Every Boy's Got One

PDA of Cal Langdon

PDA of Cal Langdon

This is intolerable. I am in Italy, on a warm, moonlit night by a sparkling pool, with palm fronds blowing gently in the evening breeze, a platter of olives and crumbled chunks of Parmesan and a bottle of extremely excellent wine before me, and a woman radiating a very healthy sexuality across from me…

And I’m playing War with her.

What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong with ME? I shouldn’t want this woman. She’s everything I can’t stand… artistic, obsessed with popular culture, set in her ways, American…

And yet…

I want to kiss her.

Maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s this damned place.

Or maybe it’s because she made me laugh so many times today.

Damn. What’s happening to me? So she made me laugh. Mark makes me laugh, and I don’t want to kiss him. I don’t even like funny women. And I especially don’t like funny artistic women.

So why is it that I’m going to kill this kid if he doesn’t get the hell out of here in the next five minutes?

One.

Two.

Three.

He’s still not leaving. He’s telling some story about a comic he loves. Jane is apparently familiar with it, though it’s not her own. It appears to have elves and gnomes in it. Peter is gushing over the fact that the final installment is coming out in only two weeks. Jane, who knows the author, says she’s heard what’s going to happen, but flirtatiously refuses to tell the kid. He is delighted by this, and is begging her. She refuses to divulge what she knows, and lays down an eight. Peter’s just lain down an eight.

War.

She won.

The candlelight brings out the highlights in her dark hair, and makes her eyes shine. Her skin looks like butter…

What is wrong with me? I do NOT want to get involved with this woman. Or any woman, for that matter. I have a book to write. I have to find a place to live. I don’t even have a dry cleaner. I can’t get into a relationship….

OK, I’m giving the kid another five minutes to leave. It’s nearly midnight. Doesn’t he have some computer system he has to go hack into somewhere back home?

Now she’s asking him about Annika. Who the hell is Annika? Oh, the girl at the mayor’s office. The mayor’s daughter, apparently. Peter speaks scathingly of Annika, whom he’s clearly in love with, and who, judging by his insistence that he loathes her, obviously doesn’t return his feelings for her.

I slap down a two. So does Peter.

War.

Oh, it’s war, my boy. In more ways than you know.

Wait. What’s that?

Meowing. The cats are back.

She leaps up and heads into the kitchen to find something to feed them. Peter and I are alone at last.

By the time she returns with a bowl of what looks to be the contents of several cans of tuna, Peter is gone.

“Where’d Peter go?” she wants to know.

And I can’t help but believe that she genuinely doesn’t know.

This is a mystery I’m only too happy to clear up for her.