by Linda Howard
Well, no one’s life was perfect, Jaine thought. She hadn’t done so great in the romance department herself. She’d been engaged three times but hadn’t yet made it to the altar. After the third breakup, she had decided to give dating a rest for a while and concentrate on her career. Here she was, seven years later, still concentrating. She had a good credit record, a nice bank account, and had just bought her first very own house—not that she was enjoying the house as much as she had thought she would, what with that nasty-tempered, inconsiderate cretin next door. He might be a cop, but he still made her uneasy, because cop or not, he looked like the type who would burn down your house if you got on his bad side. She had been on his bad side from the day she moved in.
“I had another episode with my neighbor this morning,” she said, sighing as she propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her entwined fingers.
“What did he do this time?” T.J. was sympathetic, because, as they all knew, Jaine was stuck, and bad neighbors could make your life a living hell.
“I was in a hurry and backed into my trash can. You know how when you’re running late you always do things that would never happen if you took your time? Everything went wrong this morning. Anyway, my can knocked his down, and the lid bounced into the street. You can imagine the noise. He came charging out the front door like a bear, yelling that I was the noisiest person he’d ever seen.”
“You should have kicked his can over,” Marci said. She wasn’t a believer in turning the other cheek.
“He’d have arrested me for disturbing the peace,” Jaine said mournfully. “He’s a cop.”
“No way!” They all looked incredulous, but then, they had heard her describe him, and red eyes, beard stubble, and dirty clothes didn’t sound very coplike.
“I guess cops are just as likely to be drunks as anyone else,” T.J. said, a little hesitantly. “More so, I’d say.”
Jaine frowned, thinking back to the morning’s encounter. “Come to think of it, I didn’t smell anything on him. He looked like he’d been on a three-day drunk, but he didn’t smell like it. Damn, I hate to think he can be that grouchy when he isn’t hungover.”
“Pay up,” Marci said.
“Damn it!” Jaine said, exasperated with herself. She had made a deal with them that she’d pay each a quarter every time she cursed, figuring that would give her the incentive to quit.
“Double it,” T.J. chortled, holding out her hand.
Grumbling, but being careful not to swear, Jaine dug out fifty cents for each of them. She made certain she always had plenty of change these days.
“At least he’s just a neighbor,” Luna said soothingly. “You can avoid him.”
“So far I’m not doing a very good job at it,” Jaine admitted, scowling at the table. Then she straightened, determined to stop letting the jerk dominate her life and her thoughts the way he had for the past two weeks. “Enough about him. Anything interesting going on with you guys?”
Luna bit her lip, and misery chased across her face. “I called Shamal last night, and a woman answered.”
“Oh, damn.” Marci leaned across the table to pat Luna’s hand, and Jaine had a moment of envy at her friend’s verbal freedom.
The waiter chose that moment to distribute menus that they didn’t need, because they knew all the selections by heart. They gave him their orders, he collected the unopened menus, and when he left, they all leaned closer to the table.
“What are you going to do?” Jaine asked. She was an expert at breaking up, as well as at being dumped. Her second fiancé, the bastard, had waited until the night before the wedding, the rehearsal night, to tell her he couldn’t go through with it. Getting over that had taken a while—and she wasn’t going to pay up for words she thought, but didn’t say out loud. Was “bastard” a curse word, anyway? Was there an official list she could consult?
Luna shrugged. She was close to tears, and trying to be nonchalant. “We aren’t engaged, or even seeing each other exclusively. I don’t have any right to complain.”
“No, but you can protect yourself and stop seeing him,” T.J. said gently. “Is he worth this kind of pain?”
Marci snorted. “No man is.”
“Amen,” Jaine said, still thinking of her three broken engagements.
Luna picked at her napkin, her long, slender fingers restless. “But when we’re together, he … he acts as if he really cares. He’s sweet, and loving, and so considerate—”
“They all are, until they get what they want.” Marci stubbed out her third cigarette. “That’s personal experience speaking, you understand. Have your fun with him, but don’t expect him to change.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” T.J. said ruefully. “They never change. They may put on an act for a while, but when they think they have you sewed up and tied down, they relax and Mr. Hyde shows his hairy face again.”
