“I couldn’t believe it when she said that,” Kyle told Chelsea in a phone call the next night. “I mean, I’ve been so used to Wychbold where I could hardly buy a date with a single woman who weighs less than I do.”

“I never got the impression there were any in that town who could be bought,” Chelsea laughed. “Or even rented by the hour.”

“I never noticed any either, not that I was looking,” he replied. He hadn’t really intended to get into this with Chelsea at all, but he’d realized that he had to share it with someone, and she was really the only candidate. “So anyway, it got to be lunchtime, and Andrea said she ought to go with me just to introduce me around. I guess the word got around that I was new to the place and single, because when we walked into the room, well, I don’t want to say all eyes were on me, but I was definitely feeling the eye tracks all over.”

“Believe me, a girl is more used to that sensation than most guys are,” she laughed again. It sounded good to hear her laugh; she’d often sounded morose on their phone calls over the last couple of months. “So what happened?”

“Well, we found a table,” he continued, in a good mood at least partly because she was. “Andrea offered to go get us Pepsis, and I took her up on it. She’d no more than left the table when this big, burly, stacked-up Hispanic girl sat down at the table. I kid you not, Chelsea, she had fingernails that had to be an inch or more beyond her fingertips, and painted the hottest red you ever saw. God knows what she must do around Mercer-Howe and have claws like that. A bear would have been proud of them. ‘Hi, I’m Sabrina,’ she said. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ Well, I told her that I was, and she said. ‘Hey, would you be up for a drink or two after work? Maybe we could have some fun.’”

“Straight, direct, and to the point,” Chelsea giggled. “I get guys hitting on me like that, even in this nowhere town, and in the library at that.”

“It’s for damn sure that I never have,” he sighed. “She made it real damn clear that she was ready to rock, too.”

“So did you take her up on it?”

“Not on a bet. I wouldn’t even think of it. All I could do was to look at those claws and I didn’t want them anywhere near me, let alone raking my bare back while we were in bed. That could have been a real quick way to find out what the local hospital is like. Besides, I can’t imagine the amount of work it must take her to keep them that way. I mean, all you had to do was look at them to understand what the term ‘high maintenance’ really means.”

“What happened after that?”

“Well, I didn’t know if maybe she was some high-level executive or something so I didn’t want to piss her off. I told her I was new in town and right at the moment didn’t have time to do anything but get my act together, but she didn’t get the message until Andrea came back and told her she was sitting in her seat. Even then, it wasn’t real easy.”

“I can imagine.”

“So Andrea just shook her head and smiled at me. I opened the can, took a drink, and started in on my sandwich wrapper, when another girl came up to the table. I say girl, but she must have been ten years older than I am and had on about five pounds of makeup to cover it up. Oh, and she might as well have had ‘high maintenance’ stamped on her forehead, too.”

“Hey, you can have some fun with cougars like that. Look, most girls my age are looking for Mr. Right. When they get a few years on them, especially if they’ve been divorced, they’re mostly looking for Mr. Right Now.”

“Could be, but she really turned me off with that makeup. I mean, she had to have laid it on with a trowel. Oh, and she had on some perfume that just about made me want to barf. I mean, the Pentagon could use it for chemical warfare. She came onto me just about as hard as Sabrina did, too. I mean, she really wasn’t that bad looking, except for being a little heavy, but wow, was she desperate. I could just tell she wanted a ring on her finger and one in some man’s nose as soon as possible, and she was ready to do what she had to to get it.”

“So did you have any trouble getting rid of her?”

“It was a little easier, but only because there weren’t any seats left at the table. Chelsea, I’m not sure how I managed to get through my lunch. I mean, we were getting interrupted all the time. I’ll bet that in the half-hour we were in there that at least ten women dropped by to say hello. Now, to be honest, most of them weren’t as obnoxious as those two, but they had me running scared for everyone else. I mean, some of them seemed all right, although I’d have to say that on the average they were older than we are. And, hey, some of them might have even been all right, although I’m not taking bets right now.”

“After hearing you complain about how hard it was to find women in Wychbold, it must seem like a happy hunting ground to you.”

“It might be if I wanted that much drama in my life. Now, I’m probably being unfair to some of the other women around there, but Sabrina and this other gal, I never got her name, sort of got me off on the wrong foot. There are probably some perfectly nice women there, but Chelsea, you ruined me for casual action like that. If I’ve got to look around, I’m not looking for someone who might be fun for an evening in bed, and I’m not looking for someone to run my life for me. I just hate the thought of going through all the junk to find someone worthwhile.”

