Courtship for the Clueless

1.

"Your new book is selling pretty well," said Irina Slonimska, Roger's editor. "

Plumbing for the Panic-Stricken

fills a definite need. I don't mind telling you that it saved me several hundred dollars in New York City plumbers' bills when I was editing the manuscript."

"Did it really?" asked Sharon Hillstein, eying her old college roommate across the table, barely acknowledging the presence of Roger Chamberlain, who had written it and was her ostensible date following a book signing at Montgomery's Books-A-Million earlier in the evening.

"Yes, it did. I sponsored a 'meet the candidate' fundraiser at my apartment. One of the guests got drunk, went in the bathroom to throw up, and cracked the toilet tank. The chapter on how to replace a toilet gave me full instructions and the confidence to tackle the job myself. My boss was so impressed by that, he had me persuade Roger to allow me to write an intro for the book telling the story." She gave her writer an arch look.

Roger blushed a little and turned his attention to his dinner companion. Tall, she had the Mediterranean olive skin, blue-black hair and figure of a young Sophia Loren, with long legs and curves that stopped just short of voluptuous. It was a type Roger found very attractive, but so far every approach he'd tried had fallen flat with Sharon.

"Well, Irina keeps telling me to write from personal experience, and after rebuilding the farmhouse I live in up to current code, including adventures in plumbing, the book sort of wrote itself. So tell me, what do you do when you aren't obliging an old friend as the dinner date of the writer whose book she is currently promoting?"

She glanced at him, and addressed her plate as she replied. "I manage an antique shop not too far from the State House. But I'm not there much of the time, as I travel to auctions and estate liquidations in search of new stock." She put a forkful of cake into her mouth.

Irina looked from Roger to Sharon. He was doing his best to be charming, but for all the response Sharon was giving him, he might as well have been talking to the marble statue in the restaurant's lobby. Pushing her chair back, she announced, "I'm going to powder my nose," signaling with her eyes for Sharon to come with her; but her friend kept her seat. She walked off.

Left alone with Roger, Sharon said, "Look. I can see where you're going with this. You think I'm gorgeous, and smart, and you'd like to see me again without Irina as the third wheel. You'd probably like to lure me into bed and fuck me until the cum pours out of my ears. But it's not going to happen. You seem like a nice guy, but there's no chemistry here. I'm just not into you." She calmly lifted another bite of cake to her mouth.

Roger looked at Sharon, his head reeling from that casual declaration of utter disinterest. At last he said, "Well, that being the case, I'll not inflict myself upon you further. I hope you and Irina have a pleasant evening." He unfolded himself to his lanky six foot two height and headed to the register, where he paid the bill and left.

A couple of miles down the road, he realized he'd left his Borsalino sitting on the fourth chair at their table. He returned to the restaurant and motioned to the maitre d'.

"I just had dinner with two ladies at that table over there," he said, pointing through the elaborate pierced-work screen, "and I forgot my hat."

"Not a problem. Just walk over and retrieve it. This sort of thing happens."

"That might prove ... awkward."

The maitre d' looked more carefully at him, and understood. "I see. Just give me a moment, sir." He motioned their waiter over and spoke to him; he looked at Roger, then back at his boss, nodding, and left.

The screen also separated the reception area from the bar beyond it. It was difficult to see through, but sound carried perfectly well. He heard the clinking of glasses, and then words. Irina and Sharon had repaired to the bar after his departure and were continuing their evening as a girls night out.

"Rina, you owe me

big

for tonight. Even a good dinner and seeing you again doesn't make up for having to spend time sitting opposite that nebbish! What on earth were you thinking?"

"I thought the two of you might hit it off. You're in the arts and antiques biz; he's a writer and not a bad one. He actually makes a good living at it, and that's more than most in the writing game can say. And you said in our last phone call that your mother has been leaning on you, singing the 'Am I never going to have any grandchildren?' song."

"Yeah, Mama's been playing the matchmaker a lot lately, trying to fix me up with every nice young unmarried Jewish lawyer and doctor she and her girlfriends can dredge up from here to Charleston, Atlanta, and everywhere in between. I am so sick of Mama's shiddochs, I could puke. I'm only 32, for heaven's sake! There's still time for babies if I decide I want them.

