“My God, I thought you were serious there for a minute,” Sharon shook her head as the waitress left. “You don’t really eat that kind of stuff do you? I mean, I still have the option of going to China in front or me, and the kind of shit they eat is even worse than what you were teasing me with. God, Bob, I don’t want to have to spend another year or two living on ramen noodles.”

“Well, then, don’t go to China,” he laughed. “We do eat people food in Colorado, you know. What kind of things do you like?”

“Oh, I’ll eat a lot of things,” she replied. “At least things that are edible by normal human beings, which leaves out liver and sauerkraut, for a couple of things. Bob, I’m sure you know that I occasionally have trouble with my digestive system, so I try to avoid heavy spices and things like that, and I don’t like things real hot. If I get too carried away with it I know I’ll be sorry afterwards, and in more ways than one. Heartburn isn’t fun, Bob, and some of the other stuff that happens afterward, well, that isn’t fun either. I think I told you that I enjoy Italian food, and I do, but sometimes they pour on the spices a little heavy and that can get to be a bit too much for me if I don’t watch myself. But, Buster … well, I am talking about a butt buster, if you know what I mean. Butt buster, I’ll have to remember that, you get it? I guess you know about it, don’t you, I had to give you a couple splendid examples of it today, didn’t I? But we probably shouldn’t be talking about something like that in public, we probably ought to talk about something else. Even though we’ve talked about our plan possibilities, Bob, there’s so much we haven’t talked about, and there’s so much you don’t know about me or that I don’t know about you. Like music, for example. I don’t have any idea at all what kind of music you like. Are you musical at all, or do you just play the radio? When you do, what kinds of things do you listen to? I like to have music on sometimes, not all the time, but I don’t like it if it’s country, I hate country, it’s so stupid and why people think they have to sing through their noses with a fake southern accent is beyond me, Bob, it’s just plain silly! Oh, and I don’t like grand opera, the song goes that the opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings, I know that’s country too but it’s wrong, it’s more like the opera ain’t over till the fat lady screams. And I don’t much care for real punky hard rock, either, that’s just concentrated noise. What do you think about it, Bob?”

“I think that one of the things that I like about you is that I never have to search for a topic of conversation,” he grinned. “You always come up with things, and it’s never hard for me to hold up my end of the conversation.”

“Well, I suppose,” she shrugged. “I guess you know that I like to talk a lot and I think you’re a good listener, Bob. I like that in a man. In spite of everything, you still are pretty much the strong silent type that I knew in high school, just like Gary Cooper in old movies. Oh! Movies! Bob, what kind of movies do you like? I like to go out to movies, but so many of the ones they make these days are trash, Bob, they’re just pure trash. What are your favorite movies? I like some of the old classics. Gone With The Wind! I mean, the original version, with Clark Gable, not that horrible knock off they did what was it, twenty years ago? Oh, the original version, that was a movie! They don’t make movies like that any more, Buster, I’ll tell you. Oh! Oh! Rear Window, with Grace Kelley, not that remake they made, either. Grace Kelley, she was so beautiful and such a wonderful actress, even though she didn’t make a lot of movies before she went to Monaco, but wow! Such a movie, everything in it is just perfect, it almost makes you want to cry at the way that modern movies are all sex and violence. Now, I don’t mind sex, you know that, and some of it in a movie is just fine but I like my movies to have some story with them, not just jump from bed to bed like some sort of a porn video. I’ve seen one or two of those, and they’re all right I guess, if you like that sort of thing, but a movie can be so much more moving if some things are suggested, rather than being just right in front of you. Of course they made a lot of crap back in the old days but the good ones have held up, they’re still good. I don’t get to watch all the movies that I’d like to but it’s nice to sit back with a DVD player and watch something from back out of the thirties or forties, it really takes you back to watch some of those legends on the screen. I just love to curl up with a good movie and a bowl of popcorn, and I mean real popcorn, Bob, not the kind where you just throw a bag in the microwave, it’s just so dry and tasteless that way. If I’m going to have popcorn I want to have real popcorn, and as far as I’m concerned the only way to make it is in a heavy cast iron skillet, right on the stove, with real popcorn cooked with vegetable oil, then served with real butter, not margarine, either. Oh, and salt! Salt! How can you stand popcorn without salt? It’s not supposed to be all that good for you, but I think that’s a load of bull! Almost everything tastes better with salt, well not everything but a lot of things, but now you’re not supposed to use it. I think some of those food freaks actually think that if something tastes good it’s not good for you, and that’s a load of bull, too. I want my real popcorn with real salt! They have these spices and chemicals and things that are supposed to replace salt, and I don’t think they taste very good and they can’t be much good for you, most of them give me heartburn, but they’re supposed to be good for you and salt isn’t? I don’t think so, Buster. How are you supposed to be able to enjoy a movie without popcorn. They still make pretty good popcorn in most movie theaters because they still use that vegetable oil to cook it with rather than trying to torture the kernels with microwaves, but movie theater popcorn is still a little dry to my taste. I’d just as soon have my popcorn at home where I can watch my DVD and be able to get up and go to the bathroom or something without missing any of the movie. You don’t have a pause button in a theater, Bob! I like to go out to movies, because there’s nothing like seeing one on a big screen, but when it’s big like that it overwhelms you and you get caught up in the visual action and miss part of the story. That’s the nice thing about a videotape or a DVD, if you miss something or don’t understand it you can always just grab that old remote and run it back so you can figure it out if you have to. The other nice thing about watching a movie at home on your tape player or DVD player is that if you’re not interested in the movie, it just doesn’t grab your attention or it’s pure junk, you can shut it off and watch something else, or read a book or something. You don’t have to just sit there and take it because you’ve spent your eighteen bucks and feel like you have to get your money’s worth, don’t you think, Bob?”

