LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 11- His Friend

"I used to think that if dogs could talk, they'd probably make fun of me, too," Michelle wept hard into her handful of wadded-up tissues.

"Ah, honey, c'mon. I don't think ya looked geeky at all," Tony assured her, staring in stunned disbelief at the printout of the article featuring a photo of Michelle as a sixteen-year-old, inset into a larger picture of the gaping hole in the brick wall, with the local Fire Chief standing inside the school looking out through the hole and waving to the camera.

"You're just saying that to make me feel better," she swallowed hard amid her gulps.

"Don't be silly, honey. You're being way too tough on yourself. If I went to school with you, I would've asked ya out," he said, pulling a few more tissues from the box on the floor beside him and holding them out to her, his eyes remaining fixated on the chubby face with the short, frizzy, out-of-control hair staring back up at him from the printout. Perhaps if it were ten years from now he might casually remark about how it reminded him a little of a red-headed Harpo Marx, but intuitively knew that now was not the time to mention it.

"I sort of doubt that. You probably would've gone out with Muffy Engle. Everybody else did," she sniffled, dabbing her eyes again, catching the fresh stream of tears that involuntarily poured out. "Hussy..." she muttered under her breath between gulps as she tried to get her crying under control. "I used to call her Hussy Engle."

"Well, see, honey? Right there it shows you were creative. Creative people aren't geeks. Everybody knows that," he comforted her, breaking off another chunk of the carrot cake balancing on his lap in the dinner napkin he'd stolen from the restaurant. "Besides," he chewed, "I could never go out with somebody named Muffy. Who names a kid that, anyway?" he asked, briefly recalling Muffy Schneider and how she used to take his breath away when she'd bounce around on the high school football field, leading the cheerleading squad. It was the only reason he ever went to the games.

"I thought they tormented me enough before the accident,but after—hah!" she painfully reminisced, addressing her mutterings as much to herself as to him. A fresh tributary of tears streamed down her cheeks. She blew her nose hard into the tissues Tony had handed her, dropping the old handful into the wastepaper basket he'd earlier fetched and parked at her side.

"Are ya sure you don't want me to make a run to the pharmacy for those aloe ones?" he generously offered, praying she'd decline again and injecting a little extra pain into his expression to help ensure that she did. "I could be back in ten minutes, y'know."

"Thank you, dear, but these will do fine," Michelle lied, feeling herself aging a year with every contact the untreated tissues made upon the super-sensitive epidermis surrounding the eye region. She nonetheless tried to force an appreciative smile through her tears, only to suddenly burst into a whole new round of uncontrollable gut-wrenching sobs.

"Aw, honey, c'mon," Tony said in a soft, sympathetic voice, rewrapping and tucking the last chunk of cake into his t-shirt pocket, then pushing his back away from the lower doors of the kitchen cabinets.

Giving the tissue box a push across the floor in Michelle's direction, he got on all fours and crawled over to sit beside her, positioning his back against the smooth surface of the refrigerator: a welcome relief from the cabinet's handles that had been jabbing him in the shoulder blades up to that point.

"How can I get ya to stop this, huh?" he asked in a gentle, soothing tone, sandwiching her hand between his. "Look at yourself, honey. You're eyes are getting all sore and swollen... Why do you let those people get ya all upset like that, huh? They aren't even worth it, for cryssake."

He'd always hated when women cried. He never knew what to do and often wondered how long it would take enemy nations to catch a clue and replace their troops with full armies of unarmed women under orders to just stand there and cry. U.S. troops would be rendered totally useless, staring wide-eyed at each other as they scrambled to take up a collection of tissues, tie them to sticks, and promptly surrender with the promise to spill their guts if only the women would just stop crying.

"I'm sorry," she gulped, trying her best to collect herself, though dismally failing.

"Here. You should be eating this," he said, pulling the last bite of cake from his pocket and unwrapping it. "It'll make ya feel better."

"No, honey, you need it for your headache," she sniffled, thinking again of how sweet he had been when the downloaded image came out of the printer and she'd run to the kitchen in humiliation, having forgotten just how bad her hair had looked back then, and how viciously Hussy Engle and her immaculately coifed in-crowd of Farrah Fawcett look-alikes used to relentlessly torment her.

"I can't believe you won't even go to your high school reunion just because a bunch of losers used to give ya a hard time," he said, popping the last chunk of cake into his mouth before she had a chance to reconsider his offer. "You should go and show yourself off to them. I'll bet ya anything that Muffy's a whale now, with a bunch of snotty kids and a nowhere job."

"You think?" Michelle looked up at him with a glitter of hope in her eyes.

"Sure, honey. It'll drive her crazy when she sees that you've only gotten prettier over the years while she's been chowing down on all that stuff they taught in Home-Economics... Take me with you," he added as the bright idea occurred to him. "It'll make ya look even better and drive her crazier," he guaranteed, eliciting the first semblance of a smile he'd seen on Michelle's face since making the tragic mistake of raising the subject of cake.

"You would go?" she sniffled and dabbed.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I," he snorted, drawing her hand up and sealing a light kiss against her fingers. "I'll even start a fight with one of the guys, if ya like. And then you can arrest us and show all those losers what ya do for a living."

Her eyes widened from swollen slits to nearly their normal size.

"You would do that for me?" she asked, overwhelmed by the sensation of her heart tripling in size as she gazed at her knight, her hero, wondering how someone as unlucky as she could've ever managed to hit the jackpot like this.

"Sure, baby. Ya can draw your weapon, and everything. Put us up against the wall and read us the riot act. Let us off with a warning. See how geeky those people think ya are after that," he scoffed, feeling himself growing a little hot under the collar just thinking about the gall of those people treating Michelle like a social pariah and hurting her, still, after all these years. "Hmm?... Promise me you'll at least think about it, okay?" he nudged her.

