Love's Little Instruction Book (4 page)

Dave told them briefly about Denise’s efforts to befriend and do something nice for her mentally challenged colleague. “She was just so nice to Theresa,” he said. “Not everyone would even notice the cleaning lady, let alone one with Down Syndrome.”

“Okay, so she’s gorgeous and kind,” summed up Ghoulie. “Now what?”

Dave shrugged. “Good question. Here I meet this gorgeous, intelligent, sweet lady and she probably doesn’t even remember my last name.”

“Uh, Dave?” interjected Kirk. “No one can remember your last name.”

Ghoulie turned to Kirk. “What’s his last name again?”

“DiSciullo.”

“
Gesundheit
,” responded Ghoulie.

“Thank you.”

Both sets of eyes turned back to Dave, grinning at the same joke they’d been telling since grade school.

“Very funny, you knuckleheads. This is serious.”

“No,” clarified Kirk, “but you’d like it to be.”

“Yeah,” sighed Dave. “I’d like to be.” He rolled his bottle back and forth between his hands. “So what do I do, guys?”

“Get to know her better,” Kirk shrugged.

“And how am I supposed to do that? Women like that never look twice at a guy like me.”

“Well … ” mused Kirk, staring at his beer bottle as if it were a crystal ball that would reveal the mystical answer to him. “You need to find some common ground. You know, things you both like. Then go from there.”

“Yeah,” seconded Ghoulie. “Does she like the Sox? Maybe you could take her to a game. Be a great ice breaker.”

“I don’t know,” Dave said. “She doesn’t strike me as a big sports fan. Too much the glamorous type.”

“Not into masochism then,” Ghoulie noted.

“What do you know about her?” Kirk asked.

Dave shrugged. “Mostly what I got off the rumor mill,” he told them. “She just moved out from Manhattan. She’s divorced from some rich guy. She lives in Cambridge with her mother. Oh, get this — her mother is a romance writer. Can you imagine having a mother who actually writes that stuff?”

Kirk’s head snapped up. “A romance writer? You mean those books they sell at the drug store with all of the people whose clothes are falling off while they bend each other into really uncomfortable looking positions?”

Dave shrugged.

“Shelby reads those,” Ghoulie said. “She’s got a whole bookcase full of them in the bedroom.”

“She’s got you,” Kirk observed. “What does she need romance novels for?”

Ghoulie shrugged. “Damned if I know.”

Dave studied Ghoulie critically and thought maybe he could guess why Shelby liked to read romance novels.

“Have you ever read one of those things?” Kirk asked Ghoulie curiously.

Ghoulie gave him the
Are you a moron?
look. “Hell no. Why would I want to read something like that?”

“Women seem to like ’em,” Kirk noted. “How ’bout you?” he asked Dave. “You ever read one?”

“What do I look like to you?” he asked. “Of course I’ve never read one.”

They all paused to think while they tasted their beers.

“I don’t know, Dave,” Kirk commiserated, shaking his head. “If her mom’s a romance writer, the girl’s got to have pretty high expectations in romance department.”

“So why couldn’t Dave be romantic?” Ghoulie interjected. “You know, bring her flowers, chocolate, go for moonlight strolls on the beach — all that crap.”

Dave sighed dejectedly. “I don’t know. A girl like that probably has guys chasing after her all the time — you’d have to have something really special to attract a girl like that.”

Kirk grunted in agreement. One thing about being with the guys — you could convey a wealth of information in a single grunt and no one would accuse you of being uncommunicative. Ghoulie took another swig of beer while Kirk reached for a handful of pretzels out of the open bag on the counter.

Suddenly, Kirk’s head snapped up. “Why couldn’t
you
be special?”

“Huh?”

“Why couldn’t you be special? Think about it. There’s nothing actually
wrong
with you. You’re a decent guy. You make a good living. Why can’t you be special?”

Dave looked at him with dejection in his eyes. “I’m not special. I’m ordinary.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got an inside track — you know something about her that those other guys probably never even thought of. Her mother’s a romance writer.”

“So what?” asked Ghoulie.

“So there’s got to be more to those books than flowers and candy and moonlight strolls. Don’t you get it? Those books hold The key to her affections. They’re love’s little instruction books, the roadmap that shows the way to a lady’s heart! Don’t you see? All you have to do is read a couple of romance books and you’re in!”

