Читать книгу I'm Your Girl - J.J. Murray - Страница 15

I pick up the fourth and last book, Wishful Thinking, by D. J. Browning. Nice, colorful cover photograph of an average sister in a hard hat with a Mona Lisa smile. Different. Opening the book to the first page, I read:

1: Daniel “Dan” Pace

I know I am in trouble when Beth says she wants to eat at Hooters on a Monday night.

Asking a guy to Hooters has to be some kind of new test for men, and I’m failing miserably. I am trying not to look at all the reconstituted breasts and buttocks bouncing and all the pierced and tattooed belly buttons undulating around the restaurant. And all those tan legs! Pairs of them everywhere I look! How can a man not look at Darcy, his server, when the sun on her sunrise tattoo below her belly button has set somewhere lower? How can I not stare at the freckles practically staring back at me through Darcy’s tight

shorts? How can I not stare at Darcy’s hooters at a place called Hooters?

You could respect your date and look into her eyes, Dan. Uh-duh. And is this guy white or what? He’s staring at “tan legs.” This must be one of those interracial books I’ve heard about. I read on:

“You remind me of my mother, Dan,” Beth says, her eyes following Darcy instead of looking at me, a plateful of shiny clean chicken bones in front of her and five empty bottles of Sam Adams guarding her side of the table.

Back to reality. “Hmm?”

“I said, you remind me of my mother.”

I hope my one class in psychology will come in handy here. “I remind you of your mother?”

Beth nods, sighing in Darcy’s direction.

“Um, is that a compliment?”

Beth glances my way. “No, Dan. I hate my mother.” Her eyes grab on to Darcy again, her tongue flicking over her lower lip. Damn, she’s sexy when she does that. “I’ve hated my mother since the day I was born.”

Where’s this coming from? “So what exactly did you mean by that?”

She guzzles more beer. “You’re pretty smart. You figure it out.”

Beth is gay, Dan. She and Darcy are going to hook up and leave you hanging at Hooters. So predictable.

“Figure out what?”

Beth rolls her eyes and takes another sip, tossing her napkin on the table. “I’ll be back.”

I watch Beth head for the bathroom and glance over at the semicircular booth across from us. Two black women sit on either side of a black man who either had to have played some football or had to have done a tour or two in the service. Lucky guy. He’s got two women, one on either side of him, yet he’s able to be hard staring at every implant in the restaurant. One of the black women, who has light brown eyes almost like a cat’s eyes, catches me staring, so I quickly return to picking at the label of my Sam Adams.

Yep, this is an interracial book. I’m somewhat intrigued. “Cat’s eyes,” huh? They’re probably contacts.

I have no idea why I’m here. I’m sitting alone at a table on my fifth date with Beth, and I’m still not sure why I’m with her at all. Nancy, a woman I teach with at Monterey Elementary, said we’d be “perfect” together. “She’s so outdoorsy and spunky,” Nancy had said. “And she is so into hiking like you are, Dan.”

Hiking. Right. On two of our previous dinner dates, all she did was hike to the bathroom or talk our servers to death. On our other two dates, we sat in front of her TV watching college football on ESPN, the dramatic fall colors of the Blue Ridge Parkway screaming to be hiked through. And at the end of each evening, she rushed from my car or rushed me out the door of her condo without even saying good-bye. I have yet to find out if her tongue flicking feels as good as it looks.

“Because she’s gay, Dan,” I say. “Now hook up with the sister, and let’s get on with this thing.”

Beth returns. “You figure it out yet?”

I sigh. “Well, I know you don’t like your mother.”

“I hate my mother. There’s a difference.”

“Okay. Um, so if you hate your mother, and I remind you of her, you must hate me.” I smile and wait for Beth to contradict me.

She doesn’t.

“I, uh, I hope I’m wrong.”

“You’re not.” She gulps the rest of her sixth Sam Adams.

Huh? “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that you hate me?”

She nods. “With a passion.”

I sit back. “Then why have you been going out with me?”

“Just to see.”

“To see what?”

“To see if you interested me.” She shrugs. “And you don’t. Sorry.”

This is messed up! “Then why’d you agree to go out with me tonight?”

“For the hot wings,” she says, with a soft laugh. “And the view.” She raises her eyebrows. “Isn’t that why you come here, too?”