"I will," she said in a small voice, feeling her eyes beginning to dry considerably. "Do ya really think it could've happened to anyone?" she asked for at least the tenth time, just wanting to hear him go on again about how the newspapers had so obviously sensationalized the story. "Did ya notice how they didn't even report how illegible the labeling on the container was?"

"Of course I noticed. That was the first thing that leapt out at me," he responded in wholehearted support, gazing at the loin-warming vision of Michelle's silky black panties as she crawled over to his old cabinet-door perch to retrieve the printout of the article he'd left on the floor. "That's how they do it. They leave out half the story. See — gimme that for a second, honey — See right here?" he pointed as Michelle sat back against the refrigerator, wrapping her arms around her knees and leaning her cheek against his shoulder, peering at the article. "They deliberately make it sound like ya knew all along it was industrial floor polish."

"I know," she scowled with a ring of bitterness in her voice. "Like I wasn't smart enough to know the difference between that and cooking oil. No mention, you'll notice, that they kept the cooking ingredients in the same exact containers and in the same closet as the janitor's cleaning supplies."

"My point all along," he reiterated. "Ya should've been angry over this deliberately misleading coverage, honey, not hurt by it. Anybody with half a brain could see that the reporter was going out of his way to distort the facts and chain of events and everything in-between."

"That's what my Aunt Hildie said," she sniffled, this time with a frown, rethinking the wisdom of having allowed herself to carry the burden of so much pain and embarrassment over the course of so many years.

"See that? Great minds think alike," he said, resting his case. "So, listen... Why don't ya go throw some water in your face, and I'll pour us some wine and stick on that movie I got for ya, okay?... Go on, honey," he cajoled. "It'll make ya feel better."

"But what about The Navarone Guns?" she asked in surprise.

"It's not going anywhere," he flinched. "Besides, we've got the whole rest of the night to watch it, right? Ya didn't make plans to meet up with some other guy later on, or anything, did ya?" he frowned with feigned suspicion and jealousy, bumping his shoulder against hers. "Did ya?"

"No," she giggled, suddenly feeling a little silly for having become so upset.

"Better not have," he gave her fair warning in a stern voice, getting to his feet. "Break my heart and you're gonna be in big trouble with me, woman."

He watched her face half-beam and half-blush as he pulled her up by her hands and steered her off in the direction of the bathroom with a light pat to her flannel haunches.

"Go on," he said softly, crossing his arms and mindlessly chewing his bottom lip, drinking in the view of The Duke heading into the west with Dollar's flanks moving in concert with Michelle's graceful gait. He envisioned her little black panties beneath the animated artwork and wondered how a guy so unlucky at love as he could've ever managed to come across a woman like her. It was true what he had told her earlier: he'd indeed fallen in love with her within the first few moments of meeting her. He could honestly and willingly admit it, now, in hindsight and retrospect.

Stooping over to gather some crumpled tissues that hadn't made it into the wastepaper basket, he picked up the printout and hesitated before dropping it into the receptacle, deciding to fold it in half and stash it away somewhere. Maybe he would bring it along with him to Michelle's high school reunion and find somebody's throat to cram it down; it might be the perfect way to start that fight he'd promised her. He would decide when the time came — if the time came. He first had to run down Muffy Engle's DMV photo and check the latest stats of her weight, then crack into her IRS records. If she looked like a babe and had a successful career going for herself, he would concoct a reason to skip the reunion, even if he had to fake an old war injury to keep them home.

As he pulled a bottle of his favorite California fume blanc from the refrigerator, he kissed Mrs. Sanchez in his mind for having remembered to chill a few, then made love to her on the floor when he discovered that she'd also put two wineglasses in the freezer to ice. That woman thought of everything, he sighed. It was like still living at home with a mother, only one who never complained about anything he did, or bugged him about marriage and grandchildren, either.

He poured a glass to share with Michelle and took a long, icy sip. A moment later, he found himself experiencing the oddest feeling of déjà vu as he placed Michelle's movie, "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," into the DVD tray, feeling like he'd watched his hand making that very same move in the past. He knew that was impossible, however, and shrugged the odd sensation off, sprawling himself out on his side and down the length of the couch. He perched his head against one hand and aimed the remote control with the other, smiling at the positive reception he already knew his brilliant selection would receive.

"The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" was one of the few love movies he could stomach and the first film he'd thought of when he'd entered the video store that morning. He grinned, remembering how much trouble he'd had locating the Classics section and focusing on the movie titles, his mind feverish with memories of just a few short hours earlier when his life had changed. He remembered how tingly his lips had felt, as if her skin were still against them; how he could still taste the remnants of her flavors clinging to his tongue; the way her lingering scents, intermingling with his own, had become so pronounced and accentuated by the sweat he'd worked up in the pharmacy. It had compelled him to nervously glance around the store, wondering if anyone would be able to detect the telltale fragrance that seemed to be wafting from every sector of his body. He'd even closed a couple of buttons on his jacket, hoping to corral the carnal scents, grateful that the jacket hung just low enough to conceal the other problem that had arisen from recalling how her fragrances had come to burrow into his pores in the first place.

