Mr Perfect (4 page)

They lapsed into a little pond of silence. The attention their laughter had gotten from the diners at the surrounding tables moved on to more promising targets.

"Wants the same things out of life," Marci repeated as she wrote it down. "That's number one? Are we agreed?"

"That's important," Jaine said. "But I'm not sure it's number one."

"Then what's number one for you?"

"Faithfulness." She thought of her second fiance, the bastard. "Life's too short to waste it on someone you can't trust. You should be able to depend on the man you love not to lie to you or cheat on you. If you have that as a base, you can work on the other stuff."

"That's number one for me," Luna said quietly. T.J. thought about it. "Okay," she finally said. "If Galan wasn't faithful, I wouldn't want to have a baby with him."

"I'll go along with that," Marci said. "I can't stand a two- timer. Number one: He's faithful. Doesn't cheat or lie." They all nodded.

"What else?" She sat with the pen poised over the pad. "He should be nice," T.J. offered.

"Nice?" Marci looked incredulous.

"Yes, nice. Who wants to spend her life with a jerk?"

"Or next door to one?" Jaine muttered. She nodded in agreement. "Nice is good. It doesn't sound exciting, but think about it. I think Mr. Perfect would be kind to kids and animals, help old ladies across the street, not insult you when your opinion is different from his. Being nice is so important it's close to being number one."

Luna nodded.

"Okay," Marci said. "Hell, you've even convinced me. I don't guess I've ever known a nice guy. Number two: Nice." She wrote it down. "Number three? I have my own idea on this one. I want a guy who's dependable. If he says he's going to do something, he should do it. If he's supposed to meet me somewhere at seven, he should be there at seven, not come strolling in at nine-thirty or maybe not at all. Is there a vote on this one?" They all four raised their hands in an aye vote, and "Dependable" went down in the number three slot. "Number four?"

"The obvious," Jaine said. "A steady job."

Marci winced. "Ouch. That one hurt." Brick was currently sitting on his butt instead of working.

"A steady job is part of being dependable," T.J. pointed out. "And I agree, it's important. Holding down a steady job shows maturity and a sense of responsibility."

"Steady job," Marci said as she wrote.

"He should have a sense of humor," Luna said. "Something more than an appreciation for The Three Stooges?" Jaine asked.

They began snickering. "What is it with men and The Three Stooges?" T.J. asked, rolling her eyes. "And bodily function jokes! Put that at number one, Marci – no toilet jokes!"

"Number five: Sense of humor." Marci chuckled as she wrote. "In the interest of fairness, I don't think we can dictate what form the humor takes."

"Sure we can," Jaine corrected. "He's going to be our sex slave, remember?"

"Number six." Marci called them to order by tapping her pen on the rim of her glass. "Let's get back to business, ladies. What's number six?"

They all looked at each other and shrugged. "Money's nice," T.J. finally offered. "It isn't a requirement, not in real life, but this is fantasy, right? The perfect man should have money."

"Filthy rich or comfortable?"

That called for more thought.

"I like filthy rich, myself," Marci said.

"But he would want to call all the shots if he was filthy rich. He'd be used to it."

"No way is that going to happen. Okay, money is nice, but not too much money. Comfortable. Mr. Perfect is financially comfortable."

Four hands went up, and "Money" was written in beside the number six.

"Since this is fantasy," Jaine said, "he should be good- looking. Not drop-dead gorgeous, because that could be a problem. Luna's the only one of us pretty enough to hold her own with a handsome guy."

"I'm not doing so good at it, am I?" Luna replied with a tinge of bitterness. "But, yeah, for Mr. Perfect to be perfect, you should enjoy looking at him."

"Hear, hear. Number seven is: Good to look at." When she had finished writing, Marci looked up with a grin. "I'm going to be the one to say what we've all been thinking. He should be great in bed. Not just good; he should be great. He should be able to make my toes curl and my eyes roll back in my head. He should have the stamina of a Kentucky Derby winner and the enthusiasm of a sixteen- year-old."