Wait a minute. Something weird is happening here. “This is the first time I’ve ever been here, Beth.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, it’s true.” I’d be too embarrassed to eat here by myself, and Hooters is not the place to take a lady if you want to keep her respect.

Three cheers for Dan! Not. Wait a minute. This means, then, that Dan doesn’t think Beth is a lady…or something like that. I’m getting to be as confused as Dan is.

Unless she likes good hot wings, I guess, or…she really likes the view.

Beth waves at yet another server. “I come here all the time.”

“You come here…all the time.” Oh…shit. I can handle this. “You’re, um, you’re bisexual?” Please say yes! This is every man’s fantasy, and I am definitely a man in need of a fantasy to come true at this time in my—

“Hell no, Dan. I’m not even bi-curious.” Oh. I guess that’s good. It would be so hard for me to take if she were dumping me for a—

“I’m a lesbian, Dan. I thought Nancy told you.” Spunky. Outdoorsy. Into hiking. Beth, who looks like an L.L.Bean model with her short, dark hair; high New Hampshire cheekbones; jeans; Timberlands; and blue and black flannel shirt, is a lesbian?

Gee. What a nice stereotype to see again in a novel. This had better grab me in the next few pages, or I’m going to slam this one.

I run a checklist through my mind. Beth likes sports. Check that—Beth loves sports. She can quote stats, scores, and sports scandals better than any guy I know. She plays on a softball team and everything, and she even played field hockey in college. Lesbians wielding sticks? Wait, they’re curved sticks. Nothing phallic there. And so what if she wears flannel shirts; I mean, I know it’s a stereotype and all, but I wear flannel shirts. And no one can drink more beer, belch louder, or—

Geez, she’s more of a guy than I am. About the only thing she hasn’t done is light some farts, though I did see a lighter in her bathroom.

Dan sounds like a fraternity boy. I hated the frat boys at Purdue. All their secret this and that was just cover for their insecurities.

And not a single one of them ever asked me out.

And she did ask if I had a cute sister. How’d that conversation go? “You have a sister?” Beth had said. I had said, “Yes.” Beth had smiled and said, “Is she cute?” Hmm. I should have connected the dots with those two questions.

“Uh-duh,” I say.

“No, uh, Beth, Nancy didn’t tell me that you were a, an, um—”

“A dyke.”

So glad she said it instead of me. Oh, sure, I was thinking the word, but I would never say it. To a woman, anyway. There were a few in the service with me, but every one of them could have kicked my ass. Come to think of it, even the nonlesbian women in the Marines could have kicked my ass.

Dan’s wimpy. Or at least he says he is. I bet he can handle himself. Or, rather, I hope he can handle himself. The sister on the cover looks rugged.

And as for Nancy, the bitch, we’re going to have a long talk. Nancy is still trying to get me back for that one-night stand two years ago. I mean, other than teaching fourth-graders in the same building together, we have absolutely nothing in common. Except for that bottle of vodka. And the whipped cream. Oh, and the peanut butter. And the ice cream. Good thing I was out of Hershey’s syrup or the stains never would have come out of the comforter while we made our “ba-Nancy split.” I still have a little peanut butter stain on the wall. Something about peanut oil on latex paint not coming out. Why did we—oh, yeah. Jewel had just broken up with me, and I had no self-control that night, and I was hungry, and I do have a sweet tooth, but—

So far, Dan is clueless, unscrupulous, and loveless. And he’s an elementary school teacher? Would any sister—or any woman for that matter—be interested in that combination? I don’t think so. This writer flunked characterization—and logic—in a big way.

Beth pats my hand. “Don’t worry, Dan. But, hey, you never know. Things might work out for you in the end.”

“They, uh, might work out how?”

“One can always hope.”

“Hope for what?”

Darcy chooses this moment to return with our check, and Darcy is doing that tongue-flicking thing. In Beth’s direction. And it’s sexy as hell. Either chapped lips must be catching or…

No…way. Was I just bait for a lesbian hookup? No wonder Beth said that she wanted to meet me here.

Darcy hands the check to me and slides a slip of paper to Beth. Beth peeks at the slip of paper and nods at Darcy.

“Have a nice evening, y’all,” Darcy says.

“You know we will,” Beth says, and Darcy walks away, occasionally looking back at Beth.

Beth gathers her coat. “Sorry, Dan.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Where are you going? What just happened?”

She stands. “I have a date.”

“With whom?”

