LOVE AT FIRST DATE

Chapter 13: Their Anniversary

"What's that?" he inquired casually, in stark contrast to the alarm that gripped him inside.

"Uhh... I'd say it was your battleship, dear," Michelle responded with a suppressed grin, toe-testing the temperature before stepping in and easing herself beneath the steamy, sudsy water.

"My battleship?" Tony snorted with an unconvincing show of astonishment, shifting his knees back slightly to make a little more room for her on the opposite end of the tub. "I don't own any battleships, Michelle," he assured her with a bewildered scoff. "C'mere... Let's see that..."

"Really?" she challenged his veracity, not quite ready to relinquish custody of the grey plastic model just yet. "Funny, it was right in the cabinet under the sink," she reported, slumping down into a more comfortable position. "There's a submarine under there, too."

"Huh. No kidding," Tony replied, feigning detached disinterest as he refocused his attention on the mountain range he'd been carefully sculpting out of the suds floating on the water in front of him. "Probably one of Mrs. Sanchez's grandsons'. She brings the kids over when she's cleaning sometimes..."

"Uh-huh," Michelle responded, unable to help but notice that the battleship was the exact same model she had assembled decades ago, except for the brass radar unit, double cranes, and door hangers that he had evidently replaced the original plastic ones with.

"Hey, don't... Watch the—"

"Watch what?" Michelle innocently asked, peering up at him as she deliberately, though carefully, fiddled with the delicate gun turrets.

"Just — just let me see it for a second," he said with a soapy hand foisted out at her, suddenly seeming terribly concerned, Michelle thought, for a man claiming to have never laid eyes on the battleship before.

"In a second. I'm not done looking at it yet," she taunted him, sensing the steady increase in his anxiety level as she noodled with the brass aircraft hanger doors. She took an extra torturous few moments to peer closely at the main stacks before settling the ship back in the water and giving it a push, watching him scramble to move his suds mountain off to the side.

Geeziz, she almost hit the iceberg, Tony silently snarled to himself, struggling to maintain his air of nonchalance. Gingerly lifting his prized model battleship up to eye level, he prayed that she hadn't put too much pressure on the brass cranes, which were always coming loose no matter how many times he carefully re-glued them to the main stacks. He fretted, knowing that if he had to reinforce them, it would be a good month before his battleship was seaworthy again.

"Huh. Kinda looks a little like the Bismarck," he commented offhandedly, inspecting the starboard rudder area in a panic, only too painfully aware of how impossible replacement parts were to locate these days.

"Looks an awful lot like a Bismarck model I put together when I was a kid," Michelle puckishly grinned.

His eyes shot up at her with an angry glare, knowing he was busted and resenting having to acknowledge it.

"I didn't even know they made a Barbie Bismarck," he sarcastically grumbled, his ego still smarting from earlier when she'd discovered his half-empty bottle of Mr. Bubble under the sink and snickered.

"I wouldn't know. Mine was the same exact Skill Level Three 1/400 Bismarck as that one. Slapped it together in fifty-five minutes without even using nippers," she immodestly added.

"Sure ya did," he agreed, nodding sarcastically. "How old were ya? About twenty?"

Michelle smirked, thinking back to how equally smug and defensive Danny always used to get whenever she'd display her knowledge and expertise in areas that boys arrogantly thought they had the right to dominate, like model building.

"Skill Level Three, ages ten to twelve," she repeated slowly, as though she were communicating with a chimpanzee. "I was a mere eight years old at the time."

"Big deal," he responded, wholly unimpressed. "I assembled the Kung Fu Shaolin Temple when I was seven."

He hated to have to rain on her parade, but the truth was the truth, after all.

"Ah-huh. With help from somebody, maybe," she responded. "Your grandfather, I'll bet."

Tony neither confirmed nor denied.

"I was already doing the King Kong Glow-in-the-Dark at the age of six, Michelle," he defensively informed her, annoyed that his model-building credentials were even being brought into question.

"Bet ya weren't doing the Lost In Space Cyclops in thirty-five minutes," she shamelessly bragged.

"Yeah, right," he replied, almost laughing aloud. Everybody knew that the Lost In Space Cyclops was a defective product. It had taken him nearly that long just to get the eye in.

"Ask my Aunt Gert," she invited him. "Want her number? She was the one who timed me... Ask her to tell you about the Level Three Batmobile I assembled in under an hour."

"Not the Aurora, with the 110 precision pieces, detailed chassis, and Batman and Robin figures, ya didn't," he confidently scoffed, knowing clear well that there wasn't a soul alive who could've whipped that baby together in less than an hour and a half.

"Nah, we po' folk couldn't afford the Aurora. That was the rich kids' model, for the Little Lord Fauntleroys on the other side of town," she verbally slapped him upside the head, feeling he deserved it after that condescending Barbie Bismarck crack he had made.

He opted to remain silently focused on his wobbly brass embellishments, resisting the temptation to rub in the fact that his Aurora Batmobile had also come with a free annual comic book subscription, knowing it would only make her more jealous of him than she obviously already was.

"Let's see that again," she said, gesturing for him to sail the battleship back to her. "I'll bet I know why those pieces aren't sticking."

He thought about it for a moment, then reluctantly about-faced and skimmed his Bismarck across the water, folding his arms across his chest and shooting her a look as if to warn her that she'd better handle it properly this time if she knew what was good for her. He watched her lift the ship up and slowly turn it back and forth, squinting as she closely examined the seal on each of the brass pieces.

"Zap-A-Gap CA-7?" she safely assumed after a minute or two.