“I guess,” he said, feeling like he had to at least say something when she took a breath between the rush of words. “I don’t go out to movies much unless it’s something I really want to see. It’s not as much fun to go by myself. Sometimes I’ll watch something on TV, but I can’t tell you the last time I rented a movie.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” she replied, getting control of the conversation back and getting going again, the words tumbling out of her faster than ever, if it were possible. For a guy like Bob who didn’t mind talking if there was something to say but hated to make small talk, it was easy to sit back and let her run, just enjoying the show. “That’s right! You’re mostly a book person, aren’t you? It’s just like when you were in school, you always had your nose stuck in a book, and it was never anything simple, always something that weighed about as much as I did. Always politics or history or something like that, too. If it was a novel it was always some big door stopper, War and Peace or something like that. I tried to read that one once and I don’t think I got ten pages into it, I like to read but I got lost in it so quickly it wasn’t funny. I like to read, though, but I can’t do something quite that heavy. I like novels, usually something light and not too serious but with some substance. I kind of like romances, not the frothy kind of thing you get from Harlequin, they’re all the same when you get right down to it. Chick lit, that’s fairly new, but sometimes the novels are all right although it always seems like they’re set in New York and really they’re just another kind of romance except that sometimes the girls are all lesbians or at least lesbian wannabes. I don’t really like all that heavy action stuff like Tom Clancy, although I read one of his books one time and it was all right except that things were always blowing up. I kind of like murder mysteries, too, but not if they’re too dark. Oh! Oh! Have you ever read any John Sandford murder mysteries? Oh, they are great, I sometimes think that he may be one of the most under-appreciated writers in the business today. He’s not based out of New York so I think he gets overlooked a lot. Oh, and J.D. Robb! J.D. Robb, Bob! That’s a pen name for Nora Roberts, and she’s one of the great romance writers of our time but her J.D. Robb books are murder mysteries that have a totally different textures than her romances, which I think are pretty frothy. These are set about fifty years in the future and I’m not so sure I’m all that fascinated with her future world, it doesn’t sound like the most fun place. But the thing with the J.D. Robb books is that when she gets around to the sex scenes she starts to write like the romance writer that she is, and wow! Things get steamy, really steamy, you don’t normally see something that hot in a murder mystery and it keeps me coming back for more, even though some of them are pretty dark. Did you ever read any of her books?”

She stopped for an instant, maybe to get a deep breath, so Bob figured he’d better make the appearance of keeping up his end of the conversation. “Yeah, I’ve read both Sandford and Robb,” he said. “Sandford’s Tarot series strikes me as rather stupid, but I think he makes up for it with the Prey series. He’s had a couple clunkers in there, but they’re mostly pretty good. Robb’s In Death series is all pretty good, there are only a couple clunkers in there, and I agree the sex scenes are hot. I think they give me a woman’s view if it’s possible for a man to get it. They’re all good light reading if you really don’t want to think about what you’re reading.”

