LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 10: Their Pasts

If he weren't already lying down he would've fallen down.

"Geeziz, baby," he gasped, waiting for enough oxygen to refill his lungs before attempting a complete, cohesive sentence. "Geeziz…" he was forced to repeat, knowing it was about as cogent and intelligent a thought as his brain was going to be capable of formulating for the next few moments.

His stomach muscles ached, still tense and pinched from clutching so hard. His brow glistened. His head was spinning, reduced to a state of reeling mush after Michelle had spontaneously decided to put off making the coffee she'd promised and percolate him instead, leaving him hideously, though euphorically, drained of his senses. It was a state of blissful disorientation he was just going to have to start getting used to, he silently reckoned with an exhausted smile.

"Get up here, you…" he panted heavily, sliding her along his body and pushing his tongue into her mouth, tasting himself. Her muffled moans gradually became intermixed with spurts of fiendish giggles as she noticed his chest starting to heave hard again, instead of leveling down.

"Ya think you're so funny, don't ya," he grinned against her mouth, enjoying how pleased she seemed to be with the aftereffects of her wicked handiwork.

"I distinctly remember you telling me I should just take whatever I wanted," she peeked through her lids and reminded him in all innocence.

"I was talking about the refrigerator and you know it," he scowled, pushing one side of her panties away enough to perch two fingertips left and right of a pinch-perfect quantity of skin, threatening to close in for the squeeze.

"You might wanna be a little more specific about such things in the future," Michelle advised, as if his current state of physical and mental disarray were entirely a result of his own doing.

"Never mind," he grumbled, cooperatively holding his arms aside for a brief moment while she squirmed herself into a more comfortable position on top of him. "That was technically a sexual assault," he apprised her, snaking his hands down between their stomachs to readjust the waistband and snaps on his commemorative John Wayne flannel boxers. "I could haul you into court, if I wanted to, y'know. "

"I'd love to be a fly on the wall of the jury deliberation room," she snickered. "Remind me again. When were you were screaming 'stop' and 'don't' and 'unhand me, you evil fiend?' I must've missed it, what with all that heavy breathing and deafening moaning going on…"

"That was code for 'stop,' " he entered into the record. "It was the best I could do under the circumstances... getting jumped and rendered speechless like that."

"Uh-huh... Not to cite too many more glaring weaknesses in your case, or anything, but... at what point did ya say this 'speechlessness' overcame you, exactly? " she inquired on cross-examination. "Was it before or after ya somehow managed to get 'Oh, God,' 'Oh, Geeziz,' and 'That feels so incredible, baby' out of your mouth a couple of dozen times, or so? "

She rested her case amid his assorted ensuing defenses, denials, and motions for appeal, nuzzling a headful of curls into his neck and bringing her cheek to rest against the soft double-brushed cotton of his long-sleeve CUBS t-shirt — the one she had been wearing all morning, but which he had insisted was his turn to wear when they'd changed from their linner clothes into more appropriate DVD-wear.

Once she was settled comfortably in, Tony replaced his arms around her and listened to her peaceful sighs in response to his fingertips slowly trailing along her curves and crevices. He halted abruptly, however, when he felt her jaw gently straining against his shoulder, as if laboring to conceal a yawn while prepping herself for a quick, clandestine pre-show catnap.

"Uhh… No... No ya don't," he nudged her, shaking his head in bemused disbelief as he steered her face front and center with a handful of curls from the back of her head. "First of all, I'm the one who's supposed to be passing out right about now, not you. Secondly, our sleep-clocks are already off enough as it is…"

That's all he needed was for her chatterbox to be fully rested and re-energized just as Greg Peck, Tony Quayle, Tony Quinn, and — at least in his own mind — Tony Almeida began their treacherous ascent up the slick mountainside under cloak of darkness, in search of some unsuspecting Nazi butt to blast into oblivion. If Michelle wanted to talk through the movie he had gotten for her, that was another story. But silence would be observed during the historic dismantling of the two giant killer guns deviously embedded into the mountain on the tiny Mediterranean island of Navarone.

"I wasn't even thinking about falling asleep," she blatantly lied.

"I'm sure, " he said, angling her head a little to the side to give his lips better access to the weak spot he'd discovered the night before, just behind and slightly south of her ear. "Next you'll be telling me again that ya never said ya loved me in your sleep," he mumbled between nibbles, smiling at the way her eyes opened and closed in precise synchronization with his lips landing and lifting away from that spot.

"Not to crush you, dear," she shuddered, "but I never did say it... 'Love you, too'... You'll notice the absence of the 'I' in that statement. "

"You'll notice the presence of my hand on your butt, " he quietly pointed out to her, perching his fingertips again to deliver the pinch he had earlier promised.

"I don't suppose you're well-read enough to know that there are entire cultures that regard pinching not as a threat, but a compliment."

"First the woman assaults my body, then she insults my intelligence," he murmured upward, acknowledging the presence of a higher power and demanding an explanation.

"Ya can't assault the willing, dear, " she casually corrected him with a sigh, immediately followed by a squeal from the playful pinch he finally landed.

