I’ve heard it said that in order to find her prince, a girl has to kiss a lot of frogs.
Start calling me Wart Lips.
When I was a little girl I’d dress up in my pink leotard, ballet slippers, and tulle skirt, paint my nails Pretty Princess Pink, and set my rhinestone tiara high on my red pigtails. Then I’d line up my subjects—Malibu Barbie, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, the Cabbage Patch Kids, the Monchhichis, and a stuffed white kitty—and play princess.
The object of the game was simple. I ordered everyone around. If any of my vassals disobeyed—Strawberry Short-cake in particular had a stubborn streak—I’d threaten to banish her to Ick Land, i.e., the hallway where my older brother Grayson waited to pounce on her and pull off her head.
If my subjects were good and obeyed me, then they earned the privilege of sitting with me on my pink-canopied daybed and watching through the bedroom window for the noble prince’s arrival.
I’m still watching.
Come to think of it, not much has changed in the twenty-something years that have passed. I still get dressed up, I still paint my nails, and I still have to deal with those stubborn Strawberry Shortcake types.
Only on days like today, I wonder why I even bother with the someday-my-prince-will-come routine.
I’m wearing a cream silk blouse and black wide-leg trousers, à la Katharine Hepburn in the early 1940s. I’m not into vintage footwear—sixty-year-old foot odor is not appealing—so I’ve got on three-inch black satin slides by Anne Klein, and I’m sporting a matching bag. My nails are painted OPI’s Chicago Champagne Toast, a nod to the city where I live, and my red hair is a perfectly straight, shiny cascade down my back (I checked earlier in my bathroom mirror).
I look like a princess—a princess surrounded by a bunch of screaming, red-faced buffoons, a dozen sweaty guys in jerseys and shorts that are too big, and a toad I was hoping would turn out to be my prince.
Translation for those of you not living in Fairy Tale Land like me: It’s the last game of the Bulls basketball season, I’m at the United Center, seated directly behind the players and next to Dave Tivoli, aka the toad.
A howl goes up from the crowd and the toad jolts me as he jumps out of his seat. “Go! Go! No, no, no! Damn!”
The referee makes some motions, and a deep bass voice booms, “Foul on Chicago number three, Tyson Chandler. Rockets number fifty-five Dikembe Mutombo to the free-throw line.”
“That wasn’t a foul. Come on!” Dave and half the auditorium scream. I stand and peer over the players’ heads. Not that I care what’s happening. I just need to stretch my legs. Dave’s arm goes around my waist, and I glance at him. His eyes are still on the game, but his touch sends a tiny shiver through me anyway.
Pressed against me, Dave’s body is tense and focused. I wonder how all that power would feel concentrated solely on me. Under me…
“No.” Dave slaps his free hand to his forehead and I look back at the court. The Rockets player is still at the free-throw line.
“Dave?” I say quietly near his ear.
“Hmm?” He doesn’t look at me, then suddenly he yells, “Yes! Yes! He missed. One more to go. Miss! Miss!” There’s a split second of silence, and even I have to look. The ball sails toward the basket in a perfect arc—and falls just short.
The crowd roars, and Dave pulls me hard against him and kisses me. It’s not a long kiss, or even a particularly passionate one, but something about Dave always sends my senses spinning.
By the time I reel said senses in, we’re sitting again, and I say, “What was that all about?”
“We’re still ahead. Mutombo’s got to be hating that he missed those free throws. He played for Chicago before we traded him to Houston.”
“Hmm. Fascinating.” I had meant what was the kiss about, of course.
“No way!” Dave jumps up again to watch the game, and I sit back and sigh.
I have no idea how I got here. I mean, I know how I got here—in Dave’s Land Rover—but I don’t know how it’s come to this. How I—Allison Lynn Holloway—have come to be sitting in a sports stadium with a toad.
I look over at him: tall, football player build, spiky blond hair, nice butt…Okay, he’s a hot toad. I’ll give him that. I met Dave a few weeks ago. My best friend is dating his best friend, so we ended up hanging around together, then moved to hanging around on our own.
