The Nicest Guy in America

by Angela Benson

  “The Nicest Guy in America?” She heard the suspicion in his voice. “Exactly what kind of contest is this?”

  “Well, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it since you subscribe to our magazine. We ran an ad for nominations in last month’s issue.”

  “And I was nominated?”

  “More than once,” she said.

  “You still haven’t told me what kind of contest it is.”

  “As I said, we’re calling it The Nicest Guy in America Contest. Women nominated wonderful men they had dated who turned out not to be the right man for them.”

  Silence.

  “You mean women nominated men they dumped? Is this some kind of a joke?”

  The words sounded harsh coming from him. “I assure you the contest is being handled with utmost professionalism. It is definitely not a joke.”

  “It’s gotta be a joke, lady. Why do you think I’d want to he featured in a contest about men who’ve been dumped? Who nominated me, anyway?”

  Kim rattled off the six names.

  “Damn,” he said, again surprised. “I was nominated six times. You must think I’m a number one loser.”

  “Not at all, Reggie,” she chimed in. “You’re a finalist because we think you’re a true representation of a Nice Guy. Your nomination letters all portrayed you in a most positive manner and with a great deal of respect.”

  “So what do you want?”

  Kim knew she was on the verge of losing him and therefore she had to get to the point of her call before he hung up. “I want to interview you, along with the other finalists of course, for a spread in an upcoming issue of our magazine.”

  “And what do I get out of being in your magazine?” he asked, not yet warming to her idea. “Other than having everyone in the country know how many times I’ve been dumped?”

  “Well, we expect this article to bring the kind of response our bachelor issue brings. You’ll be getting mail from women all over the country who want to meet a Nice Guy. I’ll want to interview you in your home and your place of business and get some candid pictures in both places.” She crossed her fingers and her toes and said a silent prayer. “What do you say I come down there next Tuesday, a week from today?”

  “I say no. I have no desire to be on display in your magazine. Believe me, women don’t want a nice guy. They want some player who looks good, talks smooth and is about as stable as a sand castle. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Good-bye, Ms. Washington.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kim said. She couldn’t let him get away.

  “I was on my way out the door when you called. I don’t have all night.”

  “Won’t you think about the interview? I promise you this article will in no way be embarrassing. It will be an honest look at Nice Guys. We may even use your suggestion and explore why women drop Nice Guys for the not so nice ones. What do you say?”

  “I say no, Ms. Washington. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to go.”

  “Wait,” Kim said, but it was no use. He’d already hung up. “Dag,” she said, “I definitely blew that one.”

  “What’s the matter, kiddo?” Jim Whittaker asked.

  She looked up, not surprised to see him standing in the doorway of her cubicle. It was almost seven, but many of the staff kept late hours. “How do you do that?” she asked.

  Jim perched his bulk on the edge of her desk. “Do what?”

  “Show up unexpectedly and jump into the end of my phone conversations.” She eyed him closely. “You don’t have listening devices in the phones, do you?”

  Jim laughed. “Now that’s funny, Kimmy. Come on, what’s got you so upset?”

  “I just called Reggie Stevens, my fifth Nice Guy finalist, and he won’t agree to an interview.”

  “No problem,” Jim said with a shrug. “Pick another guy or stick with four.” He got up. “I thought you had a real problem. Take care of it, Kimmy. And you’d better start making reservations for your trips to visit these guys. That spread is due in six weeks.”

  After Jim scooted off to nose in somebody else’s business, Kim sat thinking about what he’d said. He was right. She could pick another finalist or she could go with the four she already had. This wasn’t a big deal. So what if Reggie Stevens didn’t want to participate? Maybe she’d been wrong about him. Maybe he wasn’t a Nice Guy after all. Maybe he was just another guy using another angle to get over on women. Unfortunately for him, his angle wasn’t working too well.