“Well,” she said. “I suppose you’d say something like that, you were always more interested in something that will make you think. I like science fiction sometimes too, that often makes me think. Have you ever read any David Weber? He’s very good although I think he’s about run out of steam with the Honor Harrington books. I mean a pregnant Honor Harrington? Come on folks, get real, it just doesn’t work for me. And being the second wife in a multiple marriage? Honor Harrington? Buster, it just doesn’t make a bit of sense, I can’t imagine her going for him in the first place, and then to be a second wife? It’s just such a huge drop in her personal status. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in a multiple marriage anyway, well, unless it was a three-cornered one, if you know what I mean, that might have some advantages, but I don’t know, either. It might be all right for a while, but I don’t see it working in the long haul. At least I don’t see it working for me, it might for some people but it strikes me that there are two sexes for a reason, not that I’m putting down gay marriages or gay relationships, I can’t do that, obviously. It makes for a fun intellectual exercise to imagine Laura and I marrying some guy, she was bi, too, and I suppose it could have happened. At the time neither of us was looking for a relationship with a guy so maybe it didn’t matter, but that’s neither here nor there anymore. I guess what I was trying to say is that there’s plenty of good reading out there, I can see how a person could spend a lot of time buried in a book. Reading is a very good use of your spare time, especially if you like peace and quiet, like I know you do. That’s still one of those things that concerns me about you and me, you know. I’m just very afraid that I would take up too much of your time and attention and take you away from the books and things that I know you love.”

“Yeah,” he interjected into the flow of words. “That is something we’d have to work out, and why we’d need some personal space. Oh, well, I can still always buy you a ball gag if I really need peace and quiet sometime.”

“And you’d use it too, wouldn’t you Buster? When you draw the line, you draw the line, don’t you. I can see that you’re pretty flexible but there have got to be times when you can be pushed too far. I always knew you were one of those strong silent types …”

Bob tuned out of her line of thought for a moment, to think about what she’d just said. It was true, his major concern about whether his offer to her would work between them was mostly whether he’d have enough personal space to do what he needed to do and still be fair about spending the time he wanted to with her, or she wanted with him. She was so hyper so much of the time that he knew it could get irritating. Right now, it was amusing, and it was nice to sit back and just let her carry the conversation without him having to put much into it. But there were times that it was clearly going to be a first class pain in the ass, especially if they couldn’t establish some limits to their personal space early on. She could be very intrusive, he realized, without even thinking about it or recognizing it. On the other hand, in several of the conversations they’d had she hadn’t dominated the conversation with her typical mindless prattle, and they had exchanged views and ideas without him having to pick them out of a flood of words. So who knew? He didn’t; it was, as he had realized from the beginning, something that he couldn’t tell beforehand. They would just have to find out from sheer brute experience.

“… me over your knee if you have to,” she was saying as he tuned back into her broadcast. “I mean, if you do, you do and I probably would understand, but I hope that it won’t get that far. I mean, I know I can be rather irritating at times and I hope you’d be able to tolerate it, but I think we’re going to have to learn to give each other some personal space. I know it would be hard for both of us since we’ve lived by ourselves for so long, but we’d just have to see what happens …”

Interesting, he thought, her thinking seems to parallel mine, at least right now. It might not do that in the long run, but it was promising right now, at least. He sat back, watching her talk, rather than listening to her, and she seemed comfortable with the constant flood of words. Well, that was who she was, he’d just have to accept that. For that matter, he’d already accepted that or things wouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place.

