The World's Last Bachelor

by Pamela Browning

  Roommates, Dorian thought with annoyance as she painstakingly threaded a needle and stuffed the feathers back into the pillow. Then she thought about the day before.

  What a disaster! First Deke, then her car not starting, the fiasco at the restaurant, getting fired from her mystery-theater job, and, finally, her car again refusing to start. At least it was over. At least she’d never have to put up with that particular set of circumstances again in her lifetime, which was just as well. She’d reached the end of her rope last night somewhere between the grilled cheese sandwich and the parking lot of the mall, where her poor little car, faithful companion that it was, still sat.

  Unless Deke Washburn had taken care of it, as he said he would. Actually she hoped he’d forgotten. If he were in charge, her car certainly wouldn’t survive.

  She bit off the end of the thread and tossed the pillow back onto the couch. The phone rang, and she picked it up.

  “Dorian? Jill. Listen, I’ve heard of a job you can probably get,” said her roommate on the other end of the line.

  “Great,” Dorian said unenthusiastically. Jill’s track record as far as jobs were concerned was even less promising than her deplorable record in setting up blind dates. In the past, Jill had steered Dorian to stints as a singing tel-egram delivery person who was expected to jump out of cakes at parties and to one stupefyingly boring job where Dorian had done nothing but sort nuts and bolts into glassine envelopes.

  “Don’t sound so suspicious. My friend Rennie—you remember, he’s the manager at Bulldawg Burgers? Anyway, his fry cook quit. I told him you’d had experience,” Jill said.

  “Frying...let’s see, is that where you brush the food with butter and stick it under the broiler for ten minutes?”

  “Don’t be funny, Dorian. Be there at eleven o’clock. I happen to know that Rennie is so shorthanded that he’ll hire you on the spot. Oh, and wear a hair net. They don’t like hair falling in the french fries. Bye,” she said, and hung up.

  “Hair net. Gee, thanks, Jill,” Dorian said into the dead phone line.

  The phone rang again as soon as she replaced the receiver in its cradle, and thinking that it was Jill calling back, Dorian snapped it up.

  “All right, all right. I’ll go,” she said.

  “Dorian?” The familiar deep voice jarred her, coming as a complete surprise.

  “Deke Washburn. Go away,” she said irritably.

  “I called about your car. I had it towed to the Mazda place, and they can’t fix it. So what do you want—”

  “Nothing, if you’re involved. Tell them I’ll call them later,” she said. Then she hung up.

  Her poor little car had bitten the dust. Well, it had been that kind of week. She’d have to ride the MARTA train for a while, that’s all. At least she didn’t live too far from the nearest station. She could walk there in five or ten minutes.

  She managed to locate a white uniform that she’d worn the last time she’d worked as a waitress, but she couldn’t find a hair net. Maybe Rennie would let her get by without one for at least a day.

  * * *

  DORIAN WORKED a four-hour shift as a fry cook at Bulldawg Burgers and headed home on the MARTA, dejected and disgruntled about her new job. She’d had to heft big vats of grease. She’d dropped a whole basket of french fries on a co-worker’s feet. Nevertheless, Rennie had enthusiastically praised her for doing such a good job and had promised to move her up from french fries to chicken tomorrow.

  Now that’s really something to look forward to, Dorian thought, rolling her borrowed hair net into a tight little ball and stuffing it down into the bottom of her purse. The job terrified her. She was sure she would eventually spill grease on herself and end up in the hospital with a second- or third-degree burn, scarred for life. Then where would she be? Nowhere, that’s where. At least she didn’t have the usual problem of being hit on by the boss. Rennie had made it more than clear that he was in love with the cashier, who also happened to be his wife.

  Dorian noticed the unfamiliar car as soon as she passed the stone gates leading into the apartment complex. It was a beautiful bright red Mazda Miata, and it was parked in front of her building.

  It looks like Carla’s husband finally bought her that new car he’d been promising, she thought, admiring it as she passed by. She and her downstairs neighbor Carla had been nursing their cars through various ailments, lending encouragement and offering each other rides on mornings when one or the other of their decrepit vehicles wouldn’t start.