Dave isn’t my type. At all. Not even his looks. Dave’s all casual and rugged-looking. I like some refinement in a man. And Dave’s a guy’s guy—“Hey, man, how’s it hanging?”—and all that macho bullshit. An advertising exec with Dougall Marketing, Dave lives in an apartment in Wrigleyville. My type owns a Porsche, a penthouse, and his own company.
Dave and I had been out five or six times when he called last week to ask me out again. I was having trouble getting a handle on Dave at that point. He seemed to like me, but he wasn’t taking any of my cues to move things to the next level.
It isn’t so much that I’m dying to sleep with Dave, though I’m not opposed to the idea, but I don’t want to jump into bed if that’s all it is. I’ve been there before, bought the requisite “I Had Sex and All I Got Is This Lousy T-shirt,” and I’d rather use my frequent dating miles elsewhere, thank you.
It didn’t take a genius to see that Dave would need a lot of work. And while it’s true that Chicago Home & Garden called me “an inventive interior designer with a flair for the understated,” inventive as I am, I just don’t have the patience to make over a man after remodeling rooms all day. So when Dave called again I gave him the let’s-just-be-friends speech. Or was it the it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech?
I don’t know. Dave’s a jock; I don’t have to be inventive. The point is, I thought that was the end of him.
Until a few days ago, when he decided to impose his too yang environment on my happily balanced yin.
Coincidentally, we happened to be lunching at the same restaurant. He was sitting with some fellow ad execs, and I was presenting my new feng shui ideas to a longtime client. Between the appetizer and the entrée, the waiter brought me a Melon—vodka, midori, pineapple, and lime juice.
Okay, so Dave’s no fool. He knows I love Melons. And he knows Le Colonial is the only place that makes them right. He probably also knows that in the past I’ve dragged my best friend, Rory, across town to Le Colonial solely because I craved a Melon. Le Colonial is on the low end of expensive, but Rory is always saying things like we’d get a better deal from Jabba the Hutt, which I think means we’re getting ripped off.
I don’t care. The Melon is worth it.
But it hadn’t occurred to me—well, not seriously occurred to me—to order a Melon that day. I’ve been to business lunches where the clients drank me under the table, but I doubted Mrs. Bilker-Morgan drank anything stronger than herbal tea. Edith M. Bilker-Morgan is Old Money, having been part of Chicago society since the earth under State Street cooled. But more important than the fact that she’s a founding member of the Chicago elite, she’s also on intimate terms with my parents. In Edith M. Bilker-Morgan’s presence, I don’t even allow myself to entertain thoughts of Shirley Temples.
But when the waiter set the Melon in front of me and said it was compliments of the gentleman, then inclined his head toward Dave’s table, I was too surprised to object. I’d seen the toad when I walked in, and he’d seen me. I thought we were ignoring each other.
There’s no question he knew I was with a client—a stodgy, sober-looking client—and he’d sent the drink anyway. Then—and this is the most aggravating part—when I looked over, he winked.
Winked!
Like we had some private joke between us or something.
Did he not understand the let’s-just-be-friends-it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech? Was I going to have to give him the lecture again? If so, I decided to add a section detailing why an ugly Regis Philbin silver tie and matching shiny shirt should never be worn outside of Halloween.
Mrs. Bilker-Morgan’s voice stopped me. “Well, Miss Holloway, are you going to drink it or am I?”
“I was thinking I should send it back.”
She huffed. “Allison Lynn Holloway, I’m going to call Mitsy this very afternoon and tell her she failed miserably in her attempts to raise you. In my day, we called a boy like that a real catch. If you don’t want him, I do.”
I stared at Edith M. Bilker-Morgan, then burst out laughing. She may be almost eighty, but she cuts to the point quick and pretty as a pair of pinking shears. Then Dave came over, introduced himself, and somehow, face-to-face, talked me into going out with him again. I didn’t even realize I’d agreed until he left and Mrs. Bilker-Morgan asked if he was my steady.