"Just... you just get that coffee going, " he muttered, feigning defeat and disgruntlement. "You remember... the coffee beans you were just about to grind before ya decided to grind my— Just get busy with that coffee, y'hear?"

"You poor soul," Michelle sympathized with a bleeding heart, steadying her palms against his biceps as she obligingly raised herself up, taking a second to brashly press herself against him as a subtle reminder of the indomitable powers she held over him.

Once on her feet again, she stooped to grab the fertility watering can sitting on the hassock, wondering which room or closet it might look best in. She suddenly felt his fingertips touch a zone that sent her lurching forward in surprise, nearly toppling herself over the hassock in the process. She turned to catch a glimpse of his deviant smirk, there but to remind her of his own formidable powers, lest she be foolhardy enough to forget or deny their existence.

Ignoring him, Michelle straightened back up and countered with a slow sashay toward the kitchen, working an exaggerated Cleavage-esque sway into her hips. Tony dropped his head off the side of the couch and strained his neck to watch her, his heart melting at the sight of the aged flannel shirttails moving in rhythm with the curves they covered. His commemorative John Wayne pajama top fit her so perfectly, he thought with a sigh to himself. Sure, he'd had to roll the sleeves up a few of times, but that didn't matter since the rich, dyed-through flannel featured the same scenes on the inside as it did on the outside. Flannel, like everything else, was so much better made back in the days when his grandfather had given him the pajamas for his fourteenth birthday. One could literally wear the shirt inside-out, if so desired. The only difference would be The Duke technically riding into the east instead of the west, which only a trained eye like his would ever notice anyway.

No amount of bare skin could be sexier, he was forced to conclude, gazing at the flannel Nevada rock formations sloping around Michelle's delicate shoulder; her hind quarters moving in animated rhythm with the Duke's horse's, like two sets of haunches predestined to meet up with each other someday along the dusty road of life; and The Duke himself, sitting tall and mighty in the saddle, square in the middle of Michelle's back, heading into Indian territories unknown, with seemingly no concern for the inevitable ambushes that lie ahead.

Tony had originally planned to have Michelle wear the matching flannel boxers, but the waist would've been way too big and he didn't know if he had any pins, or even where Mrs. Sanchez might keep them. The pajama top's long, curved tails, which reached the center of Michelle's creamy thighs, would've totally obscured the boxers anyway, so he'd decided to commandeer them for himself, since the vivid pictures contrasted so nicely with his long-sleeved Cubs t-shirt. Besides, after drinking in the vision of Michelle in those little black panties of hers, it was hard to deny that it was at least ten times more exciting than the varietal scenes of sun-bleached buffalo skulls and freshly shot Indian corpses immortalizing his boxers.

The Duke; the Cubs; the Navarone boys coming up soon; his woman barefoot in the kitchen, grinding his beans and brewing up a hot pot of java … How much happiness could one man bear.

Tony dragged himself up from the couch and body-stretched, then crossed over to the cabinet housing the TV and began searching the drawers for the photos he had promised to show Michelle after she had succeeded in bugging him into submission. There were a lot of pictures of Olivia, which he had taken over the years, but there weren't any shots of himself as a kid, just as he had forewarned Michelle. His Mom had always been afraid that some crazed, scissor-weilding, newly dumped girlfriend might inadvertantly cut one of them up in the process of slashing contemporary pictures of happier, more romantic times. So his Mom had always insisted upon keeping his baby and growing-up pictures at home in the family album, "just to be on the safe side, darling." But he at least had a couple of college and Marines pictures to show Michelle, which he hoped would be sufficient enough to appease her curiosity until he could get Olivia to scan some boyhood pictures for him.

"That's all there are?" Michelle sulked, laying the coffee mugs on the hassock and rejoining him on the couch where he had since repositioned himself in a half-seated semi-slump: back against the arm, knees bent, and feet flat against the cushions as he rearranged the pictures into chronological order.

"Sorry, baby," he said, pausing while she settled herself in between his legs with her back to him, his chest serving as her pillow.

"Good?" he asked patiently, waiting for her shifting to wind down.

"Ah-huh... Wait. Let me just..."

"Owww!... Michelle! For cryssake!"

"What did I..."

"Ya gotta... Geeziz, ya can't go putting your elbow just anywhere in the world ya want, for cryssake... You're doing damage here..."

"Well... okay, dear... How am I supposed to know?... There... Better?"

"Ya don't have to know. Just always assume," he whined.

"You're right... How's that? Comfortable now?"

"For a man in pain, y'mean?" he pouted.

"You're fine, dear... Okay?... Let's just relax."

"I'll relax when you're all done squirming around… Good, now?" he double-checked, throwing in a final self-pitying whimper, just for effect, before letting his guy-guard down and dropping his arms around her. He quickly shuffled through the pictures, giving her a sneak preview before starting again from the top.

"No pictures of your Dad either?" Michelle asked in disappointment.

