LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 12: His Movie

"We've already gone over this twice, dear," Michelle patiently reminded him, exhibiting remarkable patience and tolerance under the circumstances.

"So we'll go over it a third time. Who's it gonna kill... hmmm?"

Michelle sighed heavily.

"Rule One?" Tony inquired.

She pinched her lips and shook her head in utter disbelief.

"Rule One?" he repeated.

"'No talking,' okay? For pete'ssake, dear," she huffed from her perch on the edge of the couch, sitting rigidly upright with her arms and legs tightly crossed, watching him rummage through a few drawers of the armoire housing the television monitor.

"Rule Two?" he continued.

She slowly closed her eyes, growing more and more aggravated with every word that unwisely departed his mouth. "I'm not participating in this any longer," she factually informed him, opening her eyes again and staring bullets into his back.

"Rule Two?" he repeated, ignoring her unacceptable response.

If only he knew how close she was to calling the wedding off the minute he got around to proposing, Michelle thought.

"'No talking,' all right? I've got it, dear. Okay?"

"Rule Three?"

She was steaming.

"I'm sorry, baby. I didn't hear you," he sing-sang obsequiously. "Rule Three?"

"'No talking'... Here's Rule Four, in the event you're interested. You're never touching me again for the rest of your life if you bring those obnoxious rules up to me one more time," she vowed.

He snickered. He had made his point. Besides, she was full of it. No way she could make it through the rest of her life without The Sperminator. Who did she think she was kidding anyway. The woman was clearly hooked.

"What's this for?" Michelle grumbled as he approached and wrestled her hand open, dropping two small batteries into her palm.

"Eh, the remote's been feeling a little sluggish. Probably just the batteries. Do me a favor and change 'em for me, sweetheart?" he nonchalantly requested over his shoulder en route to the kitchen.

"There's not a thing wrong with these batteries, dear," Michelle announced after pretending to examine the remote, though actually exercising and warming up her eye muscles, moving them from side to side multiple times in anticipation of ultimately sustaining a long, hard peer to her right the minute he made his covert — or so he thought — move to retrieve his M&M's from his secret — though not for long — hiding place.

"Just... just change them, okay?" he griped, irritated with himself upon realizing that he'd failed to concoct a backup plan to preoccupy her while he retrieved his stash. Why did she have to be so electronically adept, intellectually curious, and factually correct all the time, anyway? Pink Sweater hadn't said a word when he'd asked her to change the batteries a few years back. It had taken her a full ten minutes, in fact, before she had figured out where the battery panel was located, how to slide it open, in which direction to insert the positive and negative terminals, and how to slide the little panel closed again. He'd never retrieved his M&M's so leisurely or carefreely in his entire life.

About an hour or so away and 20,000 feet above, the plane couldn't move fast enough for Amanda Almeida. She'd get out and push if she weren't certain it would ruin her hair. Impatiently glancing at her ruby-and-diamond-encrusted Chopard watch for the fourth time in the past five minutes, she took another sip from her hand-blown Scandinavian crystal martini glass, smoothed a wrinkle from the skirt of her custom-designed Givenchy suit, picked up her platinum Caran d'Ache fountain pen, and scanned her list again:

• Get names of Sarina's girlfriends from Peter

• Engrave invitations ASAP — "With breathless anticipation of the arrival of Amanada Almeida's grandchild, you are cordially invited to attend a baby shower to be held yada, yada, yada... (Work in Sarina's name somewhere)

• Shower favors/call Henri ASAP — sterling charm bracelets w/bike theme: child's tricycle; bike w/training wheels; older child's 5-speed; grownup child's Harley... whatever else Henri can think of (bells? streamers? baskets? gas tanks?)

• Call Miriam re: P.I.

• Question Louis & Olivia re: Michelle (?)

• Olivia — grounded/two weeks

• Tony — DIB!

Amanda paused to fume again. That son of hers was getting just a little too fresh for her blood lately. She had every right as his mother and the grandmother of his future children to meet and interrogate that woman he was seeing behind her back. Something with an "M"... "Michelle," was it? "Melody"? "Melissa"? Darn. She was pretty sure "Michelle" was the name that Olivia had earlier mentioned, despite the girl's sudden and conveniently timed bout of amnesia ten minutes ago, when Amanda had called to question her further. Those two children of hers were always in cahoots with each other, she bristled, conspiring against their own mother even when they weren't on speaking terms. Heck, they never even needed to "speak"! The positively eerie way in which they communicated with their eyes sometimes made her feel as though she'd given birth to Children of the Corn.

Her growing anger and frustration was temporarily placed on hold when a timid steward gingerly approached and handed her a phone.

"Miriam, darling, how cosmic of you. I'd just written your name on my must-call list. How are you, darling"" Amanda chirped. "Lovely. And how was Tropez?... Well, it's tourist season, darling. What did you expect... Oh, I had just wanted to ask you the name of that private investigator you were so pleased with,... No, the one who'd worked so quickly to compile the dossier on that tart who'd try to steal your Stanley away... No, the other tart, darling. The one who'd mixed the Gucci purse with those dreadful open-toed Jimmy Choo knockoffs. Remember how hard we laughed when we saw the pictures?... Ah, Mr. Kobayashi, of course. I knew it was something Nipponese," she said with the perfect, politically correct Japanese accent. "Oh, would you, darling? That would be marvelous... Hmmm?... My Jim? Oh, heaven's, no. You must be joking. It's for my son. He's finally seeing someone again... You're too sweet, Miriam. Yes, you can tell Mr. Kobayashi that I believe it's with an 'M'. Likely 'Michelle,' though I can't be certain... No, I couldn't even get the first name out of him, much less a surname, and Olivia's sealed herself up like a clam. I'm simply up to here with the both of them," she sighed, indicating the middle of her forehead with the rim of her martini glass. "Oh, please, darling, your son is a perfect angel compared to mine. He's become so fresh lately, I hardly even know what to do anymore... Yes, fresh to his own mother, Miriam, and his language is perfectly disgraceful, as well. Every other word out of his mouth is 'h-e-double-hockey-sticks,' if you catch my meaning... No, he's been picking it up for years at that dreadful 'CTU' place he works for... CTU, darling. You remember. The place that blew up last week. We canceled lunch..."

Amanda shuddered to think of the language her son might well employ if he were ever to find out about Mr. Kobayashi. But his stubborn refusal to answer even the most basic, fundamental questions, like name, age, social security, and blood type — or even so much as confirm the very existence of the woman — had left Amanda with no other recourse but to pursue alternative means of sourcing out the information. She could hardly be expected, after all, to simply sit back and watch his life shatter again, as that last horrid CTU woman had done to him. Besides, her son should know by now that if he wanted to keep such vital information from her, he'd best be prepared to play hardball Amanda Almeida-style.

