Janice and I had a window seat at the Blue Coyote Café. Our lattes had just been delivered and I had a raisin crumb cake and Janice a brownie. She’d already gobbled down half of it. “Oh, Molly,” she said, “this brownie is so delicious. You just have to try a bite.”

I considered it but kind of rolled my eyes at the same time.

“Suit yourself,” she said, and with her next bite she all but polished off the brownie. I stared at my crumb cake. Why is it that the tiniest nibble of almost anything and I put on sixteen pounds, and Janice can eat like a horse and not gain an ounce?

“Look at that,” Janice said, while I was still studying the crumb cake.

“What?”

“Out on the street. That guy with the purple pants.”

I looked out onto the street. A man and a woman were just crossing. The man was wearing purple pants.”

“What a hunk,” Janice said. “I’d do him in a second. Half a microsecond.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Looks like he’s taken,” I said. The pair were now stopped on the opposite corner in front of the wine store.

“That hasn’t stopped me before,” Janice said. “Look, you can kind of see his prick through his pants.”

Again I kind of rolled my eyes, but I admit I looked. Just maybe...

The woman the purple pants guy was with was carrying a small package wrapped in red. The man was reaching for it, the woman holding it away, up over her head. Just then the rain started. A few drops, but the man had been carrying an umbrella, and he snapped it open.

“Wow, a purple umbrella,” Janice said. “To go with his prick. I mean his pants.”

The woman started running down the sidewalk and the man, still holding the umbrella overhead, gave chase. At the end of the block they caught a cab, slid inside, and off they went.

Janice stared at my untouched crumb cake. “If you’re not going to eat that...”

I slid the plate across the table. “What do you think was in the package?” I said, more trying to distract myself than anything else.

Janice picked up the cake and took a bite. “Mmm, this is great,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I do know,” I claimed. I took a sip of my latte.

“What package?” Janice asked.

“The one the woman was holding.”

“What woman?”

I’d opened my mouth to say something, I don’t know what, when Janice said, “A dildo, of course. A dildo for their daughter’s sixteenth birthday.”

I sighed. “That’s outrageous.”

“Isn’t it though,” Janice said. The guy’s trying to convince his wife that they should try it out first. Just to make sure it works.”

I snickered. Janice can be so at once naughty and amusing. She shoved the rest of my crumb cake into her mouth. After she swallowed it down, she said, “That’s what my parents gave me for my sixteenth.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It was purple, like the guy’s pants. I named him Bobo.”

“Do you still have him? Bobo?”

“I do,” Janice said. “Come on over and you can try him out.”

Of course I didn’t believe her, but one evening a few days later Janice came over. She was carrying a box wrapped in red.