"Nah, not here, baby," he said. "See this, though? If ya laid a picture of Mom at sixteen next to this one of Olivia, you'd swear they were twins. So just add a couple of decades to Olivia and that's what my Mom looks like, okay?" he said, thinking about how truly and exceptionally pretty his Mom was for a woman her age. She'd worked hard throughout her life to earn the youthful appearance she now sported, religiously hitting the gym three times a week and decades before the health-craze would eventually sweep the country. She never once missed a hair or facial appointment, either; not even when she was in the hospital after Olivia was born. Jose and his crew of snooty stylists, manicurists, and stuck-up skincare specialists were only too happy to make the pilgrimage up to her hospital suite for double the extortionist prices he already charged at his salon.

"Oh, my God!" Michelle squealed in delight when the next photo in the deck revealed a full-body, grim-faced shot of Tony holding the newly arrived Olivia L. H. Almeida, wrapped in a pink baby blanket. He looked none too thrilled about it, either. Someone off-camera had obviously ordered him to take the baby or live to regret it, though had failed to come up with a threat heinous enough to coax him into losing the scowl. Michelle couldn't help but laugh. It was the same expression of intolerance that lacquered his face whenever he was in the presence of Chappelle or Hammond.

Gazing at the perfectly angelic baby swadled in pink, Michelle bugged him to know if his relationship with Olivia had always been so fractious, or if some singular event had led up to the strained relationship that existed today.

"An event aside from the puking business, y'mean?" he asked, biding his time while he thought about whether he even wanted to get into it all.

It was a difficult subject for him to reflect upon. Although he had essentially hated her pablum-eating guts at first, Olivia — who'd always loved his guts from Day One— had eventually succeeded in bamboozling him into becoming her adoring slave. Only nowadays it seemed like she could barely even stand to be in the same room with him anymore, which bothered him immensely. He knew that his 24-hour surveillance tactics, replete with biotelemetric satellite tracking when necessary, had an awful lot to do with the strife that infested their present-day relationship, but that, unfortunately, couldn't be helped. He was doing it for her own good. But the real division, he explained to Michelle, had actually begun a number of years earlier, when Olivia had the gall to make the transformation from girlhood to womanhood without asking his permission.

Michelle, in her inimitable fashion, gently cajoled him into sharing the gory, distressing details, beginning at the beginning when he'd had such a tough time coping with the news that God's Gift from Heaven was on the way. He'd come home from his first year of college for the Christmas holidays to find his Mom — already five months pregnant by then — greeting him at the door in a conspicuously and uncharacteristically large dress.

"It's a Versace, darling. Do you like it?"

"What the hell is under it?" was his first question, prompting his Mom to instantaneously burst into tears, which Tony would soon realize had become her new hobby. What he hadn't been old enough to understand at the time, however, was how truly terrified his Mom was that something might go wrong with the pregnancy, given her age. So all one really had to say to her throughout those remaining four hell-months was something like, "What's the weather's gonna be like today?" to successfully set her off on a solid 10-minute crying jag.

To add to the mayhem of the moment, his Dad, who could hear an Amanda Almeida teardrop hit the ground from a mile away, had immediately emerged from his den, hugged and kissed his son innumerable times in elation, then promptly threatened to kill him if he ever made his mother cry again. But because Tony had committed the exceptionally unforgivable offense of making her cry "in her condition," his Dad had tacked an addendum onto his threat, vowing to also beat him after he got through killing him. Tony only half-listened, absorbed instead in circling around his Mom, staring at her profile in horror and demanding to know what was going on. "Pregnancy" hadn't even entered into his mind. Rather, he had quickly convinced himself that her "condition" consisted of an inoperable tumor roughly the size of a national prize-winning watermelon. Shortly thereafter, the DIB from hell would ensue.

His parents had wanted to tell him sooner, he explained to Michelle, but they hadn't known how to break it to him. They certainly didn't want to tell him over the phone, so they'd decided to wait until his first trip home from college, which would've ordinarily been the Thanksgiving holiday. But he'd never made it home for Thanksgiving, due to irresistible last-minute plans to join his buddies for a long beer-and-babes-filled weekend at a ski chalet. So his first face-to-face with his parents didn't occur until the Christmas holiday.

To Michelle's amusement, though not her surprise, Tony had predictably gone ballistic once his parents had gently explained that his Mom's condition wasn't, in fact, an inoperable tumor, but a blessed event.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he demanded to know, thoroughly confused and sick of the suspense. "What 'blessed event'? Is she throwing a Bar Mitzvah in there, or something?"

"Don't you get smart with your mother, " his Dad had warned, threatening to smack him from here to next Tuesday, then finally dropping the bombshell on him: The inoperable watermelon was actually some screaming little varmint-in-the-making, who'd soon be bringing Tony's single-child status to an abrupt and permanent halt. Some drooley little diaper-soaking, crumb-eating rugrat had actually had the nerve to go and get conceived, with nobody even consulting him about it, which was probably a wise decision, in retrospect, since he never would have gone along with it in the first place.

It had felt like his entire world was suddenly crumbling all around him, Tony bravely explained to Michelle, who took great pains this time not to jab him with an elbow as she joined him in an upright seated position on the couch, hanging her head in solidarity with the painful plight he'd been forced to endure.

His Dad, who'd preached "protection" to him all his life, ad nauseam, was about to become the father of an accident. On top of it all, he had actually seemed terribly proud to be doing the fatherhood thing all over again "at his age."