"Ya know of a better glue?" he snidely queried, suddenly feeling the familiar pang that always hit him whenever he was reminded of his grandfather; in this case, the man's uncanny ability to consistently select the proper glue for any job. Though Pop Almeida had passed away more than two decades ago, and Tony himself had not kept abreast of the technological advances in bonding agents over the years, he was certain that if Pop were still around, he'd be giving Michelle a run for her money right about now. The man was a veritable mucilage genius in his day. While other model enthusiasts were mindlessly relying upon the standard cyanoacrylate adhesive that came in the box, Pop was breaking new ground with fly-fishing glues, the properties of which not only offered hands down superior waterproofing, but even stood up to harsh salt water. Determining which glue was best equipped to withstand Mr. Bubble's corrosive elements would've been a walk in the park for Pop.

Michelle shrugged, perfectly content not to pursue the discussion of glue any further. He was obviously using the green Zap-A-Gap, she had quickly surmised, likely unaware of the superior super-thin pink variety, specifically designed to penetrate those tiny holes that precluded the brass from forming an airtight seal with the plastic. But far be it for her to impart information he clearly wasn't interested in hearing about.

"So, what did you decide to cook?" she asked sweetly, their eyes remaining competitively locked like rams' horns in the heat of battle.

"Are ya trying to say there's something wrong with Zap-A-Gap, Michelle?" he challenged her.

"Not at all, dear... as long as you're using the right color, that is," she blithely replied with another light shrug, watching him grimace at the mere thought that she might possibly possess a superior knowledge of modern-day bonding substances. "Tell me what kind of vegetables I can have in that omelet again?"

"Any kind ya want... except for Brussel Sprouts," he muttered, mentally wincing, as he always did, at the mere thought of Brussel Sprouts and instantly flashing back to the day that he, his Dad, and grandfather had all sworn off them for life.

Tony was only five-years-old at the time his Mom had been cramming an entire week for her upcoming Brussel Spouts exam, scheduled to be given the following Monday by the young up-and-coming Austrian-born, French cuisine-trained master chef Wolfgang Puck. Amanda had joined his 8-week vegetable class almost immediately after the Almeidas had moved from New York to Bel Air, where cooking haute cuisine was all the rage among her new crowd of California girlfriends. Since New York's wealthy housewives wouldn't know where to find their own kitchens if somebody drew a map for them, Amanda had a lot of lost time and ground to cover if she ever wished to get up to speed and had therefore committed herself to not only making the grade in Wolfgang's class, but pulling a higher mark than any of her far more experienced friends. Consequently, every day that week, from sunrise to sunset, it had been Brussel Sprouts in one nightmarish form or another: Brussel Sprouts Cocotte for breakfast when all Tony wanted was his beloved Count Chocula; Brussels Sprouts Cockaigne Canapes for lunch when he could've killed for a simple grilled cheese sandwich; Chestnut Pasta with Brussel Sprouts Sauce for dinner when his Spaghetii-O's were literally screaming his name from behind the kitchen cabinet doors.

By the conclusion of Thursday's Brussel Sprouts and Couscous lunch, Tony was beside himself. He secreted a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of Wonder bread from the pantry, quietly crept upstairs, packed as many toys as would fit into his Superman suitcase, and ran away from home. But his master plan to live with Jed Clampett's family in the Beverly Hillbillies' mansion was quickly quashed when only blocks away from his house, an LAPD police cruiser had recognized the telltale signs of his bulging suitcase, taken him into custody, and transported him down to the station house.

Along the way, the officers had tried to cajole his name out of him by bribing him with a Snickers bar, but Tony informed them that he wasn't allowed to accept candy from strangers. Both men assured him that officers of the law were the exception to the rule, presenting their badges for his inspection and even letting him wear one on a chain around his neck. But Tony remembered a World War II story his grandfather had told him about the enemy craftily swapping uniforms and dog tags with their American captives and decided not to simply take them at their word based solely on their uniforms, shields, and police car.

Upon reaching the station house, the desk Sergeant had attempted to unhand Tony of his Superman suitcase, hoping to find an I.D. tag inside. But Tony had seen enough Adam 12 episodes to confidently inform the officer that he would have to produce a search warrant first.

"Hey, you're a smart little fella," the desk Sergeant, with a five-year-old of his own back home, had chuckled heartily, tousling Tony's thick mop of curls as a group of officers circled around and joined in the laughter. Tony, failing to see the humor, continued to frown suspiciously, quietly memorizing the features of the various faces leaning in and laughing at him, just as Master Kan on "Kung Fu" had taught Grasshopper Kwai Chang Caine to always do whenever confronted by a potentially dangerous mob of unknowns.

"It is said that a Shaolin priest can walk through walls," Tony quietly began reciting from memory, borrowing Master Kan's highly Americanized Chinese accent. "Looked for, he cannot be seen... Listened for, he cannot be heard... Touched, he cannot be felt..."

His ancient credo was promptly met with a host of wide-eyed stares, dropped jaws, and a couple of "What the hell is the kid talking about?" grumblings. One exceptionally tall and burly officer had decided to try a slightly different tactic at that point, stepping forward and authoritatively demanding Tony's name, rank, and serial number. Tony, who'd never been assigned a rank that he was aware of, knew that there weren't any numbers on his Count Chocula cereal box either, so he refused to respond at all, figuring it had to be a trick question of some sort. A policewoman then came up with the bright suggestion of checking his clothes, thinking that if he were enrolled in a day camp or a swimming club, as her own children were, they'd likely find an iron-on name tag somewhere. But after forcing him to endure the indignity of a collar and waistband search, the officers failed to come up with anything beyond "Izod," "Wrangler," and "Underoos."