"But why you thought I'd be interested in

that

one mystifies me. Yes, he's not bad looking, and something might be made of him if he could be taught to dress more upscale, got a haircut that wasn't 20 years out of style, and didn't carry himself like a klutz. But I don't have time to waste on a fixer-upper even if I was interested in him, which I'm not.

"Besides, goys are only for practice. They're fine for sport-fucking, but not to bring to meet the family. Mama and Papa can be

so

traditional. If I came to dinner with a schlemiel like him who isn't even Jewish, they'd react like I'd brought home a Cossack on his horse, complete with saber and whip!"

Roger was spared further disparagement by the maitre d' handing him his hat. He fled to the parking lot and burned rubber getting out of there. It wasn't the first time he'd heard a girl deliver the verdict that as a man, he had been examined and found wanting.

As he approached Gardendale from the south, he realized he had calmed down enough during the drive to understand that although dinner had been a dead loss, he still did have something to celebrate. As Irina had said, his latest book was selling well. He deserved a night out. He sometimes went to the Bird & Bottle during the playoffs if one of his teams was in the hunt. Driving down Main Street, he turned into the parking lot, noting that the bar had repainted the parking spots since the last time he'd been there.

Pushing through the door, he looked around to see if anyone he knew was in. The crowd was light for a Saturday night, which might have had something to do with the facts that the day's NASCAR race was over; it was the off-season for football; none of the region's basketball teams had made it to the playoffs (no surprise there); and the Atlanta Braves had been rained out. The Bird & Bottle, although partly a sports bar, also catered to the local singles crowd. Roger took a seat where he could see the TV, and the busty blonde tending bar drifted from the other end where she'd been chatting with two girls to take his order.

"What'll you have?" she asked.

"You have any VSOP back there?" he asked, gesturing to the well-stocked shelves in front of the mirror. She thought for a moment, and walked partway down the bar to fish a bottle from the top shelf.

"We have some Armagnac, sweetie. Would that do?" she called.

"Nicely. And if you would add a plate of barbecue-on-a-stick, leave the bottle, and please switch the idiot box to The Car Channel, I won't need to disturb you and your kaffeeklatsch of young lovelies for awhile."

She smiled wryly, fished under the bar, and came out with a marker pen. She drew a line on the bottle showing where the level had started, poured his drink into the snifter she had taken out of the rack, and then stuck her head through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. On her way back to her friends, she used the remote at the cash register to change the channel, leaving Roger to his thoughts.

He watched the various car shows for their entire three-hour cycle, occasionally scribbling a note on the pad he kept in his coat pocket, absently nibbling at the boneless pork barbecue on the skewers from time to time. The clacking of the pool balls and the occasional shouts of joy or outrage from the darts players in the other room provided background noise. He noticed the two women at the other end of the bar eying him now and again, then whispering to each other and giggling or chortling. He caught the attention of the barmaid as she was returning from delivering a platter of fried chicken to the pool sharks.

"Excuse me, Miss ...?"

"Tiffany," the leggy blonde supplied.

" ... Tiffany. Would you be kind enough to see what the two beauties at the other end of the bar are drinking, give them one, put it on my bill, and ask if they'd care to join me?"

"No," Tiffany said firmly, "I wouldn't. Cilla and Betty Sue have been having a snark-fest with you as the subject since you walked in here. The

kindest

thing they've said was that considering what you're watching, you're well dressed for a redneck.

"But if that offer is open,

I

would not mind taking you up on it. I'll just be a minute." She smiled, bringing two more bottles of the local microbrew to the two girls who had been belittling him before returning with a glass of the house white for herself. They clinked glasses, much to Cilla and Betty Sue's surprise, and settled in to talk.

To Roger's surprise, he learned Tiffany was part owner of the Bird & Bottle. The minority shareholder, true, but part owner nevertheless. She had gone to work for Bud Armstrong as a waitress, saved her money, and after four and a half years had bought in, "leaving the ranks of the wage slaves to become a capitalist running dog in management," as she put it. Her revising the bar's menu, expanding the supply of potables, talking Bud into signing a deal with the local microbrewery to become their first tied house, and repositioning the place to appeal to local women as well as the local sports fanatics, had put the Bird & Bottle firmly in the black.