His Mom, who used to be his Mom, was now abandoning him to become somebody else's Mom. Tony also found that he couldn't look at her without envisioning his parents having sex, which was a thought that made him just as nauseous at nineteen as it had at age nine.

As the pre-Christmas days dragged by, things had progressed from bad to worse. All that his so-called friends seemed to be able to do was snicker. His girlfriend, Laurel, suddenly became baby-happy after someone had reminisced over dinner one night that Amanda Almeida had been Tony's own age —just about to turn twenty — when she had given birth to him. Only days later, Laurel proposed, Tony declined, and Laurel promptly hopped into bed with one of his so-called best buddies, whom she would eventually go on to marry inside of a year and divorce within three.

Sulky and depressed, Tony had gone back to college before the holidays were even over, relieved to get away from all the insanity. His life had been so happy only two mere weeks earlier; now everything seemed to lie in ruins. And it was all, all, all the fault of that bratty little imbecilic brother-to-be of his, whom the testosterone gods — just to make his life a couple of thousand times more miserable — had decided at the last second to change into a girl.

Even the overlords had turned on him. He couldn't believe it. It was as though someone had put a hex on him, and he hadn't even done anything to deserve it. His life was in shambles.

Then his Mom decided to give birth, of all times, on the same weekend that Tony had promised to escort his new girlfriend, Anna, to a long-awaited family event, forcing him to cancel out at the last minute, which resulted in Anna canceling their romance all together.

That was two women he had lost because of Brat Girl, and before he had even yet to lay eyes on her.

But little did he know at that point in time that his nightmare had not even formally begun. His Mom, who'd decided to make it her mission to see to it that Tony "bonded" with his new sibling, insisted that he spend his entire summer at home with the family. Tony knew that his Dad would go berserk if he refused to comply with his emotionally fragile Mom's request, so he reluctantly moved back into his old room, just one door down from the Brat Girl herself.

It had taken him less than a week to conclude that there were only three things Brat Girl was any good for: saturating Pampers, which he adamantly refused to change; wailing her lungs out at all ungodly hours of the night, which he likewise adamantly refused to get out of bed for; and making each minute of his days and nights a living hell on earth, which unfortunately for him, was something she seemed to excel at. It was also only too clear that Brat Girl had it out for him: For starters, the one night that Tony decided to drag himself out of bed and into the hallway, where his parents took turns walking the wailing Brat Girl for hours every night, the kid pulled a fast one by instantly shutting up the second her ears beheld the impressive pitch and volume of his voice, plaintively wailing about how impossible it was to get any sleep. His wails were even louder than her own, which Brat Girl found both fascinating and mesmerizing.

That's when she decided to pull her second fast one on him: The instant Tony stormed back to his room, she immediately began her wailing again. His parents stared at each other, then rustled him out of bed, handed Brat Girl over, and demanded that he take a turn walking the hallway with her. Sure enough, the angel from hell immediately piped down, like someone had pressed an "off" button, and started cooing contentedly in his arms smack in front of their parents. The house had suddenly become so quiet, you could hear a pin drop in the furthest recesses of the wine cellar where his Dad had recently been spending an excessive amount of time, it seemed.

Needless to say, and much to Tony's infuriation, he found himself permanently assigned to Brat Girl Detail from that night forward, which didn't exactly help advance the "bonding" process any. Especially after it had become crystal clear to him that the only reason Brat Girl would even start wailing in the first place was for the sheer enjoyment and personal pleasure of watching him come stumbling through her door whenever she felt like summoning him.

"You're such a good soul," Michelle beamed in admiration, swirling a comforting hand around his back.

"Yes," he was forced to agree with her, obligingly going on to explain how he'd eventually made the transition from hating Brat Girl to hating her a little less.

It was one afternoon toward the end of the summer: Brat Girl was napping on one side of the house while Tony was slumped in an armchair on the other, trying to decide which classes to register for in the Fall. His Mom had come in and stooped down to kiss his forehead goodbye, announcing that she was heading out for a doctor's appointment, then lunch with the girls, then probably a little shopping if she still felt up to it at that point. Not a minute after Lou had turned out of the driveway, however, the phone began to ring. It seemed that his Mom had somehow completely forgotten to mention that Tony was on babysitting detail, since there wasn't a soul in the house other than him and Olivia. Coincidentally enough, every Almeida employee — from nanny to housekeeper to gardener, right down to Paco the pool boy — had all found it unavoidably necessary to take the rest of that afternoon off for any number of fishy reasons.

Amid and despite her son's ensuing angry, panic-stricken protests and pleas, Amanda Almeida steamrolled ahead, breezily reciting a checklist of things he would need to remember, including the location of Brat Girl's Pampers, diaper disposal unit, baby wipes, lotions, powders, t-shirts, bibs, socks, hairbrush, and pacifier; how to heat the bottle and check the temperature of the milk before feeding it to her; when, why and how to position her against his diaper-shielded shoulder before gently patting her back; and so on.

