Chapter 8

Saturday, mid morning, September 8th {Bob}

I took a break from the heartbreak of knowing my dream woman was out there, but that I couldn't find her, or had already lost her to some other guy, and went to Home Depot to get a dog door. Bandit wasn't doing well with being cooped up in the house all day long. I don't know why I didn't just build him a dog house and put him out back, like any normal pet owner would. Maybe it was because I felt like I was out in back of the house all the time, metaphorically speaking.

What I mean by that is that, while I was very talented, and made the best drawings in the company, I was a social outcast. Well, maybe outcast is too strong a word, but people weren't looming in the doorway of my cubicle, wanting to waste my time chatting. I had plenty of uninterrupted time to do good work. I knew all my neighbors' names, but none of them knew me. How hard is Bob to remember?

I think where I went wrong was while I was in college. I spent my time trying to become the best draftsman I could possibly be, instead of carousing with loose women and drinking and all that. As a result, I never seemed to learn how to do that.

Then there were the first five years of having a real job, where I spent five or six hours of overtime every night, and even worked on weekends, to ensure that my stuff was perfect, and that I'd have a real career, instead of a job that somebody hotter took away from me because I was having a good time.

I must have asked fifty women out in the last five years. It's astounding how much time women spend washing their hair. I'll tell you that. American women must have the cleanest hair on the planet, as often as they seem to have to wash it.

I'm not stupid. I know it's just an excuse to say "No" to me. What drives me crazy is that I do have some friends, and I know I'm an okay kind of guy. If they'd just give me a chance ... get to know me ... I know a lot of those women would realize I'm a pretty good catch. I'm polite, and I care about people and animals, and I don't curse too much, or drink too much and all that stuff. I'm just not handsome or particularly buff.

Anyway, because I know how it feels to be out in the cold all the time, I couldn't just banish Bandit to the back yard. He was part of my family ... all two of us. So, I decided that a dog door was the answer. He could come in or stay out, whichever he wanted, while I was gone.

Of course, the problem was that, while I could draw in exquisite detail all the working parts of anything known to man, including a dog door, I had no idea how to install one. For that, I was going to need expert advice. So, naturally, I went to Home Depot.

I know you've been to one. Everybody has. It's like walking into New York City and looking for a particular store. If you don't have the exact address, you could walk for days. I've often wondered why they don't have drinking fountains in the aisles, and a food court in the center of the store. I swear people would stay there for days in a row if there were a place to lie down and catch a nap, now and then.

So, the intelligent person, naturally, finds one of those exciting and motivated people wearing orange and asks for help. It's almost entertaining, especially when, on the rare occasion, the employee doesn't know where what you're asking for is. Then it's either off on a tandem exploratory safari, or to find "Ted" or "Jennifer" or whoever it is that "will know exactly how to help you, Sir." What makes it entertaining is that Ted, or Jennifer or whoever always does know exactly how to help you. It's uncanny.

I always try to pick a woman to ask for help at Home Depot. It has to be a tough world for them, what with all the stereotyping of women that goes on and the sexual objectification that men subject them to. So I try to help them excel. Besides, you never know. She might be a babe, with huge knockers and a too-thin bra. She might be on her last nerve, and you could slide in under the radar, to get a date for some yummy make-her-feel-all-better time, later. You could get lucky. Not that I knew what that was like, but I'd heard guys say stuff like that.

So, when I saw a woman in an orange pullover shirt, I mustered up every ounce of suave and debonair I had in me and said "Excuse me. Do you work here?"

Yup. That's me. Apparently the needle for my suave and debonair tank is banging on empty. That's the best I could come up with for meeting a woman.

She turned around and I knew I'd found one who needed my special brand of help. She sounded almost scared when she asked me how she could help me.

She was not Raquel Welch, or Jodie Foster, or Nicole Kidman. In fact, she wasn't beautiful at all, when compared to all those women who look normal when they get out of bed in the morning, and then look much better after six hours in hair and makeup. She was just a normal looking woman, with the kind of face that an observant man would detect cuteness-of-personality in. Especially if that observant man was lonely and desperate for any kind of normal interaction with a female of the species.

Being a fairly observant man, I noticed she was wearing a Home Depot shirt, instead of an apron. That told me she was either a supervisor, who knew everything in the world ... or a trainee, who might know nothing at all. Based on her looking scared, I assumed she was a trainee.

I looked at her chest, to see if there was a big round button that said "Trainee". There wasn't. All there were were two delightful breasts.

She said "Can I help you?" again in this strained kind of voice.

I looked back up at her face to realize that I had just gotten caught staring at her boobs. I sighed. I had quite possibly destroyed any chance I had of engaging the reasonably long-term assistance of a nice looking woman who probably knew everything in the world.

"Um ... ahh..." I stammered, trying desperately to dredge up the fumes of my empty suave and debonair tank. "I need a Bandit door," I blurted.

She looked confused ... and wary. "You want a door that will keep bandits out?"

She had really nice eyes, even if they were squinting at me like I was some kind of mental case.

"No!" I dug myself in deeper. "So he can come and go as he pleases."

She took a step back. "You want robbers in your house ... whenever they want to be there."

It was plain, now, that she was about to whip out one of those phones those people carry, and call for help.

"No!" I almost yelled. "He's my dog!"

"Who's your dog?" she asked, her voice soothing, like she was trying to calm me.

"Bandit," I said weakly. "My dog's name is Bandit. I need a door for him ... a doggy door."

She blinked. Her face got a strange look on it, and then ... she laughed!

"Home Depot doesn't carry dog doors," she said, still chuckling. "You need a pet center for that."

"Oh," I said, totally deflated. It was clear she thought I was nuts. My shoulders slumped. I couldn't even have a normal conversation with a normal woman, without her thinking I was a whole pallet of bricks shy of a load.

The realization hit me pretty hard. My line would die out. There would be no little Bobs running around, to carry my name on into history. No woman would ever grace me with sex, to say nothing of actual procreation. I was destined to ride, alone, into the sunset, having done nothing more important than draw - perfectly - the entire three hundred page set of blueprints for the convention center some developer was trying to build. It would be his legacy, a monument to his imagination, drive, and masculinity. Conventions would be held in it, and hundreds of horny conventioneers would pick up women and bed them in the hotel rooms I had drawn out. Accidents would happen, and women would get pregnant. Some of them would have the babies who would grow up to carry on some faceless man's name, or at least his bloodline. But the man who had made it all possible, with perfect drawings, that would become the buildings, in which the babies would be conceived ... his name ... my name ... would die out forever.

I already felt old and feeble. Having nothing to lose, now, I cast one, last admiring glance at the breasts under the Home Depot shirt, of the supervisor who was laughing at my stupidity.

They really were nice breasts.

Saturday, mid morning, September 8th [Chris]

When I turned and saw the face which went with the sexy baritone speaking to me, I felt like Jamie Lee Curtis must have felt in all those Halloween movies when she would turn a corner or open a door and Michael Meyers would be standing there. It was the geek from the grocery store ... the one who couldn't choose olives without help. Of course, this guy wasn't a monster. I mean, the police wouldn't have let him go otherwise, but seeing him gave me one of those heart altering shocks; and my voice came out sounding like a sick mouse, which isn't good for catching a man. Not that I wanted this particular catch -- even if he was looking at my exposed skin the way the article promised.