She bid her good-byes to Miriam and picked up her pen again, jotting some notes to remind herself of a few of the points she intended to make the next time she got her hands on that perfectly fresh young man of hers: first and foremost, the way he always hung up on her without saying "good-bye." She didn't give a hoot if every last employee of the federal government wished to behave like they'd been raised by cave dwellers; far be it for Amanda Almeida to utter a politically incorrect word about it. But when Anthony Almeida was conversing with the woman who'd given him his very life, he would just have to remember to say "good-bye" before clapping his phone shut like that.

Back down on Earth, Tony stared at Michelle in mild shock.

"What do ya mean, 'no'?"

"I'm just not in the mood, dear," Michelle shrugged, watching her elbows this time as she shifted into a comfortable position between his legs, settling half on her side and half on her stomach, with her arms tucked around him and her cheek resting against his chest.

"How can ya not be in the mood? This is the kind with the almonds," he exclaimed in wide-eyed bewilderment.

"I'm probably not even gonna like them," she said, scrunching her nose. "I've never tried the almond ones before."

In actuality, she could kill for some M&M's. Especially the kind with the almonds, which happened to be her absolute favorite. Nevertheless, she was determined to resist, thereby leaving it to him to explain to his ridiculous pagan deities why he hadn't paid proper homage to them via the holy Snatch Back ceremony. He deserved their wrath, after all, for having obnoxiously put her through those silly made-up rules of his, three entire times, no less.

"Well... well, how do ya know you're not gonna like them if ya don't even try them?" he asked in dismay, thinking to himself how much he just sounded like his Mom that time she had tried to push raw sushi on him when he was a kid. He recalled how annoyed she had gotten when his salt-of-the-earth grandfather had risen from his chair and come to his rescue, insisting that there wasn't a reason in the world why a boy Tony's age should have to "expand his palette" by taste-testing the equivalent of bait.

"I wouldn't step on that stuff on the sidewalk!" his grandfather had roared out in the middle of the exclusive Japanese restaurant where Amanda had chosen to celebrate his Dad's birthday that year. Seizing upon the perfect opportunity, his grandfather Almeida had snatched him up from his chair and roared, "We're getting' the hell outta this fish-stinkin' joint, kid!" making a break for the door and not slowing down a step until they had finally come across a Burger King. It was the best dinner Tony had ever had.

"Mmm... no thanks," Michelle declined, not moving a muscle as he held the bag out to her again, offering to pour some into her hand. "You go ahead and enjoy them, dear. I'm fine. Really."

"No, here," Tony insisted in a light panic, knowing the anger he was bound to provoke in the testosterone gods if he didn't even try to pull off at least one ceremonial Snatch Back.

The phone rang from across the room. Tony couldn't believe it.

"Geeziz! What the hell does this world want from me!" he exploded as he bustled Michelle off his chest and rushed to retrieve the phone, clipping his knee against the edge of one of the kitchen table's chairs along the way. "If this is Chappelle, half the damned country had better be in the throes of Armageddon or I'm reading the riot act to that guy," he warned the world.

"It could be Pete calling about the baby, y'know," Michelle soothingly offered from the corner of the couch she had landed in after Tony had leapt to his feet at atomic speed.

"Almeida," he barked into the phone, angrily rubbing his knee in pain and peering down at it as if already convinced he'd be spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Michelle stared in suspense, watching his expression slowly transform from self-pitying agony to wide-eyed amazement.

"It's starting already! I knew it!" he whispered loudly across the room, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece.

"Oh, my God! She's gone into labor?" Michelle whispered back excitedly. It occurred to her that very moment that she hadn't even offered Sarina to be her coach, as any hostess worth her salt would quite naturally be expected to do. Her mind frantically raced to remember the special Pregnancy Apparel edition of Elle she'd read last spring, with step-by-step Lamaze instructions replete with a breathing chart and detailed illustrations of each vital stage of the delivery process.

"Whoa, whoa... just... Look, just take a deep breath and calm down first, all right?" Tony said into the mouthpiece in a smooth, easy, authoritative voice. "One thing at a time. I can barely understand a word you're saying... No, take a breath first. You're not even making any sense... Fine. Now, just hang on and listen for a second, okay?... No, don't talk. Just listen, all right?... First of all, I wasn't being fresh. I was simply trying to explain that... Ma?... that you'll meet her when I decide the time is right. Now, did ya see how nicely and calmly I just said that? It's the same exact way I said it bef... Mom?... Ma..."

He dropped his head and squeezed his forehead in pain, arching his aching eyes up in Michelle's direction to be certain she was taking note of the hell that was already starting, just as he had warned her it would.

"Look, Mom... Mom... We've gotta talk about this in the morning, okay? Petey could be trying to call and... Geeziz, how the hell would I know? Sarina didn't even know when the baby was due... All I know is that she's enormous, just like you were when ya... I didn't mean it that way, Mom. I just meant that Sarina could be in the middle of having the kid right now, so we shouldn't be tying up the lines like this... Huh?... 'H-e-double' what?... What the hell are ya— Okay, fine, fine. I won't anymore, okay? I promise... Yeah, but tomorrow, Mom, not... Hah?" he said, squinting his eyes as though struggling to understand what she was saying. He listened in confusion for another few moments, then dropped his chin to his chest, closing his eyes and slowly reopening them again. "No, fine, fine... 'Good-bye,' Mom... Like that? Was that good?... Geeziz," he said, clapping the phone shut.

"I'm getting a headache, Michelle," he whined in anguish, limping back in the direction of the couch. "First I smashed my knee, and now I'm getting a headache."

"Not another one," Michelle went out of her way to fret on cue, scrunching her forehead and gazing at him with deep sympathy and concern, which already made him feel a little better.

"It's spreading through my entire head," he nevertheless moaned, lowering himself onto the couch and wincing in agony as he bent his knee. "Why can't I just watch the Nazis get slaughtered in peace? Is that too much to ask?" he rhetorically inquired, gesturing toward the frozen screen of the boys hunched behind a boulder, moments away from pouncing on the enemy's unsuspecting sentry. This is what he got for failing to properly honor the overlords.

He whimpered as Michelle cajoled him into a reclining position, helping him lower his head onto the pillow and stretch himself down the length of the couch. She spent a minute gently stroking her fingertips through his hair and listening to his pained breathing, like a man on his deathbed clinging to life.

