by Mary Gorman
• • •
Dave spent much of the day processing what Presley had told him. Part of him was delighted. She was everything he’d expected and more — pretty, smart, independent, and best of all, unattached. But a bigger part of him was now feeling a bit intimidated. What would a woman be looking for in a man after she had already had a multi-millionaire? He wasn’t, as a rule, intimidated by successful women, and he took it as a given that a primetime radio deejay would probably make more than an associate sales manager at the same station, but the daughter of a bestselling writer and the ex-wife of a financial tycoon? Damn, but she wasn’t going to be easily impressed.
To his credit, he thought he was what would probably be considered a nice guy. He had his circle of friends, made it to church about half the time, still held doors open for ladies, and was generally a likeable sort. He’d had a couple of long term relationships in his time which had ended amicably, generally when the other partner had relocated due to graduation or changes in her job situation. When he wanted to date, he generally did, so he wasn’t totally repulsive. But how did one go about attracting a supermodel quality woman when one was a Jack Black type of guy?
The more he thought about it, the more hopeless it seemed. There was liable to be stiff competition for this woman’s attentions. Not only was she spectacular in her own right, but she had a whole publicity campaign heralding just how beautiful she was. Damn. An offer of dinner and a movie wasn’t likely to cut it with a woman who could order in French in a French restaurant and get something that wasn’t even on the menu. Damn.
By ten o’clock that night, he had convinced himself that he didn’t have anything that a woman would want. He stood in his briefs in front of the mirror and critiqued himself savagely. He was no longer that firm young body that he had been ten years before when he’d left college. He was maybe fifty pounds overweight — not enough for major love handles or extra chins, but definitely thick in the middle. White threads shot through his curls, giving them a sort of salt and pepper coloring rather than the dark brown that he’d had when he was younger. It was a curse of being Irish, that. His mother had been coloring her hair by her mid-thirties, just about the age he was now. And while he wasn’t exactly a wrinkled old man yet, he definitely had lines creasing the corners of his eyes.
He sighed. Thirty-four years old and already past his prime.
So how did a guy win a girl who was younger, smarter, taller, richer, and better looking than he was?
He didn’t. That was the hell of it.
He needed an objective opinion, but he knew that he couldn’t ask Presley or Diane or his mom or one of his woman friends — they all liked him, and would lie to spare his feelings if they thought he was making a mistake. He needed advice from someone who would pull no punches. Luckily, he knew just who to ask for advice — Kirk and Ghoulie, his two best friends.
Chapter Five: The Plan
Kirk James and Jimmy “Ghoulie” Drumgool weren’t exactly relationship advice columnists. Kirk was too busy having what he thought was a good time to ever want to have a real relationship with a woman. And sure, Ghoulie was married to Shelby, but he’d admitted that marriage had been Shelby’s idea, and that he was just too dazed by the fact that she wanted him to protest until it was too late. Still, the guys had been Dave’s best buddies forever, and if he couldn’t talk about Denise with them, who could he talk to?
Saturday afternoons were a habit with the three of them. Hell, after all these years, they were practically a ritual. They were at Ghoulie’s place this week. Shelby was a flight attendant and Dave couldn’t remember where she was this weekend. Probably someplace swell.
Ghoulie had his head stuck in the fridge excavating for cold beers while Kirk rummaged in the drawer for the bottle opener. Dave leaned his arms against the kitchen counter, watching them both and trying to figure out how to work his non-existent love life into the conversation.
“So where’s Shel this weekend?” Kirk asked Ghoulie, coming up with the bottle opener.
“London, Paris, Rome, then home,” he replied, emerging from the fridge with two Sam Adams beers tucked under his arm and a third in his other hand. “I think she’s probably in Paris today. At least, that’s where she’s spending the night.” He handed beers to Dave and Kirk and then went to the cabinet to fetch a bag of nacho chips.
Dave waited until everyone took a sip of his beer and then decided to take advantage of the lull to make his opening. “I met a girl.”
Kirk’s head perked up. “Is she pretty?” he demanded.
Dave drew in a deep breath. “Gorgeous. We’re talking super model quality here, only without the bony look.”
“Where’d you meet her?” Ghoulie asked, helping himself to a handful of chips.
“Down at the station. She’s the new P.M. commute deejay.”
“Oh, I heard her,” Kirk interjected. “What’s her name? Denise Johnson?”
“Yeah, that’s her. I was working late last Thursday and she stopped at my office to talk to Theresa.”
Kirk looked blank. Ghoulie looked thoughtful for a minute, then remembered. “The retarded cleaning lady?”
“That’s the one.”
“Yeah, I remember her from one of the times I brought you a pizza up at the station. So what happened?”
Dave told them briefly about Denise’s efforts to befriend and do something nice for her mentally challenged colleague. “She was just so nice to Theresa,” he said. “Not everyone would even notice the cleaning lady, let alone one with Down Syndrome.”
“Okay, so she’s gorgeous and kind,” summed up Ghoulie. “Now what?”
