Chapter 4

Tuesday morning, August 14th {Bob}

I leaned over and picked up the paper on the floor by the door to the front office, as usual, and stuck it under my arm like I'd brought it to work with me. I know it was a silly childish thing to steal the company paper, but the fact is that I'd never seen anybody in the whole place ever pick it up. There were days, when I didn't steal it, that it lay there all day. I decided, one day when I was bored that someone had ordered the paper just for me. Therefore, it wasn't stealing ... now was it?

Actually, I read the paper mostly for laughs. The Banner, as it was called, was about half a step above the average college newspaper. I thought of it as the place where all those journalism grads went who didn't get hired by The Post, or The Journal, or The Times. It was kind of fun to see what they came up with for headlines. They had a tendency to leave out punctuation that could be critical, or just use words that could have more than one meaning, such as one headline I saw one day that said: "Priest Holds Hostage" in big bold letters. What it was supposed to be was a headline to go with a photograph of some poor woman who'd been taken hostage by her husband, or boyfriend, or whatever, and when she escaped, the Priest hugged her. With The Banner, you got the kind of thing that ended up on The Tonight Show, with Jay Leno.

And, the kind of people who advertised in The Banner were the equivalent of those guys you see in car commercials at two-thirty in the morning, between re-runs of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and infomercials about the thing that slices, dices, wakes you in a storm, brews beer and shines your tennis shoes, all for four low payments of thirty-nine-ninety-nine.

So, my first order of the day was usually to start that day off with humor, by leafing through The Banner and seeing how many screw-ups I could find in ten minutes.

On this day, I hit a gold mine. Some hopeless schmuck had actually proposed to his lady fair in the paper! And he did it on page two, no less, which almost anybody who reads a paper actually gets to. That meant that everybody who bought this rag, (and those of us who stole it, ) would actually see what he'd done. And he didn't just propose. He wrote a poem. And it wasn't just any poem. It was a singularly bad poem. You'll never get to see it if I don't repeat it here. Not even Leno would use this stuff. But here it is, so you'll know why I laughed so loud that people came to see what was wrong.

Chris, fair Chris, now hear me out,
My heart is pining for ya.
I am so blue, from needing you,
The fairest Peach, in Georgia.
Nothing means as much to me,
As the bonny fair lass named Chris
I beg ye now, come make my day,
And join me in wedded bliss.

Evan

And, if that wasn't enough, the guy basically included a self-addressed stamped envelope, except that this girl had to answer his proposal in kind ... in the paper ... for all the world to see.

I read it again. There was a picture of a teddy bear, for pity's sake, and roses. Maybe Chris was a guy, and Evan was gay. No, that couldn't be. Gay marriage wasn't legal in our state. At least not yet.

I couldn't wait. I might actually buy The Banner every day for a week, just to make sure I didn't miss her answer. Maybe she'd answer him in Haiku. I could just imagine it:

Should I marry you
This is not a quandary
No - fuck off Evan

I wondered if it was legal to print "Fuck Off, Evan"

Tuesday morning, August 14th [Chris]

"Where in God's time have you been?" Grandma demanded as Lady and I walked in the back door of her house an hour later. "I was about ready to phone the police."

"They wouldn't have had to look far," I replied, sitting down in my place. Lady went to the rug in front of the sink and curled up. "I was already with one of them. Officer James Huntley."

"Nancy Grayson's sister's boy?"

I swear Grandma knows everyone in the world. I could take her anywhere and she would meet someone's sister's boy or someone's cousin's girl or any other combination there is. She and her friends -- including ladies from all over on the Internet -- have a network like nothing I've ever seen.

"I'm not sure," I said, reaching for a biscuit. "We didn't exactly get around to discussing our relatives, friends and other acquaintances."

"Oh, pish! You young people! What exactly did you get around to discussing?"

"My going seven miles an hour over the speed limit. A thousand cars around doing at least two-hundred miles an hour and he pulls me over for that little piddly amount, which I wouldn't have been doing if there hadn't been a spider swinging on a web in front of my face. Of course, the spider disappeared in all the excitement and Officer Huntley insisted I take the Breathalyzer, which apparently he didn't believe since he also put me through several other sobriety tests before being convinced I wasn't intoxicated or otherwise inhibited."

"Sounds just like Nancy's sister's boy," she replied, taking a sip of coffee. "I met him at the police station when I visited it that time -- you know when they came and got us but were too busy to take us back to the park and you were kind enough to come and get me? Anyway, I met him that day and he's such a nice young man. He's a hunk, too, as I recall."

"I was hardly in the mood to notice."

"Fiddle-sticks! You ain't ever not noticed a man of any type. You're just like me. Did you ask him for his phone number?"

"Not exactly."

"Land sakes alive, Child! How on earth do you expect to get a man if you don't take the opportunities you're given?"

"It's Tuesday, Grandma. If I'd asked for his number he would have arrested me for solicitation or some such thing. And I have enough problems already -- thanks to my very own father."