All in all, it had taken a bit of doing, but the officers eventually tricked him into spilling his guts, announcing that Superman was on the phone ordering him to return to his home. They had even gone so far as to hand the phone over to Tony. After personally speaking with the strange visitor from another planet — if you can't trust Superman, who can you trust, after all — Tony obligingly revealed his identity to the desk Sergeant, just as the Man of Steel had requested. It was two years before he would come to realize he had been hoodwinked after Petey had gently broken the news that he had probably just been talking to some cop calling on an extension from another room in the station house.

"Don't feel bad," Petey had commiserated, towering over his blood brother and empathetically patting his shoulder. "They duped me into showing 'em where my father stashed his pot, telling me that Wonder Woman wanted to buy a nickel bag."

Needless to say, Amanda had been horrified to find two police officers on her doorstep, one holding her five-year-old's hand and the other holding his Superman suitcase out to her. After the officers had respectfully declined her generous offer of a cup of coffee and a nice slice of Brussel Sprouts quiche, Amanda had sent Tony sent straight to his room, vowing to "deal with him" the second she figured out the key to baking a Brussel Sprouts soufflé without it deflating while still in the oven.

Tony was sitting on his bed, building a Walking Giant Robot with his Erector Set and fretting over the sizeable amount of trouble he figured himself to be in, when his grandfather had creaked the door open and pssssst-ed at him from the hallway.

"Grab your gear and follow me, kid," Pop Almeida instructed in a hushed whisper, frantically waving him toward the door while repeatedly checking over his shoulder to ensure that the coast was still clear.

"Where are we going?" Tony asked.

"Shhhh! We're bustin' the hell outta here, that's where," Pop had whispered back with desperation in his voice and a look of steely determination in his eyes.

Once in the hallway, Tony's heart soared upon seeing Pop's Army-issue duffle bag slung over his shoulder and stuffed to the gills. As perfect timing would have it, Pop Almeida had likewise reached the Brussel Sprouts breaking point that afternoon and, no sooner able to hack another one of his daughter-in-law's horrific culinary concoctions than eat his own hand, had been inspired by Tony's great, albeit unfortunately failed, escape. Nowhere near as limber in his sixties as when he had conducted reconnaissance missions as a young, strapping Army Alamo Scout behind enemy lines in World War II, and hindered by a limp from the piece of shrapnel still embedded in his leg, his short, wiry, hundred-pounds-soaking-wet grandfather had nevertheless succeeded in stealthily evading the detection of the same patrol car that had hauled Tony down to the station earlier; plus, snoopy old lady Von Vandergrossen and her two ankle-hungry Chihuahuas; a SWAT unit, which turned out to be part of a Rockford Files film crew; and a Van Cleef & Arpels delivery truck with an armed security guard and driver.

As Pop steadily blazed a trail into the foothills behind a cluster of estates, he suggested they set up a temporary camp until they could hammer out an agreement as to where they should ultimately settle down and begin living the good life: Jed Campett's mansion, or Disneyland's Tom Sawyer Island, which Pop was pushing hard for, given his irrational contempt for Buddy Ebsen. Pop had lost all respect for the actor, who'd originally been cast as the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, but was forced to give up the role after succumbing to the aluminum dust contained in his experimental "tin" makeup.

"What kind of a pansy-ass gets hospitalized on account of makeup, for cryssake," Pop had snarled from across the family room the night Amanda had brought up the little-known trivia fact during Tony's first screening of the Wizard of Oz when he was a four-year-old. The fact that Ebsen's Tin Man role had been taken over by Jack Haley had only served to aggravate his grandfather that much further.

"Fag!" Pop barked loudly every third or fourth time Jack Haley would appear in a scene. Tony, who was watching the movie from the safety of his mother's lap — spooked by the way the Wicked Witch of the East's legs had curled up under Dorothy's house and not quite sure how he even felt about the Munchkins yet — had laughed heartily every time his grandfather yelled out "fag," much to Amanda's horror and disapproval.

"There is absolutely no evidence that Jack Haley is homosexual," Amanda had scolded Pop. "He's married, for goodness sake, and has a son who's dating Judy Garland's daughter, Liza Minelli."

"Now, there's a dyke if I ever seen one," Pop snorted, ignoring his daughter-in-law's incessant tsk-ing. "A fag and a dyke getting married in Hollywood. Ya don't see that happening too often, huh?"

Tony didn't know what "fag" or "dyke" meant, nor was he entirely sure he even knew what a Munchkin was at that point, but had nevertheless found it amusing to see his Mom becoming more and more upset, her hands flying up to cover his ears each time Pop yelled out the pejorative. Later that night, when Tony had crawled into his grandfather's bed after having awoken from a horrifying nightmare about flying monkeys in little red jackets and bellhop hats, he'd asked him what a "fag" was.

"You don't wanna know," his grandfather had assured him in the gruff, Brooklyn longshoreman's voice that sounded like it ought to belong to a man twice Pop's height and weight. "Let's just put it to ya this way... We'd all be doing the Hitler goose-step right now if it had been up to them pansy-asses to win the war."

"Mommy says we're supposed to be kind and respect homer-sexels, just like anybody else," Tony said, not even sure what qualified a person as a homosexual beyond spraying oneself with silver paint.

"Your mama's a whacky liberal," Pop guaranteed him. "Just stay the hell away from bath houses and don't beat any of them up, or you'll get your ass thrown in jail. That's all ya gotta remember."

"What about being kind, like Mommy says?" Tony thought he should double-check.

"Ya can if ya wanna. It won't kill ya. Just don't be too kind or they'll be askin' ya out on a date," his grandfather strongly advised. "So tell me what the hell's got ya so scared over a buncha flying baboons anyway, huh?"

