The maître d' looked up, puzzled.
“Is that two or three, sir?”
“It's
two
,” Jim said, giving my purse the evil eye.
Scooping up some menus, the maître d' led us through the restaurant, past tables filled with rich old men and their stunning young “nieces.” He made quite an imposing figure as he strode in front of us, his toupee shining in the glow of the restaurant's soft lighting.
Then a familiar falsetto voice piped up: “Hey, buddy. Is that a toupee on your head or a carpet remnant?”
The maître d' whirled around and glared at me.
Oh, foo. Was I going to get blamed for Arnold's zingers all night?
Still quite miffed, our not-so-genial host led us to a booth, where he practically hurled our menus at us and stomped off.
“Let me out of here!” Arnold whined the minute the maître d' had gone. “I refuse to sit here next to a half-eaten Almond Joy all night.”
I looked down at my open purse, and sure enough, an Almond Joy was visible in the clutter next to Arnold.
Normally I'd be embarrassed to have my date see a half-eaten candy bar in my bag. But with Jim, I didn't give a flying frisbee. By now his blue eyes and sun-streaked hair had lost all their appeal.
“All right,” Jim said, plucking Arnold out of my purse and propping him on the table against a pair of oversized salt and pepper shakers. “You can sit here.”
“No!” Arnold whined. “I want to sit on Jaine's lap.”
“You're not sitting on Jaine's lap!” Jim snapped. “That's how we got hit with that restraining order from Ida.”
“Waiter!” he called out, motioning to a guy in a cropped red jacket.
The waiter scurried to our table, only to stare goggle-eyed at Arnold, propped up against the salt and pepper shakers.
“We need a baby seat,” Jim said.
“A baby seat, sir?”
“Yeah,” Arnold's falsetto rang out. “You got a problem with that?”
“Er . . . no, sir,” the waiter gulped.
And off he dashed, no doubt to update his résumé.
Minutes later, he returned with the baby seat, which, in a stroke of good luck, Jim parked between us. At least there'd be no kneesies to worry about.
“My girlfriend's got a thing about her stuffed animal,” Jim explained to the waiter with an indulgent shrug. “She just can't leave him at home.”
Oh, for heaven's sakes.
“He's not mine!” I cried.
“If you say so, hon,” Jim said, winking broadly at the waiter.
“Can I get you something to drink?” the waiter now asked, trying hard not to stare at Arnold in his baby seat.
“A chardonnay, please,” I said. “Just bring the bottle. I don't need a glass.”
Of course, I didn't really ask for a bottle. But, oh, how I wanted one.
Jim ordered a martiniâand a whiskey sour for Arnold.
After the waiter left, I sat there fuming. I still couldn't believe Jim had the nerve to pawn off his insane teddy bear fixation on me.
And now he'd ordered a martini
and
a whiskey sour. Both of which Jim would no doubt guzzle down. This could only spell trouble. I'd had it with this guy. I had to get out of there. Now. I'd just tell him I had to go. No excuses. Just get up and go.
“Look, Jim. I've really got toâ”
And just as I was about to make my break for freedom, I happened to glance down at the menu.
Oh, Lord. Apparently, I'd died and gone to Chow Heaven. There on the parchment-like pages was the stuff dreams are made of. My dreams, anyway. Prime rib au jus. Double-stuffed baked potatoes brimming with sour cream and bacon bits. Creamed spinach. And for dessert, Molten Chocolate Lava Cakeâdense chocolate cake with a warm, gooey chocolate center, topped with whipped cream and fudge sauce.
“Jaine?”
I looked up and realized Jim was looking at me questioningly.
“You were saying? You've really got to . . . ?”
“Order this fabulous molten chocolate lava cake. It looks divine.”
Yikes! I'd just sold my soul for a chocolate cake!
(Are you even remotely surprised?)
“Go ahead,” Jim said. “Order all you want. And don't worry about the insanely expensive prices. It's my treat.”
I checked out the menu and saw that the prices really were insanely expensive.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Not a problem,” Jim replied with an expansive wave.
He may have been a nutcase, but at least he was a generous nutcase.
The waiter now returned to our table. I couldn't help but notice a wary look in his eyes, like that of a rabbit approaching a particularly cranky lion.
“Ready to order?” he asked after setting down our drinks.
“Yes,” Jim said. “We'll have the chateaubriand for two.” Then, turning to me, he asked, “And what would you like, Jaine?”
Good heavens. He actually intended to “share” a chateaubriand for two with his stuffed animal! The guy was certifiable.
I gave the waiter my order, going whole hog with the prime rib, baked potato, and creamed spinach. “And molten chocolate lava cake for dessert,” I added, the words tripping off my tongue in happy anticipation.