“I can’t say as I blame you on that,” she sighed. “I don’t know how to sort it out other than to look and see. I can’t believe every woman in that place is some kind of a shark.”

“As near as I can tell, they aren’t. At least, that’s what Andrea tells me and I believe her. She says that really only a small percentage of them are single, like most any other work force you could name, but there are a few sharks there who sort of poison the atmosphere. I suppose I’ll wind up dating some of those women there sooner or later, but I’m sure going to be more than a little picky after today.”

“Don’t forget, you have to have lunch there tomorrow, too.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I think I’m going to find a bunch of guys and do nothing but talk about football or something.”

“There are worse things than having a reputation for being hard to get.”

“Yeah, and I guess I’m going to have to work on it.”

It had been good to talk to Chelsea, especially to be able to have her in a good mood. While Andrea and her husband were becoming friends, Chelsea was a close friend, and he could say things to her that he didn’t dare say to the Bolenbaughs. Neither of them were in a position to talk directly about what happened at work, although occasionally Chelsea had told him a story about what had happened at the library in Arlington, and a couple of times she’d unloaded her frustrations about the library board on him. He didn’t mind; after all, that was what friends were for, and as far as he knew she was in the same position he was, which was to say, no real close friends to talk to. It was a damn shame she was so far away, but she was, and that was that.

After a few days some of the hassles from the lunchroom sharks died down since he made it clear that he wasn’t anxious to play those kinds of games. He followed up on what he’d told Chelsea, and mostly stuck to a small group of guys who normally gathered at one table. A couple of guys at the table were single as well, and they were often able to warn him away from this shark or that one.

Once the new had worn off a little, he decided to stick his toe in the water a little. One day he was waiting out the line at the Pepsi machine when he got talking with a bright, cheery-sounding redhead who was probably close to his age from the looks of her. She might be a possibility, he thought.

Over the course of a week he talked to her a few times in the lunchroom, and ultimately decided she might be worth some future investigation. Keeping it casual, he suggested that they might like to meet for dinner after work someday, just to be able to talk in a less hectic atmosphere. She said it sounded like a good idea, and they made a date for the next evening to meet at Sotelo’s Hacienda, the Mexican restaurant downtown he particularly liked.

They agreed to meet a little after work, so they’d both have time to freshen up and unwind a little. She came in dressed more than a little nicer than she had been in her work clothes, and she was not a bad looker. Things looked promising, but just about as soon as she sat down the conversation drifted to her ex-boyfriend, who now lived in Texas. It was Ron this and Ron that, and she said she was looking forward to seeing him when he got home to visit his parents in a few weeks. He tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, to see if there was anything else she liked, but even when he was successful the conversation soon drifted back to Ron.

“After an hour or so of it, I gave up hope,” Kyle told Chelsea when he called her to report on the date. It wasn’t as if he had to report in, but once again, it was nice to have someone to talk to about it. “I mean, it was Ron this, Ron that, Ron is so wonderful, Ron turns her on so much.”

“You picked a real winner there, Kyle,” Chelsea laughed. “What do you want to bet that as soon as he’s back in town, she’s back in his bed?”

“No bet, unless he brings another girl with him, and then a threesome wouldn’t surprise me,” he replied. “But hell, it was like he was sitting there at the table with us. In some ways she didn’t seem like a bad girl, but I don’t need to put up with that kind of stuff.”

“Oh, well, hang in there,” she said. “You should hit a winner sooner or later.”

I hit a winner once, but I lost her, he thought as she started to report on her latest sewing project – a swimsuit, of course. He knew that she spent a lot of time surfing the web, looking for ideas for swimsuits, and occasionally she came up with some good ones. He knew that very often such projects were quick and dirty ones that looked good in a Chastity White photo but really wouldn’t hold up to use. But sometimes she liked to do complicated ones that involved a lot of finishing work, if for no more reason than to have something to do. This sounded like one of those.

“I’d sure like to see you wearing it, if only to understand what you’re saying,” he told her. “But I’ll settle for you e-mailing me a photo.”

“I can finish it in the next few days,” she said. “And I’d love to send you a photo. It’ll have to be taken here in my living room because it’s the only place around here I can wear a swimsuit, but at least it’ll give me the reason to wear it for a few minutes.”