“With Darcy. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

My dinner date has just picked up our server for a night of tongue flicking. “You and Darcy are going to…”

Beth nods.

“Just like that?” And I’m not invited?

She slips into her coat. “Hey, Dan, I tried to include you, but Darcy isn’t into that.”

“Into what?”

Beth squints. “I thought you were from California.”

“Yeah, but that was a long time ago, and just what does being from California have to do with this?”

Beth shakes her head. “I gotta go get ready.”

“And you’re leaving me with the check?”

She laughs. “Yes, but don’t worry about the tip. I’ll tip Darcy later for us, okay?”

And this is the end of his version of the events, thankfully. I don’t like him or find him believable for a second. I turn the page and hope the sister is more likable.

2: Tynisha “Ty” Clarke

Tynisha? Hmm. Is Ty going to be ghetto? Is this another one of those “opposites attract” interracial romances? You’d think that just having two characters with different skin color would be enough. Well, let’s see if Tynisha is a believable sister:

I know I shouldn’t be eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation in a restaurant, but when you’ve been waiting as long as we have, you have to do something. That’s so…twisted! Poor Dan!

“Did you just hear what she said to him?”

Mike sighs and pours out more salt onto the table, flicking several grains toward Pat. “He should have seen it coming, Ty. Look at her. She’s wearing what he’s wearing and looks more comfortable in it than he does.”

Pat arranges the stack of Sweet’n Low for the fifth time. “She is wearing a flannel shirt and work boots, Tynisha.”

“I wear work boots, Patricia. What are you trying to say?”

“If the boot fits,” Pat says.

I am so glad to get out of those heavy, steel-toed Red Wings that I wear while I’m roaming Roanoke, Virginia, in my Verizon van—

Hold up. She said, “Roanoke, Virginia”? She works in my adopted hometown? So, the Hooters in the story must be the one out on Williamson Road, not that I’ve ever been there. I might just like this book a little. My new hometown is in a book. Imagine that.

—looking for some address in the middle of nowhere, hopefully not having to gaff a pole or squeeze into a crawl space. Climbing poles for the phone company is not glamorous at all, but the pay is better than good. I am one of the few sisters climbing poles for any company in the state of Virginia, but that doesn’t mean I’m a dyke.

“That’s right,” I say. “It means you’re a pioneer, girl.”

“Forget you, Pat,” I say. “That’s just wishful thinking on your part. That’s probably why you’ve been my friend since the seventh grade. Hoping you can get a piece of this action.”

“Come on now. You know I only pole climb, no pun intended. And unless you grow a dick, Ty, I don’t want your…”

Oooh, Pat is nasty. I’m glad she and Dan aren’t going to hook up. I shudder. But they might hook up anyway. Dan seems hard up enough. And did Pat really have to say, “Grow a dick”?

Mike elbows Pat and cuts his eyes to the left. “Finally.”

And, naturally, it’s the wench who has a date later with Beth. And Dan is still sitting there at his table peeling his beer bottle. Man has to be hard up, but why is he so calm? If I were Dan, I’d be breaking shit about now, and I wouldn’t have been stuck with the check. And how clueless is he? I mean, he didn’t know his girlfriend was a lesbian! The man should be wearing a stupid sign.

“Amen to that,” I whisper. I like Ty.

“Hi, my name is Darcy.”

She looks like that Darcy chick on Married with Children. Wasn’t she gay on that show, too? I know all Darcys aren’t gay, but this is creepy.

“I’ll be your server tonight. What can I get y’all to drink?”

Y’all? Maybe she’s from Hee Haw. Do they do gay salutes on Hee Haw? Getting “down on the farm” has just taken on a totally new meaning.

I giggle. If this book were written solely from Ty’s point of view, I might be enjoying myself more. This should have been the first chapter anyway. A lady should always get to speak first…and last.

“I’ll have a grande frozen strawberry margarita,” says Pat, the alcoholic, while I stare her down. “What?”

“Who’s driving?” I ask.

Pat latches onto one of Mike’s muscular arms. “Mike is.”

I roll my eyes. “So you two aren’t trying to get any tonight? Just trying to get your drink on?”

“It’s a Monday night, girl,” Pat says. “Who goes macking on a Monday night?” She rests her head on Mike’s shoulder.

Mike moves his shoulder away from Pat’s head. “Go ahead, girl. You’re blocking all the testosterone up in here.”