"Don't worry. Nancy and I will work out something."

"Grandma!"

"Hush-up and tell me about this Evan fella'."

"There's not really much to tell," I said and went on to explain about my weekend.

"Good Lord. How old is he?"

"Thirty-five. I was with him five minutes and the only thing I could think of was Dudley Do-right."

She cackled and I took a swallow of orange juice.

"Dad called me right before you called. He's as excited as he is when one of his bitches gives birth to a litter. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. He honestly believes I'm going to marry this goof-ball."

"He'll get over it."

"But will I?"

"Of course, you will. Call the paper and see how soon you can put in a response to the proposal and just get it over with. Write flowery and heart-wrenching and let him down as gently as possible."

"Killing him might be easier."

"Yes, but if you're arrested for murder you won't be able to go out with your Officer Huntley."

"He's not MY officer."

"Of course he is. He obviously pulled you over to flirt with you, got nervous and botched the whole thing. Men do dumb things. It's our job to help them out."

Wednesday morning, August 15th {Bob}

It was actually a let down, Wednesday morning, when I opened the paper I actually spent money for, for once, and saw Chris' response to Evan's proposal. In gigantenormous letters was the single word

"YES!!!!!"

Well, that's how it is with reality newspapers. You get all worked up for something cool, and the reality lets you down. Chris had the opportunity to grab me by the balls, and get my attention, but she sputtered and died in the crunch.

I put the paper down. I'd wasted precious time laughing at Evan and hoping Chris would provide me with some entertainment.

I got back to the more important business of finding my dream woman. It was almost a week since I'd found the list, and I'd done a lot of thinking about my dream woman. Most of it, sadly, was more along the lines of a bad romance novel, where I dreamed up the steamy parts, and plugged us in as the hero and heroine. What I hadn't done much of was make progress on coming up with a plan to find her.

On Wednesday, I tried to think about finding my dream woman using logic. The list said she had been on her "regular Thursday shopping trip". It had been blowing around the parking lot, which meant it hadn't been there too long. I'd been there around five. If she went at the same time each Thursday, that meant she'd be there each Thursday around, say, four at the earliest. Of course I didn't know if she'd dropped it on the way into, or out of the supermarket, but I figured four was the earliest she'd be there.

That meant that I needed to be at the supermarket by three thirty, just to be safe, and spend however long it took to spot her. I wasn't sure just how I'd do that, yet, but I was pretty certain that, based on my unbridled love for this fair maiden, that something would come to me. I was inspired, after all. I'd have to finagle my work load so I could leave early, that day, but I had all week to do that. It wasn't unheard of for a draftsman to do a site visit, to get the lay of the land, so to speak, and look at adjoining spaces. There wasn't actually a good reason for doing that, but it was an accepted practice by people who didn't understand drawing. Lots of people who didn't need to, did site visits. Jasper did site visits all the time, and the only thing he was qualified to do was use a toilet.

Wednesday morning, August 15th [Chris]

Wednesday morning would have been better than Tuesday if I hadn't carefully looked out my front window and seen Evan -- along with a thousand people -- at my front door. Okay, maybe it wasn't that many bodies, but when you've just been awakened by the door-bell ringing and the cold nose of a Golden Retriever on the back of your neck, even just one person at your front door at the crack of dawn can look like a stadium full of folks.

I couldn't really complain about not being warned of the impending doom outside my door. Certain I'd be bombarded with calls as soon as the paper came out and not wanting to deal with anyone before noon, I'd silenced the ringer on my phone before going to bed the night before. I was certain if I listened to the messages on my machine there would be plenty of people telling me I was headed up the creek without a paddle.

I never dreamed the circus would show up outside my door at eight in the morning.

Taking another look to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I noticed some of those well-meaning people were bearing cameras -- one of them was Dad. He and Evan both were wearing tie and tails. That's when I noticed the others, some of whom I recognized as my sisters and their families, were dressed to the nines, too.

"Well, are you gonna let them in, or not?"

I squeaked and turned to see Grandma standing in the doorway leading from the kitchen. She has a key to my back door. Thank God, she'd kept everyone else out of the house.

"Good Lord, Child!" she continued. "You're still in your pajamas. Go get some clothes on, while I let them in. We can't have a wedding with the bride not properly dressed."

"WHAT?"

She cackled.

"Simmer down, Sweetie. They're not here for the wedding -- least not today. I talked your father out of that, for which you owe me. He was ready to bring the preacher and the whole shebang when he saw the paper."

"Looks like he didn't leave much of the shebang out," I replied.

Snorting, she said, "Why in thunder didn't you do what I told you?"

I explained about deciding at the last minute that I simply couldn't turn Evan down in front of a million people -- okay, the few thousand who read the paper. My plan had been to just give a one word response along with picking out a teddy-bear image to go with my "Yes". Then, in private, I'd tell him I'd changed my mind.