"I wish I had more cake to give you," Michelle sympathized, identifying his headache as definitely not the aspirin kind, but the grandmother-wannabe kind. Even worse, the mother-with-a-late-thirties-son-who-wasn't-even-married-yet kind. "Maybe an M&M? That's sort of like cake in a way, isn't it?... Y'think that might help to ease the pain?"

"I'm not sure, but I'll try," he moaned bravely, parting his lips to accept the blue one Michelle had already dug out of the bag and was perched to place on his tongue. Generally, no one was allowed to touch his M&M's, but he would make an exception in this case, considering it was an emergency.

"Just suck on it, dear. If you bite into it, it'll probably send shooting pains from your jaw into your brain," she advised with the wisdom of Florence Nightingale, transferring her attentive hands from his head to his leg wound. "Let's get you inside so I can have a look at what you did to this knee," she announced.

"The chair did it, Michelle!" he quickly set the facts straight.

"Well, however it happened, your leg is just gonna cramp up on this couch and inflame the injury even more," she stated authoritatively, recognizing his high-frustration level over his Mom and, hence, the need to have pity heaped upon him. "Do you think you can make it to the bedroom if I help you?... Hmmm?" she asked, shifting her fuss-gear into overdrive.

"I'll try," he moaned courageously, temporarily storing the M&M in the side of his cheek as he summoned the strength to push himself up on his elbows, like a fallen soldier determined to live and fight another day. "The M&M's," he managed to whimper through the searing pain, pointing to the bag on the hassock. "I might need more."

"I know, dear. I'll come back for them, " she promised, squeezing her eyes shut upon hearing the phone ring yet again.

"Geeziz!" Tony thundered, promptly dropping himself down on the couch. "I'm not answering that, Michelle!"

"You have to, honey," she placidly said, reminding him of the unfortunate nighttime-and-weekend rules governing Unit Directors as she scurried to fetch the phone for him.

"It's not the office," he psychically stated, dropping his head into his hands and seriously wondering what to do. Perhaps a call to his Dad, as much as he hated even considering dragging him in at this point. He generally liked to reserve his Dad — "the big guns" — as his last resort. He was the only man on Earth with any kind of control over Amanda Almeida.

"Well, just... just try to keep your temper at bay. She is your mother, after all," Michelle gently encouraged him as he reluctantly took the phone from her hand. He inhaled deeply, preparing to comply with her wishes, though unable to offer any guarantees.

"Almeida," he said in a perfectly composed tone, immediately glaring up at Michelle with an I-told-ya-so expression fixed on his face. "I thought we agreed to stay off the phone in case Pete... 'Cause they're probably still at the clinic. Saturday's their busiest night down there. Just tell the driver to take ya home and if I hear anything, I'll call ya, okay?... No, Mom. I'm not telling you that... 'Cause you'll only go down there and drive everybody insane... No, I gave her 'til midnight... We're not in 'cahoots,' Ma. I just wanna see how she handles the responsibility... Okay... Okay, I will," he said, clapping the phone shut, only to have it ring again a couple of seconds later. "Yes, good-bye, Mom. Good-bye... I thought I said it..."

He clapped the phone shut again in frustration and handed it back to Michelle. "She's gonna be calling all night," he anguished, wondering if the California stalking laws applied to sons and mothers.

"Just try to relax, dear. You're only gonna make your headache worse," Michelle doted some more, knowing there was little else to do but smother him in the sympathy and attention he craved. "I really don't know why you even allow yourself to get so upset in the first place."

"Because I knew this was gonna happen, Michelle! I told ya she was gonna make my life a living hell the second she found out about you."

"She wasn't calling about me, honey," she gently reminded him. "She was calling about Sarina."

"That was just her cover story," he cynically assured her. "She was hoping that you would answer, thinking it would be safe to do after she'd promised to stay off the phone for the rest of the night," he snarled in aggravation, mindlessly chomping down on the M&M, then remembering to wince in searing pain. "And then once she had you on the phone, she was gonna trap you into saying 'yes' to us doing lunch or dinner tomorrow, before ya even knew what hit ya. You don't know this woman on the subject of marriage and grandchildren..."

"So why don't you just humor her?" Michelle suggested. "Once she meets me, she'll leave you alone. And isn't that what you want?"

"It's the principle," he growled. "I'm not ten years old anymore and she's gotta learn to accept that reality. It's my life and my decisions, not hers anymore."

"Remind me to explain how much easier and more effective 'yessing' someone to death is rather than trying to change their personality," Michelle said, smiling as she thought back to how young she had been when she'd figured that out about her dearly departed mother's two sisters, Aunt Gert and Aunt Hildie, who'd raised her and Danny since she was just a infant. There were no two women on earth more overprotective and overbearing, or more manipulatable through the simple use of the word "okay."

Michelle listened to him mutter a series of unintelligible comments under his breath as she cajoled him back onto his feet and rewrapped his arm around her shoulder.

"I knew this guy in the service who smashed his knee and ended up having to get his leg amputated, y'know," he informed her, conveniently neglecting to mention the tank that had run over it.

"Yes, I've heard of freak medical incidents occurring like that," Michelle fretted in solidarity. "It can be very dangerous if you bang your knee the wrong way, I know, dear. Your elbow, too," she added, surreptitiously suggesting another injury he could fake the next time he felt the need to be smothered in sympathy and attention.

"It wasn't just a 'bang,' Michelle. It was a smash," he corrected her as she guided him into the bedroom, placing the phone on the nightstand and sitting him down on the side of the bed. She went about the business of removing his shoes and socks and tugging his jeans off, then returned to the living room for his M&M's and a couple of couch pillows, which she tucked beneath the bend in his leg to elevate his knee.

He laid back in blissful serenity, clutching the M&M's to his chest and gazing down at Michelle sitting beside his knee, examining it with her fingertips and kissing it a few times. Satisfied that an amputation probably wouldn't be necessary, she rose up and moved to the head of the bed, gently wrestling the bag from his hands and depositing one into his mouth before placing them on the nightstand.

"You're so good to me," he said, dreamily coaxing her down by her wrist and temporarily tucking the M&M into his cheek while he embraced her lips in long, warm, soulful kiss.

He knew she was fully aware there wasn't a thing wrong with his knee or his head; that he'd simply had it up to his eyeballs with the constant slew of interruptions all evening long, and on a night when the only people he wanted in his world were Michelle, Greg Peck, Tony, and Tony. He loved his Mom to death and generally found her craziness more amusing than upsetting, but this just wasn't the night for it. There would plenty of time to reintroduce her, and everyone else who wished to annoy the hell out of him, back into his life come Monday.