"How the hell do ya spell that?" Tony had yelled into the phone in a panicky sweat, frantically scribbling out the list his Mom was rattling off. "'Pacifier'!... I don't know how to spell it!" greatly relieved when his Mom assured him that a misspell wouldn't hinder his ability to locate it.

The insensitive giggle that Michelle had allowed to slip from her throat was instantly met with a disapproving, stone-faced frown.

"It wasn't funny, Michelle!" he glared at her sternly. "I wasn't prepared for any of this, y'know."

"I was just... No, I'm sure you weren't, dear. It had to be terrifying for you. Go on... How did you ever manage... Go on, dear," she soothed him with a concerned frown and suspense-filled voice, biting the inside of her lips to prevent another blast of laughter from successfully making it over the wall.

He took a deep, brave breath before proceeding to elaborate upon the crippling fear that had consumed him the moment he'd hung up the phone, terrified that he might forget something, or do something wrong, or inadvertently break Brat Girl somehow. But much to Tony's relief, either the testosterone gods had been generous enough to assign some celestial brethren to guide him through that harrowing afternoon, or Brat Girl herself had decided to have mercy or pity on him, or both, and cut him a break for a refreshing change of pace.

For example, she had been good enough, he explained to Michelle, to subject him only to saturated Pampers and nothing more. She had laughed, rather than scream, when his fumbling fingers had accidentally sent powder flying all over the place. While brushing it out of her hair, she'd cooperatively gone along with his idea to style it into a mohawk, just like a Sioux warrior's, which actually came out looking better than he had anticipated, given how very little hair he had to work with. And later, as he slumped in his Mom's rocker, holding up the bottle while Brat Girl guzzled it down, she had handed him a totally unexpected compliment, fixating on his face in awe, like he was some sort of John Wayne, or something. She'd also been kind enough to grant his request to please not puke on him after he had finally remembered to pat her on the back about an hour after he was supposed to. It was the only thing he'd screwed up that entire afternoon.

As Michelle endeavored to praise his keen survival skills and overall performance, he was forced to humbly share the spotlight with Amanda Almeida, conceding full credit to her for having sagely hatched the perfect plan to forge the bonding process forward. Tony had found himself actually beginning to like Brat Girl after that day, and little more each day thereafter. He especially liked the way she gripped his pinky finger so tight and smiled up at him every time he'd grant her request to hum a few bars of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

And the rest was history.

Years later, however, that fateful day would arrive — Black Wednesday; he would never forget it — when Olivia, about ten at the time, would develop her first full-blown puppy-love crush on a boy at school. That's the day Tony's life took a sharp u-turn into the bowels of hell again.

"Honey, c'mon, now... Honey?" Michelle sought to console him in a tender voice.

"I can't talk about it any more. I'm sorry," he brooded, resisting her efforts to wrestle his fingers away from his forehead. "I'll just have to tell ya the rest some other time..."

"Honey," she tried again, doing everything in her power to maintain a straight face. "She was going to have to grow up at some point. Surely you had to know that."

"Yeah, well..." he responded, not the least bit comforted by her fingers gently stroking through his hair or the kisses she lightly landed around his cheek.

All those years he had played the role of a human Saint Bernard for her, never even once complaining when Olivia called him "Bruce," the name she had selected for him the night he'd volunteered to be her make-believe dog after her pediatrician had delivered the crushing news: that there wasn't enough allergy medication in the world that would allow Olivia to adopt a real, live puppy, like so many of her friends had. What's more, on top of his generous offer, Tony hadn't even put up much of an argument when Olivia decided to make him a Saint Bernard, despite all the time he'd invested on the internet trying to get her to buy into making him a Doberman Pinscher, instead; or a Rottweiler or Boxer, or any breed that was just a little more formidable and action-oriented than a lumbering, sad sack Saint Bernard. But Olivia had stubbornly stuck to her guns, eventually cutting a deal that would allow him to be a boy dog, but only if he agreed to be a Saint Bernard. It was an offer he couldn't refuse.

"All this I did for her, and for what?" he demanded to know from Michelle, who was hard-pressed to answer the question at the moment, given her need to dash to the bathroom before she wet herself from laughing so hard inside.

It was all so Olivia could just toss him aside the second some short, skinny, acne-bound geek with a cracking voice came knocking at the door, whom inexplicably enough Olivia had decided was suddenly more fun and interesting to be around than him and Bruce, his alter-him.

"Then right behind the geek came the certified imbecile with the bike," Tony went on to bellow in the direction of the bathroom, describing how "the imbecile" never paid any attention to the rules of the road and could've easily gotten Olivia killed that time he let her ride on his ridiculous souped-up handlebars, with the streamers that looked like a girl's... And the village idiot with the mouthful of braces, who didn't even know a single name of a CUBS player, living or dead... The sex-crazed maniac who kissed Olivia in the movie theatre when she was only barely thirteen, which she couldn't stop talking about the entire next day, eventually compelling Tony to drop her off at the house early, and himself off at the nearest bar... Then came his personal favorite: the sensitive "poet" who eventually broke Olivia's heart when he all of a sudden decided he was gay, leaving it up to Tony to explain to her what that meant — a conversation he had yet to fully recover from.