  Chapter 2

  “I think you should do it, man,” Luther said. He propped his feet up on the wrought iron and cherry cocktail table in Reggie’s den. In the background, an old Al Green tune played from the entertainment center. “A lot of women read Urban Style. You’d probably get a lot of play from an article.”

  Reggie leaned forward and placed his beer bottle on the table. He, Luther and their friend Nate Brown had just returned from their regular Wednesday visit to the Boys’ Club. “Is that all you can think about? Meeting women?”

  “What else is there?” Luther stretched his arm across the back of the teal leather sofa and tapped Reggie’s shoulder. “I figure it this way. I’ve only got one life and I’ve got to make the best of it. Like they say, so many women, so little time.”

  “At least you’ve stopped marrying every woman you meet,” Nate said from the matching club chair next to the sofa. At five-ten, Nate was the shortest of the three friends. His boyish grin made him seem the youngest, though he was actually about three months older than Luther who was only a couple of weeks older than Reggie.

  Reggie laughed. “Nate has a point, Luther.”

  “I’m not gonna let Nate press me. He’s the only brother I know whose wife filed for divorce on the grounds of boredom.”

  “At least I was married longer than a week,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, but your wife was bored to death before the honeymoon was over.”

  “So what do you have to say to that, Nate?” Reggie asked, getting into the joking. He, Nate and Luther never failed to have a good time when they were together. Sometimes Reggie felt they reverted back to little tykes on the playground. At others, they seemed more like college boys on the make. When they were together, they rarely acted like the thirty-eight year old professionals they were.

  “Man, I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Nate said. “At least, we’ve been married. You can’t even get a woman to go out with you for more than six months.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Luther added. “And when you get a chance for some national publicity with the women, you turn it down. You must be losing your mind.”

  “Or maybe he’s embarrassed,” Nate said. “Maybe he doesn’t want everybody back home in Oklahoma City to know the high school star quarterback and Most Popular Guy in the Senior Class is the most dumped guy in America.”

  “Hey, hold up,” Reggie said, tapping his toe against the wrought iron base of the cocktail table. While he was used to the teasing of his buddies, things were getting out of hand. He looked at Luther. “How would you feel if they told you that you were a finalist in the Most Divorced Man in America Contest?”

  “Hey, man,” Luther said. “They didn’t divorce me. I divorced them.”

  “Yeah,” Nate added. “After they threw you out of the house.”

  Reggie turned to Nate. “How about you, Nate? How’d you like to be in the Most Boring Ex-Husband in America Contest?”

  “Hey, I’m not boring. I’m just shy.”

  “Right,” Luther said with a snort. “You’re shy until you open your mouth. Then you’re boring.” Luther made a snoring sound. “But let’s not get off the subject. We’re not talking about us; we’re talking about Reggie. I still think you ought to do the interview,” he said to his friend. “What harm could it do?”

  Land another blow to his already bruised ego, maybe? he thought. “Too late,” Reggie said. “I’ve already told them no. It’s a moot point now, so let’s talk about something else. Like
your search for someplace else to live.”

  “I don’t know about you, man,” Luther said. “I told you I was looking.”

  “You’ve been looking for a year. It’s time, Luther.” Luther’s last divorce, his third, had left him anxious to get away from Oklahoma and his ever-increasing number of ex-wives. The Club, a nightclub for the over-thirty crowd that he’d started before his first marriage, was a huge financial success, but most of the money was going to the ex-wives.

  After visiting Reggie in Atlanta only one time, Luther had decided to turn his first club over to the ex-wives and start afresh. He’d gotten Nate, a commercial real estate broker, to help him make a deal on a suitable property in Atlanta, and before Reggie knew what was happening, Luther was moving in with him. The exposure Nate had gotten to Atlanta’s commercial real estate market convinced him that Atlanta would be a good place for him to expand his business. So, six months later, he, too, was in Atlanta. Fortunately for Reggie, Nate had chosen to get his own place.

  “I don’t know why you want me to leave,” Luther was saying. “It’s not like you have a woman or anything.”