After a while their discussion drifted back to the lunchroom. “Don’t give up,” she advised. “You’ve just had a few bad experiences. And maybe you shouldn’t limit your hunting to the lunchroom, either.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. “This is a pretty neat town from what I’ve been able to see of it, but I really haven’t done much looking around yet. I’ve taken work home with me most evenings, and that’s limited me a little. But I think I’m getting the stack beaten down to the point where that’s going to be the exception, not the rule. Then I ought to have a little more time to see what’s what. Besides, it’s winter now and things ought to perk up in the spring.”

“Yes, and I’m hoping that for around here, too.”

His next date, a week later, started out much the same way, a lunchroom girl who seemed relatively normal. She was a little blonde, actually on the cute side, if a little hyperactive in the lunchroom. He should have taken some warning from that, but he didn’t. They were to meet at Sotelo’s Hacienda – he was becoming a bit of a regular there. He got there early – and sat down to wait for her. She came walking in fifteen minutes late, which irritated him because he was a person who appreciated punctuality. As if her being late wasn’t bad enough, she was talking on her cell phone to someone about someone else’s bad experience on a date.

Kyle reasoned that maybe she thought the phone call was important somehow, but as he listened to her talk on the phone he realized it was just feminine gossip. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, she said to whoever it was she was talking to, “I’ve got to go, sorry, but my date is here. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I’d try the darker red nail polish, that always looks so attractive …” and so on for another ten minutes or so.

He was already pretty tired of her constant cell phone chatter, but when she finally punched it off, he said politely, “Hi, how are you tonight?”

“Oh, not bad,” she replied as her cell phone rang. She glanced at it and said, “Sorry, I really should take this call.” Kyle rolled his eyes as she answered the call. “Oh, hi again,” she said into the phone. No, not the really deep red nail polish, the hot color. No, not the hot pink …”

Later that evening, when he called Chelsea and told her the story, he went on, “She went on babbling like that for fifteen minutes before I’d had enough. I got up, got the check, gave the waitress a good tip, and left. The last I saw of her, she was still yapping into the damn thing, and I don’t think she noticed that I was gone. I stopped at a drive-through and got a couple of burgers, then came home. I’m not curious enough to go back and see if she’s still babbling about nail polish or whatever the hell it was she was yapping with her friend about.”

“That’s really rude, Kyle. Oh, I don’t mean you. You were right to get up and walk out if she didn’t want to show any more interest in you than that.”

“That’s exactly what I thought. If all she could do was sit there and babble with her friend and hardly even acknowledging that I was there, I obviously wasn’t worth her time, and she sure proved to me she wasn’t worth mine.”

“I couldn’t agree more. You did the right thing. Cell phones are convenient and they can be very handy and useful, but they’re too easy for people to abuse. I’ll bet she’s one of those idiots who drives down the street yapping on her cell phone oblivious to everything else. Some day she could run over a kid or something and not even notice it.”

“You’re right, Chelsea. Sometimes when I see people like that I want to yell, ‘Shut off the damn cell phone and drive.”

“I do, too. So what are you going to do this evening?”

“They’ve got a good used bookstore here in town and I hit it the other evening. I picked up a couple of good ones, and there’s one about the California gold rush of 1849 that looks interesting. At least it’ll be better than listening to some gal babble on the phone about her friend’s nail polish.”

“Don’t give up, Kyle,” he heard Chelsea say. “Keep trying.”

Of course, Kyle ran into the gal in the lunchroom the next day, and she was not exactly happy that he’d gone off and left her. “That was a very rude thing to do,” she said with fire in her eyes.

“And sitting there ignoring me while you were babbling with your friend wasn’t?” he snorted.

“I have to stay friendly with my friends.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but we were on a date, and we were each supposed to get an impression of what the other was like. You didn’t care enough about your date to even acknowledge me. I sat there politely listening to you talk for almost an hour, and you said a grand total of three words to me in that time. All that adds up to a very bad first impression of you. All I have to say to you is ‘better luck with the next one.’”

That conversation had been heard by several of the lunchroom sharks, and as a result the interest in him died down even more. Right at that moment, he was just relieved. He had yet to have a good date, much less a prospect, out of any of them, and several he doubted could overcome his already bad impressions of them.