Jaine laughed. “That sounds like something I would say.”
“Except there weren’t any curse words,” Marci pointed out.
T.J. waved a signal to cut the jokes. Luna looked even more miserable than before. “So I should either put up with being one of a herd, or stop seeing him?”
“Well… yeah.”
“But it shouldn’t be that way! If he cares for me, how can he be interested in all those other women?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Jaine replied. “The one-eyed snake has no taste.”
“Sweetheart,” Marci said, her smoker’s voice as kind as she could make it, “if you’re looking for Mr. Perfect, you’re going to spend your whole life being disappointed, because he doesn’t exist. You have to get the best deal you can, but there will always be problems.”
“I know he isn’t perfect, but—”
“But you want him to be,” T.J. finished.
Jaine shook her head. “Isn’t going to happen,” she announced. “The perfect man is pure science fiction. Not that we’re perfect, either,” she added, “but most women do at least try. Men don’t try. That’s why I gave up on them. Relationships just don’t work out for me.” She paused, then said thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t mind having a sex slave, though.”
The other three burst out laughing, even Luna.
“I could get into that,” Marci said. “I wonder where I can get one?”
“Try Sexslaves-R-Us,” T.J. suggested, and they dissolved into laughter again.
“There’s probably a Web site,” Luna said, choking a little.
“Of course there is.” Jaine was totally deadpan. “It’s on my Favorites list: www.sexslaves.com.”
“Just type in your requirements and you can rent Mr. Perfect by the hour or the day.” T.J. waved her glass of beer, carried away with enthusiasm.
“A day? Get real.” Jaine hooted. “An hour is asking for a miracle.”
“Besides, there is no Mr. Perfect, remember?” Marci said.
“Not a real one, no, but a sex slave would have to pretend to be exactly what you wanted, wouldn’t he?”
Marci was never without her soft leather briefcase. She opened it and dug out a pad of paper and a pen, slapping them down on the table. “He most certainly would. Let’s see, what would Mr. Perfect be like?”
“He’d have to do the dishes half the time without being asked,” T.J. said, slapping her hand down on the table and drawing curious looks their way.
When they managed to stop laughing long enough to be coherent, Marci scribbled on her pad. “Okay, number one: Do the dishes.”
“No, hey, doing the dishes can’t be number one,” Jaine protested. “We have more serious issues to address first.”
“Yeah,” Luna said. “Seriously. What do we think a perfect man would be like? I’ve never thought about it in those terms. Maybe it would help if I had it clear in my mind what I like in a man.”
They all paused. “The perfect man? Seriously?” Jaine wrinkled her nose.
“Seriously.”
“This is going to take some thinking,” Marci
pronounced.
“Not for me,” T.J. said, the laughter fading from her face. “The most important thing is that he wants the same things out of life that you do.”
They lapsed into a little pond of silence. The attention their laughter had gotten from the diners at the surrounding tables moved on to more promising targets.
“Wants the same things out of life,” Marci repeated as she wrote it down. “That’s number one? Are we agreed?”
“That’s important,” Jaine said. “But I’m not sure it’s number one.”
“Then what’s number one for you?”
“Faithfulness.” She thought of her second fiancé, the bastard. “Life’s too short to waste it on someone you can’t trust. You should be able to depend on the man you love not to lie to you or cheat on you. If you have that as a base, you can work on the other stuff.”
“That’s number one for me,” Luna said quietly.
T.J. thought about it. “Okay,” she finally said. “If Galan wasn’t faithful, I wouldn’t want to have a baby with him.”
“I’ll go along with that,” Marci said. “I can’t stand a two-timer. Number one: He’s faithful. Doesn’t cheat or lie.”
They all nodded.
“What else?” She sat with the pen poised over the pad.