"One of them ate, umm... he ate through the window screen and then... and he was flying at me and he was gonna get... he was gonna come and get me, like Toto!" Tony leapt up from beneath his grandfather's Army-issue blanket, recounting the frightening event with a deep frown of concern creased into his brow and his fingers nervously flailing open and closed, reenacting the gestures the winged creature had made as it swooped in with the intention of carrying him back to the Wicked Witch of the West's ominous fortress.

"Eh, you were just having a bad dream from all those Twinkies ya ate during the movie, kid. Ya got nothin' to fear from them monkeys. Trust me. They weren't even real," Pop had assured him. "Half of them was just a bunch of stuffed animals flying around on a string, like that Gorgeous George monkey ya got in your room."

"Curious George," Tony had corrected him.

"Gorgeous... Curious... Who gives a rat's ass. They were nothing but stuffed animals on strings, is my point. And the other half of them was midgets. And the other half was kids not much older than you, dressed up in faggy monkey costumes... Ya want fear? Try one of the Luftwaffe's Henschel 123's bearing down on your ass with both twin-MG17 machine guns firing. That's when ya got yourself something to fear," his grandfather said, simulating the rat-a-tat sounds of the machine guns, poking Tony's ribs and making him squeal until he was certain he was going to wet the bed if he didn't stop laughing soon. His grandfather then promised to check the window screen at first light and give Tony the all-clear before he went back in his room again. Tony, in return, promised to cut down on his late-night Twinkie consumption.

"Thank God, 'cause if them cheeks of yours get any fatter, I swear they're just gonna up and explode someday, TonyBalonie," Pop had razzed him, evoking a whole new round of uncontrollable laughter from his beloved four-year-old pride and joy: the spitting image of himself when he was that age. Tony had felt like he was looking into a mirror when Pop had shown him the well-worn, faded picture of himself at four years old, taken in front of the old Brooklyn brownstone Pop and his two sisters had been born and raised in. It was as though Tony had been cloned from his grandfather's cells, from his full head of thick black curls and the enormous brown eyes that his face had yet to grow into, to the full lips wedged between two voluminous chipmunk cheeks and the classic baby-fat stomach he sported.

"Pipe down, Balonie, or your pinko-liberal mama will be in here bustin' my nuts about you needin' your sleep... like you're eighty, or something," his grandfather growled, dragging him back under the musty, Blitzkrieg-scented blanket and draping his thin, though still powerful, arm protectively across his shoulder. "Next thing I know, I'll be eating cat food in one of them homes for old geezers and wishin' I didn't dive for cover when that Luftwaffe tried mowin' my ass down."

Tony roared with laughter again, reaching up from beneath the blanket to mop the tears from his cheeks with the cuffs of his Dr. Dentons. Between the mental visual of his cheeks exploding across the room and the machine gun rib-tickling he'd just endured, he felt like he was about to faint. Pop Almeida was the funniest person alive, as far as TonyBalonie was concerned. He wasn't even sure what "geezer" meant, but it was just the way that his grandfather said things sometimes, in that gravely longshoreman's voice of his, that would invariably send Tony into fits of hilarity. It also never failed to slay him whenever Pop referred to him as "TonyBalonie," a nickname he'd been calling him for as far back as Tony could remember. The image in his head of his grandfather eating cat food had nearly killed him, as well, despite knowing it was the last thing that was ever going to happen to Pop: Even though he was a cranky and cantankerous old man who was forever growling at his daughter-in-law, calling her a communist and using undesirable language in front of her innocent four-year-old, Amanda Almeida nonetheless doted and fussed over Pop with just as much fervor as she did her husband and son.

Tony thought about how much he still desperately missed his grandfather to this day, flashing back again to the evening of their great escape when their grandiose plans for the future had been roundly snuffed the second that Jim Almeida — a former special-ops Beach Jumper with the Navy's Amphibious Forces in Vietnam — had suddenly appeared at their campsite out of nowhere. As hard as Pop had gone on to argue that Sing Sing's death row would be preferable to another heinous course of Brussel Sprouts, Jim Almeida had insisted that they were just going to have to buck up and live through it, regardless. Tony had dreaded the thought of returning home, not so much for fear of punishment, but because he was so stuffed on peanut butter sandwiches at that point that he sincerely doubted he could make it down the hill without chucking his guts up.

But much to his surprise and enormous relief, it turned out that his Dad, whom Tony had expected to be angry and frantic with worry, was not only sympathetic to his and Pop's Brussel Sprouts plight, but appeared to be in no particular rush to get back home that night himself. Although Jim Almeida had thus far managed to miss every single one of his wife's culinary atrocities, pleading breakfast and dinner meetings with important clients, the nauseating aroma of Brussel Sprouts had been torturing him all week long, infiltrating every fiber of his every suit, shirt, and tie, all of which reeked regardless of how much of his favorite Old Spice cologne he'd douse himself in. The night air of the foothills was so succulently crisp and clean, and such a refreshing relief from the stifling stench pervading every nook and cranny of the house, that after contacting Amanda on the walkie-talkie and assuring her that Tony and Pop were perfectly fine, all three generations of Almeida men had ended up sleeping under the stars that night.

Tony would always remember the evening as his first introduction to the daredevil life associated with the noble and honorable task of serving one's country. Pop and his Dad had regaled and enthralled him for hours, each trying to one-up the other with their assorted World War II and Vietnam stories, pausing occasionally to allow Tony to interject a tale or two of his own about his glory days of fighting the Nazis under the command of Vic Morrow, having to borrow scenes from the "Combat" reruns he and Pop religiously watched every Monday night at 7:00 since he didn't really have any war stories of his own to recount.