"I think those M&M's are beginning to work," Michelle smiled against his mouth after two strong arms had effortlessly dragged her on top of his body and enveloped her in an extra firm hug.

"A little," he agreed, nuzzling his lips against her ear and casually suggesting in a low, soft voice that perhaps a neck and shoulder massage might help to loosen his muscles up, relieve some of the stress, and possibly even cure his headache. Or at least enough to get him through The Guns relatively pain-free. She lifted her head and kissed around his face and jaw, agreeing that a massage indeed sounded like a logical first step, but that a relaxing bath with dimmed lights, and maybe even a little soothing music, might be necessary, as well, to achieve the full therapeutic affect.

He sighed contentedly, tightening his embrace as she began to slide herself away to get the massage ball rolling.

"Not yet," he whispered and kissed her ear, needing to feel her warm body pressing against him for just a little while longer. He took a quiet moment to curse out the estrogen goddesses again for dropping by at the worst of all possible times, when he wanted nothing more in the world than to roll over and ensconce himself in her for the next solid hour, or however long it took to make long, slow, sweaty love to her. The kind that made windows rattle at its soul-satiating conclusion.

"That's a pretty big bathtub, y'know," he slyly dropped the hint as she kissed him a few final times before lifting herself off him and coaxing him into a sitting position.

"Mmm, I thought I'd noticed that earlier this morning," she coquettishly recalled, dragging his long-sleeved CUBS t-shirt over his head, then pushing the bed pillows off to the side and steering him onto his stomach, flat against the cool sheets. She took a little longer than necessary to wiggle herself into position on top of his hips, then sank her fingertips firmly into his muscles and giggled to herself as his earlier fraudulent moans of pain quickly dissolved into sounds resembling something more along the lines of rapture.

"Geeziz, your hands are like magic," he murmured after a few minutes of dizzying euphoria, knowing he could easily slip into sleep from how thoroughly relaxed he felt, but refusing to miss a moment of the sensations that seemed to be coming at him from all directions: the snuggness of her thighs pressing against his sides; the way she rocked against his hips as she slowly and methodically kneaded away the knots in his shoulders; the chills that shot through his body when her nails dragged down the center of his back. He felt like he had died and gone to heaven until the phone rang again, instantly sending him spiraling back into the belly of hell.

"Don't deprive yourself of oxygen like that," Michelle recommended after noticing that his breathing had stopped. "It's not good for your brain," she assured him, more fully appreciating the problem he indeed had on his hands and beginning to genuinely fear the moment she would eventually meet the infamous Amanda Almeida.

He reached for the phone on the nightstand, then slowly raised and propped himself up on both elbows. Flipping the phone open and preparing to scream into it, he felt Michelle shimmy down and reseat herself on the back of his thighs. His aggravation instantly evaporated as his boxers suddenly began easing slowly downward a couple of inches, both surprising and exciting him as they came to rest in the middle of his hips.

"Almeida," he moaned in ecstasy, feeling Michelle's fingertip beginning to gently scroll out a message across the exposed skin she'd decided to turn into a writing tablet. "Nah, I was just lying down..." he sighed into the receiver, identifying the words "Be nice!" she had scripted into his tingling skin, with a little extra pressure applied to the dot of the exclamation point. "Nothing, Mom. I just hurt my knee... No, I don't need an x-ray," he quietly mumbled into the receiver, dropping his head a little and shivering from the sensation of soft, ticklish heart shapes lazily etching themselves into his electrified flesh. "I'm going to sleep now, Mom, so could ya please, please not call me anymore tonight?" he asked as gently and politely as he possibly could, winning a soft pat of approval. "Nah, she gave me a pain pill she had and took a cab home," he flagrantly lied, hoping it might dissuade his Mom from calling any more that evening if she knew there was no chance of Michelle answering the phone.

He tried not to laugh when Michelle's tender swirls of approval abruptly transformed into in swat, followed by "You are such a liar!" scribbling frantically and ending with an even firmer poke beneath the exclamation point. Clenching her fingers together, she vigorously rubbed the heart shapes away, like an eraser against a chalkboard, and immediately replaced them with what felt to him like the image of a large skull and crossbones.

"Yes, Mom, I know, but it was only... it was only one pill, Ma," he assured her, expounding upon his lie as he explained that the pill Michelle had given him was the same kind the CTU doctor had prescribed when he'd hurt his ankle last week. "I'm not gonna slip into a coma," he promised, allowing another low, ecstatic moan to escape from his throat as Michelle's fingertip ticklishly scribbled out "It sounds like I abandoned you!" and "I sound like a drug pusher!" He was reasonably certain that his moans of ecstasy would pass for pain, but nevertheless struggled to curtail them as Michelle went on to scroll "She's going to hate me!" across his haunches. He "yessed" his Mom a few times, just as Michelle had earlier suggested, before politely saying "good night," earning himself another pat of approval.

"See? It's not so difficult to speak nicely to your mother," Michelle proudly noted as she nudged him off his elbows and flat against the sheets again.

"Don't let her fool ya, baby," he dreamily sighed, closing his eyes and resting his cheek against the cell phone in his hand. "She was just trying to wangle me into going down to the clinic so she'd have an excuse to meet me there, knowing that you'd eventually show up, if you weren't already there by the time she arrived."

"Well, just try to put it all out of your mind," Michelle encouraged him, leaning in with the intention of returning the phone to the nightstand.

"Nah, she's not through yet, baby," he guaranteed her, holding onto the phone for now. "Give it another 10 seconds, or so, and she'll..."

The phone rang in his hand sooner than even he had anticipated. He didn't bother to prop himself up on his elbows this time, far too comfortable to move a muscle.

"I thought you promised not to call anymore tonight," he politely mumbled, quietly listening for a few moments. "I'm not getting my stomach pumped. Nice try, though, Mom. Good night, now... Good night, Ma... 'Cause I'm hanging up on you..." he blissfully moaned, concentrating on the new message gently scrolling across his stimulated skin as he clapped the phone shut and tossed it aside.

"I-L-O..." he read aloud, intoxicated by the tingling sensation her fingertip produced. "Ilo"?

"Shhh," Michelle hushed him, busily engrossed in her writing.

"V-E-U..." he continued. "Ilo... vey... ou? Is that French?" he mumbled. "Could ya do it again, in Spanish this time, honey?"

"Shhhh... Pay attention," she giggled, starting from the beginning again.

"I-L-O-V-E-U," he spelled out. "I... love... you."