“He should be nice,” T.J. offered.
“Nice?” Marci looked incredulous.
“Yes, nice. Who wants to spend her life with a jerk?”
“Or next door to one?” Jaine muttered. She nodded in agreement. “Nice is good. It doesn’t sound exciting, but think about it. I think Mr. Perfect would be kind to kids and animals, help old ladies across the street, not insult you when your opinion is different from his. Being nice is so important it’s close to being number one.”
Luna nodded.
“Okay,” Marci said. “Hell, you’ve even convinced me. I don’t guess I’ve ever known a nice guy. Number two: Nice.” She wrote it down. “Number three? I have my own idea on this one. I want a guy who’s dependable. If he says he’s going to do something, he should do it. If he’s supposed to meet me somewhere at seven, he should be there at seven, not come strolling in at nine-thirty or maybe not at all. Is there a vote on this one?”
They all four raised their hands in an aye vote, and “Dependable” went down in the number three slot.
“Number four?”
“The obvious,” Jaine said. “A steady job.”
Marci winced. “Ouch. That one hurt.” Brick was currently sitting on his butt instead of working.
“A steady job is part of being dependable,” T.J. pointed out. “And I agree, it’s important. Holding down a steady job shows maturity and a sense of responsibility.”
“Steady job,” Marci said as she wrote.
“He should have a sense of humor,” Luna said.
“Something more than an appreciation for The Three Stooges?” Jaine asked.
They began snickering. “What is it with men and The Three Stooges?” T.J. asked, rolling her eyes. “And bodily function jokes! Put that at number one, Marci—no toilet jokes!”
“Number five: Sense of humor.” Marci chuckled as she wrote. “In the interest of fairness, I don’t think we can dictate what form the humor takes.”
“Sure we can,” Jaine corrected. “He’s going to be our sex slave, remember?”
“Number six.” Marci called them to order by tapping her pen on the rim of her glass. “Let’s get back to business, ladies. What’s number six?”
They all looked at each other and shrugged. “Money’s nice,” T.J. finally offered. “It isn’t a requirement, not in real life, but this is fantasy, right? The perfect man should have money.”
“Filthy rich or comfortable?”
That called for more thought.
“I like filthy rich, myself,” Marci said.
“But he would want to call all the shots if he was filthy rich. He’d be used to it.”
“No way is that going to happen. Okay, money is nice, but not too much money. Comfortable. Mr. Perfect is financially comfortable.”
Four hands went up, and “Money” was written in beside the number six.
“Since this is fantasy,” Jaine said, “he should be good-looking. Not drop-dead gorgeous, because that could be a problem. Luna’s the only one of us pretty enough to hold her own with a handsome guy.”
“I’m not doing so good at it, am I?” Luna replied with a tinge of bitterness. “But, yeah, for Mr. Perfect to be perfect, you should enjoy looking at him.”
“Hear, hear. Number seven is: Good to look at.” When she had finished writing, Marci looked up with a grin. “I’m going to be the one to say what we’ve all been thinking. He should be great in bed. Not just good; he should be great. He should be able to make my toes curl and my eyes roll back in my head. He should have the stamina of a Kentucky Derby winner and the enthusiasm of a sixteen-year-old.”
They were still rolling with laughter when the waiter plunked their orders down on the table. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” T.J. managed to gasp.
“I get it,” he said wisely. “You’re talking about men.”
“Nope, we’re talking science fiction,” Jaine said, which sent them off again. The people at the other tables were staring at them again, trying to overhear what was so funny.
The waiter left. Marci leaned over the table. “And while I’m at it, I want my Mr. Perfect to have a ten incher!”
“Oh, my!” T.J. pretended to swoon, fanning herself. “What I couldn’t do with ten inches—or rather, what I could do with ten inches!”
Jaine was laughing so hard she had to hold her sides. Keeping her voice down was an effort, and her words shook with hilarity. “C’mon! Anything over eight inches is strictly for show-and-tell. It’s there, but you can’t use it. It might look good in a locker room, but let’s face it—those extra two inches are leftovers.”