"At the moment, I'm working on Bud to let me redecorate the place," she said, gesturing disdainfully at the stuffed hunting and fishing trophies sitting on shelves a couple of feet below the ceiling. "Quite apart from wanting to repaint in warmer colors that don't have fifty years of tobacco smoke discoloring everything, I want to get rid of every stuffed critter that isn't a bird, add some exotic bottles, put up some NASCAR posters -- maybe a hood or a fender signed by Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick, or Junior off one of their cars, something like that, if I can get one -- and maybe have poster sized schedules of all the local teams made up and put under Plexiglas so we can write the scores and keep the won-lost record up to date.

"But tell me something," she said, switching gears. "I noticed when you came in that you had an expression like, 'This

is

a happy occasion, and you

will

celebrate, and you

will

like it.' The only thing is, it sort of looks like you don't know how. So what's with that?"

"You're not wrong, Tiffany. I'm a writer. I just came from a post-book signing dinner with my editor and a friend of hers she was trying to fix me up with. That didn't work out very well. And Irina has arranged a three-week-long signing tour for me. New Orleans, Galveston, Houston, Dallas, the National Home Improvement Convention in Fort Worth, Taos, Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott, Denver, the Regional D-I-Y show in Boulder, and the annual Oklahoma Home Remodeling Show in Oklahoma City, then home. I leave a week from tomorrow. Yee fuckin' haw." This last, he said with a sour smile.

"You don't like traveling?"

"I like traveling just fine, but on my terms and to places I want to see. Of all the cities on the itinerary, the only one I'm looking forward to visiting is Prescott, because J&G Guns is headquartered there. I'm a gun collector. Any time I'm in the area I stop in, and I haven't left empty-handed yet. It's part Quest for the Lost Ark and part collector mania.

"But as to the book signings themselves ... well, I think you can relate. Beautiful as you are, I bet you've heard the same pick-up lines a jillion times from thousands of different men and maybe a few women as well. And while you probably have pre-programmed replies ready to go, ranging from 'Not tonight, but try again another day' to 'Sorry, only with humans,' you are so sick of the tired old routines that you'd like to scream when guys with delusions of stud-hood come out with them. Or am I wrong about that?"

Tiffany smiled and patted his hand, leaving hers on his. "You're not wrong. I guess you get asked the same questions over and over too.

"I bet this is the most often heard question at a signing: 'Where do you get your ideas?' Aha. I can tell from your expression that's one you get all the time.

"And 'How long did it take to write fill-in-the-blank?' I bet that one comes either from pasty-faced nerds with glasses, or girls who could stand a regular gym routine, both clutching manuscripts six inches thick, who are sure they could be the next George R.R. Martin or E.L. James if they can just get an established author to introduce them to his editor.

"Here's another: 'Why did you do thus-and-such to so-and-so character?' That from obsessive fans who either want to screw their favorite character, or want to kill you for whatever you did that screwed with their vision of their favorite character.

"And I bet you hear 'How much money do you make a year writing?' a lot. I don't know much about writing, but I do know publishers don't send hacks on book signing tours, even short ones."

Roger took her hand. "You left out 'What's your next book going to be about?' and 'When is your next one coming out?' but otherwise you've covered the spectrum pretty well. I suggested to Irina once that she have a sign made up answering all of those, to be set up near the table you sit behind with a stack of your latest. She didn't think it was funny. Answering those perpetual questions comes with the job. If the readers feel they are getting their questions answered

personally

, they buy more books.

"Fortunately, I don't get the ones on characters that often, because mostly I write nonfiction, practical stuff. For the past eight years I've been doing how-tos along the line of the 'For Dummies' books. It was Irina's idea to use alliterative titles, a shtick to pull in the readers. I don't really mind, even if sometimes it feels like I'm channeling Gilderoy Lockhart when I'm trying to come up with a title."

Tiffany chuckled appreciatively and squeezed his fingers. "So what

is

your latest?"