Dave shrugged. “Good question. Here I meet this gorgeous, intelligent, sweet lady and she probably doesn’t even remember my last name.”
“Uh, Dave?” interjected Kirk. “No one can remember your last name.”
Ghoulie turned to Kirk. “What’s his last name again?”
“DiSciullo.”
“Gesundheit,” responded Ghoulie.
“Thank you.”
Both sets of eyes turned back to Dave, grinning at the same joke they’d been telling since grade school.
“Very funny, you knuckleheads. This is serious.”
“No,” clarified Kirk, “but you’d like it to be.”
“Yeah,” sighed Dave. “I’d like to be.” He rolled his bottle back and forth between his hands. “So what do I do, guys?”
“Get to know her better,” Kirk shrugged.
“And how am I supposed to do that? Women like that never look twice at a guy like me.”
“Well … ” mused Kirk, staring at his beer bottle as if it were a crystal ball that would reveal the mystical answer to him. “You need to find some common ground. You know, things you both like. Then go from there.”
“Yeah,” seconded Ghoulie. “Does she like the Sox? Maybe you could take her to a game. Be a great ice breaker.”
“I don’t know,” Dave said. “She doesn’t strike me as a big sports fan. Too much the glamorous type.”
“Not into masochism then,” Ghoulie noted.
“What do you know about her?” Kirk asked.
Dave shrugged. “Mostly what I got off the rumor mill,” he told them. “She just moved out from Manhattan. She’s divorced from some rich guy. She lives in Cambridge with her mother. Oh, get this — her mother is a romance writer. Can you imagine having a mother who actually writes that stuff?”
Kirk’s head snapped up. “A romance writer? You mean those books they sell at the drug store with all of the people whose clothes are falling off while they bend each other into really uncomfortable looking positions?”
Dave shrugged.
“Shelby reads those,” Ghoulie said. “She’s got a whole bookcase full of them in the bedroom.”
“
She’s got you,” Kirk observed. “What does she need romance novels for?”
Ghoulie shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
Dave studied Ghoulie critically and thought maybe he could guess why Shelby liked to read romance novels.
“Have you ever read one of those things?” Kirk asked Ghoulie curiously.
Ghoulie gave him the Are you a moron? look. “Hell no. Why would I want to read something like that?”
“Women seem to like ’em,” Kirk noted. “How ’bout you?” he asked Dave. “You ever read one?”
“What do I look like to you?” he asked. “Of course I’ve never read one.”
They all paused to think while they tasted their beers.
“I don’t know, Dave,” Kirk commiserated, shaking his head. “If her mom’s a romance writer, the girl’s got to have pretty high expectations in romance department.”
“So why couldn’t Dave be romantic?” Ghoulie interjected. “You know, bring her flowers, chocolate, go for moonlight strolls on the beach — all that crap.”
Dave sighed dejectedly. “I don’t know. A girl like that probably has guys chasing after her all the time — you’d have to have something really special to attract a girl like that.”
Kirk grunted in agreement. One thing about being with the guys — you could convey a wealth of information in a single grunt and no one would accuse you of being uncommunicative. Ghoulie took another swig of beer while Kirk reached for a handful of pretzels out of the open bag on the counter.
Suddenly, Kirk’s head snapped up. “Why couldn’t you be special?”
“Huh?”
“Why couldn’t you be special? Think about it. There’s nothing actually wrong with you. You’re a decent guy. You make a good living. Why can’t you be special?”
Dave looked at him with dejection in his eyes. “I’m not special. I’m ordinary.”
“Yeah, but you’ve got an inside track — you know something about her that those other guys probably never even thought of. Her mother’s a romance writer.”
“So what?” asked Ghoulie.
“So there’s got to be more to those books than flowers and candy and moonlight strolls. Don’t you get it? Those books hold The key to her affections. They’re love’s little instruction books, the roadmap that shows the way to a lady’s heart! Don’t you see? All you have to do is read a couple of romance books and you’re in!”
Dave stared dumbfounded at his friend. It made sense. It shouldn’t have and his benumbed mind tried feebly to come up with a reason why it didn’t, but by damn, the idea made sense. “It couldn’t be that easy,” he said cautiously.
“Why not? Women love those books, right? And they wouldn’t read them if they didn’t provide them with something they wanted but didn’t get in the real world. And her mother writes them, right? Like mother, like daughter. All you have to do is read those books to see what it is that women want, and become that for Denise.”
“Damn,” murmured Ghoulie. “It’s perfect. Simple, but perfect. Why in the hell hasn’t somebody ever thought of this before?”
Kirk shrugged. “Because before, guys looked at women like that and only thought about what it was that they wanted. Dave here is going to look at Denise from the standpoint of what it is that she wants.”
Dave set down his beer. “Damn,” he repeated. “It might work.”
“Shelby’s got a bunch of that kind of book,” Ghoulie offered. “You’re welcome to borrow a couple if you want. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
Dave looked at him hopefully. “Do you think she has any of the ones by Denise’s mother?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of them in there. Let’s go look.”
