I left my office and walked back home. Along the way, I dropped the businesswoman’s bill in a mailbox, but I held onto the other bill, the one for the cheated-on guy. I don’t usually take cases involving marital disputes. They tend to be messy and acrimonious, and, more often than not, both parties are not a lot of fun to deal with. This guy, though, well, he’d gotten to me, I guess. I’m a romantic at heart, and so was he. You could almost feel how much he wanted me to tell him that everything was all right, that he and his wife were, indeed, going to live happily ever after. Instead, I’d ended up telling him that the dream was over, at least that particular dream, anyway. And now I had his bill in my hand as I walked along Walnut Street. There was a large trash bin at the corner where I turned on to my street. That’s where I tossed the guy’s bill.
Hey, I said I was a romantic.
Chapter 5
I met Laura Fleming about six months ago. She’s a kindergarten teacher at the same school where Angie Ventura teaches 4th grade. Angie and I met when we were five, and she wanted me right away. Well, she wanted my chocolate-chip cookie, and to a five-year-old, that’s practically the same thing. After all, when you think about it, You Are What You Eat is really nothing more than the logical extension of I Am My Cookie. Anyway, it was Angie’s idea to put Laura and me together. At the time, I wasn’t very optimistic, given Angie’s rather dubious record at setting me up, but this time she got it right. Laura and I clicked right from the start, and although we’ve never formally acknowledged the fact in any public forum, neither of us has gone out with anyone else since that first date.
Laura lives at the Tennis Club Apartments in Monroeville, a suburb of Pittsburgh. We’d arranged to meet at her place after school, and she was waiting for me in the lobby of the building when I pulled up in my Toyota 4Runner. Watching her walk towards me, I had the same thought I often have when I see her: I’m a really lucky guy.
“I’m a really lucky guy,” I told her as she stepped up and slid onto the passenger seat. She was wearing a camel-colored coat with fake fur collar over a dark brown pinstriped pants suit with a white silk blouse.
“Hi, cutie,” she said, and leaned over to give me a kiss. “Why are you so lucky today?”
“Because I’m going to the mall with the hottest babe in Monroeville, possibly the hottest babe in Monroeville and Wilkins Township and all of Pitcairn.”
She smiled that smile and said, “Possibly?”
Pulling away from the apartment building, I said, “Okay, not possibly. Let’s say probably.”
Again with the smile.
“I wore this pants suit to work today, but not the silk blouse. I just put it on a few minutes before you got here.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. And while I was at it, I thought, what the heck, maybe I should change into one of those feelies bras you seem to like so much.”
“Hmmm. Is that right?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. And this time I got the smile and the upturned eyes with just a hint of mischief. “Probably?”
“All right, all right,” I said. “Definitely the hottest babe in the whole county.”
I glanced over at her for a moment.
“Which feelies bra would that be?” I asked. “The pink one?”
“We’ll discuss that later, during our geography lesson.”
“Geography lesson?”
“Hm-hmm,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Just the county?”
And then she began to giggle. She has a very sexy giggle. In fact, I think you could say that Laura gives great giggle. It’s very contagious, and by the time we arrived at Monroeville Mall a couple of minutes later, we were both laughing uncontrollably.
You had to be there, I guess.
* * *
Holding hands, we walked in through the main entrance to the mall and took the escalator down to the food court. There are a couple of restaurants in the mall where you can sit down and be waited on, but the purpose of this trip wasn’t to eat, but to shop. The department stores were having one of their Day ‘N Night sales, and Laura was looking for some new school clothes. When we got to the bottom of the escalator, we split up, Laura heading for the Potato Patch for a salad and a baked potato, me for Manchu Wok, where I got some General Tso chicken, fried rice, a pork roll and a Diet Coke.
When we sat down and began to eat, I asked Laura about her day.
“I’m thinking about a career change,” she said. “Any openings at Barnes, Inc.?”
“Rough day with the five-year-olds?” I asked.
“Well, let’s see,” she said. “Alena cried all morning because she’d come to school without her red pencil, the one she never uses, Samuel tied his shoelaces together so tightly I had to ask Jeff Arnold to come in and untie them, Turner was mad at Todd because Todd said Turner had one ear bigger than the other, Devon peed his pants at naptime, and, oh yes, after lunch, Rowan told me she thought she was going to be sick, and then she was, right on schedule.”
“You know, Laura,” I said, “I believe the school board offers a variety of workshops aimed at helping teachers like you learn how to maximize their classroom management techniques.”
She gave me a stunning smile and said, “So I guess the sex last weekend tuckered you out so much that you haven’t fully recovered. Good. Gives us more time to shop tonight.”
“On the other hand,” I said, “it’s quite possible, indeed, I