  “It’s his house,” Nate explained as if talking to a child. “You have money. You could find a place if you weren’t so cheap.”

  “I’m not cheap.”

  “Yes, you are,” Reggie said. “Look at your car. You need a new one. If you ever get stopped in that rat trap, you’re going to get a ticket.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with my car. It’s practically an antique.”

  “Not an antique,” Nate said. “More like a junk heap. You’re too cheap to buy a new car and too cheap to foot the bill for your own place to live. Maybe your wives divorced you ‘cos you’re so cheap.”

  Reggie smiled. He liked putting Luther on the hot seat. “And I know you have plenty of money. You spend as much time with the Wall Street Journal as you do with Playboy.”

  “All right, enough,” Luther said. “Just so you know, I’ve ordered a new car and I’ll be out of here at the end of the month like I told you. But you’re gonna miss me. I was about to set you up with a Halle Berry look-alike, but I’m not so sure you deserve a fine woman like her.”

  Reggie remembered the woman who’d grabbed his butt at Luther’s last party. “I don’t need a matchmaker. I can find my own women.”

  “Sure you can,” Luther said with sarcasm. “You’re the most successful man I know when it comes to the women. Second only to Mr. Boring over there.”

  “Give the man the digits, Luther,” said Nate. “You know you won’t be getting any play from her.”

  Luther opened his mouth to make another crack on Nate, but obviously decided against it. He reached in his pocket and handed Reggie a slip of paper with a name and phone number on it. “Now don’t mess this up,” he warned Reggie. “This sister has it going on. She’s not like the needy women you usually date.”

  Reggie took the paper and glanced at the info. So, Brandy was her name. “She grabbed my behind the night of your party.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Luther asked incredulously. “You can bet if she’d grabbed my butt, I’d be at her house right now.”

  Reggie shook his head and placed the slip of paper in his pocket. He wasn’t sure he was going to call. Brandy was attractive, but she didn’t appeal to him. He liked his women a little less aggressive.

  “You’re not even going to call her, are you, Reggie?” Luther asked.

  “Maybe.” Reggie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re crazy, man,” Luther said. “You can’t do much better than this sister. She’s got beauty, body and brains. You definitely won’t have to help her with her rent.”

  Nate laughed. “He has a point there, Reggie. You might want to make that call.”

  The last thing Reggie wanted to do was rush into another relationship. He needed some time to figure out what had gone wrong in the last one. In the last few ones, to be exact. His track record hadn’t been too good lately. “Maybe I’m thinking about taking a break from women and the dating scene. Everybody seems to be playing games. Women say they want a nice guy and then they go back to the guy who dogged them. I don’t understand them.”

  “Who said you had to understand them?” Luther asked. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s all women. It’s the women you choose. That’s why you need to hook up with Halle. I’m telling you, man, she’s got it going on in a major way.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Reggie said, but he wouldn’t commit to anything more. He was about burned-out. While he tried to be understanding of women and really didn’t want to be with a woman who didn’t want to be with him, he was finding it more and more difficult to understand the choices women made. For now, he’d stop thinking about it.

  ~ ~ ~

  Kimberla couldn’t stop thinking about Reggie Stevens. It was Tuesday, two weeks to the day since she’d spoken to Reggie on the phone, and she’d just gotten back to D.C. after traveling to Denver and Dallas to interview two of the finalists. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been impressed with either of them. Sure, they were nice guys, in a way, but she also thought they were a bit clingy. She imagined they smothered a girl. She didn’t get that impression from Reggie Stevens. Even though he’d turned down her request for an interview and refused to participate in the contest, she still had the lingering feeling he was a true Nice Guy. A guy she’d like to get to know.

  Of course, she’d been a bit disappointed when he’d turned her down out of hand, but after she thought about it she had seen his point. A private person might view the contest as a bit over the top. Left to her boss, it might turn out that way, but she was in charge and she was determined that this article would explore male-female relationships and draw some conclusions about why people choose the mates they do. She’d even spoken to a couple of family counselors and psychiatrists. Her article was definitely shaping up to be something she could be proud of. And something she felt Reggie would be proud of too. If only she could convince him to participate.