He was aware that he was comparing them with Chelsea and they just didn’t measure up. Even though Chelsea had a slightly odd obsession or hobby or whatever you wanted to call it, she was warm, friendly, intelligent, and a good conversationalist on a good many topics. She shared many of his interests, especially his photography, and could appreciate the ones she didn’t really share. He had enjoyed being with her, even on those times when they weren’t saying much. He had yet to have a really good conversation with one of his dates, and he was starting to feel like it wasn’t worth the effort.

Under Chelsea’s and Andrea’s urging, he stalwartly gave it another try. This girl, also from the lunchroom but not one of the sharks, was bright and cheerful and seemed like she might be fun to talk to, and was a little on the talkative side herself, so he took a swing at another dinner date at Sotelo’s. At least this girl talked to him, rather than into her cell phone, but he could hardly get a word in edgewise. After the last date, having a conversation directed at him was refreshing, at least for a while, but he soon got very tired of it. The date dragged on for a couple of hours, and after a while he was wishing he had on the ear protectors that were required in some sections of the plant.

“Have you ever watched birds fly?” he explained to Chelsea when he called her the next evening – it had taken longer than he would have liked to get rid of the nonstop talker. By the time he did, it was too late to call his friend, what with the time differential. “Big birds, like an eagle or a turkey vulture, don’t flap their wings much, and when they do, they put a big power stroke into it, at a very slow rate of speed.”

“I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t see where you’re going with it.”

“Hummingbirds are tiny, and their wings are going all the time. They have less mass to move, so can move them faster. I should have realized what was going on when I happened to notice this girl’s tongue. It was tiny, and came to a sharp point. No wonder she could have it going so fast all the time.”

“You sure aren’t having much luck,” Chelsea giggled.

“It would have been better if she had actually said anything. She was a real Southern girl, you ought to know the type from being down there.”

“I’ve had some experience with them.”

“Then you know what I mean when I say that all she could talk about was her relatives. She’d get partway into a story, hit a ‘that reminds me’ and then go charging off into another story without ever finishing the first one. I don’t mean she did it once, she did it a lot. It got very irritating after a while. I mean, she was pretty and lively and perky, but I kept thinking that if she offered to take me to bed I’d want to invest in a locking ball gag first. I mean, can you imagine making love to a woman while she’s rattling on about her second cousin’s pet poodle’s eating preferences?”

“To be honest, I can’t imagine making love to a woman, period, although I understand what you’re talking about,” Chelsea laughed. “Like I said, I’m familiar with the type. We have a couple of them down here who won’t shut up even when they’re in a library. And I agree, they might even be interesting if they ever actually said anything.”

“Chelsea, I know all girls aren’t pains in the ass like I’ve had on the last few dates, because I know you and you were never a pain in the ass. I can’t believe there isn’t one girl out here who’s halfway decent.”

“Maybe you’re not looking in the right place,” she said. “All of these girls have come out of your lunchroom crowd, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Then maybe what you ought to think about doing is spreading your nets a little bit farther. I don’t know why your lunchroom crowd is such a bunch of nutcases, but there ought to be some logical reason for it, or else you’re just plain having bad luck. Have you talked with Andrea about this?”

“Oh, yes. She gets about as many laughs about these stories as you do. The hell of it is that she’s warned me off of a couple of gals who are even worse. Like, we spent some time the other day talking with a gal who is a real nutcase right-winger. I mean, she’s so far to the right she ought to be wearing a green light.”

“Huh?”

“Airplanes have green lights way out on the right wingtip. I mean, she thinks Rush Limbaugh is some kind of freaking pinko.”

“Oh, I should have caught that one. We have our fair share of them down here, too. I get damn sick and tired of hearing that stuff. I have to keep my mouth shut about politics, when sometimes I really want to sound off. I’m like you, I’m a radical centrist moderate, and it seems like everyone hates that political viewpoint.”

“Especially the nutcases out on the wingtips,” he agreed. “So anyway, I think I’m going to give the lunchroom a rest for a while, at least as far as potential dates are concerned. I’m not saying never again, but I think I’m going to at least have a minimum of having a couple of lunch dates there in the lunchroom before I expose my friendly waitress at the Mexican restaurant to another one of these losers.”

“You really ought to think about looking elsewhere, too.”

“Yeah, and right now I’m thinking about looking at the used bookstore again, and I don’t mean for a potential date. Even a mediocre book is better than the dates I’ve had recently.”

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