"I'm getting a headache," he anguished, dropping his face into his hands on cue with Michelle's return from the bathroom.

"Lie down, dear. For Pete'ssake... You're doing this all to yourself," she assured him, hovering over him as she coaxed him onto his back and tucked a couch pillow beneath his head. "And right before your movie, too... Do you really want to watch the Navarone Guns with a headache?... Hmmm?"

God Almighty, why couldn't she just get that title straight. It was like she was begging the testosterone gods to mow her down with a special-delivery lightening bolt. And, just his luck, he'd be standing close enough to get himself caught in the crossfire; he could just see it coming.

"I need cake," he moaned through pained eyes, figuring he might as well capitalize on the sympathy he had succeeded in garnering.

"You're not getting that carrot cake, dear," she calmly assured him for the umpteenth time as she headed toward the kitchen. "I'll get you some aspirin, but as far as..."

"This is not an aspirin kind of headache, Michelle!" he angrily mewled, draping his forearm across his eyes in the hopes of guilting her into at least giving him half of it. "These are permanent scars I'm living with, y'know."

"They're not permanent," she called back to him, swearing she had seen a bottle of aspirin in one the drawers while tidying up the kitchen that morning. "You just haven't come to terms with the fact that you're no longer the center of her universe, dear. Five years from now, after you've become better accustomed to men entering and exiting her life, you'll feel entirely differently about things, I can guarantee you..."

Michelle, just like everybody else, simply didn't get it. But he swallowed the aspirin and nevertheless tried to explain to her that it wasn't about guys entering into Olivia's life; it was about being roundly shut out of her life from the minute that first geek had happened along. Out the window flew all those collective hours he'd spent following her around as she crawled through the yard, reminding her not to eat the grass; the back-breaking hours of hunching over so she could use his two index fingers as human handlebars while efforting to perfect her walking technique; the countless kinks in his back, and the cramps in his thighs, from walking around with her standing on his foot and holding onto his leg, frequently up to an hour at a time; and the Brownie meetings... Oh, God, all those boring-as-hell Brownie and Girl Scouts meetings he sat through, just in case some pervert or serial killer, or perverted serial killer, lived in or around the Troop Leader's house — that lone, courteous, gentleman psychopath whom no one in the family or neighborhood "would've ever suspected in a million years," as the newspapers would always quote, like clockwork, at the conclusion of every manhunt.

The zillions of toys and dream houses and bicycles he'd mindlessly assembled... All those important things in life he had taught her over the years, like how to still get a decent bubble going even long after the Bubblicious was all chewed out... The idiotic books he'd read to her a hundred times, half of which had never even made any sense the first time around; the science projects he'd helped her construct, always only too happy to take the heat whenever something would unexpectedly ignite; the emasculating hours spent on the floor being "Ken," a guy so boring that even Barbie eventually tossed in the beach towel and dumped him.

By the close of his tragic self-portrayal, Michelle seemed terribly moved and impressed by his courageousness, nobility, and endless selfless sacrifices. She even commented that she thought he had the natural-born makings of a wonderful father — an astute observation with which he found himself humbly hard-pressed to argue.

"Lesser men than you have been nominated for sainthood, dear," she also assured him.

"I'm aware of that," he responded, quietly sipping his coffee and suffering in silence while mentally reviewing all those saints he'd learned about during the zillions of catechism lessons he'd also stood guard over in the church basement, just in case some strung-out junkie came bursting into the room in search of the weekly collections. No one would likely ever understand the full depths of his generosity over the years, or the gravity of pain he'd quietly suffered, or the selfless lengths he would nonetheless continue to go to ensure Olivia's overall safety and happiness, even if she didn't appreciate any of it. He was just that kind of guy.

"More coffee, honey?" she offered.

"Y'know, you wouldn't even have that carrot cake if I hadn't wrapped it the napkin and stuck it my pocket at the last second," he thought he would mention.

"You're not getting the cake, dear," she calmly reassured him.

"Fine, fine..." he replied, thoroughly annoyed, but pretending like he couldn't care less if he tried.

"I'll be happy to get you more coffee, but..."

"Nah, that's all right... What good is drinking coffee, anyway, when ya could be eating cake instead, as the old saying goes."

Michelle closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief.

She hadn't exactly made the strongest coffee he'd ever tasted in his life, he noted to himself, adding it to the "beverages" section of his mental list, directly below his "Courvoisier, not Frangelica" notation. True, there was so very much to teach her, but as his heart warmed over, gazing at the way the Duke's horse Dollar's flannel ear erotically followed the lines of the curves beneath it, he realized he had the rest of their lives to teach her the things she needed to know, like how to go about properly measuring and grinding his beans.

He took her coffee cup out of her hands and laid it beside his own on the hassock, then eased her down onto her side and drew her in for a serious kissing session. Her lips and mouth tasted so sweet from all the cream and sugar she used. He reminded himself to kiss her right after she finished eating that carrot cake, provided she ever got around to it.