"

Plumbing for the Panic-Stricken

. It de-mystifies home plumbing repairs and projects. It tells how to install and fix sinks, faucets, and toilets; how to install a hot tub or a personal sauna yourself; that kind of D-I-Y project. It walks the reader through the various common plumbing parts and explains how they work, where they should be used, and where they should

not

be used, and why. It tells how to install cut-offs and why you need them. It tells you how to diagnose various problems and what to do about them, from hard water to a failing pressure tank. There's a section on coping with emergencies. It also advises which jobs you can tackle depending on your comfort level, and which you absolutely shouldn't.

"And it stresses, again and again, Rule One of Home Plumbing Repair:

Make sure the water is shut off.

And after you do, check it again just to be sure. I never learned that lesson the hard way, but I've spoken to plenty of do-it-yourselfers who have. In fact, I say it's best if you can chase everyone out of the house, just so you can be sure the water

stays

shut off!"

Tiffany smiled knowingly and leaned closer, making the atmosphere instantly more intimate and coincidentally giving Roger an unobstructed look into her cleavage. She whispered into his ear, "You know, it's just about time for last call. I have a problem, and I think you are just the man to fix it. Would you come home with me and see what you can do?"

He looked into her eyes and read the unspoken message in their sparkle. "Always happy to oblige a lady. Let's get my tab settled and be on our way, shall we?" He handed her a credit card. She stepped into the kitchen for a few moments, reemerged and worked at the register for a minute, and then came back and took Roger's arm, leading him out the front door. He followed her Fiat 500 home along Fieldstown Road.

"Home" for Tiffany was a doublewide trailer in a trailer park that had been put in just over what had been the original western border of Gardenvale before the city fathers had annexed several thousand acres of land from the unincorporated areas surrounding the city. Her trailer was nowhere near new but was in good repair. Tossing her keys into a bowl on a table just inside the front door, she said, "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. Why don't you put a pot of coffee on?"

"How do you take yours?" he asked.

"White," she tossed over her shoulder as she walked into the bedroom.

Roger obediently walked across the trailer to the kitchen to put the dripolator to work. Checking the spice rack, he added cinnamon to the grounds before he switched it on. When it was done, he carried two mugs into the living room and set them on the table opposite the couch. The tip-tap of high heels got his attention.

Tiffany walked over dressed in a long tee shirt intended as a nightdress, belted at the waist with a cloth tie that accentuated her hourglass figure. She smiled at him, taking one of the mugs and raising her eyebrows appreciatively as she inhaled the steam and detected the scent of cinnamon. She sat, motioning him to the seat next to her.

They sat sipping their coffees for a bit, not saying anything. Tiffany eventually put down her mug and looked at Roger, batted her blue eyes in a parody of a 1930s Hollywood ingénue and said, "You know, I'd really appreciate having my neck and shoulders massaged, really I would." He smiled, turned her so her could work on her, and began to massage the tension out of the afflicted areas.

She sighed as his strong fingers relaxed the tendons and muscles in her neck, working patiently on one recalcitrant knot at the base of the skull until it finally softened. He used the "karate chop" technique to initially loosen the shoulder muscles, then shifted to pinpoint pressure to ease the tight burn in her trouble spots, finishing with the long strokes of effleurage to encourage relaxation. Tiffany settled against him, a contented smile on her lips.

His fingers gradually moved along her breasts to find the nipples denting the soft pima cotton fabric. He lightly stroked them with a circular motion, both seeing and feeling them harden from his attentions. She arched her back, encouraging him to take greater liberties.

"Feels good ... don't stop," she whispered as her nipples tightened, enjoying the sensation. Her head tipped back to rest on his shoulder and he bent to her lips. They kissed, gently at first and then harder as arousal liberated them from social proprieties. Her lips parted under his and his tongue tentatively invaded her mouth, the kiss deepening as she sucked on it and began the oral thrust-and-parry of seduction. His hand squeezed the melons on her chest and hers found the lump in his pants, feeling its readiness for action. When his hand fell from her tits to her thigh and found its way under the cloth to caress her skin and work its way up to her mound of Venus, she did not resist.