Please.
Not only was he so not my steady, I thought we’d broken up.
But life isn’t that easy with Dave. To get what he wants, he can be unbelievably manipulative. Exhibit A: the aforementioned Melon Incident.
And of course Exhibit A led to this evening and the Bulls game. Dave said we were going to do something really exciting—at which point I was thinking private jet to New York and mind-blowing sex in the bedroom at 10,000 feet. So when Dave picked me up and told me we were going to the Bulls game, I wondered if, were I to commit assault, a shoe could be considered a deadly weapon. See, Mrs. Bilker-Morgan wouldn’t think Dave was so great if she’d known basketball was his idea of a date.
Yeah, it’s partly my fault. The jet thing is way out of Dave’s price range, and he might not have presumed basketball was exciting to me if I hadn’t pretended I liked it the last few times we were out. I didn’t lie or anything. Dave knows I was a cheerleader, and I sort of let him assume that meant I liked sports.
The crowd at the game settles down, and Dave sits and smiles at me. I return the favor by shooting him the withering glare I copied from my mother, Mitsy, who, in her heyday, could wither a man at fifty feet.
Dave grins and shakes his head. “I’m not ignoring you.” He takes my hand, and I forget what I was about to say.
Exhibit B: If Dave can’t use alcohol or little old ladies to manipulate a girl, he gets physical.
I struggle to remember why I was angry, and then a voice startles me with a loud time-out announcement.
Oh, yeah.
I’m surrounded by sweaty equivalents of the Jolly Green Giant, and the toad beside me doesn’t seem to realize this is not the fab fete he made it out to be. “Is the exciting thing we’re doing this?” I gesture to the court.
He winks at me. Again.
“Look, Dave, sports are fun”—I have to suppress a shudder when I say this—“but not exactly exciting.”
“What are you talking about? This is probably the best game of the season.”
“Dave.” I wait until I have his full attention. “I know I’m using some two-syllable words here, so focus really hard. Sporting events are not, no matter who is playing, exciting.”
“But if the Bulls win this game, they go to the play-offs, and”—he gestures to the seats—“we’ve got the best seats in the house.”
Though I’m sure the effect of my expensive eyebrow wax is lost on him, I raise one of my perfectly arched brows. “If I am not mistaken, while you may consider basketball a way of life, the majority of the civilized world still considers it a sport, and therefore it falls under the not exciting category.”
Okay, let me just point out here that I say this in my most scathing tone. And let me further point out that the big, dumb toad isn’t affected in the least.
He keeps smiling, leans over, and says, “So, Red, what are you trying to imply here?”
I stiffen. “Do not call me that. My name is Allison.”
“Maybe to the civilized world, but to a barbarian like me, you’re Red.” He strokes my hair, letting the sleek auburn sheet spill over his hand, then lifts my fingers and kisses them…What were we talking about?
Argh! The physical thing is the biggest problem with Dave. Whenever he touches me, a shiver runs all the way from my toes to the roots of my hair. Seriously, my hair tingles. No other guy has ever made the roots of my hair tingle. And that makes Dave very dangerous. I either have to make him over or get rid of him.
Neither idea seems tenable at this point. I’ve been sitting here all night contemplating my dilemma, and I’ve still got nothing. I gaze disinterestedly at the game. The score is pretty close. Rockets: 81. Bulls: 79.
The ref blows a whistle and play begins again. Othella Harrington takes the ball down the court, skillfully evading the Rockets defense. I scoot to the edge of the bench and crane my neck to see over the Goliaths in front of us.
Harrington nears the basket and turns to throw the ball, just as Yao Ming from the Rockets rushes by and collides with Harrington, knocking him over. Yao takes possession of the ball.
“What the hell!” I jump up and watch as Yao Ming dribbles the ball down to the Rockets side of the court and slam dunks it. The Rockets side goes wild.
“Foul!” I yell. “That was a foul.”
Beside me, Dave yells, “I can’t believe this.”