Lost in the warm embrace of her lips, he suddenly ached to walk Michelle through a fantasy of his own — one of the tamer of his favorite top-forty — the same way she had guided him through her own the night before. He cursed the estrogen goddesses for deciding to exercise their visitation rights upon her this weekend, of all times. Covertly checking his watch, he saw that he even had just enough time to pull it off, too, before it would become respectably dark enough outside to safely roll out The Guns.

But because he had somehow been mercifully spared having to engage in a conversation of that nature in his past, he really wasn't sure about the lovemaking rules governing off-days like this and felt self-conscious and a little weird about even asking.

"Whatever it is you've got on your mind, ya might as well spit it out before you kill off too many more brain cells, dear," Michelle suggested. "You know you're only gonna come out with it sooner or later anyway."

"Nah, it's nothing," he softly assured her, placing his arms against her back and across her thighs, turning over and settling her on top of himself again. "I was just wondering when you were gonna tell me about your own family…"

"Well, there really isn't much to tell outside of what you already know from my file… but that's not what was on your mind," she promptly busted him, sitting up and pushing his CUBS t-shirt away enough to reveal the slender trail of hair between his chest and commemorative waistband.

"Okay, I'll give ya that," he confessed, feeling his gut clutching from the ticklish feeling her fingertip generated as it dragged down along his skin. "I was actually just trying to figure out... Geeziz, baby..."

She giggled as he slapped away the fingertip she'd deposited inside his navel, possibly the most torturously ticklish spot on his body.

"... to figure out why ya haven't been bugging me all day to tell ya which movie I got for ya."

"I've been too afraid to ask," she truthfully replied. "But that's not what you were thinking about either. I can tell, y'know."

"Ya can, huh?" he chuckled. "Okay, fine. Ya want me to tell ya want I was really thinking?... Fine, then. I was thinking about the kitchen cabinets, wondering if we had all the ingredients for you to make me a cake," he grinned.

She cocked her head and eyed him suspiciously.

"Uhh... no."

"Y'mean, 'no,' that's not what I was thinking about? Or 'no,' you don't wanna make me a cake?"

"'No,' that's not what you were thinking about, and 'no,' you really don't want me to make you a cake, and you know it," she said a little sharply.

"Huh?"

"Don't 'huh' me," she said, crossing her arms tightly over her chest and looking away with annoyance and embarrassment.

"I don't understand," he said, squishing his brow and eyeing her in confusion.

"Ah-huh... Who directed you to it? Wait, don't tell me. Carrie, right? Am I right?" she sneered, now clearly annoyed, without a doubt.

"Directed me to what, honey?" he asked, watching her face growing pinker and decidedly more pinched by the second.

"I don't even know why it's in there. It's not like I was some — some militant radical making some kind of time-bomb..."

"Huh?" he frowned, now thoroughly confused. "Honey..."

"I didn't even want to take that stupid class. I told them right up front that I wasn't any good at it. But would they let me take Machine Shop instead? Heck, no! That's for boys!" she ranted, glaring bitterly off in the distance.

"Okay, sweetheart, you're gonna hafta stop now. Truly, I don't know what the hell you're talking about..." he said, unhooking her arms from across her chest and holding her by the wrists. "Honey... Honey, look at me and tell — Michelle? Tell me what the hell you're so mad about. I don't know what the—"

"My file, dear!" she turned and barked at him. "The file that I know that you know that I know that you read, your pretenses to the contrary notwithstanding."

"I read about a page and a half of it, Michelle. You were obviously qualified for the position... Over-qualified, if anything. I didn't read beyond the departments you worked in at Division. So whatever you're talking about... about... radicals and bombs and stuff... Are ya trying to tell me you were a radical feminist in high school 'cause they wouldn't let you into a guy's class, or something?"

His tone sounded sufficiently frustrated and confused for Michelle to cautiously eyeball him over a second time.

"You're saying you don't know?" she dead-eyed him, prying her wrists loose and recrossing her arms over her chest.

"Know what, Michelle?" he said, taking a deep, genuinely exasperated breath.

"About the accident?… In Home-Ec? The newspaper clipping... with the picture?"

"What picture?"

"The hole? ... The big hole in the side of the building. You're telling me you know nothing of this, correct? ... Is this what you're telling me?"

"Do ya— Would ya like to get in the car right now and go down to the office and give me a polygraph? I'll take a polygraph, Michelle," he assured her with a frustrated bark. "I don't know anything about any damned hole in the wall, or Home-Econom—" He stopped short. His eyes widened and stared for a second.

"You blew a hole in the wall in your Home Economics class?" he asked in amazement.

She pinched her brow and her lips and looked away again, her cheeks blushing furiously out of control.

"Did ya really?"

"Yes! Okay?... It was an accident, for petes'sake, okay? Millions of people have accidents every single day of the week, all right?" she snapped, climbing off his stomach and onto her feet. "Why don't ya just go read the stupid article, like everyone else in America did? You can even see what I looked like at age sixteen... provided ya feel you have the stomach for it."

"You're kidding," he insensitively added in stunned astonishment. "Was it a cement wall?... Brick?... What?... Michelle, c'mere... Where are ya going, honey?" he asked, scrambling to his feet and trailing her into the kitchen, watching her throw on the cold tap before systematically opening and banging cabinet doors shut in a fury, muttering under her breath.