The time he would always normally spend talking and cuddling and saying clever post-coitus things to his bed-partner du jour had been spent in stunned silence, instead, clinging tightly, almost desperately, to each other. Words had seemed woefully and laughably inadequate, so they'd spoken with their eyes, in astonished gazes, and with small kisses to the spots they'd missed before: inside palms; between fingers; against eyelids, wrists, knuckles... He'd kissed her teeth. Her fingertips had petted and apologized to the scar on his eyebrow for not having been there to soothe it, back when the injury had occurred. He'd buried his face in the crook of her neck, seeking shelter from his past and safety from the outside world. She'd drawn tears from him that he would have ordinarily felt loath to show any other woman, for fear of telegraphing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He remembered the moment she had taken possession of him. He had known on the spot the second he had become her property — or, rather, when he had willingly handed every fiber of his being over to her. He hadn't been brave enough to vocalize it then, but from the precise moment they'd fallen off the cliff together, he knew that they would forever be bound in perpetuity.

It seemed like a week ago, now, since all of that had happened, although it hadn't even been an entire day, he reflected in amazement. Time felt different, like the space-time continuum had gone off kilter. Although their relationship appeared to be moving at an accelerated pace on one hand, time was crawling so mercifully slowly on the other. There were so many new feelings and awarenesses crammed into every passing minute that an hour felt more like a day to him. But whatever the cause or explanation for the recent warp in time and space, he cherished and relished the peaceful, relaxing, full evening awaiting them. He was even looking forward to hearing Michelle squeal and chatter to her heart's content throughout her movie, as he instinctively knew she would, and was also somewhat amazed to find that it barely even bothered him to have to wait to see The Guns.

Michelle finally emerged from the bathroom puffy-eyed, but a great deal cheerier, much to his relief.

"C'mere, baby," he said, patting his chest with the remote, gesturing for her to stretch out in front of him. "Didn't I tell ya you'd feel better throwing some water on your face?"

"Yes," she admitted with a weak smile, still feeling a little foolish for having allowed herself to become so upset in the first place.

"See? This should go to show ya that you need to start listening to me more often," he self-confidently asserted, kissing her curls as she nestled in against him.

"You're right, as usual, dear," she commended him with a chuckle to herself, pushing a little further back to meld and seal their angles and curves together. Once comfortably settled in, Tony reached over her shoulder and hit the "play" button.

"Oh, my God! I can't believe it!... I haven't seen this since I was... oh, my God, like, ten or eleven, or something!" Michelle shrieked in delight, instantly straining her head back to kiss him and giggling at the small, though hugely proud, smile that met her as he stooped his head down to peck her lips.

He had first seen "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" as a small boy when his grandfather, who adored Gene Tierney enough to qualify as a stalker, had taken him to an offbeat film festival featuring three back-to-back movies from the actress's 1940's heyday. But it was the salty, macho seaman, played by Rex Harrison, who'd captivated Tony from the minute he made his first ghostly appearance on the screen. Tony was instantly enthralled by the way the dashing, short-tempered Captain Gregg continually barked at "Lucia" and got away with it, rarely ever catching any grief from her. He'd also marveled at how entrancingly mild-mannered, feminine, and even-tempered Lucia was, taking each of the Captain's outbursts and tantrums in stride and with a grain of salt, much the way Michelle tolerated his own foibles and flare-ups.

Michelle reminded him a lot of Gene Tierney in facial features as well. He would tell her that later on, after they'd gone to bed. He would also tell her about how "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" had contained the first incredibly erotic scene he'd ever been exposed to on the silver screen — the part when Captain Gregg made himself invisible while Lucia was changing into her nightgown. It was meant to be nothing more than a whimsical, lighthearted moment in the movie, but Tony remembered having walked around in a daze for a week afterward, fantasizing about all the exciting things he could witness if only he were invisible. It was enough to make him want to die young, beeline it back to Earth, and move his transparent self directly into the bedroom of Patty Lowenstein, the eleven-year-old girl down the block who always made him stutter incoherently whenever she'd say hello to him.

"See? Do I know what you like, or what?" Tony boasted, sinking his teeth into Michelle's neck, delighting in how it made her scrunch her shoulder in self-defense and giggle wildly out of control as she pleaded with him to stop.

"Yes... yes, you do!" she howled, wondering way back in the non-ticklish section of her brain if he had any idea of how very much he knew exactly what she liked and precisely how she liked it.

"So ya gonna start listening to me now?... Huh?" he tortured her a little further, clamping down on her neck again and going in for the kill with an unexpected assault of his fingertips against her ultra-ticklish ribcage.

"Stop!... Pleeeeeaaassseee... Yes, I will! I will!" she shrieked, protectively curling her body into a tight ball as she futilely tried to pry his fingers away from her ribs.

"Planning on touching the remote tonight... or ever?" he just thought he'd check.

"Noooooo!... Noooooo, I swear!" she wailed, feeling only moments away from having to make a mad scramble to the bathroom if he didn't stop making her laugh so hard.

"Alright, then," he said with a satisfied smirk, releasing his death-lock on her neck and resting his hand against her panting stomach.

"You just wait," she threatened, leaving him to live in stark fear of the surprise attack she would perpetrate upon him at a time when he least expected it. He snickered. The only fear he had was of the enemy ever getting hold of Michelle. Two minutes of rib-tickling and every state secret she'd ever been sworn to safeguard with her life would be splashed all over the front page of the Radical Islamic Terrorist Times the following morning.

"I'm petrified," he guaranteed her, kissing her flushed cheek. She nestled back in and refocused on the movie, her fingers mindlessly attaching themselves to his, squeezing and interlocking and jostling them every time she sought to punctuate a point throughout her ceaseless blow-by-blow commentary of each and every ensuing scene. Tony shook his head. He knew it: He could always smell a movie-talker from a mile away.

In the midst of Michelle's uncontrollable giggling over Captain Gregg's giving Lucia's in-laws an invisible bum's rush out the door, followed by her incessant chatter about how much the mother-in-law reminded her of her Aunt Gert, Tony reached for the wine glass on the hassock and brought it to her lips, luxuriating in the three seconds of blissful quiet that filled the room while she took a sip, only to promptly pick right back up on the word she had left off on as soon as he lowered the glass from her lips. He tilted his head back and guzzled down a long, low sip, trying to remember a time when he'd ever felt so relaxed, contented, and crazed all at the same time.