It had also been the night that had introduced Tony to the joys of roughing it in the wilderness, inspiring him to ask his Dad if the three of them could go on a real camping trip sometime. Just a mere few weeks later, he'd found himself headed off on their first Almeida-Men-Only/No-Girls-Allowed annual camping excursion. Two years later, Petey became the fourth marauding member of their unit, respectfully begging that they add Cowboys and Indians scenarios to the war-reenactment agenda and volunteering to be the Indian who bit the dust every time, provided he could don a loincloth, wear the war paint he'd made from the berries he'd picked in the woods, and howl at the moon whenever the mood struck.

Tony came to live for their annual Fall adventure: pitching camp in the same spot each year — an uncivilized patch of wilderness that his Dad and grandfather had scouted out about seventy miles north — cooking cowboy-style grub over an open campfire; bedding down in sleeping bags, sans tents, just like The Duke always did; talking about men's stuff, like hunting knives, fishing tackle, and killing the enemy; and Tony's personal favorite new activity, peeing in the great outdoors, a habit that had taken Amanda months to break him of after the Almeida Men's first camping trip. There was just something terribly rustic, liberating, and manly-man about it, Tony had felt. Amanda, on the other hand, was beside herself. Not only had he violated virtually every plant and flower patch on the Almeida's estate, but the neighbors had begun to complain, as well. Yet no amount of threats, corner time, revocation of television privileges, or trips to the child psychologist had seemed to phase her five-year-old. It wasn't until Pop Almeida casually glanced up from the funny pages one Sunday morning and growled "Quit upsetting your communist mother or I'll kick your ass" did Tony promptly kick his addiction, cold-turkey.

The night of his and Pop's great escape had also been Tony's first introduction to the fine art of negotiating a fair, reasonable, and equitable compromise in lieu of simply giving up and running away. He had listened intently as his Dad hammered out a smooth deal over the walkie-talkie with his Mom: She could continue creating as many Brussel Sprouts masterpieces per day as she wished, his Dad had offered, in exchange for her agreement that she just not serve them as meals anymore. It hadn't been a perfect deal, by any means: the house still reeked of Brussel Sprouts even days after Amanda had aced her exam; plus, Tony and his grandfather had been grounded and deprived of television for the following two solid weeks. But it was a compromise that all three Almeida men had decided they could live with and had shaken hands on that night. And though it darned near killed Tony and Pop to subsequently miss two entire episodes of Gunsmoke, his Dad had managed to ease the pain by smuggling a number of model-building kits past Amanda, which had given Tony and Pop something to occupy their minds while Matt Dillon, Festus, and Pop's personal favorite character, Miss Kitty, somehow managed to go about life without them.

Among the kits had been the very first model that Pop had allowed Tony to assemble entirely on his own: a Skill Level One Godzilla with three heads. Up until that point in time, Tony had only been allowed to watch Pop lovingly assemble the great ships and warplanes of World War II, narrating the role each one had played, from the Royal Navy's Swordfish's pivotal participation in sinking the Bismarck, to the Chance Vought F4U-4 Corsair's assaults upon basically anything that crossed its path.

Tony would tell Michelle all about his great escape someday — maybe even later that night — but not now. He was still too inwardly aggravated over her stubborn unwillingness to simply tell him which color Zap-A-Gap to use for repairs. Women: Every last living, breathing one of them was seemingly intent upon invading every last sacred, centuries-old male hobby turf in the book. As he began to wonder why men even put up with them, he was quickly reminded when the timer on his watch suddenly sounded.

"Geeziz. C'mere... Quick, c'mere," he said excitedly, reaching for Michelle's wrist and sliding her over to him. Before she realized what was happening, she found herself engulfed in his arms and lost in a deep, soulful kiss so unexpected and sensuous that it literally took her breath away. "Happy first anniversary, baby," Tony paused to moan before hungrily consuming a second impassioned helping of her warm, silky lips.

"What anniversary?" Michelle gasped in an exhilarated daze as his mouth traveled around her cheek, warming and tingling her skin with his breath.

"Geeziz, you forgot our very first anniversary?" he whined in mock-disappointment, sighing heavily and settling his head back against the porcelain rim of the tub. "It's one entire day since we — what?" he quizzed her, guiding her on top of himself.

"You've got it down to the minute?" she giggled in shocked and delighted astonishment, still thoroughly overwhelmed by how intensely romantic and sweet his watch-setting gesture had been.

"Up until ya started puking, as close as I can calculate," he said with a shy grin, sinking a little lower beneath the water and anchoring her snuggly between his legs. "I looked at my watch that last time, when I smashed it against the night table — remember? When you were, ummm..."

His voice trailed into a soft whisper against her ear, causing Michelle's cheeks to glow and her breath to hasten as he detailed a particular moment that she wasn't likely to forget anytime soon. The mere memory sent stabbing waves of exhilaration through her, escalated by his hands slowly submerging and resurfacing as he gently slid them around her slick skin.

"I figure that was roughly three or four minutes before you, uhh… had the neighbors wondering if I was killing somebody in here," he recalled with a proud smirk, quickly closing his eyes and feeling his breath catch as her slippery body suddenly began teasingly and rhythmically rocking against him.

"You almost did," she recalled with an wicked grin, mercilessly sliding and pressing herself a little more firmly against him each time, luxuriating in the small gasps her taunting movements were drawing from his throat.

"I'm the one who's lucky to still be alive," he reminded her, opening his eyes just long enough to find her lips and devour them with an intensity rivaling the last time they had spiraled into the abyss together, shortly before Michelle had reached for her pills.

He felt her body quake in his arms and wished there were some way to sink his teeth into her skin without hurting her, just to relieve the ache he felt in his jaw from wanting to somehow consume her entirely. Small, subtle rotations of her hips exacted a series of short, strained groans from somewhere deep inside his chest. His hands trembled, sliding a little more quickly and zealously over and around her silky curves and amid her creases. He felt his breathing growing steadily more rapid and shallow from the myriad sensations assaulting his brain: thick, soapy bath water sealing her breasts tightly against his matted chest; warm lips sliding solidly across his own, accented by an occasional taste of her darting tongue; soft groans seeping into his ears again, at the same thrilling pitch and low-level volume that had burned into his memory banks and sent him reeling the night before.