Dave stared dumbfounded at his friend. It made sense. It shouldn’t have and his benumbed mind tried feebly to come up with a reason why it didn’t, but by damn, the idea made sense. “It couldn’t be that easy,” he said cautiously.

“Why not? Women love those books, right? And they wouldn’t read them if they didn’t provide them with something they wanted but didn’t get in the real world. And her mother writes them, right? Like mother, like daughter. All you have to do is read those books to see what it is that women want, and become that for Denise.”

“Damn,” murmured Ghoulie. “It’s perfect. Simple, but perfect. Why in the hell hasn’t somebody ever thought of this before?”

Kirk shrugged. “Because before, guys looked at women like that and only thought about what it was that
they
wanted. Dave here is going to look at Denise from the standpoint of what it is that
she
wants.”

Dave set down his beer. “Damn,” he repeated. “It might work.”

“Shelby’s got a bunch of that kind of book,” Ghoulie offered. “You’re welcome to borrow a couple if you want. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

Dave looked at him hopefully. “Do you think she has any of the ones by Denise’s mother?”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of them in there. Let’s go look.”

Carrying their beers, they followed Ghoulie into the bedroom. “Holy shit,” murmured Kirk, looking at the crammed bookcase. “Has she actually read all these?”

Ghoulie shrugged. “I guess. Sometimes she trades them with her friends.”

“Are there any there by Denise’s mother?” Dave asked. “Her name is Judy Johnson.”

Ghoulie scanned the shelves. “I don’t see any.”

“The pregame show’s starting,” Kirk announced. “C’mon, let’s take a bunch of them into the living room and see what we can find out.”

Ghoulie pulled short stacks of books discretely off of the bottom shelf and handed a pile to Kirk and another to Dave before taking a third batch for himself. With their beers in one hand and the books cradled against them with the other, they made their way back into the living room and spread the collection out on the coffee table.

“Shelby actually
reads
this stuff?” Kirk asked after a long moment of taking them all in.

“The ones with the flowers and shit are okay,” Dave remarked, staring down at the covers. “But the ones with the couples on them — Jesus, doesn’t that look like soft core pornography to you guys? I don’t think there’s a done up button or a zipped zipper in the lot.”

“That’s the point, you idiot,” Kirk reminded him. “You don’t want to get this girl just for companionship, do you?”

“Well, no, I guess not,” he agreed. “But I don’t want her just for a quick lay, either.”

Kirk glanced up from the covers at his friend’s face and then back at the covers. “Okay, okay,” he regrouped. “What can we learn by looking at these books?”

“That they didn’t have shirts in the past,” Ghoulie observed, picking up on of the books and turning it over in his hand. It had the same couple in still more provocative poses on the back.

“And the shirts they did have apparently lacked buttons and blew off their shoulders at the slightest breeze,” Dave added.

“And the women were all near-sighted,” Ghoulie added.

“How can you tell?” Kirk asked, frowning.

“They’re all squinting at the men.”

“They’re not squinting, you moron,” Kirk snapped. “Those are bedroom eyes.”

“Huh?”

“Bedroom eyes. The way women look at you when they’re — you know — in the mood.”

“Shelby never looked at me like that.”

“Never?”

“Hell no!”

“I think they’re all stoned,” Dave noted.

“Stoned?” Ghoulie repeated.

“Well yeah,” Dave explained. “I mean, that explains it all, doesn’t it? The droopy eyes, way they’re falling all over the men, the fact that they couldn’t get their clothes on right … ”

Kirk studied the array of covers critically. “It does look like the men are holding them up,” he agreed.

“Well, what’s the point of that?” Dave asked, mystified.

There was a long pause before Kirk said, “That love is a drug?”

Dave considered that for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay … yeah.”

“What else can we tell just from the covers?” Kirk asked.

There was another pause, then Ghoulie said, “That the women couldn’t keep their dresses fastened any better than the men could keep their shirts on.”

Dave ran a questing hand through his hair. “How is this supposed to help me with Denise?” he asked impatiently.

“Damned if I know,” Ghoulie replied with a cheerful shrug.