Just to make him a little crazier, the phone rang from the kitchen counter across the room, compelling him to try to remember a time when he'd ever felt so utterly aggravated.

"Damn," he growled, convinced he was destined to spend the entirety of his CTU career worrying about whether every incoming call was work-related, then feeling his gut clutch upon recognizing that the call was indeed coming in from the office. Much to his enormous relief, however, it turned out to be nothing more than the new kid, Adam, calling in his first satellite report on Olivia and Gerald, as Tony had earlier phoned from the restaurant and instructed him to do.

"If you're gonna trust her, you've gotta go all the way," Michelle gently reminded him as he rolled over her and replanted himself against the back of the couch.

"I trust no one," he stated over-dramatically in his favorite dark, deep-undercover black-operative voice. "Gimme," he said, pursing his lips and nudging the side of her face until she turned her head and schmushed her lips over just enough for him to reach them, her eyes never leaving the screen.

"I don't know how Lucia manages to maintain such a calm demeanor," Michelle indignantly prattled on, catching her curls on his beard every time she shook her head with displeasure at Uncle Neddy's heavy-handed come-on tactics.

"Uh-huh," he robotically responded every two sentences or so, occasionally leaning in to kiss her cheek until the phone rang once again, instantly wrecking his mood.

"Geeziz, what now," he moaned, rolling over her and darting back to the counter. Michelle watched as he closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief, scratching some fresh groves into both his forehead and his cheek while grumbling a few quick "yeahs" and "okays" before wrapping up with a terse "I'll be right down."

"Oh, no! Am I being called in, too?" Michelle gasped in disbelief, getting up to follow him into the bedroom where he hurriedly slid himself into some jeans. "I don't even have anything to wear!"

"Nah, baby, it's just some kinda altercation going on in the lobby," he answered, unsuccessfully trying to conceal his aggravation as he yanked on a pair of socks. "They think I'm the damned security guard around here, for cryssake. They oughta give me this place for free, for all the times they've... Do ya see my shoes around anywhere, honey?"

"I'll go with you," Michelle volunteered, retrieving the shoes from the last place a man would ever think to look: the closet.

"No, you stay here. It's just some jerk causing a commotion," he grumbled, though pausing to grab his weapon from the night table drawer just in case the situation turned out to be a little something more than that.

He kissed her quickly before heading out the door, promising to be back in a minute and telling her to go on with the movie without him. She sighed and placed it on "pause" instead, just in case he was gone for awhile, then carried the wineglass to the refrigerator and placed it on the shelf to re-chill. She contemplated eating something just to pass the time, but wasn't really in the mood, so decided to snoop around the kitchen to see if she could find his stash of M&M's. But before she had even barely begun her search, Tony was pounding on the door, calling for her to open up. Assuming he had forgotten his keys, Michelle swung it open and immediately stepped back in shock at the sight of a huge, burly, unkempt-looking Hell's Angels-type man following Tony through the door, directly on his heels.

"What's going on?" she asked with a wild-eyed stare. Her first thought was that a gun was being held to Tony's back. But another step through the doorway revealed a woozy, enormously pregnant woman passed out in the biker's grimy arms, whom Michelle assumed to be his "old lady," given her matching leather-and-chains ensemble and the "Animal's Old Lady" tattoo running vertically down the length of her dangling arm.

"Easy, Petey," Tony coached as the massive hulk strained to lower his better half onto the couch without dropping her, or giving himself a hernia. Michelle's eyes widened even further upon realizing that Tony knew the man by name, then felt her heart rate begin to ease, figuring it was probably safer that he did.

"Grab her some water, honey?" Tony asked, gathering the woman's ankles and lifting her feet onto to the couch, taking note of Michelle's dazed expression as she tucked a pillow under Animal's Old Lady's head. "Umm... Pete, this is Michelle..." he said, introducing two of the most mismatched people presently inhabiting the earth. Petey nodded politely, fixating on what Michelle was convinced was her breasts, though the two flannel Indian corpses covering them were what Petey was actually gazing at.

"Damn, thems about two of the sorriest-looking dead-ass suckers I ever seen," he remarked in a booming voice, evidently incapable of articulating his thoughts at any decibel level lower than max. Mortally insulted, Michelle frowned angrily and immediately crisscrossed her arms over her breasts. Petey sheepishly dropped his eyes to the ground. He couldn't imagine what he had said to evoke such a furious reaction from his best buddy's girlfriend, leaving him to assume that she must be one of those super-sensitive, politically correct tree-hugger types who set up picket lines around anyone who dared to say "Indian" instead of "Native American," or something. Not wanting to cause any trouble, however, he apologetically muttered "sorry" to Michelle at the top of his lungs and turned his attention back to Tony.

"I stopped at the house, but there wasn't nobody there but some broad who wouldn't let us in," Petey roared. "She even threatened to shoot me... I didn't know where else to go, Tony."

"An emergency room is always a good place under the circumstances," Tony gently reminded him, stooping over to lightly pat the woman's cheek in an attempt to bring her around.

"I remembered you got that medic training in the Marines, so, y'know... I figured maybe you'd know why she got all dizzy and shit," Petey boomed, shrugging his massive shoulders and setting off a musical clanging of the various chains attached to his putrid leather vest.

"Probably 'cause she's hardly in any condition to be hanging off the back of a bike, Pete. What the hell were ya thinking, anyway?" Tony asked rhetorically, concluding with a safe amount of certainty that Petey probably hadn't been thinking at all. "Ya can't fool around with this kinda thing, y'know..."