  Dorian thought she might as well check the mailbox on her way in. Inside were a few bills and a small white envelope addressed to her. Curious, she opened it, and out fell a set of keys.

  “I hope you enjoy your new car,” said the accompanying note. It was signed Deke Washburn.

  “My new car,” she said out loud.

  As Dorian was thoughtfully weighing the shiny new keys in one hand, Carla came out of her apartment, pushing her baby in his stroller. “I saw them deliver it,” she said. “I’m glad you finally got your new wheels. I’m still waiting for mine.”

  “The Miata? Is that the one you saw delivered?”

  “Yeah, and I’m glad you chose red,” Carla said. “Boy, do I envy you. You must have picked up a good job, right?” Her forehead wrinkled in perplexity as she studied Dorian’s grease-spattered uniform.

  “The car is not mine, I don’t want it, and I won’t have it,” Dorian said.

  “Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” Carla called playfully as Dorian ran up the stairs and into her own apartment.

  Dorian threw off the uniform and jumped into the shower. It was three-thirty, and once she washed the smell of grease off, she’d confront Dr. Feelgood himself in his elegant downtown office suite. Didn’t she have his card? Hadn’t he told her to come by to see his brother about a job? Deke Washburn’s business card was her ticket into the executive suite, all right, and today she would use it.

  She was going to give Deke Washburn a piece of her mind—and make him take the car back. This time he had really gone too far.

  * * *

  IN THE BOARDROOM of the Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas executive office where he was meeting with the company’s top managers, Deke fidgeted against the cushions of his big leather chair and tried to concentrate on the droning voice of Maxie Lubner, the president of the advertising agency hired by his brother Bob.

  “We’ll need a spokesperson, an easily recognizable icon that people will associate with Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas,” Maxie was saying.

  “Like the Pillsbury Doughboy?” asked Bob. He was deep into the discussion, concentrating intently on what Maxie was telling them. By contrast, Deke was bored out of his mind. He knew the importance of finding the right spokesper-son, but he hated going over the details. This was the fourth meeting they’d had on the subject, and he was tired of hearing about media blitzes and ad sizes and target groups.

  “The Pillsbury Doughboy would be a good example, but we want to use a real person, not an animated character. You’ve got a good name for your teas. The name Dr. Feelgood’s lends itself to the healthful image that we want to project. All we need is a little pizzazz,” Maxie said, turning the pages of his flip chart until he located a graph.

  “We did a survey and found that more than eighty-seven percent of our respondents reacted favorably to the name Dr. Feelgood’s. Only thirty percent of them reacted favorably to a cartoon character named Dr. Feelgood. Seventy-five percent, on the other hand—”

  Deke’s chin fell to his chest, and he startled himself back into wakefulness. Bob shot him a beseeching look, and Deke resolved to stay awake. He did so by imagining Dorian Carr driving the red Miata he’d had delivered to her apart-ment. Her pale hair would be wafting in the wind, and her eyelashes would be tipped golden by the sun. She would be wearing something black and tight, and Jackie-O sunglasses pushed back like a headband. Every man who saw her would want to take her in his arms and—

  “Don�
�t you, Deke?” Maxie was saying.

  Deke had no idea what Maxie was talking about.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  Bob looked uneasy. “If we choose a woman as the Dr. Feelgood’s spokesperson, what will women’s groups say?” he asked worriedly.

  Deke realized that he’d just given his approval to hiring a woman as the Dr. Feelgood’s spokesperson. He turned the idea over in his mind. Well, why not? Deke liked women—too much, he sometimes thought.

  “A woman portrayed as a doctor is positive. I don’t see why women’s groups would kick up a fuss,” Maxie said.

  “What do you think, Deke?” Bob asked, turning to him.

  “Go for it,” Deke said. Bob treated him to a more searching look, but it didn’t matter. Deke was eager to be lost in his daydream again, driving around Atlanta in Dorian’s new red car.

