Chapter 2

Thursday night, August 9th {Bob}

I needed to think about how to find my dream girl. The way I think best is when I'm doing my favorite hobby. I build ships. Not big ones, like you sail, but models. You can get a kit, which costs between three and seven hundred dollars. I know that sounds like a lot for a model kit, but what you create with that kit is about three feet long and two and a half feet high, with full rigging and sails, and individual planks on the hull and decks. You have to build your own staircases and railings. You have to nail each plank on, just as if you were building the real thing. And I'm talking tiny little nails here, much smaller than a straight pin. This is tweezers and needle nose pliers work. You put together tiny little cannons, and cut gun ports in the hull for them. Stuff like that. My last one, which was the H.M.S. Victory, took me about six hundred hours to build. I don't quite build to museum quality. You have to paint them for that, and I can't bear to put paint on the beautiful and exotic woods that come in the kits. I just put a clear finish on everything, or wax, and leave them their natural colors. That's the way most of it would have been back in the sailing ship days anyway, except maybe for the hull, which might have been painted to make it last a little longer, exposed to salt water. They painted the gun decks red, so that the crew couldn't see the blood splashed all over the place, but you couldn't see that in a model anyway, so I don't do that either.

Anyway, while I'm carving a yardarm from a dowel, and then sanding it smooth, I think about stuff. My hands know what to do, so I don't have to think about what they're doing. I think about whatever needs thinking about, such as this woman, and how I was going to find her.

It was clear to me that I had to find her. Her list spoke to me in so many ways. I was twenty-eight, which isn't all that old, if you've been married for six or seven years and already have two kids. I wasn't married. I had no kids, because I was a virgin, something I didn't advertise at the gym where I played racquetball. And I was a geek, so I didn't have many prospects, in terms of women, virgins or not. I wasn't particularly worried about whether the woman who would eventually have my children was a virgin, though it would be kind of cool if she was when I met her. I'm a fairly traditional kind of guy, and I figured it would be pretty special if we could find out what this sex thing was all about together.

Of course I knew a little about sex. That was because I had practiced my part. Alone, of course. I knew how to make it spurt, and kept it in good working order so that, when it eventually got the call, nothing would be clogged up or anything like that. I might only get one chance to impress a woman, and I wanted that part of me in tip top condition. Besides, if you use a muscle, it gets bigger ... right?

FRIDAY morning, August 10th [Chris]

Some mornings, I look in the mirror and smile ... something Grandma taught me to do. Other mornings, all I can do is groan, which is what I did Friday morning. My mousy brown roots were shining as bright as the Christmas Star and I'd forgotten to pick up some more coloring to keep my shoulder length strands looking the shade of blond from Miss Clairol, which was called Sunblonde Brown. When I'd decided to follow the advice on changing my hair-color to enhance my love-life, which I'd read in a magazine in the doctor's office, I hadn't realized there were a thousand shades of blond ... well, maybe not that many, but all the boxes on the shelves for that color sure looked like a thousand when I was trying to decide which one I wanted to be.

"You're lucky you don't have to worry about your roots showing," I said to Lady, who was sitting in her usual morning spot ... the frog-themed bath rug in front of the shower that she helped pick out.

She gave a short bark.

"Okay, I wouldn't, either, if I didn't color my hair. But blondes have more fun."

She whined and left a question mark at the end.

"Okay. Okay. Things haven't changed just because I colored my hair. Guys still don't look at anything but my boobs. That's all they've looked at since I was twelve."

She whimpered.

"I never will forget Rachel Johnson's twelfth birthday party. She turned twelve a month after I did. Her Mom let her have boys over too, which we were all excited about. Turned out to be the most gosh awful night of my life. All the girls got mad at me because the boys were practically fighting over me just so they could dance with me and touch my boobs. I slapped several hands before I refused to dance any more. Then, of all the stupid things, some of the boys tried to talk me into playing spin the bottle with them. They wanted to go in the closet with me so I could raise my blouse up for them. I told them to go to hell and had Rachel's dad take me home. And you know what?"

She cocked her ears.