Petey stuffed his jailhouse-tattooed fingers into the pockets of his filthy jeans and looked down over his beer belly to the floor, the same way he always did when they were kids and he'd broken the law for the fourth time that day, ashamed of himself for disappointing such good folks as the Almeidas, the only people who'd ever treated him like family.

"What's her name?" Tony asked after conducting a quick check of the woman's vitals.

"Tits," Petey thundered, provoking his common-law mama to stir and Michelle to bang her head on a shelf inside the refrigerator.

"I'm not calling her that, Pete. What's her real name," Tony said, hearing a "tsk" in Michelle's eyes without even having to look over at her. But he did anyway, just to assure her with his own eyes that everything was fine and that he'd explain it all later.

"I dunno. She only said it once and that was years ago, man... Sabrina, maybe?... Sarina?"

"Where the fuck am I?" the woman muttered groggily in response to the sound of her name roaring out of the Animal's lungs, bringing a light blush to Michelle's cheeks as she handed a glass of water to Tony, watching as he raised the back of the woman's head and tilted the glass against her lips.

"Ya scared the shit outta me when ya almost fell off the back like that," Petey roared at his beloved. "I go to the hassle of stealing that sissy bar and ya don't even try to hold on!"

"Suck my dick," the woman poetically directed, still a little groggy but eagerly accepting another sip of water from Tony. "If ya got me a Happy Meal, like I asked, I wouldn'ta fainted in the first place," she paused to snarl.

"Ya almost made me rack up the hog!" Petey roared back in a voice even louder than his normal deafening level, then turned to Tony with a fretful look across his blubbery, weather-worn face. "Y'think she'll be all right?" he asked, with grave concern.

"A doctor would be a little better qualified to make that determination," Tony suggested with the patience of a saint, handing the empty glass to Michelle, who hurried back to the kitchen to throw something nourishing together for Sarina.

"Nah, I mean my hog," Petey clarified at the top of his lungs. "That dude in the monkey suit downstairs wouldn't even let me wheel her into the lobby to look her over... I damned near spilled her in a turn with the old lady hanging off the side like that."

"Your bike'll be fine," Tony assured him with a tinge of annoyance, stooping down and placing his hands gently against either side of Sarina's enormously pregnant gut, barely covered by a dingy white tank top sporting a "69" insignia and a host of mustard, ketchup, and DNA stains. As a series of rapid-fire kicks and punches met Tony's palms from all directions, he wondered why the kid hadn't already been born about a week ago, judging from the enormity of the mother and the healthy, high-activity level of the baby.

"You a doctor?" Sarina groaned in discomfort, struggling like a downed elephant to move herself into more of a seated position, then finally giving up and allowing Tony to do the rest of the heavy lifting.

"Nah, he's 'the man,'" Petey roared laughing, watching Sarina's eye widen in confusion and fear. "I ain't kidding, hon. This here's my buddy, the Fed... The guy that delivered one of them gook babies in Iraqi... Remember I told ya?"

Tony felt a brotherly whack hit his left flank like a ton of bricks, nearly sending him careening on top of the woman's gut.

"Geeziz, Petey, quit horsing around, huh?" he winced, straightening up as Michelle stooped in and draped a dinner napkin over Sarina's midsection as if it were a TV table, then balanced a plate of assorted vegetables, fruits, and cold strips of chicken and beef.

"Can I get you anything, Pete?" Michelle felt obligated to graciously ask, considering that the man, for whatever unimaginable reason, was Tony's best friend.

"Yeah, I'll take a pair of them black bloomers for the old lady, if ya got any extras," Petey roared, figuring he'd hand Michelle a compliment this time, only to find himself apologizing once more after she'd shot straight up, tugged at her shirttails, and glared at him angrily again.

"Enough, Petey," Tony gently admonished him, taking hold of Michelle's hand. "Grab yourself a beer while I scrounge up a doctor for Sarina, okay?" he instructed, leading Michelle into the hallway and down to the guest bedroom. "Olivia's probably got something you can wear in one of the drawers," he said, kissing her cheek apologetically and reaching behind her to open the door. "Don't worry, baby. They're not staying," he was quick to add. "They'll be outta here soon. He's just an old friend from..."

"Tell me later, dear," Michelle suggested, glancing nervously up the hall. "My purse is in there," she smiled weakly, circling her arms around his waist long enough to gently rub the spot where Petey had whacked him.

"It'll be okay. Don't worry. Pete would just as soon cut his hand off than ever lift anything from me. We go back forever," he assured her, aching to be back on the couch tucking her close up against him again, soaking in her gales of laughter and nonstop commentary on the lovely turn-of-the-century wallpaper that you just can't find anymore these days. He couldn't believe his god-awful luck. He hadn't seen or heard from his childhood buddy in over a year, and tonight, of all nights, he had to come ringing the bell — or the doorman's neck, to be more specific — and monopolizing this chunk of his precious time with Michelle, who would've put a steak knife in Pete's back by now if she weren't such a gracious hostess, Tony was sure.

"Listen, umm... call Olivia and tell her and Gerald to be waiting downstairs at the curb as soon as they can make it over here, okay, sweetheart? Her number's inside on the speed dial."

"Are you sure we shouldn't be driving Sarina ourselves?" Michelle asked with as much concern for Olivia as Sarina.

"Nah, the clinic is only ten minutes away. Olivia will be fine," he said, reading her mind and kissing her forehead. "Pete's her godfather. She loves the guy."