“You sure can pack it away, can't you?” Arnold commented after the waiter had sprinted away.
But I'd already had a few sips (okay, gulps) of my chardonnay and was thus immune to Arnold's zinger. And I hardly minded when Jim started feeding him bits of French bread, making yummy noises as Arnold “ate.”
“So, Jaine,” Arnold said between bites, “tell us all about yourself.”
“Wellâ”
“Do you put out on the first date? How do you feel about threesomes? Are you wearing panties?”
“Arnold!” Jim cried. “Cut that out!” Then he turned to me apologetically. “I'm afraid he's had a bit too much to drink.”
And indeed, Jim had been putting the whiskey sour to Arnold's lips and making slurping sounds along with his yummy bread-eating noises.
“This is why I don't take you anywhere,” he said, turning back to his best buddy.
At which point, I looked up to see the maître d' leading a couple to their tableâa gorgeous young thing, all legs and boobs, accompanied by a massive goon of a guy with hair sprouting from his open Hawaiian-print shirt.
“Hey, sweetheart!” Arnold called out. “What's a doll like you doing with Orca?”
The goon stopped in his tracks and stomped over to us.
“Who said that?” he asked, his hands thrust in his pockets, where I'm sure a pair of brass knuckles were waiting to spring into action.
And Jim, with the straightest of straight faces, replied, “I think it was one of the busboys, sir.”
It was a mighty tense couple of seconds before the goon decided to buy Jim's story and stalked off to his table.
By now, I'd drained my chardonnay, and was once again considering making a run for it, but I couldn't bear the thought of missing out on that molten chocolate lava cake.
Eventually our food came, and dinner passed by in a surreal blur as Jim fed Arnold pieces of steak, gave him sips of whiskey sour, and took pictures of me and Arnold for Arnold's Facebook page.
Yes, apparently, the bear had a Facebook page. With, according to Arnold, seventy-two friends.
Probably Jim's buddies from the psycho ward.
I even had to pretend to give Arnold a bite of my prime rib.
“Arnold loves prime rib,” Jim said.
“Yeah, baby,” Arnold crooned. “Lay it on me!”
Reluctantly, I cut a piece and mimed feeding it to him.
“More! More!” Arnold cried.
“Not until you finish your chateaubriand,” I said sternly, refusing to play this ridiculous game one more minute.
Somehow I managed to tune out Jim and Arnold and concentrate on my chow.
Which was fantab, I might add. The prime rib. The baked potato. The creamed spinach. And the second glass of chardonnay.
I was sitting there, digesting it all, dreaming of the molten chocolate lava cake to come, when suddenly I realized that Jim and Arnold seemed to be in the middle of a heated argument.
“No, Arnold,” Jim was saying. “You can't drive the car home.”
“Why not?” Arnold's falsetto rang out in reply.
“Because you've had too much to drink, that's why.”
“I am so sick of hanging out with you. You never let me have any fun. Never let me drive. Making me hide in a Bloomingdale's shopping bag when we go to the movies. You're always keeping me under wraps. And you know why? Because you're jealous, that's why! You know I'm so much cuter than you!”
“No way,” Jim scoffed.
“I'm twice as cute as you,” Arnold's falsetto insisted. “Just ask Jaine. I'm a regular chick magnet, aren't I, hon?”
If truth be told, he did seem a tad more fun than Jim.
“And stop putting the moves on my date!” Jim cried. “She's mine.”
“That's what you think, buster. She's had her hand on my thigh all night!”
“
What
?” I shouted.
Jim's face flushed with anger. Good heavens, he actually believed his own little melodrama.
“Why, you ungrateful little twerp,” he said, yanking Arnold from his baby chair and shaking him so hard, I thought Arnold's glass eyes might fall out.
But Arnold wasn't down for the count. Not by a long shot.
“So you want to play rough, huh?” came the falsetto voice.
And with that, Jim began hitting himself with Arnold, alternately crying out, “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” and then, as Arnold, yelling, “Take that. And that. And that!”
By now everyone in the restaurant was staring at us.
“Jim, please,” I said, grabbing Arnold from him. “Everyone's looking.”
“Arnold started it,” he said, pouting as I put Arnold back in his baby seat.
“Look!” came Arnold's falsetto. “Here comes dessert.”
And indeed, a waiter was approaching with two pieces of apple pie (for Jim and Arnold) and my long-awaited molten chocolate lava cake.
Right behind him was our genial maître d'.
“Hey, carpet top!” Arnold cried.
“I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave,” the maître d' said just as the waiter set down my chocolate extravaganza.
“Now?” I asked, eyeing the lava cake, swimming in ice cream and fudge sauce.
“Yes, now.”
With that, the maître d' yanked Jim out of the booth.