Pat waves at the crowd of people at the bar, their eyes glued to Monday Night Football. “How do you know if any of them are gay?”

Mike only raises his eyebrows, and I shake my head at the two of them. Pat, who is the most heterosexual being I have ever met, goes on dates with Mike, the strong, silent gay guy. Yet if you ever saw either one of them on the street, you’d think Pat was a librarian with her granny glasses and old-fashioned clothes and Mike was a preacher all dressed up sharp in electric blue.

Oooh, that E. Lynn Harris! Every time you turn around there’s another gay black man in a book. And what is Ty, who seems to be levelheaded, doing with a freak and a homosexual? I know they’re friends, but come on! Is everything going to be “opposites attract” in this book or what? And that crack on librarians, oooh! I have never worn granny glasses in my life!

Though my mama has. Hmm. Two stereotypes so far. Maybe D. J. Browning is going for a record.

“Ahem,” Darcy says.

Don’t be a-hemming me, wench! You made us wait, so I’m going to make you wait. “Let’s see now…I’ll have…a strawberry daiquiri and…a glass of water, please.”

“And I’ll have a Sex on the Beach,” Mike says. “And Darcy, I hope it won’t take you fifteen minutes to get our drinks to us since we’ve already been sitting here for fifteen minutes waiting to place our order.”

Darcy fiddles with the gold cross on her necklace. Oh, right, Darcy’s a Christian. Not. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Monday is one of our busiest nights.”

And later, it’s going to get busier, huh, Darcy? I look over at Dan. Still sitting there, still ripping labels off bottles. Pitiful.

Well, hook up already. Do something. I know they have to develop their relationship over—I flip to the back of the book—285 pages? This book is kind of light. I could read a book like this in a couple hours. Hmm.

“Would y’all like to order appetizers with your drinks?”

“We’ll have an order of hot wings and an order of spinach dip, please,” Mike says, and I blink at him. “What?”

“What if I wanted something different?” I say.

“Go ahead,” Mike says.

I’m not really that hungry for anything but good conversation, but I can’t stand anyone ordering for me. “Make it two orders of hot wings.”

“Okay,” Darcy says. “I’ll be right back with your drinks and food.”

Yeah, right. We’ll be lucky to see Darcy before the second half of the game.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Pat says, “before I was rudely nudged with somebody’s hard and crusty elbow—”

“My elbows aren’t crusty,” Mike interrupts.

“Dag, Mike, lube them things,” Pat says. “So, Mike, we haven’t seen your friend Paul around in a while. Are you two still kickin’ it?”

Mike shrugs. “Yeah, we’re still cool, but I think our relationship changed when I asked him to give me a little space. I’m just tired of partying all the time. I’m getting too old for that shit.”

And this ends Ty’s opening section. Not terrible, not wonderful. Adequate. I’m getting hints for what’s to come, and it isn’t as if it will take long for these two to get together. It’s Dan’s turn again:

3: Dan

I’m getting too old for this shit.

I’ve been peeling beer bottle labels ever since I had my first Michelob—or was it a Miller?—back in high school. I peeled quite a few bottles of Bud in the service, too. I know it means I’m horny. And I am. It’s hard for me to admit that at thirty-two, yet it’s true. I know I’ve just been dumped for another woman, and I know that this isn’t the first time it’s happened.

But at least the first time involved a woman dumping me for her mother.

Oooh, nasty! Why can’t Dan just be a plain, ordinary man? Why does he have to have so much baggage?

Which isn’t as twisted as it sounds. Okay, it does sound twisted, but there’s a logical explanation. Given the choice between marrying me, the surfer boy Marine from California turned elementary school teacher from Virginia, and the traditions of her Thai, man-hating mother in Cleveland, Jewel chose…the Honda Prelude that her mother promised her if she broke off her engagement with me.

This is different. A white man with a Thai ex will be bumping uglies with a rugged sister—an interesting development. At least it means he’s open to interracial relationships.

Either that or he’ll mess with any woman, anytime, anywhere.

The freak.

Yeah, it’s a little bit twisted. And it also involved her mother agreeing to pay for all of Jewel’s med school bills, but I feel that I’ve been replaced by a two-door coupe that I hope rusts to dust up in Ohio, and I don’t want to think about Jewel anymore. She’s past history, end of story, archives, end of the road…yet she visits me whenever I have situations like this, as if she’s sitting across from me right now in Beth’s empty chair. The ex that keeps on giving me pain.