  She shook her head and glanced at her antique grandfather clock, the only furniture she’d taken from her family home when she’d moved out after her mother’s death five years ago. Any minute now, Leslie and Tam would be ringing her doorbell wanting to get the scoop on her latest interview. She wondered if she had enough time to call Reggie Stevens again before they arrived.

  She tossed aside the paisley sofa pillow she had pulled onto her lap and got up from the loveseat to find his phone number. She thumbed through her Day Timer and quickly found it. Sucking in her breath, she picked up the phone on the wall in her kitchen and began dialing.

  Her doorbell sounded after the second ring.

  “Damn,” she said under her breath. She let the phone ring one more time before deciding to hang up. “Coming,” she called to her insistent visitors.

  “What took you so long?” Tam asked as soon as Kim opened the door.

  “Yeah, you don’t have a man in here, do you?” Leslie added, entering the apartment after Tam. “We don’t want to interrupt anything.”

  “Please,” Kim said. “You’re not interrupting anything. It just took me a minute to answer the door.” She watched her two friends make themselves comfortable on her green corduroy loveseat, then joined them by taking a seat in the matching rocker-recliner across from them.

  “So tell us about the guys you interviewed,” Leslie said, folding her legs under her.

  Kim looked at her eager friends and almost laughed. One would have thought she’d interviewed celebrities instead of some guys who’d been dumped by their girlfriends. “Unfortunately, there’s not much to tell.”

  “I knew it,” Leslie said with satisfaction. “They were duds. Never trust a good guy.”

  “How would you know, Leslie?” Tam asked. “You’ve never dated a good guy.”

  “They were good to me,” Leslie said with a sly smile. “One woman’s bad is definitely another woman’s good.”

  “You ought
to know,” Tam smarted. “Lord knows, you’ve dated enough bad ones.”

  “Marcus wasn’t exactly a saint, Tam,” Leslie shot back. “Or have you forgotten?”

  Kim had the feeling that things were about to get out of hand with her two friends. Tam resented the speed and ease with which Leslie went through men and Leslie thought Tam was jealous of her because she was so thin. Kim tried not to get in the middle of their brawls, knowing somebody had to be the voice of reason if the three of them were going to remain friends. “Let’s not get started tonight,” she said. “I’m not up for it.”

  “She started it,” Leslie said in a voice that indicated she was used to getting her way. “Who made her the morality police?”

  “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” Tam said with a smug look on her face.

  Kim thought sometimes Tam was a bit too self-righteous for her own good. “Tam,” she warned. “I think we should talk about something else.”

  “Yeah,” Leslie said. “Why don’t we talk about Tam’s love life?” She covered her mouth. “Oops,” she said, “I forgot. She doesn’t have a love life.”

  Kim winced. That was it. The verbal fight was on and nothing she could do would stop it. They’d have to slug it out with words. She listened to the battle for a few minutes. Then, tiring of it, she got up and went into the kitchen to prepare a snack. She knew the combatants would be hungry and thirsty when they finished.

  Sure enough, ten minutes later, they joined her in the kitchen. “You guys finished?” Kim asked.

  “Finished with what?” Tam said. “We were just having a discussion.”

  “You didn’t have to leave the room,” Leslie said.”Why do you do that anyway?”

  Kim rolled her eyes. Tam and Leslie’s quick makeups always bewildered her. “I don’t enjoy hearing my two best friends berate each other,” she said, handing a tray of cheese and crackers to Leslie. “Take that back into the great room, will you?”

  Leslie took the tray and turned back to the great room. “What do you want me to take?” Tam asked.

  Kim pushed the pitcher of tea into her friend’s thrust out hands. “You take the pitcher. I’ll bring the glasses.”