“Leftovers,” Luna gasped, holding her stomach and shrieking with laughter. “Let’s hear it for l-leftovers!”
“Oh, boy.” Marci wiped her eyes as she scribbled rapidly. “Now we’re cooking. What else does Mr. Perfect have?”
T.J. weakly waved her hand. “Me,” she offered between giggles. “He can have me.”
“If we don’t trample you getting to him,” Jaine said, and raised her glass. The other three lifted theirs, and they touched rims with ringing clinks. “To Mr. Perfect, wherever he is!”
three
Saturday morning dawned bright and early—way too bright, and way the hell too early. BooBoo woke Jaine at six A.M. by yowling in her ear. “Go away” she mumbled, pulling the pillow over her head.
BooBoo yowled again, and batted the pillow. She got the message: either get up, or he was going to unsheathe his claws. She pushed the pillow aside and sat up, glaring at him. “You’re evil, y’know that? You couldn’t do this yesterday morning, could you? No, you have to wait until my day off, when I don’t have to get up early.”
He looked unimpressed with her outrage. That was the thing about cats; even the scruffiest one was convinced of its innate superiority. She scratched him behind his ears and a low rumble shivered through his entire body. His slanted yellow eyes closed in bliss. “You just wait,” she told him. “I’m going to get you addicted to this scratching stuff, then I’m going to stop doing it. You’re going to go cold turkey, pal.”
He jumped down from the bed and padded to the open bedroom door, pausing to look back as if checking to make certain she was getting up. Jaine yawned and threw back the covers. At least she hadn’t been disturbed by her neighbor’s noisy car during the night, plus she had pulled down the window shade to keep out the morning light, so she had slept soundly until BooBoo’s wake-up call. She raised the shade and peeked through the sheer curtains at the driveway running beside hers. The battered brown Pontiac was there. That meant she had either been exhausted and slept like the dead, or he’d gotten a new muffler on t
he thing. She thought the exhausted-and-dead part was more likely than him getting a new muffler.
BooBoo evidently thought she was wasting time, because he gave a warning meow. Sighing, she pushed her hair out of her face and stumbled to the kitchen—stumbled being the operative word, because BooBoo helped her along by winding around her ankles as she walked. She desperately needed coffee, but knew from experience that BooBoo wouldn’t leave her alone until he was fed. She opened a can of food, dumped it on a saucer, and set it on the floor. While he was occupied, she put on a pot of coffee, then headed for the shower.
Stripping off her summer sleepwear of T-shirt and panties—during winter she added socks to the ensemble—she stepped into a nice warm shower and let it pummel her awake. Some people were larks; some were owls; Jaine was neither. She didn’t function well until after a shower and a cup of coffee, and she liked to be in bed by ten at the latest. BooBoo was upsetting the natural order of things with his demands to be fed before anything else was done. How could her mom have done this to her?
“Just four weeks and six days more,” she muttered to herself. Who would have thought that a cat that was normally so loving would turn into such a tyrant when he wasn’t in his regular environment?
After a long shower and two cups of coffee, her synapses started connecting and she began remembering all the things she needed to do. Buy the jerk next door a new trash can—check. Buy groceries—check. Do laundry—check. Mow the lawn—check.
She felt a little excited at the last item. She had grass to cut, her very own grass! She had lived in apartments since leaving home, none of which had come with lawns. There were usually some tiny patches of grass between the sidewalk and the building, but maintenance always took care of mowing them. Hell—heck, they were so tiny the job could have been done with scissors.
But her new home came with its very own lawn. In anticipation of this moment, she had invested in a brand-new lawn mower, self-propelled, state-of-the-art, guaranteed to make her brother, David, turn green with envy. He’d have to buy a riding mower to one-up her on this, and since his lawn wasn’t any bigger than hers, a riding mower would be an expensive sop to his ego. Jaine figured his wife, Valerie, would step in before he did anything that foolish.