And I still have the ring I gave her that she threw back in my face.

Which means that Jewel will be back in Dan’s life. That’s how these books work. He’s hard up and hurt from a past relationship, and as soon as he finds true love with Ty (though I still don’t see how), Jewel will be back with a vengeance. Such a soap opera. I’m so glad real life isn’t this way.

I look at the mess in front of me: seven beer bottles’ worth of labels, two plates of chicken bones, and a pile of sticky napkins. Leftovers from a five-date relationship with…a lesbian who is going home to wait on my waitress, to serve my server, who is going to get the tip of Beth’s tongue.

Damn. I hope the Sam Adams and all those hot wings give Beth some really bad gas. Or loose stools. Yeah, that would be perfect. Just an evening of Darcy and diarrhea. An evening of sucking down Pepto-Bismol instead of sucking face. An evening of starts and farts, fits and shits.

HAAAAA! That’s a good one. Nasty, but good. Funny, but I don’t mind it so much when a man of any race curses. That’s how most men communicate when they can’t think of anything intelligent to say, right? But educated sisters—no, they can’t be cursing up a storm and get my approval.

I reach down to pick up a stray fleck of a label and turn my head just enough to see the delicious, sexy, toned brown legs of the black woman with cat’s eyes in the booth across from me. Beautiful is the wrong word. Stunning. No, dazzling. Classy, definitely elegant. Cute toes, too. She must work out. So smooth, flexed just right, so well-proportioned, so—

So busted.

She saw me.

I raise my head too quickly, bump it hard on the bottom of the table, and see a few stars. When I finally am able to sit up, I steal a glance her way—and she’s smiling at me. Perfect teeth gleaming like that gum commercial. Fabulous.

Or is she laughing? She has her hand over her mouth and—

Yeah, she’s laughing. Private Sidney, a hot black woman from Alabama whom I hung out with in Saudi, used to laugh at me the same way whenever I tried to dance, covering her face with both hands. Yeah, I’m that bad of a dancer. I wasn’t bad at dancing horizontally, though. Yeah, I wonder what Cyd’s up to these days? We used to go at it—

Dan is a freak! Do I want him messing with Ty? What on earth could she ever see in him? Do all white men in their thirties behave this way? This is getting beyond ridiculous. A Californian former-Marine freak of an elementary school teacher is going to hook up with a trailblazing, cultured sister? Against my better judgment, I’m going to give it a few more pages, but it had better get moving, and it had better start getting real.

Geez, I need to get hold of myself. I’m too old to be reliving old relationships and flirting, yet that’s what I’m doing, and who am I flirting with? A black woman sitting next to a guy twice my size just minutes after my lesbian girlfriend has left me to go play field hockey—or should I say tonsil hockey?—with one of Hooters’s finest.

Yeah, life can suck in oh so many special ways.

I toss two twenties and a ten on top of the check. I know that will give Darcy more than a 20 percent tip, but who knows? Things have a way of working out. Maybe things won’t work out between Beth and Darcy, and Darcy will see me in a new light because of my generosity, realize the errors of her ways, and give me a chance.

And then again, maybe Darcy will use her tip to buy Beth a new leopard-skin thong, and then they’ll—

I down a full glass of lukewarm ice water, and as I set down the glass, I look once more at Cat Eyes. Such ripe, red lips, such devastating eyes.

And thighs. Don’t forget the thighs. They are smokin’.

At least he’s not a chest or booty man. Eyes and thighs. I have two pairs of those. They aren’t “smokin’,” but they can smolder when I want them to.

I nod once at her, and she nods back. I put on my coat and nod again. She nods again.

We’ve just had a nodding moment.

I don’t have many of these moments. What do I do next? If I had any guts, I’d go over and speak to her. But what would I say? “Hi, I’m the guy who’s been scoping out your fine, sculpted legs like a drooling teenager, and I was wondering if I could have your phone number, maybe give you a call sometime?” But if the big guy is her boyfriend, I might be leaving with a busted nose to go with my bruised ego.

No, Dan, you might be leaving with his phone number.

Instead, I weave my way through the tables to the door, where I pause to look back at Cat Eyes and only see Darcy at her booth, serving their drinks. What’s Cat Eyes drinking? A…strawberry daiquiri. Hmm. Kind of matches her lips. She takes a sip, those cat’s eyes wide and painfully sexy.