A whoosh of soapy water cascaded between them as he suddenly brought them both to their feet, clutching her snuggly against himself as he leaned in to flip the drain on the tub and give each shower handle a firm twist. A few moments later, Michelle found herself pressed up hard against the wall with hands sliding and caressing her everywhere.

"Lose that thing," he panted in a low, husky voice into her ear, making the executive decision that all guidelines, protocols, and social graces governing the estrogen goddesses be damned; he'd courteously entertained them long enough as it was. Michelle was his and he was taking her back.

She wasn't sure which of them had carried out his dictate, nor did she care. Seconds after being freed of the barrier that had stood between them for what felt more like an eternity than a day, Michelle listened to herself gasp hard as his body hungrily reintroduced itself to hers, crushing her against the wall and impaling her with the force and desperation of a mariner returning home to his woman after years at sea.

Her body's snug and welcome reception sent his mind promptly careening in a dozen feverish directions at once upon greedily reclaiming what he'd gone without for way too long. He knew from the second their bodies conjoined that neither of them was destined to last very long. He could already feel her gripping and consuming him with subtle, telltale spasms, instantaneously elevating his own excitement level a thousand-fold. Her nails scratching against his skin, intermingled with the sensation of warm water raining down hard against his back, compelled him to increase his pace and force almost involuntarily. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her and how badly he had missed being with her. But her body, ravaging his on a number of fronts, succeeded in temporarily short circuiting his speech center, reducing his vocabulary to little more than clipped grunts and impassioned groans, interspersed with an occasional single-syllable commentary on the raw emotion he felt. "Geeziz" and "baby" were as about as multi-syllabic as he was capable of at the moment, repeating it over and over as assorted limbs, lips, and hands tightly clutched and clung to him.

The teaming water washed the sweat away as fast as his pores could produce it. Their bodies were already beginning to tense and tighten in synch, prepping for the feverish moment of meltdown that was fast approaching. His knees felt seconds away from buckling beneath him. Muscles flexed to keep her slick, slippery body balanced and steady; his thighs producing the power behind each thrust he delivered with animal-level force and intensity. He was out of time, he knew, tightening his hold and pressing his lips against her ear, softly panting out a warning that he was right on the edge. His mind had fractured into too many pieces to be able to judge her state or stage, but he felt her writhering hard in his arms and returning each feverish thrust with her own, suggesting that she was likely just as much of a goner at that point as he.

"Ready, baby?" he hoped in a breathless whisper at the last second he knew he had left, then gasped in surprise as she suddenly whooshed past him over the finish line, dragging him along with her in a fury of violent shudders and fitful cries. His teeth sank somewhere into her skin as they slammed and shuddered hard against each other, his ears ringing from the volume of her voice. Or maybe it was his own. He couldn't be sure. Her surprise finish had produced the familiar disorientation he was fast becoming accustomed and addicted to.

"Can we — can we celebrate this anniversay... too?" she gasped with a dazed grin, clinging to him on the floor of the tub where they eventually found themselves on their knees. "Like... ten minutes from now... maybe?"

"I'll see what I can do," he chuckled between heaving breaths, feeling his soul reentering his body and wondering how it was physically possible to sweat so much under a shower of cascading water.

Minutes later his knees were still shaking as he leaned against the refrigerator door, pulling out a small bottle of juice for himself and some sort of newfangled designer spring water for her, which looked as though it had already been opened. He wondered if Michelle had been drinking it earlier, or if it belonged to Mrs. Sanchez and had been sitting there on the refrigerator shelf for the entire past week.

"Were you drinking this water in here before?" he called out in the direction of the bedroom over the whirring sound of the hair dryer.

"Huh?" Michelle called back, clicking the dryer off for a moment.

"Spring water..."

"Yeah, that sounds good," she said, snapping the dryer on again.

"No, I mean, is it yours? The bottle is open..."

"Huh?" she asked, snapping it off once again.

"Did you open the spring water?"

"I'm open to anything that's cold, honey," she assured him, clicking the whirring dryer back on.

He gave up. If it turned out to be flat or stale, he would just fetch something else at that point. He entered the bedroom and set the water on the night table beside her, then emptied the bottle of juice down his throat in one fell swig, watching in fascination as the dryer's hot gusts slowly transformed her damp, limp strands into a bouquet of thick, springy curls.

Michelle snapped the dryer off long enough to sit up, throw her hair back, and follow suit, chug-a-lugging the cold spring water down in one long, continuous swallow.

"God, you have no idea how badly I needed that," she panted for air, holding the drained bottle out to him.

"The water or The Sperminator," he boastfully smirked as the dryer began whirring again, watching her eyes roll and her head shake on its way back down between her knees.

He had meant to ask for her final decision — the vegetable omelet or the grilled cheese — but refused to go through that "Huh?" thing again, making the decision on her behalf to go with the omelet.

Trying not to look too closely at the mess in the living room as he passed through to the kitchen, Tony bristled at the memory of the party that had earlier broken out, after he had gone to the bedroom to call Olivia and request that Gerald and she swing by and pick up the criminal on their way home. He wasn't aware of Amanda's concurrent phone conversation with Miriam, who'd been dining with the girls only a few minutes away and would be happy to limo Amanda home with them. Before Tony knew it, there was a standup cocktail party going on in his living room, with Mantovani droning softly in the background, after the limo-load of women had realized that it had been ages since they'd laid eyes on his face, deciding to all go up and say hello rather than summoning Amanda downstairs. As always happened, Tony had quickly found himself playing bartender in the kitchen just to escape their annoying cheek-pinching; mixing martinis while simultaneously instructing Michelle how to make the ladies' favorite watercress and endive toast points. He knew they were all coming straight from a restaurant. But he wasn't naive enough to trust that any of them had actually eaten anything and would be damned if he was going to be stuck with five socialites sipping martinis on empty stomachs, only to end up drunkenly gabbing up a storm on his couch for the next several hours.