“Okay,” Kirk said. “Let’s look at the men on the covers, then. What’s Dave got in common with them?”

A moment of embarrassed meditational silence followed. Dave shifted uncomfortably and tried to discreetly suck his stomach in.

“Well,” said Ghoulie at long last, “they all want women.”

Dave closed his eyes and sighed. He couldn’t help it.

“Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” Kirk decided finally, “Let’s look at how Dave’s different from the guys on the covers.”

Oh God!

“Dave has short hair,” Ghoulie announced. It was true that all of the men on the covers had hair down to their collars or beyond.

“And curls,” Kirk added. The cover models all sported ’dos of the straight and windblown variety.

“Dave has chest hair,” Ghoulie volunteered. Their eyes lingered on the buff and barren pectorals displayed so proudly before them.

“He does?” Kirk asked.

Ghoulie nodded. “Just a little, though.”

“Ghouls — ” Dave cut in warningly.

“No, no,” Ghoulie insisted. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it? A sign of manliness?”

Dave ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Okay, let’s just forget about the covers for a minute here, guys. Let’s just assume that I have absolutely nothing in common with these horny, muscle bound, bald-chested, long haired contortionists and take a look at what’s actually
in
the books, okay? We’re not going to learn anything just by looking at the pictures. This isn’t kindergarten, we’re all going to have to actually open the books and
read
them. How about we each pick one book, take it home and we can compare notes next Saturday?”

Ghoulie shrugged. “Works for me.”

Dave turned his eyes on Kirk. “Okay.”

There was a long moment of silence as they all stared down at the books laid out on the tables. “Okay, pick your books.”

No one moved.

“Come on, you guys. Either pick a book or I’m going to grab one and assign it to you!”

Ghoulie drew in a deep, bracing breath and then nodded. “Okay.” He picked up
Desperado
. The cover featured a sun bronzed cowboy who glared out at them from underneath the brim of his hat, hands poised to draw his gun from its holster, and no sign of a shirt beneath his vest. “I always kind of liked Western movies,” he said by way of explanation.

Dave looked over at Kirk. “You next.”

“Nuh-uh! This is your project. You pick next!”

Dave recognized the challenge in Kirk’s voice and he accepted it. Holding Kirk’s eyes the whole way, he reached down without looking and felt his hand grasp the cover of a book. Only after he had picked it up did he look at the cover. Flowers and fans on a pink background.
Forever My Love
. It could have been worse. He looked up at Kirk and arched an eyebrow.

Holding Dave’s gaze, Kirk reached down and came up with his own book. A lithe blond being bent over backwards across a long haired knight’s knee.
Forbidden Love
. “Oh, fuck,” Kirk muttered, half under his breath.

Smiling a wicked smile, Dave reached over to pat his friend on the back. “Don’t worry about it, Kirk,” he said, grinning. “They probably will.”

• • •

Presley’s chicken earrings rocked merrily as she gestured across the café table top at Denise, holding a ketchup drizzled French fry for emphasis. “You should start dating,” Presley pronounced.

Denise calmly finished chewing a mouthful of salad before answering. “No, I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Presley complained. “You’re divorced, not dead.”

Denise speared a bite of tomato. “Exactly. I’m divorced. I don’t need a man to make me happy.”

Presley shook her head. “You can be happy alone,” she allowed, “but isn’t it better to have someone special to go out with? Someone to tell your secrets to — ”

“I have you for that,” Denise pointed out.

“ — and to cuddle up and share your bed with at night?”

Denise snorted. “If I wanted all that, I could go down to the local pound and get a dog.”

Presley ate her French fry and reached for another. “You’ve been in Boston for months now, Denise. It’s time to put the past behind you and get on with your life. I could fix you up with someone. We could double date.”

“Don’t even think about trying to fix me up,” Denise warned her. “Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.”

“But I know the perfect guy for you — ” Presley protested.

“Uh uh. No way. Don’t even think about it.”

“But it’s a sin for someone as beautiful as you to just sit on the sidelines.”

“Not if the sideline is where I want to be. I mean it, Pres. No fix ups. I’ll date when I’m good and ready, and not before. Capeesh?”

Presley rolled her eyes. “Capeesh.” She sighed. “We sure would have been a blast on a double date together, though.”