"Yes, I know you do, dear," Michelle facetiously agreed, moving up and stretching herself out along his back, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting a series of small kisses against the side of his face. "I'd even go so far as to say you adore me."

"You tricked me," he chuckled, nudging her with an upward bump of his hips. "That's five you owe me, by the way..."

It felt like an eternity had passed by the time the long, black limousine had finally approached the semicircular driveway and snaked its way up and to a halt.

"What do I do now, darling? Give you money, or something?" Amanda Almeida pleasantly asked the uniformed driver as he took her silk-gloved hand and helped her out of the back seat. She'd grown so accustomed to Louis always shuttling her to and fro that she'd long ago forgotten the payment process for public transportation. "Are you sure you wouldn't just like to call my husband's office in the morning, darling? It's always so much easier that way... Hmmm?"

But the man began frantically insisting, in either perfect Spanish or Italian or perfectly mangled English, that she produce a credit card or cash, so Amanda appeased him with a handful of rumpled fifty-dollar bills that were only cluttering the interior of her Givenchy purse anyway.

"Will this be enough, darling?" she politely inquired, straining to understand the man's response as he kissed her glove repeatedly, his eyes filling up with grateful tears.

"'Cuatro' bambinos, did you say?" Amanda asked, trying desperately to remember her Italian from her Spanish, both of which she was horrible at. "Why, that's lovely, darling... Yes, by all means, purchase school supplies and shoes. Children always adore that. I have two of my own, you know, Senor, uhh?... Ahh, Senor Estrada! Yes. Inarguably among the oldest surnames in all of Spain! Steeped in heritage and rich in culture," she complimented him, having absolutely no idea what she was talking about and totally making it up as she went along. "Any grandchildren, darling?... Ah, still in elementary school. I see... Well, you have a bit of a wait on your hands, in that case, haven't you?... No, no, no need to bother escorting me. You just get yourself home to that charming family of yours, il mio amico...Yes, and a lovely buonas noches to you as well..."

What a perfectly pleasant gentleman, Amanda thought to herself as she made her way to the door, removing a glove to more easily search her purse for her Tiffany's key ring. Finally locating it, she clicked on the little built-in light designed to illuminate the keyhole — Tiffany's always thought of everything; masters of craftsmanship and practical-minded, too, which was why she utterly adored them — and slid the key into the lock. She gave it a gentle jingly twist to the right, then suddenly halted abruptly upon hearing what appeared to be the sound of a bolt turning from the other side of the door.

"Oh!... Oh!..." was the best she could manage to get out of her mouth as the door flew open and a hand gruffly snatched her wrist, forcibly yanking her inside and twisting her arm until she had landed flat on her back with a thud, like a sack of blue potatoes originally cultivated by the Peruvian Indians sometime around 200 BC and hideously overpriced at the Farmer's Market.

Where was Louis when she needed him most, Amanda cried to herself in fear and pain, then suddenly remembered Anne Marie's orthopedic surgery and said a quick prayer that all went well come Monday morning, the poor dear.

A foot dug hard into Amanda's ribcage, narrowing missing the perfect breast lift Dr. Schlemolski had performed last spring. The icy-cold steel of a gun's muzzle pressed firmly against her recently botoxed forehead. One permanent mark and Amanda would sue, provided she ever made it out of this alive.

"Don't shoot! I'm a philanthropist, darling!" she pleaded for her life, focusing fearfully on the barrel of the gun projecting out from between her eyes, not knowing why in the world a plea of philanthropy might preclude someone from pulling a trigger. But she religiously invested no fewer than twenty hours a week cooking gourmet meals at the homeless shelter with her girlfriends, which ought to account for something at the end of one's life, after all.

Feeling the icy steel of the muzzle press tighter against her forehead, Amanda Almeida watched her life flash before her eyes, just as those odd life-after-death, white-tunnel people on television documentaries were forever droning on about. She quickly mentally apologized to every last one of them for ever having discounted their tales as farfetched and somewhat boring.

In tandem with the sound of the hammer cocking into the firing position, Amanda saw herself as a young girl, giggling with her favorite cousin, Mariella, on her Aunt Cornelia's shitake mushroom farm in New York's elite South Hampton as they saddled up the Arabian ponies they'd received that Christmas from their Uncle Addison; a fleeting visual of the first time she'd ever laid eyes on James Almeida, the love of her life and most dashing, breathtakingly handsome man she'd ever crossed paths with to this day; the thick, black eyes of her firstborn glaring threatening around the delivery room, thoroughly aggravated that the birth process had interrupted a perfectly peaceful nap and angrily surveying the assorted faces cooing around him, determined to identify and exact revenge upon the culprit who'd smacked him seconds earlier, jolting breath and life into him. They were the same thick, black eyes that had peered up at her, Amanda recalled, when Louis had placed her angelic daughter into her arms and high-fived her after counting and re-counting the number of Olivia's fingers, toes, and heads.

As she heard the sound of the trigger click, Amanda spent her last second on Earth preparing to meet this A-list Jesus she had heard so much about her entire life. But the click, as good fortune would have it, hadn't derived from the trigger of the gun but a switch on the wall, suddenly flooding the vestibule area with harsh, fluorescent overhead lighting and effectively rendering Amanda blind.

"Mom!" Tony's voice rang out in horror from across the room. "Michelle! Put that down!"

Michelle dropped Tony's 9mm to the floor like Pavlov's dog, shocked by how instantaneously her Quantico training had returned to her the split-second she'd heard the unmistakable sound of a key jiggling inside the lock on her way to the kitchen to fetch an icy glass of wine.

"Oh!... Oh!..." Amanda gasped in relief, clutching her heart, despite her perfect health, once the steel had lifted from her forehead and the foot from her ribcage. As her sight began to gradually return, she stared up and blinked hard at the hazy outline of the red-haired woman hovering above her in her son's beloved, unbuttoned John Wayne flannel pajama top. She looked nothing, thank God, like the chubby, frizzied-haired teen in the photo contained in the article entitled "Teen Blows It Big Time In Home-Ec" that Mr. Kobayashi had so quickly sourced and faxed to her aboard the plane. Amanda searched her memory banks trying to recall if she'd ever, in fact, seen a more remarkable before-and-after transformation in her life. The woman was positively darling looking, even with that expression of mortified horror frozen upon her face.

As Tony bolted across the room, Michelle sealed her eyes and said a quick prayer that he'd remembered to pull his matching commemorative boxers back on. Thanking God that indeed he had, she pulled her wide-open pajama top closed with one hand and tugged her shirttail over her bare thighs with the other, feeling her knees suddenly beginning to turn into jelly. Her hominal instincts told her to dash to the bedroom, throw on her dress, fluff her hair, and apply a little lipstick, but her hostess instincts insisted that she help Tony remove his mother from the floor. Her fainting instincts, however, won out in the end, causing her to slowly sink to her knees in a light-headed, disoriented daze.