In front of us Benny, the cute Bulls mascot, jumps up and down in frustration as play continues and the Rockets’ treachery goes unpunished. Then, to add insult to injury, Clutch, the Rockets mascot, bounds over to Benny the Bull and points and laughs.
The Rockets bear has to be the stupidest mascot of any NBA team. He’s gray with a big white muzzle and a goofy grin, and he’s dressed in a red-and-white jumper and big red shoes. Benny the Bull hangs his head.
“No, Benny,” I call. “Stand up to him.”
“Hey, Red—” Dave begins.
Clutch wags his big red butt in poor Benny’s face, and that’s it. I slip off one of my deadly heeled Anne Klein slides and throw it as hard as I can at Clutch, hitting him square in the ass. He jumps, turns, and the crowd around me goes wild. Really wild.
Before I know what’s happening, there’s a shower of cups, plastic forks, wads of paper, and a big foam finger raining down on Clutch.
The Bulls players part, and Clutch rushes forward screaming obscenities. Wow. I didn’t know mascots knew words like that. Then he bends down, reaching under the players’ bench, and lifts a huge red-and-white cooler. He holds it over his head, pretending he’s going to drench us. By now the scene is being broadcast on the arena’s big screens, and the Rockets fans are cheering Clutch on.
All of a sudden, Benny pantomimes coming to our rescue, but as he rushes forward he trips over one of his big hoofs, stumbles, and knocks into Clutch.
“Oh, shit,” Dave and I mumble as the contents of the cooler gush over our heads. People near us scramble to escape the wave of bright blue Gatorade surging from the cooler, and through the waterfall, I catch a glimpse of Dave and me on the big screens dominating the arena.
For a moment, the crowd hushes, then hell really breaks loose. Dave and I stand there stunned. My first thought is to reevaluate my aversion to the color orange. It might be worth the horror of wearing an orange prison jumpsuit for five to ten if it means the satisfaction of killing or seriously maiming Clutch.
One of the guys behind me, who’s dripping with blue Gatorade, jumps over the chair next to Dave and lunges for Clutch. The two go down in a tangle of gray fur and human limbs. Another spectator follows suit, then Benny the Bull joins the fray, butting Clutch with his horns.
The crowd surges forward. I cover my head to protect it from the onslaught, but Dave grabs my arm roughly and pulls me up. “Let’s go!”
I stumble after him, rushing against the tide of humans rising to join the melee. I cry out when my one remaining heel gets caught on the edge of a stair. Dave looks back at me, glowering. In one swift motion, he bends down, frees my foot, and slips the shoe off, then pulls me by the wrist.
Finally, we break out into the corridors of the United Center. The place is practically empty, as most people are watching the fight, so Dave and I take a moment to lean against the wall and catch our breaths.
I glance at my soggy clothes and wonder if Gatorade stains silk. Then I look at Dave. His spiky blond hair is flat against his face and rivulets of azure meander down his cheeks to drip onto his blue-splotched T-shirt.
“You look like that blue guy from Sesame Street. Grover,” I say. “But worse.” I smile at his dark look.
“Want to know how you look?” He swipes a drop from the tip of my nose.
“Don’t push it, Grover.”
“Fine.” He gestures to a TV screen broadcasting the fight, which is still going on. “Got anything to say for yourself?”
“What? Like that’s my fault?”
“You threw the first shoe.”
“Yeah, and if I’d been thinking straight I’d have thrown one of yours.” I watch Clutch crawl out from the heap of Bulls fans piled on top of him. He’s still got that annoying grin. “Anne Klein is way too good for that foul-mouthed bastard.”
Dave gapes at me, then laughs. Really laughs. He throws his head back and laughs until even I start smiling. Finally he manages, “Come on, Red. If you promise not to piss off any more mascots, I’ll buy you a new pair of shoes.”
Forty-five minutes later, we’re sticky but dry, and standing on the hardwood floors in the foyer of my town house. I’m wearing red flip-flops with fake flowers from Target and cradling a mammoth Diet Coke. Dave’s holding two White Castle bags. “One thing about you, Red. You’re never boring.”