Heading back down the hallway, he glanced over his shoulder and cocked a smile in response to Michelle's stunned expression, envisioning himself sitting up in bed for half the night, explaining how eight-year-old Pete had pulled a bunch of kids off him at an inner-city summer camp that his Dad's company had established for poverty-level children. Jim Almeida had forced his son to attend, determined to give him a well-rounded view of the "real world." On Day One, Tony received his first introduction when he found himself pinned to ground, getting his butt ceremoniously kicked by six kids who hadn't taken long to decide that he wasn't exactly from the same kind of 'hood that they were. Tony didn't know why he had to get beaten to a bloody pulp for that, but after Petey — a perfect stranger and twice the size of any of the other kids their age — had rushed in like a raging bull and saved him from a few weeks of hospitalization, they'd instantly become the best of friends.

"It wasn't a fair fight," Petey had later shyly explained to Jim Almeida after Amanda, with limousine tires screeching, had whisked the two boys from the camp infirmary to the Almeidas' personal family physician, ordered them x-rayed from head to toe, then took them back to the house, all without shedding more than a couple of hundred-thousand tears. Jim Almeida promptly fell in love with the stocky, golden-hearted giant when he'd offered Petey a reward of anything he would like — from a toy store shopping spree, to the 5-speed bike of his choice, to a trip to Disneyland — only for the boy to shyly respond with a request for a ham and swiss hero, with mustard and lettuce, and a Budweiser.

Back in the living room, Tony glanced around to find Petey on the other side of the open refrigerator door, seated on a chair he'd pulled over from the breakfast table and hunched forward with a fork in one hand and the glass of wine Michelle had been chilling in the other.

"Got any of Mrs. Sanchez's burritos?" he casually inquired through a full mouth of refrigerator pickings, a trail of roast beef dangling from the side of his mouth and a chunk of potato salad glued to the bottom portion of his squirrelly beard.

"Yeah, but they're frozen," Tony said, not at all sure if that would deter Petey from eating them anyway. "So, listen... Olivia and her boyfriend are on their way over to pick up Sarina and take her to this really good clinic a couple of minutes away. We'll stretch her out in the back seat and you can follow them on the bike, okay?"

Petey stopped chewing long enough to look up and sheepishly reply.

"We ain't got money for no doctor, Tony."

"Pete," Tony said, dropping a comforting hand on the bull's shoulder. "How many times does my Dad have to tell ya never to worry about that kinda thing, huh? He'll pick it up, no matter what. You know that... Just go take care of business and tell them to call my Dad's office... That goes for the future, too... for Sarina and the baby, y'hear?"

Petey looked up with soulful eyes reeking of gratitude and affection for the blood brother he'd always wished was his real brother.

"Thanks, man. I didn't know what I was gonna do when the kid was ready to pop," he admitted.

"Ya do the right thing, that's all," Tony reminded him of Jim Almeida's golden rule. "Sarina oughta be in a delivery room where she belongs when the time comes, Pete. Not in the hands of some midwife in the backroom of a bar. This is your son we're talking about here, after all..."

Petey's eyes widened with exhilaration. "Ya really think it's gonna be a boy?" he asked.

"It better be, or you know my Mom," Tony chuckled. "You'll be the only biker with a daughter who's graduated from finishing school."

"That's one helluva lady, the Duchess is," Petey said with tears welling up in his eyes as he cracked open a beer, tipped his head back, and guzzled the entire bottle down his throat in one singular swig. "She's always been so good to me," he tenderly reminisced.

"Well, you're one of the family, so what do ya expect," Tony smiled warmly, patting his best friend's mammoth shoulder and inadvertently inspiring a long, continuous belch to bellow out of him, sounding more like a wounded Yeti than anything human and perfectly timed with Michelle's reentry into the room. Tony dropped his chin down to his chest, hearing her tsk-ing inside his head. He tried to catch her eye as she scurried back over to Sarina's side with a damp washcloth in hand, but she was obviously too concerned with the state of the woman's grimy complexion to engage in eye-conversation at the moment.

"You're such a fucking pig," Sarina called over her shoulder to Petey, provoking Michelle's eyebrows to shoot up somewhere roughly around her hairline, then casually drop down as though she were perfectly accustomed to overhearing such exchanges of endearments between two bikers in love.

"So, look, I was thinking..." Petey continued unphased, pushing himself up from the chair and wrapping his arm around Tony's shoulder, glancing over at the couch to be sure that his roaring was safely outside the hearing distance of their womenfolk. "I know I ain't the brightest guy in the world, or nothin', but do ya think your Pop might... y'know... maybe have some kinda gig for me, if I axed him? Something, like... full-time, I was thinkin'? I gotta get some kinda decent digs for Tits and the little guy, and with my record, and the heat breathing down my ass in two states, and all..."

Tony grinned, giving his blood brother's voluminous cheek a pat, relieved to realize that Petey had obviously been doing a lot more thinking than he'd originally given him credit for. No one in the family had ever held out hope of Petey becoming a Wall Street magnate or a heart transplant surgeon someday — he was who he was — but years of his parents' family-oriented nurturing and example had apparently paid off to some degree.

"He's gonna be pissed that ya didn't send him a card last year, Pete. I'm warning ya... Ya know how weird he is about Christmas cards," Tony said. "But he'll come up with something. You know that... He's always told ya what a great bodyguard you would make if he could only get ya to wear a black suit, right?"

Pete's face lit up, nodding his head eagerly. Bodyguard work was something he could definitely see himself doing. He'd get to carry a gun; maybe even legally. He quickly ran his dirty fingers through his hair in an attempt to make a more presentable appearance in anticipation of speaking with James Almeida, the greatest man God ever placed on the face of the earth, not counting His only begotten son, God, Jr.