I almost have an epiphany—something about cats’ eyes, strawberries, and leopard-skin thongs—but the epiphany vanishes when stinging rain pelts my face outside the door. Rushing to my Subaru, parked away from the neon orange glow of the Hooters sign, I jump in, start the engine, and pop in my favorite cassette.

Eric B. and Rakim to the rescue once again.

At least he has okay taste in music. So, Dan’s “old school.” I just wish he wasn’t such a freak. Now let’s see Ty’s reaction, and she’d better react. I wouldn’t shrug off a man staring that hard at me for anything—not that it happens that often to me. Let’s see, the last time a man really gritted on me was…I sigh. It was during my first year at Purdue. He was a fifth-year senior football player named…Kentrick? Kendrick? He had looked me up and down and up and even circled me once, like an African lion stalking his prey. I felt so…exposed. He never actually approached me. He just…looked.

And I graduated before he did, four years later.

4: Ty

A white guy nodded at me, and I nodded back. Twice. Either we just had us a moment—in his mind, anyway—or that boy has Tourette’s. And what a perv! Checking me out like that, hard staring at my legs, like maybe he thinks he can get between them. That will be the day.

“Preach on, my sister!” I shout. But then I sigh. I bet they will be getting busy by page fifty, which is about all I’ll probably want to read of this book. That’s one of my rules. I’ll give any book fifty pages, and if I’m not fully grabbed, embraced, and fondled by then, it’s over for me.

Though I do have some fine legs. At least he has some taste. And he does have sandy blond hair and blue eyes. For whatever reason, I’ve always had a thing for blond hair and blue eyes on a guy, not that any of the brothers I’ve ever dated have gone that route.

So, she has never been in an interracial relationship. And Dan the vodka-drinking elementary school teacher/freak, who can’t tell if a woman is a lesbian or a man is gay, is the one for her? What would Mike Tyson say about this? Oh, yeah. This is getting ludicrous.

But why did he tip Darcy? There isn’t even forty dollars’ worth of food on that table. He is obviously a generous fool when it comes to women.

With a “Stupid” sign around his neck.

I turn to watch Mike stirring his Sex on the Beach, still going on and on about Precious Paul. “Paul is somebody I can have fun with, but I don’t see us together five or ten years from now. He’s just not settle-down material.”

Pat slurps her daiquiri. Girl has absolutely no manners. “Speaking of settling down, Ty, are you and Mr. Tickler in it for the long haul, or are you going to get Charles to make an honest woman out of you?”

Oh…snap. Ty has a Mr. Tickler, too! I feel a rush of blood to my face. I know, I’m weird, but I’m feeling embarrassed by something that’s happening to a woman in a novel.

I wonder if Ty has the newest model….

Before I can answer—and I really don’t want to answer—Darcy returns with our appetizers, which gives me a wicked thought: good service means that the server is getting some later. Would Darcy be this busy with our order if she weren’t getting busy after work?

“Here are your drinks, hot wings, and spinach dip. I also brought some extra plates for y’all. Are y’all ready to order your main courses?”

I shake my head. “I think this will be enough for me, thank you. Are you guys ordering anything?”

Mike pats his stomach. “No, I had a late lunch so I’m not that hungry. This will be plenty.”

“This is fine,” Pat says. “If I get hungry later, I’ll attack some of the leftovers in the fridge.”

Darcy winces. No big tip for you at this booth, wench. “Great, I’ll bring your check in a few minutes. How should I divide it?”

Pat rolls her eyes. “Just bring one check, please. Whose turn is it to pay anyway?”

Mike pulls out his Visa and hands it to Darcy. “Mine.”

After Darcy leaves, I see Pat staring at me. I know she wants me to answer her question, most likely because she wants yet another of my leftover boyfriends. The girl really likes her leftovers. I dump ’em, and she pumps ’em. She says they taste better the second time you cook with them.

And Pat’s the librarian-looking one? Trifling, just trifling.

I decide to change the subject. “That wench didn’t even ask if we wanted dessert. I guess she needs to hurry up and get ready for her date with home girl later.”

“At least she has a date, and stop trying to change the subject,” Pat says. “So what’s up with you and your love life, Ty? You haven’t been on a date with Charles in God knows how long. I know you’ve been dating that battery-powered Mr. Tickler, and if Mr. Tickler is that good, girl, I may have to invest in one.”