I sip my Diet Coke. “I’d invite you up”—I gesture to the stairs leading to the living room, kitchen, and the…bedroom—“but you’ll get blue all over my white furniture.”
He raises a brow. “Like you got Gatorade all over my leather interior?”
I nod and sip my drink again. Dave watches me, his eyes focused on the way my lips wrap around the straw. I wish I didn’t like Dave so much. I wish every time I was with him, I didn’t want him to ever go home. “We might be able to work out a deal,” I say and set the cup on the floor.
“I’m listening.”
I step close to Dave and kiss his jaw. His arm comes around my waist as though it were a habit. “You can come up, but you have to take off your clothes first.”
His hand tightens, and when I lean in to give him a playful kiss on the lips, he pulls me harder against him. I back away before we end up on the floor in my foyer, my hands tugging his shirt out of his jeans and deftly flicking the button loose in the process.
Dave catches my wrist. “Not a good idea.”
I smile. “Scared?”
“Of you? Hell, yes. You eat guys like me for breakfast.”
I lift his hand to my lips and kiss his palm, then his wrist. “Not breakfast. But I haven’t had dinner tonight.”
I move close to him again, but this time he backs away. “I’m going to pass.”
I smile. “Right.”
“Look, Red, I really like you, but—”
I stare at him, unable to believe what I’m hearing. Is Dave rejecting me? After all I’ve been through tonight, this is really too much. I point a finger at him. “Don’t you dare fucking say it’s not you, it’s me. I already used that one on you.”
“That wasn’t what—”
“You know what?” I cut him off. I feel like I’m being drenched with ice-cold Gatorade all over again, and this time I’m fighting back. “It’s been fun, but you’re dripping blue on my expensive tile.”
“Fine. I’ll go. Here.” He presses one of the White Castle bags into my hands. “So you won’t be hungry.” And then he turns, opens my front door, and walks out.
For five minutes or more, I stand in the foyer, speechless. This has never happened to me. To my knowledge, this has never happened to any woman. Straight men simply do not walk out on willing women. Is Dave gay? Or could he just not—I gulp air and drop the White Castle bag—does he not want me?
I sit on the tiled floor—sticky, gross, and wearing Target flip-flops—and stare at the door Dave walked through. It’s not until patches of rose peek through the slim window shears on either side of the door that I crawl to my knees, then my feet, and trudge upstairs to shower.
A week later, I’ve moved on. Dave? Dave who? A Real World marathon and a healthy dose of Queer Eye have erased Dave from my thoughts completely.
Hello, my name is Allison, and I watch reality TV.
A lot.
Hey, it’s good entertainment. I know the shows aren’t as authentic as they claim, but nothing in the world is real anymore. It’s all about how we perceive reality.
In fact, that’s one of the main facets of my job—extensive manipulation of the public’s perception of reality. I work at Interiors by M, the most prestigious interior design firm in Chicago. I’m an associate designer, and I specialize in color and furnishings. Most of the junior designers’ worktables are on the spacious floor of the firm, but the three associate designers and Miranda, the M in Interiors by M, have our own offices with large glass windows. In my office, three walls look out onto the floor, and one overlooks the city. Interiors by M is on the seventeenth floor, so I have a good view of the skyscrapers.
“Come on, Google, hurry up,” I say, glancing at the screen, then back at the skyscrapers. I don’t always talk to my iMac, but I’ve got a meeting in five minutes, and I’ve been trying to get a definition for repoussé for the last fifteen. Miranda, my boss, refuses to pay for a high-speed Internet connection, so the search is taking forever.
I spin around, hit Play on the stereo, and grab the Sourcebook of Decorating, Designing, and Detailing from the bookshelf behind me. Swing music plays quietly, and I glance through the glass walls of my office into the reception area where Miranda is dictating something to Natalie, her assistant.
I check the computer again, then begin flipping through the book, trying first the index, then the table of contents for a listing. The music to “It Don’t Mean a Thing” comes on and I start to sing along. “It screws up your day if you ain’t got repoussé.”
