didn’t like it, but, no, he said it fit the market.”
“Sorry,” I told him. “Loan me a copy and I’ll read it, I promise.”
He grumbled. “Now you’re just humoring me.”
“A little bit,” I admitted. I grinned at him. He smiled back. Monroe wasn’t really such a bad guy when you got to know him. He was actually very funny and helpful and … Gah! No penis policy. I had to remember the no penis policy. I would think of something else. The ocean? Too subliminal. Wombats? Well, that’s just weird. Johnny Depp? No, that won’t help matters. Urn, Leslie Nielsen… He’s not exactly my type. He was in, uh, Tammy and the Bachelor, Prom Night. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Naked Monroe. Damn it!
Monroe was waving his hand in front of my face, trying to snap me out of my trance. “Not used to being up this late, huh?”
“Here, lately, I’ve had to get used to it. Why are you up at three am.?” I countered.
“Because I have a rare genius that works best when I’m the only person on the planet who’s awake. Your being awake is obviously what’s throwing me off. So what’s your excuse?”
“Oh, that’s easy - I’m insane,” I said. “Every time I close my eyes, I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep.”
“That tends to happen when you close your eyes … in bed … at night.”
“Yeah, but if I fall asleep, I’ll dream,” I told him. “And if I dream, I’ll dream that I’m stuck in an unfulfilling, endless hamster wheel of a life with financial stability and security, but no love life to speak of, bad sex, and an inability to trust men not to screw me over.”
Monroe absorbed that with the stunned expression of a fish that had been dynamited out of the water. “Wow.”
I laughed, running my hand over my face. “I’ve ruined your life. You had time to yourself, quiet. I wrecked your whole Fortress of Solitude thing.”
“Oh, now you did it, there’s nothing as sexy as a woman who knows her Superman.” He grinned. “I liked the solitude, don’t get me wrong. It was easier to work when it was just me. I didn’t have to worry about being sociable or answering questions. I didn’t get distracted by bottomless ladies parading around on the front porch. But it’s kind of nice to know there’s someone more screwed up than me right outside my door.”
“Well, you’re not wrong about that,” I said primly. ‘But I didn’t parade. I never parade.”
“And you’re not crazy,” he said. “Your whole life’s been turned upside down. And you’ve isolated yourself by coming up here. And you’re just processing all this information. I went through the same thing after I got shot.”
“In the ass?” I just liked throwing that out there as much as possible.
He glared at me. “After I got shot, in the ass,” he conceded. “The administration couldn’t clear me for street duty anymore. I was still walking around, but I couldn’t sit in the car for long periods, couldn’t pass the physical fitness exam. I was looking at early retirement or a permanent desk job. So I picked retirement, holed up in my apartment, and stared at the walls for days at a time. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I almost ordered something off a Tony Robbins infomercial, for God’s sake. That was the low point. Eventually I got out my special doughnut pillow, turned on my computer and started writing.”
“So you think I should order something from Tony Robbins?” There seemed to be a pregnant pause in there somewhere, “You think I should write a book?”
“You have a strong voice,” he said. I arched my brow. “I read your e-mail on The Smoking Gun.”
“Of course you did.”
“You just need to find the right idea and run with it,” he said.
“Just so you know, writing your first novel can also drive you crazy.”
“So you’re saying..
“If I see you typing, ‘All work and no play makes Lacey a dull girl’ over and over again, I’m running like hell.”
I snickered and sipped my beer. Writing a book was an idea I’d toyed with off and on for years, but I’d figured everybody thought they had the next Harry Potter bouncing around in their heads. I never got past the first few pages of any story. There was always some committee meeting, a fund-raiser, something else that needed to be done. Okay, those were excuses. I just didn’t want to finish them and become another failed, frustrated novelist. But at this point I was already a failed, frustrated housewife, so what the heck?
I nodded. “That seems fair. So tell me something about yourself. Something not glib.”
“I’m not glib.”
“If glib were a country, you would be its king,” I informed him.
He seemed to search through his massive memory bank of secrets. “Okay, I was engaged once.”
When I made my own stunned face, he asked, “You don’t think a woman would want to marry me?”
“No, once you stop cursing and scowling at a gal, I’m sure she’s putty in your hands. So what happened, did she hook up with Uniball behind your back?”
His voice was flat, serious as he said, “No, she’s dead.”
I gasped. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.”
He let me stew in my own embarrassment before bursting out laughing. “I’m just kidding, Lacey.”
“Asshole!” I yelled, slapping his arm.
“I’m sorry, you’re just so gullible,” he said, dodging the pummeling that rained down from my fists of fury.
“Yeah, it’s a character flaw.”
“Sarah was, is, a really nice girl. She was an emergency room nurse. We used to take a lot of crazies, drunk and disorderlies, to her hospital. I finally worked up the nerve to ask her out and that was it. There was nobody else for me. We were together for five years. We were about six months from the wedding when I got shot… and she just shut down. She thought she could cope with it. She was used to seeing people in crazy situations, seeing people hurt. But seeing me in her hospital, laid up with a bullet wound to the ass, was more than she could handle. The idea of waiting up each night, wondering if I was coming home, freaked her out.”
“She hadn’t thought of this in the course of five years?”
“Some people need to be smacked in the face with reality before the possibility even occurs to them,” he said, shrugging. “Had you thought Mike was capable of boffing the receptionist?”
“Point taken.” I shook my head. “But let’s not bring my ex into this. If we’re going to refer to him, let’s give him a code name like Satan or He Who Should Not Be Named. So, she gave you back the ring?”
He nodded. “And we parted as friends.”
“Oh, come on,” I whined. “She broke your heart, say something that lets me hate her a little bit.”
“She was half Canadian,” he offered. “She was a smoker. She had never seen a single episode of Saturday Night Live.”
“You suck at this,” I told him.
“Well, pardon me for being able to let go of my hatred and bitterness.”
“I don’t hate my ex,” I protested. “I just want him alone, broke, bald, impotent, toothless, fat, and wailing and twitching in a twisted tiny ball of spastic misery.”
He shuddered. “Wow, that was visual.”
“You seem fine now,” I conceded. “Somewhat socially maladjusted, but fine.”
He smiled cheekily. “I spent so many nights thinking how she did me wrong. But I grew strong. I’ll learn how to get along.”
“Fine. Make fun of me. In case you’re wondering, this is why people don’t like you.”
“I’m not making fun,” he insisted, though he couldn’t cover his impulse to snicker. “But do you see how that damn song gets into your head?”
Nothing cements friendship like beer and eggs.
I ended up staying at Monroe’s until the morning. The storm wasn’t letting up. Monroe couldn’t sleep either. We sat on his screened-in back porch and listened to it rain while we ate scrambled eggs and some of Mama’s banana bread. We talked about our hometowns and our families, how Monroe got published, and why exactly I was willing to risk my neck for a rowboat that predated the Carter administration.