I can’t believe she’s busting out with my business like that! Though I know Mike could care less, I’m embarrassed as hell.

And now I’m embarrassed all over again. In addition to giving librarian-looking people a bad name, Pat is just plain rude. What’s the word? Uncouth. Yep, Pat is uncouth in the booth.

Though I plan to get some from Mr. Tickler tonight if Charles doesn’t come through.

It sounds to me as if Ty has her priorities in order. I’ll bet she has quite a collection of C batteries in her nightstand. She may even have rechargeable batteries warming up in one of those little rechargers right now. I should probably get a recharger, too.

It’s good for the environment, you know.

“I’m just glad you got over Jason,” Mike says. “He was a dawg with a capital D.”

I’m so tired of where this conversation always seems to go. “Why is it we talk about the same damn thing every time we go out?” I ask. “I don’t want to talk about the man I’m with or the men who dogged me out. I don’t want to talk about Charles, and I sure as hell don’t want to talk about Jason. I came out tonight to talk to two of my friends about normal shit, like working, or the last movie you saw, Pat, or the last book you read, Mike. This is depressing.”

Neither Mike nor Pat speaks for a few moments.

“I, uh, I fixed that problem in accounting today,” Pat says.

“’Bout time, too,” Mike says, and in no time, they sit and fuss about working for Wachovia, where Mike is a supervisor and Pat is a systems analyst. I don’t understand a word they’re saying most of the time, because they speak that computer-tech language, but at least they aren’t grilling me anymore.

Darcy gives us exactly two minutes to start on our wings and spinach dip before bouncing up to the table and handing the credit card slip to Mike. “Here you are, sir. Thank you, and y’all have a good night.” Then Darcy bounces away, and I know that isn’t the ass she was born with. It doesn’t fit her white body at all. I’ll bet she got a real good deal on the sale of her singlewide at the trailer park and bought herself a booty. I’m sure her mama’s real proud of her.

Ain’t that the truth! All these no-ass-at-all white girls are trying to get cabooses. They could rid me of mine anytime!

But wait—how are Ty and Dan going to hook up when it’s starting to sound as if Ty doesn’t even like white people? There are far too many opposites in this book. Too much nonsense. This kind of thing would never happen, especially in Roanoke, Virginia.

Mike signs the slip. “She doesn’t deserve a tip at all, but I’ll give her fifteen instead of my normal twenty percent. Everybody has off nights. Are you all ready to go?”

When we get outside, the rain is coming down in heavy sheets. Mike and Pat share an umbrella to his Maxima, while I pop my umbrella and start for my baby, my brand-new BMW 525i, a car I may actually get to own outright in about ten years once the lease runs out. As I’m passing under the Hooters sign, I hear some thumping bass sounding like some old school rap from when I was little—and it’s coming from the old Subaru parked next to me? How dare that little car sit next to mine! I park my car in the boondocks to keep hoopdies like that away from my baby. There will be no scratches, dents, or scars on my baby!

I look through the front windshield, you know, just to be nosy, and see…Dan? He hasn’t left yet? What’s up with him? Is he having car trouble? No, exhaust smoke fills the air just fine. Is he—I hope he isn’t waiting for me. Just because I nodded to him does not mean—

He’s waving. Do I wave back at the man who was feeling up my legs with his eyes? You’re asking a lot, Mr. Dan. First nodding, and now waving. I know you’ve had a rough night, and though I don’t know exactly how you feel—no man ever dumped me for another man—I feel you, Mr. Dan. I squeeze out a wincing smile but don’t wave, get in my car, start it up, and pull out of the Hooters parking lot. I check the rearview mirror to see if he follows—you can never tell with white men these days—then head for home, humming along to that old school beat.

I close Wishful Thinking. The concept is different, but it’s too far-fetched. Ty seems as if she has her life together—a strong sister with a job and a plan. Dan, though, has too much baggage and droolage. Is “droolage” a word? I know I’d probably trash this one, even though I usually give interracial romances the benefit of the doubt, since there are so few of them. I might pick this one up again one day when I’m bored out of my skull.

Good thing I stocked up on C batteries. The checkout girl at Wal-Mart didn’t even blink as she scanned the Duracell megapack, the ones parents buy for all the electronic Christmas toys. Little did she know…

Or, what if she did know?

I’ve embarrassed myself again.

Three times in one night, two from a book, and one from a memory.

I must be crazy.