Tony came to a sharp halt, glancing wildly back and forth between his Mom on his left, extending her gloved hand to him, and Michelle on his right, swaying woozily on her knees, struggling to button Dollar's left ear onto the rest of his head. He wasn't sure which of them to attend to first. It was a polarizing feeling, like a scene straight out of "Sophie's Choice."

What lovely ringlets, Amanda thought to herself as she watched her firstborn scramble to help Michelle Dessler instead of his own mother. They resembed the natural curls she herself used to have before volunteering to participate in an experimental program at Vidal Sasson's legendary salon decades ago, the success of which had laid the foundation for literally every over-the-counter hair-straightening product on the market today.

"What the hell are you doing here, Ma!" Tony roared as he dropped to his knees in front of Michelle Dessler, exhibiting no pain or injury that Amanda could discern.

"What have I told you about that word, hmmm, young man?" she scolded him.

"What word!" he barked over his shoulder, fussing over Michelle like a panic-stricken mother hen. "Are you all right, baby?" he gently asked, smoothing his hand around her hair and repeatedly kissing her ashen cheeks.

Baby? Amanda could hardly believe her ears or contain her delight. When Michelle Dessler had first tried to kill her, she wasn't quite sure how well she would fit into the family. But never before had she heard her son refer to a girlfriend as "baby" or any other endearment, for that matter. She could swear she heard the sound of church bells clanging somewhere off in the distance, but quickly refocused herself back to the task at hand: feigning horror over his language in an attempt to shift the focus away from her own felonious breaking-and-entering.

"That 'h-e-double-hock—'"

"Don't start with me, Mom!" he barked at her again, instantly recognizing her all-time favorite tactic of turning the tables, which he was in no mood for at the moment. "You're lucky I don't place you under arrest," he threatened her before turning back and feverishly refastening the buttons he had earlier opened on Michelle's shirt.

"Oh!... Oh!" Amanda sputtered breathlessly, pressing her strand of flawless French Polynesian black pearls against her heart, like rosary beads that had been left to her in Mother Theresa's will. "What kind of young man threatens to arrest his own mother," she gasped in fabricated horror, struggling to sit herself up in as dignified and sophisticated a manner as possible, with no assistance from her son, to whom she had given life.

"The kind who has a felon for a mother!" Tony angrily shot back. "Do you understand that you could've gotten your head blown off?"

"I have never been convicted of a felony," Amanda, with fourteen misdemeanors under her belt, indignantly defended herself. If only Miriam were here, she thought. Their longstanding argument over whose son forced whom to bear the bigger cross in life would finally come to a screeching halt, with Amanda Almeida taking home the gold, never to be challenged by another girlfriend again. "And don't you dare take that tone of voice with me again, young man, or your father will hear about it, I assure you," she sternly warned with her pointed finger trailing him as he carried Michelle over to the couch.

"You bet Dad's gonna hear about it, 'cause I'm calling and telling him!" he snarled, hurriedly whisking her off the floor and carrying her over to the couch, depositing her onto the opposite side from where he had parked Michelle.

"I'm so, so terribly sorry, Mrs. Almeida," Michelle apologized profusely, her cheeks having since transformed from a lifeless pallor to the hue of a raging wildfire.

An apology. Amanda liked that. A young woman with respect and concern for her elders, plus a show of genuine regret and remorse. How terribly refreshing in this day and age, especially when compared to the surly attitude her own son was exhibiting, and all for her egregious crime of having thoughtfully and caringly dropped in to check on the state of his health as any good mother would do. This is the thanks she received for her saintly acts of selflessness.

"Geeziz, Ma, ya better not have hurt yourself!" Tony threatened her, fearing for his own skin upon noticing her fretfully studying and nursing her hand. "Dad'll kill me if ya broke something!"

"Just a nail, darling," Amanda moaned as if she had cracked a femur, intent upon accruing as much sympathy for herself as possible in the hopes that he'd decide to go easy on her in the upcoming, tedious interrogation she knew he'd be launching into at any moment.

"I have a repair kit right in my purse," Michelle eagerly offered.

"Not to worry, darling. Jose makes house calls," Amanda replied in weakened, quavering voice, graciously letting her off the hook.

Tony dropped his head and rubbed the back of his neck, taking a few steps away to collect himself before circling back around and hovering over his Mom again. Crisscrossing his arms firmly against his chest, he quickly glanced over at Michelle with an expression suggesting that it might be a good time to leave the room if she'd rather not have to eventually testify against him on the witness stand. But her doe-eyed response evoked a reminder of her earlier hand-scrolled request that he "Be nice!" to his Mom, so he closed his eyes and resigned himself to at least beginning with the good-cop-good-cop methodology that Michelle preferred. He could always easily glissade into a more aggressive line of questioning — provided he could even sustain his anger. His Mom's notoriously incredulous explanations and excuses were always so circularly insane that he usually found himself throwing in the mental towel about midway through his interrogation and dedicating himself to coming up with ways of driving her nuts instead. He was never going to win a battle of wits or wills against her anyway: Amanda Almeida could talk her way around the commission of a premeditated presidential assassination just by hanging in there long enough to send even the most seasoned Secret Service interrogator running for the nearest psychiatric unit with clumps of his own hair clutched in his fists.

"Would ya like to tell me what you're doing here, Ma?" he began in a voice so calm and patient, he even surprised himself.

"I was afraid you were dead, of course, darling," Amanda replied without hesitation, feigning shock that he would even feel a need to ask the question, as if the answer couldn't be any more perfectly obvious and clear.

"Dead," he cocked his head to the side and repeated, taking a moment to shoot a covert glance over at Michelle. Responding to her eyeballs' plea that he remain relaxed and simply allow his mother to explain, Tony obligingly nodded "fine" and returned his attention to the criminal on the other end of his couch.

"Why would I be dead, Mom?" he politely inquired.

"How soon they forget Elvis," Amanda scoffed, turning to Michelle and shaking her head in complete dismay, then taking a moment to remove her glove and graciously extend her hand. "Normally there's a gentleman somewhere in the room to make the proper introductions, but... well..." she sighed, "Amanda Almeida, darling. Charmed."

"Oh, uhh... Michelle..."

"Michelle Dessler," Tony cut in, "which I get the funny feeling you already knew, Ma."