Carrying their beers, they followed Ghoulie into the bedroom. “Holy shit,” murmured Kirk, looking at the crammed bookcase. “Has she actually read all these?”
Ghoulie shrugged. “I guess. Sometimes she trades them with her friends.”
“Are there any there by Denise’s mother?” Dave asked. “Her name is Judy Johnson.”
Ghoulie scanned the shelves. “I don’t see any.”
“The pregame show’s starting,” Kirk announced. “C’mon, let’s take a bunch of them into the living room and see what we can find out.”
Ghoulie pulled short stacks of books discretely off of the bottom shelf and handed a pile to Kirk and another to Dave before taking a third batch for himself. With their beers in one hand and the books cradled against them with the other, they made their way back into the living room and spread the collection out on the coffee table.
“Shelby actually reads this stuff?” Kirk asked after a long moment of taking them all in.
“The ones with the flowers and shit are okay,” Dave remarked, staring down at the covers. “But the ones with the couples on them — Jesus, doesn’t that look like soft core pornography to you guys? I don’t think there’s a done up button or a zipped zipper in the lot.”
“That’s the point, you idiot,” Kirk reminded him. “You don’t want to get this girl just for companionship, do you?”
“Well, no, I guess not,” he agreed. “But I don’t want her just for a quick lay, either.”
Kirk glanced up from the covers at his friend’s face and then back at the covers. “Okay, okay,” he regrouped. “What can we learn by looking at these books?”
“That they didn’t have shirts in the past,” Ghoulie observed, picking up on of the books and turning it over in his hand. It had the same couple in still more provocative poses on the back.
“And the shirts they did have apparently lacked buttons and blew off their shoulders at the slightest breeze,” Dave added.
“And the women were all near-sighted,” Ghoulie added.
“How can you tell?” Kirk asked, frowning.
“They’re all squinting at the men.”
“They’re not squinting, you moron,” Kirk snapped. “Those are bedroom eyes.”
“Huh?”
“Bedroom eyes. The way women look at you when they’re — you know — in the mood.”
“Shelby never looked at me like that.”
“Never?”
“Hell no!”
“I think they’re all stoned,” Dave noted.
“Stoned?” Ghoulie repeated.
“Well yeah,” Dave explained. “I mean, that explains it all, doesn’t it? The droopy eyes, way they’re falling all over the men, the fact that they couldn’t get their clothes on right … ”
Kirk studied the array of covers critically. “It does look like the men are holding them up,” he agreed.
“Well, what’s the point of that?” Dave asked, mystified.
There was a long pause before Kirk said, “That love is a drug?”
Dave considered that for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay … yeah.”
“What else can we tell just from the covers?” Kirk asked.
There was another pause, then Ghoulie said, “That the women couldn’t keep their dresses fastened any better than the men could keep their shirts on.”
Dave ran a questing hand through his hair. “How is this supposed to help me with Denise?” he asked impatiently.
“Damned if I know,” Ghoulie replied with a cheerful shrug.
“Okay,” Kirk said. “Let’s look at the men on the covers, then. What’s Dave got in common with them?”
A moment of embarrassed meditational silence followed. Dave shifted uncomfortably and tried to discreetly suck his stomach in.
“Well,” said Ghoulie at long last, “they all want women.”
Dave closed his eyes and sighed. He couldn’t help it.
“Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” Kirk decided finally, “Let’s look at how Dave’s different from the guys
on the covers.”
Oh God!
“Dave has short hair,” Ghoulie announced. It was true that all of the men on the covers had hair down to their collars or beyond.
“And curls,” Kirk added. The cover models all sported ’dos of the straight and windblown variety.
“Dave has chest hair,” Ghoulie volunteered. Their eyes lingered on the buff and barren pectorals displayed so proudly before them.
“He does?” Kirk asked.
Ghoulie nodded. “Just a little, though.”
“Ghouls — ” Dave cut in warningly.
“No, no,” Ghoulie insisted. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it? A sign of manliness?”
Dave ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Okay, let’s just forget about the covers for a minute here, guys. Let’s just assume that I have absolutely nothing in common with these horny, muscle bound, bald-chested, long haired contortionists and take a look at what’s actually in the books, okay? We’re not going to learn anything just by looking at the pictures. This isn’t kindergarten, we’re all going to have to actually open the books and read them. How about we each pick one book, take it home and we can compare notes next Saturday?”
Ghoulie shrugged. “Works for me.”
Dave turned his eyes on Kirk. “Okay.”
There was a long moment of silence as they all stared down at the books laid out on the tables. “Okay, pick your books.”
No one moved.
“Come on, you guys. Either pick a book or I’m going to grab one and assign it to you!”
Ghoulie drew in a deep, bracing breath and then nodded. “Okay.” He picked up Desperado. The cover featured a sun bronzed cowboy who glared out at them from underneath the brim of his hat, hands poised to draw his gun from its holster, and no sign of a shirt beneath his vest. “I always kind of liked Western movies,” he said by way of explanation.
Dave looked over at Kirk. “You next.”