He'd actually been holding out hope at that point of still watching The Guns of Navarone. But those hopes had formally gone down in flames when, on top of everyone else assembled in his living room, Petey had shown up on special assignment from Sarina, who was still stuck down at the clinic and jonesing for more of Michelle's cold veggies, chicken and beef. By the time Olivia and Gerald arrived and switched from Mantovani to something considerably more raucous, the party was officially in full swing, replete with angry telephone calls from Tony's seventysomething neighbors, whom he ultimately decided to invite over just to shut them up.

But Tony's bristling quickly transformed into laughter, recalling how his Mom, after squealing with joy upon seeing Petey, had promptly ordered him out of "that deplorable vest" and into one of Tony's clean t-shirts, making Petey wash his hands and face and comb his hair, while he was at it. The spontaneous party had all been worth it, Tony now thought in retrospect, just to have seen the look on Michelle's face when Petey had entered the kitchen, his hair neatly parted on the side and Tony's t-shirt straining at the seams, not quite clearing the bottom of the giant's enormous beer gut. The visual had only gotten better when Petey then manned a martini for himself and began politely passing a tray of hors d'oeuvres among the ladies, blushing profusely as they fawned over him with congratulations, best wishes, and a thousand questions about the upcoming blessed arrival of Amanda's grandchild.

"I'm so glad ya thought to get a picture of that," Tony smiled at Michelle as she entered the kitchen in the billowy nightshirt his Mom had given him years ago, insisting that nightshirts for men were all the rage that particular season.

"Pink ones?" Tony had questioned her sanity, feeling his testosterone levels already dropping to dangerous lows as his Mom had insisted it was "peach," not "pink," as if a subtle difference in hue mattered in the male-hormonal scheme of things.

"A picture of what?" Michelle asked with an exceptionally playful grin on her face and lilt in her voice, slipping behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist as he stood rinsing a variety of vegetables at the kitchen sink.

"Of Petey, with my Mom and her friends," he reminded her with a chuckle. Michelle instantly broke into a round of melodious laughter, conjuring the mental image of 6' 3" Petey and his neatly combed hair, posing with five immaculately dressed and coifed Beverly Hills fiftysomethings, holding up their martini glasses and hitching their skirts to show a little leg for the camera.

"Do you think your Mom made it there safely?" Michelle giggled uncontrollably, visualizing the scene of Amanda on the back of Petey's bike, clinging to him with one arm wrapped around his enormous waist, the other holding the plate of Sarina's veggies, chicken and beef, roaring away from the building with Miriam's limo in hot pursuit. Tony had finally given up when Amanda insisted she be permitted to accompany Petey back to the clinic.

"It's positively killing me to think that my grandchild is about to be delivered by a woman I've yet to even lay eyes on, darling," she had argued, seconds away from turning on the waterworks, which Tony was in absolutely no mood for at that point, angrily eyeing the conga line that had snaked its way from the living room into the sanctuary of his kitchen.

"That just doesn't seem right," Miriam had sympathetically chimed in, backing Amanda right on cue as she always did. His Mom was tough enough to deal with on her own, so whenever her girlfriends would gang up on him, Tony's first reaction was always to give them whatever they wanted just to make them go away.

"Road trip!" Miriam had gleefully called out to the girls, at which point Tony had simply kept his lips sealed, desperate to regain his alone-time with Michelle and willing to do whatever it took to have his life and sanity returned to him.

Michelle continued giggling her heart out, her head bumping against Tony's back as he crossed over from the sink to the counter with Michelle still glued to his waist.

"Something's sure got you happy," he commented proudly, convinced that his earlier masterful show of sexual prowess had everything to do with her sudden bout of euphoric giddiness.

"I love... you," she cooed loudly into the back of his t-shirt.

"I love you, too, baby," he chuckled, glancing back over his shoulder, trying to make eye contact with her.

"I love you... I love you... That was all three wordsh," she pointed out, bumping her forehead against his back again. "How many more do I owe... now?"

"After that shower?... About twenty-five," he chuckled again, curious as to why she seemed to be slurring, not to mention shouting. He reached behind himself, grabbing a handful of pink nightshirt and easing her front and center.

"I love your... hugeness," she decided to pay him the ultimate compliment, attempting to plant her perched lips somewhere in the general vicinity of his face, though missing it by about a foot.

"Ya do, huh?" he chuckled with a curious half-frown, watching her passionately making out with his shoulder. "C'mere... Look at me," he said, tilting her head up and inspecting her happy, hazy eyes. "Did you take another one of those pills, or something?"

"What pillzsh?" she lovingly grinned up at him.

"Those pills that made ya sick this morning. Those nausea pills. Remember?"

She clearly had no idea what he was referring to. Realizing that the only thing holding her up on her feet at that juncture was his hands pressed against her cheeks, Tony wrapped an arm around her waist and leaned her back against the counter. His mind raced, trying to remember if he had seen her drinking anything at the party, then recalled the bottle of spring water she had chug-a-lugged with such gusto.

"The pink Gazz-A-Zap," she said in an overly sexy voice, suddenly plunging a hand down the front of his jeans.