"What time did Olivia say, honey?" Tony called over to Michelle, who was now chattering up a storm with Sarina, asking if she'd like some chilled cucumber slices for her eyelids, offering to brush her hair into a nice, neat braid from the crown of her head on down the back — "The baby could even come tonight, after all, and think of how much more comfortable you'll feel with your hair out of your face" — and warming Tony's heart to the core. He wondered if there were anyone on earth with whom Michelle couldn't find something to amiably and warmly chitchat about.

"Another fifteen minutes or so," she glanced up at him with a sweet smile, returning her attention to Sarina's fingernails, wondering if she could pull off a quickie French manicure in the short time remaining. "Oh, and I told Olivia she could stay out 'til midnight, so remember to call Mrs. Maddigan and tell her that, dear."

Tony's mouth automatically opened to object, but quickly sealed itself shut again. Michelle had made more headway with Olivia over one linner than he, Lou, Mrs. Madison, and his parents, combined, had achieved in months. He would defer to her judgment, deciding there on the spot to officially promote her to Director of Them and Olivia and Possibly Sarina, judging from the way things seemed to be going over at Michelle's triage nail salon.

He fetched his cell phone and entered his Dad's number, thinking about how thrilled he would be to hear Petey finally asking if he could hang up his leather vest and don a God-only-knew-what-size black suit, full-time. As the phone rang on the other end, he handed it over to Petey, hoping that his Mom wasn't taking his Dad's calls.

"If my Mom answers, don't tell her about the baby, Petey, whatever ya do," Tony warned him. "She'll have ya on the phone for an hour. This'll be her first grandkid, after all."

Petey felt a lump ball up in his throat at the thought of the Almeidas regarding the fruit of his loins as their own grandson.

In the time it had taken Tony to walk over to Michelle, give her neck a reassuring squeeze, and walk back over to Petey, Amanda Almeida had answered the phone, squealed with delight and relief upon hearing Petey's voice, scolded him for not having called for so many months, and wangled the news of the baby out of him with the ease of an anesthesiologist administering sodium pentathol to a natural-born blabbermouth. Tony just shook his head.

"Nah, ya ain't gotta rush home, Duchess. The kid ain't comin' for another coupla weeks, if I know my math," Petey assured her as Tony rolled his eyes this time, trying to recall even one math exam Petey had ever passed in his short scholastic life before finally throwing in the towel and dropping out of school altogether. If anything, the enormous Sarina was overdue; Tony even had the sneaking suspicion that if she didn't get over to the clinic soon, he might well be delivering his second baby, only this time without the aid of two other medic-trained Marines hovering over his shoulder throughout.

"Nah, nah, she's feeling okay now. Tony's girlfriend's looking after her," Petey innocently mentioned. "Boy, is she big!"

Tony felt faint. He sealed his eyes shut in disbelief. The cat was out of the bag. He had completely forgotten to tell Petey not to breathe a word about Michelle to his Mom.

"Hah?... Nah, Tony's girlfriend ain't big. She's a little thing. I was talking about Sarina," Petey clarified.

Tony slowly reopened his eyes to the sight of the phone being held up to his face.

"Your Ma wants to talk to ya," Petey said with a huge question mark etched into his expression, not sure why Tony was glaring at him like that.

"Uhh... Yeah, thanks, Pete," he replied, clearing his throat before placing the phone against his ear, preparing himself for a full-blown, five-alarm verbal thrashing. "Mom?"

There was no need to say another word for the next few minutes. Amanda Almeida would be doing all the talking — or dressing-down, to put it more succinctly. "But, Mom," he tried a few times with no success, impatiently resting his hand on his hip and shifting his weight from one foot to the other while she chewed him out for deviously trying to conceal his new girlfriend from her.

"I didn't lie, Mom," he defended himself once the first opportunity to get a word in edgewise had finally presented itself. "We are watching TV and I was too tired to go out... Well, that's not what ya asked me... I'm not telling you, Mom... You know why... When the time comes... When I decide when... I'm not being—Ma, I'm not being fresh. I'm just laying out the facts. You'll meet her when the time is right, okay?... You'll be the first to know... I'm a little old for that, Ma. Ya really need to update your threats... Look, look, can I just call ya tomorrow? I've got a pregnant woman here who looks like she's—No, Mom, Sarina! Geeziz! I'll call—Mom, I'll call ya in the morning, okay?... Huh?... How would I know? You women never even let us go to those things... Uhh, no, I'm sure she doesn't know any more about biker baby showers than I do, but nice try... When I decide, okay? We've already been through this... I'm—Mom? I'm hanging up now... Yeah, I'll tell him... Love you, too... When I decide! Okay? Geeziz," he said, clicking off the phone and shaking his head in a mixture of utter amazement and dread.

He was glad Michelle was in the room just so he could stare at her forlornly, even though she was busy chatting with Sarina, blowing on her freshly polished nails, offering to dab club soda on her various t-shirt stains, and not even paying attention to him. Little did she know the hell they'd both be facing the minute the wheels of Almeida Amalgamate's corporate jet touched down.

"Honey? Finish up with Sarina, please? Olivia will be downstairs in a minute," Tony said glumly, checking his watch and rubbing his eyes.

"Damn, I always wanted to be a ghost," Petey confessed from across the room with the remote control in his hand. "Imagine all the shit ya could do without gettin' busted, huh, Tony?" he fantasized. "Did ya ever see 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man'?"

"Nah, I must've missed that one," Tony murmured, still shaking his head in disbelief. "Listen, Mom says you two are to move into the house tonight, Pete. No arguments."

"The tree house?" Petey bellowed excitedly.

"Help Sarina off the couch," Tony sighed, dropping his chin to his chest and rubbing his eyes again. He loved Petey like a brother, but more often than not he would find himself relating to Tom Cruise's character in "Rainman," having to deal with a brother who wasn't all quite there.