  As the others discussed the good and bad points of hiring a woman as a spokesperson, Deke managed to conjure up a picture of her again. This time she was wearing a white bikini under a diaphanous cape of white chiffon. They would head for his house on Blue Lake in the north Georgia mountains near Mabry, and it would be late summer, and—

  The door burst open. Dorian Carr, her cheeks flaming, strode across the room and stopped in front of him. “I don’t want your car, Deke Washburn, or anything else. All I want is to be left alone. Alone. That means by myself, responsible for myself, taking care of myself.” She lobbed the keys at him, which he managed to catch neatly as she turned and headed purposefully toward the door.

  The people in the room sat thunderstruck until Maxie erupted into action. “Wait!” Maxie shouted, running around the table to block her way. He stood in front of the door, his hands firmly planted on both sides of it as a barricade.

  “Let me pass!” Dorian said imperatively. Her haughtiness would have done credit to a dowager duchess.

  “You—you are what I want!” Maxie said, scarcely able to contain his glee. He manufactured a giant flourish for the blank-faced directors. “This woman, this vibrant, energetic, passionate woman—she would be the perfect Dr. Feelgood!”

  Chapter Four

  A stunned silence swept over the executive boardroom.

  “Who are you?” Dorian said into the void.

  “That’s not important. What is important is who you are,” Maxie said.

  Deke jumped to his feet and sprinted the length of the room. “She’s Dorian Carr,” he said quickly. “She’s an actress.”

  “Where have you worked?” Maxie asked excitedly.

  Dorian reeled off titles of plays, none of which Deke had heard of, much less seen.

  “Any film work?”

  Again Dorian, speaking as if by rote, ticked off a list of titles. Maxie looked impressed. Deke just stood there.

  “Gentlemen, this is our new Dr. Feelgood. Can you see it? Can you understand what has veritably dropped into our laps?”

  The men on the board stared in astonishment. Even Bob seemed flabbergasted.

  Maxie turned to Dorian. “You have the quality we’re looking for, Ms. Carr. You’re brimming with gumption, can project sincerity, and your insouciance is the frosting on the cake. I can see you in our commercials as a woman astronaut brewing tea on the moon, as an anthropologist tracking gorillas in the jungle.... You’ll take the job, won’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Dorian asked. Her wary eyes encountered Deke. “What is he talking about?” she pleaded.

  “A contract,” Maxie said, appropriating Dorian’s arm and leading her to a vacant chair. Dorian sat down, still looking bewildered.

  “Let’s leave them to discuss it,” Bob said hastily. He and the other board members adjourned to Bob’s nearby office.

  Deke didn’t follow. Instead he sat down beside Dorian. He thought he’d better stay and encourage whatever was going on here.

  Maxie summarized, with increasing excitement, what he had told the executive board earlier.

  “You’d be the perfect spokesperson,” he told Dorian, who was regarding him with wide-eyed apprehension.

  “You’d be the star of the commercials,” Deke added.

  “In addition, we’ll run print ads in Time, the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, you name it. Your face will be a household word. I mean, household image,” Maxie said.

  “I was only here to return an unwanted gift,” Dorian said with dignity. “I wasn’t looking for a job.”

  “You need one,” Deke reminded her pleasantly.

  She pinned him with a look. “I have a job, thank you, as of this morning,” she said in her most disdainful tone.

  This was disconcerting. “You do? What kind of job?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Maxie cleared his throat. “What you may not realize is that this job as the Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas spokesperson is going to pay a lot of money. It’s the kind of job you could build a career on. Who’s your agent?”

  Dorian said, “Susan McKenny,” with what seemed to be great reluctance.

  Maxie looked impressed. “We’ve met. She handles Megan Marchand, the child star in the `Glynn County’ series. And she’s Demetrius Hogan’s agent. He was in `Oglethorpe,’ that made-for-TV epic that was filmed around here.”

  “I was an extra in that movie,” Dorian said.

  “You should have been the star,” Maxie said smoothly. Deke had to admire the guy. He was managing to get on Dorian’s good side. It was encouraging to know that Dorian even had a good side.

  “I will be a star someday, but on Broadway,” Dorian said, elevating her chin. Deke studied the line of her jaw; it was beautifully sculpted, sweeping as it did into the graceful stem of her neck.