"Geeziz," his voice announced an octave higher than usual, gently prying her hand free of the precious anatomy she had decided to help herself to, just a tad too tightly.

"You want the pink thuff for repairs," she assured him as he slowly guided her toward the breakfast table.

"Actually, I want you to sit right here for just a minute, okay, baby?" he said with a smile and a soft tone, gently guiding her into a chair. He quickly crossed over to the counter and inhaled deeply into the open neck of the water bottle, but smelled nothing in the way of alcohol.

Hearing a firm thud, he turned to find Michelle on the floor beside the chair, curled up in a fit of laughter.

"I fell," she broke the news to him, unable to stop laughing as he gingerly lifted her back onto her feet. Her body was so limber and pliable that he highly doubted she had hurt anything, but checked her elbows, knees, and a few other critical bones just to be on the safe side, then guided her into a seated position on the floor in the corner of the kitchen.

"Stay," he gently directed her, momentarily feeling guilty for pointing his finger at her the same way he used to do with his dog, Peppy.

"Am I drunk?" she asked out of passing curiosity, clunking the back of her head against the wall and feeling no pain.

"No, but you're a little high on something, it looks like," he said with an easy smile, envisioning himself at the clinic with Michelle in one room, having her stomach pumped out, and his Mom in another, receiving treatment for strangulation marks encircling her neck. "Is there anything you're allergic to, honey?" he checked,

"Yesh... Chappelle," Michelle answered, bursting into uproarious laughter at her own joke. Tony smiled and nodded his head, searching the counter for his cell phone.

"Funny, honey," he unintentionally rhymed, impelling Michelle to double over in a full-blown seizure of riotous laughter. "I meant medication. Are you allergic to any medications that you know of, sweetie?" But Michelle was far too busy laughing her guts out to reply. Tony shook his head, chuckling on the outside and fuming on the inside as he punched a number into his cell phone.

"Yeah, hey, it's me, Dad," he said into the receiver, turning to search the refrigerator for other bottles of the designer spring water, though not really expecting to find any. But he wanted to eliminate the possibility of someone having tampered with a six-pack on a supermarket shelf and Mrs. Sanchez having inadvertently purchased it without noticing the broken seal. Just as he figured, only that one, lone bottle had been in there, suggesting the high likelihood that it had been placed on the refrigerator shelf to chill by one of his Mom's hoodlum girlfriends.

"Vergèze orange-flavored spring water. Whose M.O. is that, Dad?… Nah, I didn't, but my girlfriend did," he said in a controlled growl, glancing over his shoulder and noticing that Michelle was no longer in the corner. "Hang on, Dad. Hang on a second," he said, finding her on all fours in the living room, crawling her way toward the hallway. "No, honey, back this way... This way, baby. I don't want ya roaming around where I can't see ya, okay?" he gently requested, steering her around in the opposite direction and following her as she crawled back to the kitchen corner. He paused for a moment to fish one of Mrs. Sanchez's giant-sized Chocolate Spanish Peanut cookies from a jar on the counter, then stooped down and handed it to Michelle, hoping to not only keep her occupied while he spoke with his Dad, but to get something into her empty stomach, thinking it might help neutralize the affect of whatever barbiturate had obviously been added to the spring water.

"Dad... Yeah... Nah, it wasn't a mickey. Not an alcohol one, anyway. So, who — Huh?... I thought her husband put her in a program... You're right. Four months ago, which means she's probably been back on the stuff for at least three months, now. Geeziz. So ya think that's probably all it was? I mean, I don't wanna put Michelle through some whole stomach-pumping nightmare unless it's absolutely —Yeah, Michelle. You're gonna love her, Dad... Yeah, I'd say so… Nah, I just don't want her to go through all that unless it absolutely necessary... Nah, I remember guys taking that stuff recreationally at college all the time… Yeah, I think I'll just keep my eye on her for awhile. I can always take her down if she starts showing signs of — Hmm?… Yeah, would ya mind? At least that way I'll know for sure what I'm dealing with here… They're probably all still down at the clinic with Petey. Hang on a sec. I'm looking for the number," he said, flipping through the address book on the counter and peering over his shoulder to be sure Michelle wasn't choking on the cookie or passed out on the floor.

"Uh-huh... Yeah... Nah, it's better if you call her... 'Cause I'm about five minutes away from going down there and murdering her, Dad," Tony calmly and matter-of-factly explained. "Uh-huh… Nah, you don't know what I've been through tonight. Suffice it to say that I would've been well within my rights to have her arrested earlier... Uh-huh... Nah, it can wait 'til ya get home. It's too long a story. I take it ya noticed that your plane is missing, right?"

He glanced over his shoulder at Michelle again. She was fine, beaming up happily at him, inadvertently smacking the back of her head on the wall one more time, though seeming not to notice, or at least not to care. The cookie was in various-sized pieces, strewn across her lap and the floor, but she seemed to be enjoying it immensely.

"Ish zchat Chappelle?" she inquired brightly, a chocolate chip tumbling out of her stuffed cheek and down the neck of her pink or peach nightshirt.

"Nah, baby," Tony covered the mouthpiece and smiled warmly down at her, fishing another cookie out of the jar and placing it in her lap amid all the other chunks and crumbs before returning to the conversation with his Dad.

Amanda Almeida was in so much trouble, she had no idea, he thought to himself, thanking the testosterone overlords that the head of the Almeida household was through with his meetings and merely waiting on his pilot's arrival at this point. With a little luck and a decent tailwind, Jim Almeida's wheels would touch down before Tony eventually got Michelle into bed and, once certain she was peacefully passed out for the night, himself down to the clinic for a long-overdue, psycho mad-dog, up-close-and-personal scream-out with Amanda Almeida, who'd successfully managed to finally push him just a little too far this time.