As the process of shuffling out the door began, Petey turned and walked back to Michelle, planting a kiss on her hand like he'd seen gentleman do with sophisticated ladies in old black-and-white movies, and apologized to her again, feeling ashamed of himself.

"I get rude sometimes and I don't even know it," he bellowed out a beer-breathed explanation, bringing a tear to Michelle's eye. She accepted a bear hug from him, which came close to cracking a rib, and another one from Tony, who whispered in her ear that he loved her, reminding her that she now owed him four and pointing out, just for the record, that he'd said all three words again, not two.

Once downstairs, Tony allowed Olivia the usual couple of minutes to climb and squeal and hang all over Petey while he settled Sarina in the backseat of the car and barked out the clinic's directions to Gerald in military terminology. He and Petey then hugged, kissed, and punched each other goodbye, agreeing to talk sometime tomorrow. He even kissed Olivia's cheek for the first time in ages, shocking and stunning them both.

"Midnight," he said, aiming a finger of warning in Olivia's face before heading back through the lobby door, heaving a huge sigh of relief and aching to get back upstairs to Michelle.

He found her sprawled half-on and half-off the couch, struggling to remove Olivia's size-zero leggings, which she had earlier located in the guest bedroom and somehow managed to get into, but which were now dangerously compromising her circulation.

"I think you're gonna need a scissor, dear," Michelle said, fully intending to replace them with a new pair.

As he snipped his way up one leg and down the other, Tony gently broke the news that Petey had innocently spilled the beans about them to his Mom.

"Well, I don't know what you're so worried about," Michelle heaved a sigh of relief once he had finally snipped her free. "Seems to me that Pete's done you a huge favor."

"Uhh... you don't know my Mom," Tony smiled as lightheartedly as he could. "She's hell-bent on getting herself a grandchild and dedicated to torturing me 'til the day I hand one over."

"I don't know how true that's gonna be anymore once Sarina gives birth," Michelle nonchalantly replied, following him into the kitchen while he poured them a fresh glass of wine. "I mean, look at the bigger picture, dear. Why would your Mom need to bug you for a grandchild once her arms are already full up with Pete's?"

Tony arched an eyebrow. He hadn't even considered that. It was wholly conceivable that the baby's arrival could indeed get his Mom off his back, or at least for the time being. If so, Petey's unexpected visit would be well worth the time he'd lost with Michelle. The more he thought about it, the more he could barely contain his elation: Amanda Almeida would have the baby — her surrogate grandchild — right there on the grounds with her, to consume herself with and show off to her girlfriends. Plus, once they got a load of Sarina, his Mom would have all the material she needed to elevate herself to sainthood status for having heroically swooped in and snatched the little booger away from the equivalent of the satanic cult he'd been born into; for providing him with a roof over his head, on the right side of town; clothing; Pampers; a wholesome family environment he never would've otherwise had...This could indeed be just the break Tony had been praying for ever since his Mom first caught the grandbaby bug, going on seven years now.

"But... Pete isn't an actual 'blood' Almeida, so — so is that still gonna count? I mean, like, with my Mom's girlfriends?" he asked nervously, settling on the couch again with his head resting against his hand and Michelle on her back beside him.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, dear. If Pete's been in your family since you two were boys, which of her girlfriends is gonna have the nerve to quibble over a technicality like that?" she logically assessed. "Besides, with the grandmother crowd, it's not about 'grandchildren' so much as 'babies'. That's what the big fuss is all about. And think about all the fuss your Mom's gonna receive when she shows up with both of them in her arms."

"Huh?" Tony frowned, slowly pushing himself up on his elbow. "Both of them?... Y'mean, like, more than one—like, 'twins'?"

"I don't know how many kicking feet you counted, dear, but there were more than two, by my tally," Michelle giggled. "Plus, my Aunt Hildie's sister-in-law's cousin Sarabeth? Who's divorced now because her husband took up with a woman on their bowling team? That's exactly the way she looked when she was carrying twins. Super-big and all up front, just like Sarina," she assured him, illustrating the shape with her hands drawing a large circle above her stomach area.

Tony could hardly believe what he was hearing. It took a few minutes to even sink in. Saint Amanda. His Mom could play up one baby to the hilt, no sweat. But two? Her girlfriends wouldn't stand a fighting chance. Their blood-grandkids would come out looking like household pets after Amanda Almeida, with a baby in each arm, got through with them.

"I'm no obstetrician, so don't hold me to it, but I'd say you're off the hook for awhile," Michelle summarized with a beaming smile.

He stared down at Michelle, gently placing his hand on her head and wishing he could somehow, through the process of osmosis, sink it through her scalp and skull and pet her brain. Beautiful, sexy, even-tempered, willing to put up with his rants, and brilliant, too. There must be a God, he thought, with proper apologies and all due respect to the testosterone overlords. Somewhere, at some point in his life, he must have done something right to have been rewarded with so perfect a woman as Michelle.

"Do you have any idea how smart you are?" he asked with his eyes glazing over.

"Ah-huh," she answered matter-of-factly, turning onto her side toward the TV and clicking her movie back on with his remote control. "That's why you need to listen to me more often, dear," she stated just before launching into a whole new nonstop, chattering commentary about how Lucia was wrong to abandon the Captain, no matter how stubborn and prone to tantrums and demanding he was. They belonged together and should stick together even through the toughest of times — like, this particular life of theirs, for example, when one of them was already a ghost and the other was still a mortal... with fabulous skin tone... and a waistline one could kill for... and an excellent eye for turn-of-the-century wallpaper that one should only be so blessed to find these days... and the cutest daughter, played by Natalie Wood, whom in real life had died so young and tragically under circumstances that were still a little murky and suspicious, and...