“… and people think Terry Prachett is such a great author,” he heard her say as he tuned back in again. Apparently she’d changed channels while he had been gone. “I frankly think his books are pretty stupid, but maybe that’s just me, though you can think something totally different if you want to, that’s fine, you’re entitled to your opinion. But that’s like a lot of books out there today, pretty damn stupid, Bob, stupid, but they’re popular and so that must mean people buy them, and what does that reflect on the people who actually read them? I tell you Bob, I think the whole country is getting more and more stupid as we go along, but I guess that’s just the educational system at work under this idiotic No Child Left Behind thing that Bush came up with. As far as I can tell No Child Left Behind means holding everyone back to the pace of the slowest one, and spending what time they don’t spend taking government tests in teaching to the government tests, so kids never learn anything that’s really useful any more. I mean, I’ve worked with kids already out of high school who don’t know the first thing about things like making change or balancing a checkbook. My God, they can’t add up numbers on paper, they have to use a calculator. A calculator, Bob! If their battery goes dead they’d be totally lost about how to do anything. Is that turning us into a nation of stupid people or what? No child left behind so long as all their batteries are charged up!”

“You don’t have to lecture me on that one,” he snorted. “I work for a college, after all, and you wouldn’t believe how unprepared some of the kids are when they show up on our door. Now, of course I’m administrative, so I don’t see it like I would if I were in front of a classroom, but we get kids working on student jobs who don’t know the simplest practical things.”

“See what I mean! See what I mean? That’s what we get for allowing those idiots in Florida to shove George Bush down our throats. Dangling chads my round little ass! The Republicans stole that election right out from under the noses of everyone in the country and now we’re all paying for it. Hell, I wouldn’t be out of work if they hadn’t been so Goddamn greedy. Well, the fat cats got their big checks and the rest of us got left out in the cold, that’s how the Republicans want it, and that’s what they got.”

The rant against George Bush, well deserved in Bob’s opinion, was interrupted with the arrival of the waitress bringing dinner. It smelled good, and as he’d remembered from past visits, they were fairly large portions. Bob hadn’t really eaten much except the breakfast at the Chicago Inn many hours before. Lapping at Sharon’s crotch, while enjoyable, hadn’t counted for much in the nutrition department, so the arrival of food was especially welcome.

Apparently it was for Sharon, as well. “Wow, that looks good,” she said with a smile. “Bob, you made a great choice!”

“I can still take it back and get you the liver and onions,” the waitress offered with a grin.

“No, that’ll be just fine,” Bob laughed, remembering the waitress’s participation in his tease of Sharon a while before.

“Do you need anything else?”

“Not just now,” Bob smiled. “Thank you very much.”

“Oh, this looks good,” Sharon said, grabbing a fork. “Until I smelled this I’d forgotten how hungry I was. This looks very good.”

“Like I said, you don’t get fish like this in Colorado,” he said. “That is, unless you catch it yourself. There’s nothing else like fresh caught trout cooked over an open fire high up in the Rockies. I’ll have to take you out there some time so you can really enjoy it. I’m not really a fanatic fisherman but I do like to get out on a stream once in a while. In fact, I probably ought to get out on a stream sometime before winter comes again, and you might like to come with me. Have you ever done any camping out?”

“No, not really,” she said. “I went to Girl Scout Camp one time, years ago, when I was little. I don’t remember what the real name of it was but everybody just called it Mosquito Valley. We stayed in cabins, not tents. I was pretty little, though, and I never really thought about it recently at all.”

“This would be totally different,” he said. “I can start you off pretty easy, we can camp out of the car. I like to sleep out under the stars as it’s a really neat experience. I usually take along a tarp or something in case the weather isn’t perfect, but we could even take a tent. If you like it, we could maybe even get a little more serious, do a little backpacking. Nothing real ambitious, just enough to be able to get off the road a ways where there are less people fishing.”

“I don’t know,” she replied tentatively, and sounding a little dubious. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Like I said, we’ll start you out easy,” he smiled at her reluctance. “After all, you’re the one who likes to have new experiences. You’ll survive, and I’ll guarantee that the food won’t be as bad as Korea, Miss Kimchi Holdenhoven.”

“If you can keep it benign, I guess we’ll have to see,” she responded. “I just hope you don’t propose to use ‘Kimchi’ as a pet name for me or something.”

“Why not?” he grinned. “After all, you’re pretty hot and not to everybody’s taste, but those who like you love you.”

“When you put it like that it sounds almost acceptable,” she smiled, after trying some of the fried potatoes with the fish. “I like your sense of humor, Bob. I find you’re growing on me, and to my surprise I’m finding that I like it.”

“Well, I do, too,” he smiled. “It certainly made coming to the reunion worthwhile.”

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