They were still rolling with laughter when the waiter plunked their orders down on the table. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"You wouldn't understand," T.J. managed to gasp. "I get it," he said wisely. "You're talking about men."

"Nope, we're talking science fiction," Jaine said, which sent them off again. The people at the other tables were staring at them again, trying to overhear what was so funny.

The waiter left. Marci leaned over the table. "And while I'm at it, I want my Mr. Perfect to have a ten-incher!"

"Oh, my!" T.J. pretended to swoon, fanning herself. "What I couldn't do with ten inches – or rather, what I could do with ten inches!"

Jaine was laughing so hard she had to hold her sides. Keeping her voice down was an effort, and her words shook with hilarity. "C'mon! Anything over eight inches is strictly for show-and-tell. It's there, but you can't use it. It might look good in a locker room, but let's face it – those extra two inches are leftovers."

"Leftovers," Luna gasped, holding her stomach and shrieking with laughter. "Let's hear it for l-leftovers!"

"Oh, boy." Marci wiped her eyes as she scribbled rapidly. "Now we're cooking. What else does Mr. Perfect have?" T.J. weakly waved her hand. "Me," she offered between giggles. "He can have me."

"If we don't trample you getting to him," Jaine said, and raised her glass. The other three lifted theirs, and they touched rims with ringing clinks. "To Mr. Perfect, wherever he is!"

Saturday morning dawned bright and early – way too bright, and way the hell too early. BooBoo woke Jaine at six A.M. by yowling in her ear. "Go away," she mumbled, pulling the pillow over her head.

BooBoo yowled again, and batted the pillow. She got the message: either get up, or he was going to unsheathe his claws. She pushed the pillow aside and sat up, glaring at him. "You're evil, y'know that? You couldn't do this yesterday morning, could you? No, you have to wait until my day off, when I don't have to get up early." He looked unimpressed with her outrage. That was the thing about cats; even the scruffiest one was convinced of its innate superiority. She scratched him behind his ears and a low rumble shivered through his entire body. His slanted yellow eyes closed in bliss. "You just wait," she told him. "I'm going to get you addicted to this scratching stuff, then I'm going to stop doing it. You're going to go cold turkey, pal."

He jumped down from the bed and padded to the open bedroom door, pausing to look back as if checking to make certain she was getting up. Jaine yawned and threw back the covers. At least she hadn't been disturbed by her neighbor's noisy car during the night, plus she had pulled down the window shade to keep out the morning light, so she had slept soundly until BooBoo's wake-up call. She raised the shade and peeked through the sheer curtains at the driveway running beside hers. The battered brown Pontiac was there. That meant she had either been exhausted and slept like the dead, or he'd gotten a new muffler on the thing. She thought the exhausted-and-dead part was more likely than him getting a new muffler. BooBoo evidently thought she was wasting time, because he gave a warning meow. Sighing, she pushed her hair out of her face and stumbled to the kitchen – stumbled being the operative word, because BooBoo helped her along by winding around her ankles as she walked. She desperately needed coffee, but knew from experience that BooBoo wouldn't leave her alone until he was fed. She opened a can of food, dumped it on a saucer, and set it on the floor. While he was occupied, she put on a pot of coffee, then headed for the shower.

Stripping off her summer sleepwear of T-shirt and panties – during winter she added socks to the ensemble – she stepped into a nice warm shower and let it pummel her awake. Some people were larks; some were owls; Jaine was neither. She didn't function well until after a shower and a cup of coffee, and she liked to be in bed by ten at the latest. BooBoo was upsetting the natural order of things with his demands to be fed before anything else was done. How could her mom have done this to her? "Just four weeks and six days more," she muttered to herself. Who would have thought that a cat that was normally so loving would turn into such a tyrant when he wasn't in his regular environment?

