled.

.

Chapter 27

M
y business continued to thrive. I was completely self-sufficient. It felt like the time in my life to work, set goals, and achieve professionally. But, I did start to feel very alone and although that was okay, it was a little sad.

Preston was completely out of the picture. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. As for Luke, a couple of random texts between us had been the extent of our communication since the day he told me he was trying to work things out with his wife, the same day he compared our relationship to a tootsie pop.

I decided that since my professional life was now in place, maybe it was time for me to try a real relationship with a man. Not a sexual relationship like I had with Preston, and not a fantasy relationship with an unavailable man like Luke, but something that had the potential for more.

One night after Izzie was asleep, I went to
Match.com
in search of
Den0507,
the guy whose picture and profile had captivated me, the same guy I spotted while walking out of
Walgreens
, and the same guy whose favorite food was chips and salsa.

I pulled up the 35-50 year olds in my zip code. It was no surprise that the same match dot com-ers who popped up months earlier were still there. “Yourprince65,” “Goodguy2know1203,” “takeme44” and let’s not forget “lookingforcowgirl,” all remained ready and available to meet me.

Finally I spotted
Den0507
and found myself immensely relieved that his cute picture remained on the site. After all, wasn’t it possible that Den could have met his soul mate in the past few months and taken his profile off? Fortunately for me, he was still searching for love.

I printed out the picture, cut it to size and put it in my wallet. Then, the search began. Over the next few days, I carried around Den’s photo and showed it to people, asking them if they knew this mystery man. After all, not only didn’t I know his last name, I didn’t even know his first name. All I knew was that I was on a mission.

I pulled Den’s picture out everywhere I went. At my bank, I handed it to the teller who waited on me. “Sorry, Mrs. Bloom, I’ve never seen that person.” I showed it to a couple of my neighbors. “No, Emma. Never seen him. He’s cute, though.” In one week alone, I showed the picture to at least twenty-five people. Friends, my post man, a local florist, the guy who owned the gas station by my house, my hair stylist, Izzie’s teacher, and pretty much every store owner I called on that week. Now I had two jobs, salsa saleswoman and private investigator.

“How can no one know this guy?” I practically shouted to Laura in
Starbucks
, after just having shown the picture to the woman who made my tall skim misto with no foam, “He lives in our town and he’s single!”

My sister and I were spending Sunday afternoon together, taking advantage of an unusually long stretch of free time. My parents had taken Izzie to lunch and a movie, so the two of us decided to do what girls do best: drink coffee and talk. I invited Alice to join us, but she declined, as she was leaving the next morning for a two-week business trip to London and had lots of packing and last minute errands to run.

“Calm down,” said my soothing sister, “You’ll find him.”

“I’m obsessed!”

Laura asked, “So what do you say to these people when you show them the picture? I mean, do you explain why you’re looking for him?”

“No. I don’t give any explanation and no one really seems to care,” I answered, shrugging my shoulders, “It’s pretty hilarious. Not one person to whom I’ve shown the picture seems even the slightest bit fazed.”

“Maybe there’s a little piece of everyone who understands the concept of desperation,” Laura joked. “You know, you could always join match dot com,” she suggested, “Have you ever thought of that? Then you could contact him right away.”

“Are you crazy? I’d never put my picture on that site. What if Luke saw me?”