"I feel just terrible about all this," Michelle sincerely reassured her likely mother-in-law-to-be, trying to think of worse possible circumstances under which they could've met and coming up completely empty.

Tony was tempted to remind Michelle that his Mom should be the one wildly blushing and begging forgiveness, but quietly nodded his head and blinked a few times instead, opting to say nothing for now. It was probably best for Michelle to personally witness and experience, firsthand, how remarkably adept his Mom was in manipulating her adversaries into a state of stupefied speechlessness.

"So, uhh... what exactly does Elvis have to do with your busting into my apartment, Mom?" he inquired, tightening his arms across his chest and tucking his hands beneath his biceps as if proactively seeking to prevent himself from involuntarily reaching out and strangling her at some point.

"Well, you had said you were self-medicating, darling," she flittered matter-of-factly, smoothing the hemline of her Givenchy and glancing around for her missing Proenza Schouler shoe, "so quite naturally I assumed you'd be lying dead on the floor by now. What else was I to do under the circumstances?"

"Ya could've called me, Mom," he answered with a stone-faced stare.

"Don't be ridiculous, darling. Dead people don't answer telephones," she stiffly replied. "Just ask Elvis and any number of other high-profile drug abusers... Besides, you made me promise not to call you again this evening, remember?... Hmmm?"

Like Amanda Almeida had ever kept a promise in her entire life, Tony thought to himself. His eyes slowly angled toward Michelle again, whose eyebrows were now sitting high on her head, arched in both wonderment and amusement. He almost chuckled aloud. At least she was beginning to get the picture. He might've ordinarily just thrown up his hands and ended his questioning at this point in time, but decided to give Michelle the full, complete and chilling tour of the inside of Amanda Almeida's so-called mind.

"If you were so convinced I was dead, how come ya didn't call 911?" he persevered.

"And have them find you lying naked on the floor?" Amanda scoffed, dismissing his absurd suggestion.

"And, umm... why would I be naked, Ma?" he inquired, ironically standing in nothing more than his commemorative John Wayne boxers, which he'd nearly forgotten to even throw on before dashing into the living room earlier.

"Elvis might've asked his dear mother the same question, darling," Amanda innocently retorted with a small frown, indicating a moment of deep reflection. "It's a mystery for the ages why drug abusers always seem to be naked when their bodies are found... Marilyn Monroe... Lenny Bruce... Elvis Presley... John Belushi... Jim Morrison of The Doors was found naked in his bathtub, darling. You remember his music, don't you? You used to love it when your father played it for you when you were just a baby... A toddler, just barely walking... Oh, and those gorgeous black curls," she sentimentally strolled down Memory Lane with a slight quiver in her voice, snapping open her purse in search for her French lace-trimmed monogrammed handkerchief just in case some tears should fall. What were the chances of that ever happening, Tony wondered to himself, turning his eyes back to Michelle to be sure she wasn't missing a second of this premiere command performance by the Yoda of drama queens.

"I'm not a 'drug abuser,' Mom," he decided to state just for the record.

"Yes, darling. And I'm sure Elvis was oft to assure himself of the very same thing," Amanda fleered.

She had him in a handy corner, he had to admit. If he defended himself by telling her that he'd never even taken a pill, he'd effectively be busting himself for lying.

"How did you even get in here, Ma?" he asked, which was something he genuinely wanted to know.

"Why, your friend opened the door and pulled me in, darling," Amanda replied with technical accuracy, amazed that her son hadn't seen that one coming from a mile awhile. Tony sighed and stooped over, picking her Tiffany key ring off the floor and silently dangling it on the end of his finger in front of her face.

"Oh, please, darling, I can hardly be held responsible for how sloppy your sister is with her keys," Amanda tsk-ed. "And don't you use that tone of voice with me!" she added sternly, hoping it would incite him enough to throw him off the subject entirely, since this was the area in which she was her most vulnerable and defenseless.

Tony's mouth dropped open, perched to point out that he hadn't even said anything. But like a dog reacting to the sound of a whistle that only canines can hear, he immediately heeled upon detecting the silent "ahem" ringing out from Michelle's throat.

"You stole Olivia's key?" he patiently and professionally continued, glancing back and telegraphing to Michelle that, in his personal opinion, his remarkable restraint deserved to be rewarded with the sexual favor of his choice, which he fully intended to cash in on the minute he threw his Mom out the door.

"Don't be silly. I simply found the key and had every intention of returning it," Amanda casually replied.

"Then what's it doing on your key ring?" he stubbornly persisted.

"Why, I put it there so I wouldn't lose it, of course," she smoothly countered with the speed and grace of a reigning champ defending his heavyweight title against a 90something geriatric patient.

"Have ya heard of this new invention called the doorbell, Ma?" he asked, struggling to keep his sarcasm level at a record low.

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I have, darling. And there isn't anything the least bit new about it, either. Your father and I have had one for ages, right by the front door somewhere..."

"Then why didn't you ring it?" Tony persevered.

"Why would I need to ring the doorbell of a dead man when I had a key?" Amanda argued with perfect logic, grimacing as she watched her son take custody of the precious key she'd gone so far out of her way to make a duplicate of a few weeks back after innocently coming across it while ransacking Olivia's room for a cigarette in a moment of weakness.

Tony dropped the key ring into her lap, inadvertently setting off the "Moon River" music chip that Jim Almeida had Tiffany's install for their twentieth anniversary.

"It was our wedding song," Amanda turned and informed Michelle with a slight mist in her eyes. Tony shook his head and groaned. Stand back, America. Here comes the waterworks.

"Do you understand that you can't just go breaking into people's homes!" he snapped, feeling himself growing a little hot under the collar despite the fact that he was bare-chested.

"You're not 'people,' darling. You're my son... although one would think you were born to some cave-dwelling couple to hear you speak to your mother in that tone. And don't you roll those eyes at me again unless you would like me to start counting to three!" Amanda warned, scrambling to her feet and planting her fists firmly on her slender hips, demonstrating under no uncertain terms that she meant business.

"Try counting to thirty-seven, Ma," he sighed in disbelief, shooting another glance at Michelle and trying not to chuckle out loud at the ha-ha-you're-in-big-trouble grin she was shooting back at him.

"I don't care if you're a hundred and thirty-seven, mister!" Amanda sternly informed him, "You take that tone with me one more time and you'll pay for it, I assure you!"

"I'd have to take you into custody for assaulting a federal officer," he taunted her, stepping up his wise-guy attitude solely for the benefit of Michelle's enjoyment. "You know how bad ya look in orange, too, Ma," he added as an innocent afterthought, successfully hitting a sore spot.