The phone rings and I roll my eyes. Is there anyone who doesn’t want something from me this morning? It’s not even morning anymore, I realize as I check the computer’s progress and notice the clock in the screen’s right corner reads 1:13. I now have two minutes before the meeting.
I swivel my chair toward the phone, press the blinking light with a long, manicured nail, painted in OPI’s demure Taupe-less Showgirls, and purr, “Allison Holloway.”
“Allie, it’s me. You can turn off the Kathleen Turner for a sec.”
“Rory, I am Kathleen Turner.”
“Yeah, and I’m Princess Leia. Look, I need a favor, okay?”
I flip another page in the sourcebook. “I’m listening.” Out in the reception area, Miranda is welcoming several men—presumably our new clients—while Natalie rushes to make coffee and answer the phone. “But make it fast. I’m late for a meeting, and I still have no clue what repoussé is.”
“It’s metalwork that’s hammered on the back side.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know everything. Okay, so now that I’ve helped you, you help me. I need you to go out with me and Hunter and some of his friends tomorrow night. I can’t be the only girl again. I’ve already been exposed to dangerously high levels of testosterone.”
I finally find repoussé in the sourcebook and study the pictures. Rory was right, except, “You forgot to mention the embossing and outlining in repoussé, and the answer is no way.”
“Allison, please. Dave will be there…”
“Then definitely no. How many times do I have to tell you I hate his guts and hope he gets run over by a Mack truck?”
“I thought you wanted him to burn in hell for all eternity.”
“Hey, I can be flexible.”
“I’m not saying you’re not, but you keep saying you hate him and won’t tell me why. You guys only went out like half a dozen times. What happened?”
“What happened is that tomorrow night is a play-off game,” I say, completely avoiding her question, “and I don’t want to spend any of the ten or so short hours I escape Miranda the Maniac with a bunch of beer-swilling, basketball-chugging sports junkies.” Not to mention, Survivor All-Stars Meet the Big Brother All-Stars is on.
I glance into the reception area again, and Miranda gestures to me. I swivel so my back is to the glass window between us.
“And what are you going to do in those ten short hours?” Rory asks. “Sit home and paint your nails?”
“Maybe.” I look at my nails, but the manicure is already perfect. No maintenance required.
“Wouldn’t that time be better spent in a fun, relaxed atmosphere where you have at least a sixty-four percent chance of meeting an eligible guy?”
Have I mentioned that Rory is an accountant?
“Well, I might just have to take my little thirty—” Okay, sixty-four from a hundred is…wait, sixty-four plus six, minus—”
“Thirty-six percent,” Rory offers.
“Whatever. I’ll just have to take my chances.”
Rory sighs. “Okay, Allie, I didn’t want to have to do this, but if you insist on behaving like an astromech droid, you leave me no choice.”
Rory’s an accountant and a Star Wars nerd.
The intercom on my desk beeps. “Allison, can you come out here? I need you in the next meeting,” Miranda trills.
“Rory, I have to go.”
“Two words, droid brain: Cody Maxwell.”
I grit my teeth. “Rory, that was eleventh grade. You can’t guilt-trip me with that. The statute of limitations has run out.”
“Really? Because I thought a lie lived forever,” she says, somehow managing to sound like innocence incarnate.
“It wasn’t a lie.”
“Then what do you call impersonating your mother on the phone to convince Cody you were too sick to go to the Winter Dance with him?”
“I was sick.”
“Sick with lust for Kyle Reitmeier. That was the night you two—”
“Fine. I’ll go to the goddamn sports bar, but I won’t like it.”
“I understand.”
“Allison? Allison!” Miranda screams through on the intercom.
I ignore it. “And if that jerk says one word to me, I’m out of there.”
“I’ll give Dave fair warning.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Allison! I need you in the conference room now!”
Fricking maniac. “No need to warn Dave, Rory. Miranda’s screaming has now rendered me both insane and deaf. Hey, do you think that qualifies for workers’ comp?”
“Bye, Allison.”