"He told me boys were pigs and could be pretty stupid and would stay like that until they graduated to being just plain dumb, which is what they become when they mature... if they mature. Otherwise, they just stay stupid and those are the ones to avoid. The dumb ones are the ones to stick with because even though they're still pigs, they at least mean well. He and Daddy are the reasons I didn't swear off men forever."

She wagged her tail in response to my mentioning Dad, which I'm pretty sure was part of her training. The same as when I mention Mom, she rolls her eyes and howls. Dad is really fond of Mom, but he has a warped sense of humor that he manages to pass on to all of his dogs. I swear I know a Dave Bryant Golden Retriever the minute I look into its eyes.

Pulling my over-sized Snoopy sleep shirt over my head, I tossed it toward the hamper, and carefully checked over the prize melons men admired so much. My pink nipples always looked erect, even when they weren't aroused. Mom had once told me they were suckable, and I about died ... I was only thirteen at the time. My areolas were a darker shade of rose, and I pressed them gently with my fingers. When nothing felt out of place, I began a careful check of the rest of my breasts, which currently required a B-cup. I performed this self-examination once a week since I'd had a benign lump removed from the left breast two years earlier.

Finding nothing unusual, I reached for a button-up shirt I'd found at a yard-sale last year. A man's, it was big and roomy and I was comfortable moving around. I have several of these shirts, along with over-sized pull-over shirts. When I'd pulled on my cut-off shorts, I padded bare-foot into the kitchen to stir up some breakfast for Lady and some orange juice for myself. I was due at Lacey's in another half-hour and was looking forward to her blueberry pancakes, which she makes from scratch. She teaches cooking classes at the local college three days a week.

Feeding Lady, and making sure she had fresh water, I reached for the handle of the fridge and noticed, again, the invitation and the ticket for the Fine Arts League's First Annual Mens Benefit Auction next month. Unmarried men would be bid on by single women for an evening out. My friend Rachel, who is in charge of the event, had talked me into buying a ticket ... not that she had to do much talking. I was thrilled at the prospects of fate leading me to this ... of finding my toad and falling in love at first sight. The proceeds of the event would go to the Children's Hospital, it was worth going to even if nothing exciting happened. On a more practical note, I was also attending for the chance to gain some experience for an idea I was playing with for a future romance novel.

That's right, I'm one of those romance novelists who write pages of escapism, the kind I shamelessly read when I was a teenager. How else was I supposed to learn about the relationships between males and females? My sisters found their guys quickly, the minute they turned sixteen, which was the age we were allowed to date. Mom figured if we were responsible enough to drive a car, we were old enough to have a boyfriend. But they got their guys so fast that I hadn't had a chance to see how they went about doing it. And they'd refused to give me any pointers, claiming they were looking out for their baby-sister the way Grandma Sparks had told them to do, which I believe was a load of hooey. They were just jealous because I'd developed boobs at the age of twelve and mine were bigger than theirs. I'm still bigger than them, but they're more mature now and don't let it bother them, at least not too much.

My success as a writer irritates them no end, too. Not because they're jealous -- because of the plain and simple reason I was supposed to become a teacher. That had been their plan for me since the day I was born and I was messing up my life because I wasn't following the plan. According to them I would be married and pregnant by now if I'd done what they'd told me to do, which is the reason they're not much help when it comes to my search for the man of my dreams.

"I'll show them," I said out loud as I reached for the juice.

Lady whined questioningly.

"My sisters," I told her. "The man I bid on will be the man I've been looking for all this time and I won't ask either of them to be in my wedding. They don't help me at all. Why should they be part of the fun? Grandma always says when people don't help carry the load they shouldn't reap any part of the gold."

The phone rang and Lady went down on her belly and covered her eyes with her front paws. Another Dave Bryant touch.

"Stay inside and don't go out 'til Monday," Lacey said into my ear when I picked up the receiver and spoke. "While you're at it, maybe you should just stay in bed."

Lacey and Paula are redheads just like Mom. I got Dad's hair and his eyes and his freckles. I even got his build ... other than the boobs. I have no idea where they came from. No woman on either side of the family has ever had anything bigger than AA, and Mom is convinced they resulted from the fact I was born under a full moon.