"I can easily see you in a nice warm tangerine, however," Michelle quickly interjected, desperately seeking to make peace at this point. She thought seriously for a moment about exiting the room before Tony incited his mother any further. Thirty-seven, schmirty-seven; Amanda Almeida looked like just the type to crack him one for mouthing off to her, and Michelle didn't want to be anywhere around when she did. She knew there was no possible way she would ever be able to contain herself from bursting into fits of unbridled, intractable laughter, which would only put her in even worse stead with her likely mother-in-law-to-be than she assumed she already was. The expression Amanda sported was only too reminiscent of Aunt Hildie's right before she'd charge after Danny like a bat out of hell. If it weren't for Aunt Hildie, in fact, Danny would've never gone on to win the gold for the thousand-meter run in the regional High School Track Competitions.

"You know darned well I was forced to walk the runway in that gown for the noble purpose of raising funds for starving Parisian artists. And if you dare to ever bring that up to me again, you will most assuredly regret it, young man. Have I made myself perfectly clear?" Amanda fumed in all dead seriousness, getting right up into Tony's face. He didn't budge an inch, opting to simply snicker instead.

"Ya didn't look that bad, Ma," he sympathetically assured her. "At least ya didn't take a header in it like ya did in that purple pants suit. Remember?"

"Oh!... Oh!..." Amanda reeled back in horror of the mortifying memory.

"May I get you a cup of coffee or tea, Mrs. Almeida?" Michelle offered as Amanda sunk herself into the couch, her flawless botoxed complexion suddenly appearing more than a bit peaked.

"Yes, darling, thank you. I'd love a martini," she replied in a low, breathless moan, pushing against the sides of her perfectly sculptured hair as if trying to shove her brains back inside of her head.

Would ya like some smelling salts with that? Tony silently snickered to himself as he trailed Michelle into the kitchen, confident that she had no idea of how to even begin to make a martini. He also thought it wouldn't hurt to play it on the safe side, since Mrs. Sanchez kept the vodka in the cabinet below the kitchen sink, right next to her cleaning supplies.

Michelle stood beside him at the counter, teasingly bumping her hip into his as he produced a shaker and various other mixing implements from an overhead cabinet.

"You're gonna getttttt it... Narnnie, narnnie, narrrr-narr," she tauntingly sing-sang in a hushed whisper as he bumped her back a little harder each time she careened into his hip.

"Shut up, stupid," he grinned and growled under his breath as he splashed just a touch of vermouth on top of the ice inside the shaker.

"I'm telling Daddy you called me 'stupid,'" Michelle threateningly whispered back, grabbing a handful of commemorative sun-bleached flannel carcasses adorning the back of his boxers.

"I'll tell him ya tried to snuff out Mommy," he one-upped her with a confident smirk, giving the martini a stir, not a shake, and feeling an awful lot like James Bond in the process.

He thought for a moment about how extremely well Michelle's introduction to his Mom had gone, all things considered. He could tell that his Mom seemed to like her just from the way she called her "darling." It was different from the everyday, gratuitous "darling" she used in lieu of hopelessly trying to remember the names of his Dad's scores of stuffy business associates, or her own overflowing stable of snobby socialites, highfalutin philanthropists, deadly serious charity organizers, half-hysterical caterers, fashion designers, cosmeticians, and all those other highly affected weirdoes, airheads, and self-absorbed bores. Michelle was probably a breath of fresh air, by comparison.

In any event, he was relieved to find that he wasn't the least bit concerned about Michelle making the Almeida cut. Especially not after his Dad eventually got a load of her. There was no chance he'd react in any other way but to instantly fall in love with her, Tony knew. His Dad had never been a man with an eye for the ladies, but he'd always had a nose for them. He could sniff out a class act from a couple of continents away. Conversely, he could also always smell trouble ahead, just as he had with Nina. The first comment out of his mouth had been, "I'm sorry to have to say it, son, but there's something I just don't trust about that gal," Tony recalled. Talk about a keen sixth sense.

"Three olives and one onion. Never forget that, baby," he instructed her, dropping them one by one into the bottom of the crystal glass his Mom had gifted him with for no other reason than to ensure that there was always a hand-blown glass in the apartment in the likely event she felt like having a martini — or holding one, to be more specific. She had absolutely no tolerance for alcohol, becoming downright woozy and inarticulate beyond half a glass, but nevertheless ordering them with abandon, liking how they looked in her hand and complemented her outfits and jewelry.

That was not to say that his Dad didn't have to leave a meeting to bail Amanda and her girlfriends out of the pokie every couple of months or so, usually following one of their notorious weekly ladies' luncheons at their favorite haunt: the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. His Dad sarcastically referred to it as "The Polio Lounge," given the condition the girls would always be in whenever lunch had gone an hour too long. Without doubt, Amanda Almeida and her Silver Posse were a feisty bunch, all with misdemeanor records for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, which they proudly regarded as badges of honor and bragged about incessantly. The only real fear Tony had, in fact, was that his Mom and the girls might ultimately corrupt Michelle. But he had already decided upon a rule that he planned to enforce just as soon as his Mom began inevitably dragging Michelle around to various ladies' lunches, garden events, and other social soirees: he would allow her to take Michelle anywhere but The Polio Lounge. She was just too innocent and novice to be cavorting with that particular coterie of liquid-lunch consumers. The chances that she, a federal agent, would eventually end up with a rap sheet of her very own, just through mere association, were a little too uncomfortably high and foreseeable for Tony's blood.

"Never carry it with your hand on the glass itself," he demonstrated to Michelle, wrapping her fingers around the delicate crystal stem. "The body heat from your fingers will warm the contents up, at which point we'll have a crisis on our hands that'll make a nuke detonation on American soil look like a walk in the park, y'hear?"

Michelle seemed a little nervous, but nodded affirmatively as he turned her by the shoulders and steered her off on her maiden martini voyage. He felt like a proud, though heart-wrenched, parent placing his five-year-old aboard the kindergarten school bus for the very first time and watching it carry her away into a strange new world — in his Mom's case, exceptionally strange — where Michelle would have to sink or swim and basically fend for herself, without him standing by to protect her. He knew that in order for the two of them to successfully cultivate a genuine relationship, they were going to have to achieve it together, between each other, through conversation and over time and that neither he, nor anybody else, was going to be able to force a bond to form. But just as long as Michelle remembered to keep her fingers off the glass, and hopefully made it over to the couch without spilling a drop, Tony felt confident that Amanda Almeida and Michelle Dessler Almeida, her personal grandchild-making machine, were pretty much destined to get along famously.