“Hey!” Jim shouted, toting Arnold in the crook of his arm. “You can't do this to me. I'm a paying customer!”
With reckless abandon, I dug in and managed to nab one mouthful of molten chocolate lava cake before the waiter gently hauled me to my feet.
We were escorted through the restaurant and out the door, “Arnold” shouting, “You'll be hearing from our attorney about this!”
The minute we got outside, however, Jim burst into a fit of giggles.
“It worked again, buddy,” he whispered to Arnold.
“You betcha!” he answered himself in Arnold's falsetto. “They kicked us out without making us pay the bill! We racked up another freebie!”
Omigod. That crazy fight was just a ploy to get out of paying the bill.
Jim chuckled all the way back to my duplex and had the nerve to ask if he and Arnold could come in for a nightcap.
“Over my dead body,” were the words I muttered to myself as I stomped away from the Porsche, having told Jim I had a splitting headache.
(The truth, by the way.)
The last thing I heard as the dynamic duo disappeared into the night was Arnold whining, “I wanna drive!”
YOU'VE GOT MAIL!
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To: Jausten
From: Shoptillyoudrop
Subject: Never Been So Mortified!
Â
You'll never guess who came knocking at my door at 1:20 a.m. last night. Two Tampa Vistas security guards. With Daddy in custody, naked below the waist except for a pair of Scrabble boxer briefs!
Â
I've never been so mortified in all my life!
Â
In spite of promising me he wouldn't go near Lydia's place, Daddy snuck out of the house to go rooting around in her garbage can, looking for that ridiculous Lucky Thinking Cap of his. Of course it wasn't there. I told him all along Lydia didn't steal his silly cap.
Â
Anyhow, while he was rummaging around in her garbage, he came across a pair of hideous plaid Bermuda shorts. Apparently Lydia's brother (a delightful man but with questionable taste in Bermuda shorts) had left them there on his last trip, and when Lydia discovered some moth holes in the tush, she threw them out.
Â
Now any normal human being would see a pair of hideous plaid Bermuda shorts with moth holes in the tush and say, “Yuck!” But not Daddy! One look, and it was love at first sight. He thought they'd be perfect for our trip to Hawaii.
Â
And then he did something that, for the life of me, I'll never understand. Instead of taking them home to try them on, he decided to take off his pants and try them on then and there, right in the middle of the street. He claims he was just being “practical,” that he didn't want to carry the shorts home if they didn't fit. And besides, he said, he was certain no one would see him at one in the morning.
Â
That's where he was wrong, of course. Because Mrs. Thorndahl, who lives right across the street from Lydia, had just finished watching a
Golden Girls
rerun and was going to the kitchen to fix herself some warm milk when she heard someone rattling around outside. She peeked out her living room window to see what was going on. And that's when she saw Daddy in the moonlight, rooting in Lydia's garbage in his Scrabble boxer briefs.
Â
She wasted no time calling security to report a “perverted prowler,” and ten minutes later I was being roused from a perfectly wonderful dream (featuring George Clooney and a vat of fudge) to find Daddy on our doorstep, sandwiched between two security guards.
Â
After giving him a stern warning about raiding other people's garbage cans in his underwear, they hurried off into the night. Frankly, I think they were thrilled to be rid of him.
Â
I was so mad, I made Daddy sleep on the sofa. Which, by the way, is where he found his dratted Lucky Thinking Cap. It was there all along, wedged behind the sofa cushions from one of his Power Naps.
Â
XOXO from
Your unbelievably frustrated
Mom
Â
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To: Jausten
From: DaddyO
Subject: Little Run-In
Â
Dearest Lambchopâ
Â
I suppose Mom told you about my little run-in with the Tampa Vistas security department.
Â
In my defense, I can only say that I did what any red-blooded American Scrabble player would have done when dealing with an underhanded opponent like Lydia Pinkus. Even though she didn't steal my Lucky Thinking Cap, I bet she
thought
about stealing it. And I simply can't believe that old bat Mrs. Thorndahl had nothing better to do in the middle of the night than loiter at her living room window spying on perfectly innocent citizens.
Â
But on the plus side, I found an exceedingly stylish pair of plaid Bermuda shorts in the trashâperfect for our Hawaiian vacation. True, they have a few tiny holes in the tush area, but if I wear colored briefs, I'm sure no one will notice.
Â
And, saving the best news for last, I found my Lucky Thinking Cap! It was wedged under one of the sofa cushions. Your mom thinks it got stuck there during one of my power naps, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Lydia hid it there when she was at the house the other day. Oh, no. I wouldn't put it past her. Not one bit.
Â
But no matter. I've got it back, and that's all that counts. Victory will be mine!
Â
Time to get back to Scrabble Central.
Â
Love 'n' snuggles from
Your overjoyed
DaddyO