After a long shower and two cups of coffee, her synapses started connecting and she began remembering all the things she needed to do. Buy the jerk next door a new trash can – check. Buy groceries – check. Do laundry – check. Mow the lawn – check.

She felt a little excited at the last item. She had grass to cut, her very own grass! She had lived in apartments since leaving home, none of which had come with lawns. There were usually some tiny patches of grass between the sidewalk and the building, but maintenance always took care of mowing them. Hell – heck, they were so tiny the job could have been done with scissors.

But her new home came with its very own lawn. In anticipation of this moment, she had invested in a brand- new lawn mower, self-propelled, state-of-the-art, guaranteed to make her brother, David, turn green with envy. He'd have to buy a riding mower to one-up her on this, and since his lawn wasn't any bigger than hers, a riding mower would be an expensive sop to his ego. Jaine figured his wife, Valerie, would step in before he did anything that foolish.

Today, she would have her inaugural grass-cutting. She could barely wait to feel the power of that red monster pulsing under her hands as it decapitated all those blades of grass. She had always been a sucker for red machinery.

First things first, though. She had to make a run to Wal- Mart and buy a new trash can for the jerk. A promise was a promise, and Jaine always tried to keep her word. A quick bowl of cereal later, she pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, stuck her feet in a pair of sandals, and was on her way.

Who knew a metal trash can would be so hard to find? Wal-Mart had only the plastic kind in stock. She invested in one for herself, but didn't feel she had the right to change her neighbor's type of trash can. From there she drove to a home-and-garden supply store, but struck out there, too. If she had bought her own metal can she would have known where to find another one, but it had been a housewarming present from her mother – that was Mom, Queen of the Practical Gift.

By the time she finally located a large metal trash can, at a hardware store – well, duh- – it was nine o'clock and the temperature was already edging out of warm into uncomfortable. If she didn't get the grass mowed soon, she would have to wait until sundown for the heat to abate. Deciding that grocery shopping could wait, she wedged the can into her minuscule backseat and headed south on Van Dyke until she reached Ten Mile Road, then turned right. Minutes later she turned onto her street and smiled at the neat, older houses nestled under their mature shade trees.

A few of the houses had tricycles and bicycles on the front lawns. These older neighborhoods were seeing an influx of younger couples as they discovered the reasonable price of the aging houses. Instead of disintegrating, the houses were receiving face-lifts and remodels; in a few years, the price of real estate would shoot up again, but for now this area was just right for people just starting out. As she got out of the car, the neighbor on the other side of her house walked over to the waist-high white picket fence separating the properties and waved. "Good morning!" Mrs. Kulavich called.

"Good morning," Jaine replied. She had met the pleasant old couple the day she moved in, and Mrs. Kulavich had brought her a nice thick pot of stew the next day, with fragrant homemade rolls. If only the jerk on the other side could have been more like the Kulavichs, Jaine would have been in seventh heaven, though she couldn't even begin to picture him bringing her homemade rolls. She walked over to the fence for a neighborly chat. "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" Thank God for weather, because the world would be hard up for a conversational gambit without it.

"Oh, my, it's going to be a scorcher." Mrs. Kulavich beamed at her and brandished a trowel in one gloved hand. "I have to do my gardening early, before it gets too hot."

"I had the same idea about mowing my lawn this morning." Others were of the same mind, she noticed. Now that she was paying attention, she could hear the roar of a lawn mower three doors up from Mrs. Kulavich and another across the street.

"Smart girl. Take care not to get too hot; my George always wets a towel and puts it on the back of his neck when he mows, though our grandsons help him with the mowing and he doesn't do it as often as he used to." She winked. "I think he cranks up the old mower now just because he's in the mood to do something manly." Jaine smiled and started to excuse herself, but something occurred to her and she turned back to the old lady. "Mrs. Kulavich, do you know the man who lives on the other side of me?" What if the jerk had lied to her? What if he wasn't really a cop? She could just see him having a good laugh at her expense, while she tiptoed around and tried to be nice to him.