"You wouldn't happen to know where I could find a stupid glass around here, would ya?" she barked at him.

"Calm down, baby. What do ya want?" he said softly, trying to soothe her. "Ya want a glass of water? I'll get it for ya, sweetheart..."

"I know how to get a glass of water, thank you," she snapped, continuing to bang the doors around. "I can even do it without blowing a hole in your wall, if that's what you're concerned about."

"Okay, honey, that's it... C'mon, now..." he said, calmly catching her wrist in mid-slam and turning her gently around to him, having to hold back a chuckle from the sight of how remarkably crimson her cheeks had grown. She tried to squirm away at first, but decided to just let him put his arms around her. There wasn't much she could do about it, so she stood there with her own arms clenched in a tight crisscross and her forehead flat against his chest, patiently waiting to be released.

"What set this whole thing off, anyway? Huh?" he asked softly, trying to coax her to look up at him. "Hmmm?... It was that cake I was talking about making, right?"

She refused to answer. He leaned his chin against the top of her head and gently swayed her stiff, rigid body back and forth in an easy, almost dancing manner, trying to lighten things up a bit. He smiled broadly, relieved for a chance to get it out of his system while she couldn't see, and praying that an actual laugh wouldn't eventually escape.

"C'mon, baby, talk to me, huh?" he gently coaxed her, feeling her body shift a bit as if preparing to make a break for it as soon an opportunity availed itself. He tightened his hold just a bit and intuitively moved his feet apart, just a little wider, knowing he'd be better perched and balanced to snatch her back if she bolted. "Why don't you tell me what actually happened, instead of the way they reported it. They probably got it all screwed up and made it sound twice as bad than it was... They sensationalize stories just to sell papers, y'know."

Still not a word, although he did get a barely noticeable sigh out of her, as though his words rang only a little too painfully true for her. He gave it another minute, continuing to sway-dance slowly and easily, keeping his fingers strategically locked behind her.

"I'll bet you they made it sound like you were the one making the cake, too, when it was probably a whole group of you... or even the whole class..."

Another small sigh, which was a good sign. He tried using his chin to nudge her head back a little, but no dice. She was keeping her forehead solidly glued flat against his chest, and that was that.

"I'll bet it wasn't the first accident that ever occurred in that class, either," he persevered.

She seemed to respond positively to the word "accident," sighing a bit more deeply and noticeably this time. He softly hummed a bar of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, remembering how soothing Olivia always used to find it. Michelle seemed to like it herself, or at least she didn't seem to hate it, so he went for a second bar.

"Y'know, Home-Economics is not the easiest class in the world, too. I remember my friend Eddie's sister telling some pretty hair-raising stories about the sewing they made her do. It seemed they had all these old machines that they never oiled, like they should have, and that... that round thing on the end... What do ya call it? It used to start smoking, and sparks would fly out occasionally and leave all these weird little holes all over the thing she was making."

"The drive wheel," Michelle muttered, barely audibly.

"The wheel. Right," he said in shock, though maintaining his consistently smooth, easy tone. "Then the teacher goes and gives Eddie's sister a bad grade because of all those little—"

"The 'drive' wheel, if you wanted to be accurate about it," she brooded, still refusing to move a muscle.

"Drive wheel... Huh... Guess the joke's on them. Ya sound like ya know a little something about machines. Ya probably would've been good at Machine Shop..."

She shrugged.

"Anyway, so Eddie's sister says to the—"

"I'd like to see one of those boys try to operate a sewing machine. They probably wouldn't even know where to begin," she scoffed bitterly, allowing her head to slightly rearrange itself to the side now.

He was definitely making progress, but this was going take a while.

He strained his eyes hard to the left, catching a look at the clock. It was respectably dark enough now. The Guns could officially roll. He never thought he'd hear himself think it, but Greg, Tony, Tony and the boys were just going to have to wait a bit. Michelle came first.

He would loosen her up some more; get her to tell him her version of events; maybe they'd romantically crack into her file together so he could read the article, ridicule the obvious hype, and affirm that, as far as he could glean from the stated facts, the explosion certainly didn't appear to be exclusively her fault, whether it was or wasn't. It would make her feel better, he knew, to lay out the details, have somebody nod in agreement, and show some support for her side of the story, possibly even for the first time since the wall had gone flying. Plus, he was itching to read the article to find out how a hole could be blown through concrete or brick with cake ingredients. The information might well prove invaluable to him in the field someday. One never knew.

Something he did know for certain, however, was that The Guns wouldn't be worth watching unless Michelle was happy, alert, attentive, and on her game. It was his favorite movie and he was dying to see if her razor-sharp mind would zero in on the one and only ever-so-slight plot defect in the entire movie: the claim that Davey Nivens made, insisting that someone among them had tampered with his highly volatile vials of nitroglycerin. Were that the case, the vials would've exploded, which Tony, Tony, or Tony would doubtlessly have noticed; plus, the traitor wouldn't exactly still be standing among them in the room, but making a second swing around Pluto at that point.

Michelle would indubitably pick right up on that, Tony was confident. Especially now that he knew she had some background in explosives.