  “The Dr. Feelgood’s spokesperson role could be a springboard. What we have in mind for the TV commercials is this woman doctor, see, with a comic side. And everywhere she goes—down the Amazon River, up Mount Everest—she finds a way to make someone feel good by brewing him a cup of Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Tea. And she’ll end each commercial with a kind of wry, savvy comment. Think of Murphy Brown’s wit combined with Oprah’s empathy and toss in Kathleen Turner’s sense of adventure in Romancing the Stone. It’s pure corn, but people will remember these commercials and the star’s personality. The cam-paign is designed to compete with those coffee commercials that tell a story,” Maxie told her.

  Dorian remained impassive. “It sounds clever, but I don’t want anything to do with Deke Washburn,” she said. She ignored Deke sitting at her elbow.

  “You wouldn’t have to have anything to do with him,” Maxie said.

  “Wait just a minute,” Deke said forcefully. “It is my company.”

  “Which is exactly what worries me,” Dorian retorted, her eyes spitting fire.

  Maxie sat back. “I thought you’d jump at the chance to be our Dr. Feelgood.”

  “Your original Dr. Feelgood—” she paused to slide a meaningful glance at Deke “—has made me Feelawful on several occasions, and I only met him yesterday. An association with his company could only cause me problems. Count me out.” She stood up and started for the door.

  “No!” Maxie said, jumping up and running after her. “You can’t do this to me!”

  Dorian whirled. “Oh, yes, I can,” she said.

  Deke stood up and followed them. “Dorian,” he said quietly. “Think what this could mean to your career. Think, Dorian.” He edged around her so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes.

  She met his gaze with a straightforward look of loathing.

  “There aren’t that many acting jobs in Atlanta. You said so yourself,” Deke went on, sure that he was having no impact at all. “I don’t know what kind of job you’ve managed to land between last night and this afternoon, but it can’t possibly provide the kind of national exposure that the Dr. Feelgood’s media blitz can give you.”

  Dorian looked slightly less resolute, so Deke went on talking.

  “Your face would be beame
d into millions of homes several times a day. Everyone who picks up any major magazine will see you hyping Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas.”

  “And we’ll feature you in a national contest,” Maxie added. “Tea for Two is the name of it, and it’s an attempt to recruit more men as drinkers of Dr. Feelgood’s teas. The winner of the contest will be treated to tea at the Plaza Hotel in New York with Dorian Carr, the nationally known `Dr. Feelgood’ herself.” Maxie waited expectantly for Dorian’s reaction.

  “Let’s sit down over a cup of Dr. Feelgood’s tea and talk it over,” Deke said hopefully.

  “Well...” Dorian said. Deke thought he detected a heavy dose of doubt in that one word.

  “Our company tea room is at the end of the floor. Maxie will come with us, won’t you, Maxie?”

  “Sure,” Maxie said, bouncing up and down in his eagerness to close the deal. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you ready to roll with this major campaign?” Dorian asked on the way to the tea room. “When would you have to begin filming? And where would the filming be? I have this other job, you know, and I can’t just be dashing off here and there and all over the place.”

  Deke ushered her inside the tea room, a creation of Larissa’s and therefore very comfortable and pleasing to the eye, and sat her down at a table. A uniformed hostess who was clearly in awe of Deke ap-peared and deferentially provided them with an assortment of teas from which they made their choices. She whisked out of the room again to brew the tea, and Deke leaned over the table.

  “You won’t need your other job. Don’t you realize that we’re talking big money here?” he asked. Maxie nodded in agreement.

  The door opened. “Mr. Lubner, you’re wanted on the telephone. It’s your office in New York,” said Bob’s assistant.

  Maxie looked harried. “I’ll leave you two to talk this over,” he said, shooting a doubtful look at Deke.

  Deke tried to look businesslike and noncommittal, but his heart was beating rapidly and his palms were sweaty. He hoped he wouldn’t say or do the wrong thing.

  Maxie left, and Dorian heaved a sigh. “Well, this is certainly not what I expected when I woke up this morning. Neither was the car. You shouldn’t have sent it,” she said.