The Dumb About Men Club

Chapter 1

November 22nd, 10:30 p.m., Savannah, GA

I sat hunched over, too wired and panicked to sleep but too upset to stay fully awake. I was drifting, day dreaming, wading in it; biting hard into a naked shoulder, running my hands and nails over a glistening back, somehow both new and familiar. I didn't know whose.

I heard a woman's voice, a million miles away, and ignored it. My eyes fluttered.

My Aunt Linda shook me.

"Dahlya, I'm going to search for something that resembles coffee, dear."

Arrrrgh.

"I don't know if the cafeteria is still open, but if it's not, I'm sure that they have one of those nasty vending machines somewhere in this hospital." Aunt Linda muttered as she walked away.

When my Aunt Linda left the waiting room she took the good air with her.

Here's the thing about me, I don't have many vices but the two that I do have are doozies. Many people keep emergency Oreos and Ho-ho's in their desk drawers and can eat an entire candy aisle when they're upset. For some there's solace at the bottom of a glass. Bars would close if people didn't need a few after a hard day. Could I just have one of these simple steam-release valves? Oh, no not me.

I have to buy shoes; lots and lots of shoes. Fun, unusual, designer high-healed pumps with little straps. My closet looks like I could give Imelda Marcos a run for her money. Which, okay, should be fine because there's no such thing as too many pairs of black sandals, right? Until I had my little breakdown and left California, I could even afford this habit.

But you can't go shoe shopping in a hospital, which brings me to my second worse-than-donuts vice: sex. Okay, maybe not sex per se, but romance, or fantasy, or mind-blinding need, which was what I was going for right now because my stress level had passed epic proportions an hour ago. If I didn't have my addictive ability to numb my brain with PG-13, okay sometimes R-rated, okay sometimes a little more than that, visions I probably would have passed out by now.

It's a good thing all the waiting room nurses were women because I was beginning to have a fit. I had been dreaming about a sweaty backside for God's sake. And being half out of it had been keeping me from screaming and going mad.

There weren't many people coming in and out of the waiting room but it was a true sign of how distressed I was when a homeless woman came in and I was about to hand her all the cash in my wallet for a pair of butt-ugly worn out Crocs.

I was fully awake now and it wasn't pretty. My breathing felt like a stabbing pain, laboring in and out with a shallow rasp.

Please don't die, please don't die, please don't die. I shook my head. Even though in my heart I knew it was useless, that it was like praying, sun, please don't rise tomorrow, I still repeated the prayer over and over again.

For the past five months part of me had been working hard every day to repress to repress the vision I had in June. Now it came flooding back to me in full force.

The sword fell off the wall swinging down, end over end. The blade got sharper and more deadly with each turn. Light caught gleaming edges creating quick bouncing beams as it barreled towards us. Rick and I were lying in bed, which might have been even stranger than the sword. Rick was asleep; I was awake. The whoosh of the heavy sword cutting through the air startled me. I screamed and instinctively tucked into a ball. It was enough for the downward slice to miss me by an inch. The weapon landed like an ax on Rick's neck, beheading him. Blood spurted all over, soaking my white nightgown, the white pillows, the top of my hair, my hands. Another gush erupted, splattering all over my face. The entire room filled with red.

Now, the hospital waiting room was a fist squeezing in on me. The phone message said he had cut off his toe. They wouldn't let us see him. I couldn't let myself think. I couldn't let my body feel. Part of me had turned to a small heavy stone. In my heart, I knew he was already dead.

Chapter 2

"Come on Dahl, Breathe." I whispered to myself. My throat was tightening in on itself dangerously. "Breathe," I whispered even more softly. "You can do it."

"One breath at a time." I heard the deepest, most resonant southern drawl tell me and all of sudden oxygen was rushing into me. I looked up at the longest, most perfect pair of thighs I've ever seen, beautifully sheathed in worn, washed, blue-until-it's-white denim.

I rubbed my face, using the palms of my hands against my eyelids, cheeks, forehead hoping that when I opened my eyes I'd be clear of any possible delusion. The thighs were still there.

"Now I'm hearing voices and seeing things," I muttered softly. I let my eyes trail upwards. A skinny waist. Broad chest covered by white T-shirt under a big, loose red flannel over shirt. I looked up at the face and did a double take. I blinked.

It was like my brain was one of those FBI facial recognition programs. I took the mental picture in my mind and aged it twenty years.

"You're not..."

"Uh-huh," he said and nodded.

They say before death your whole life flashes before your eyes. Well, choice moments sped before me, like clips from a movie on fast forward.

I've made the biggest mistake of my life, I thought.

My heart sprang up in joy and was shot down mid leap to flip and flounder like a fish suddenly smacked on the shore.

Soul mate.

I didn't believe in soul mates. But the word rammed into me like a freight train and stole my breath away. Jaws closed around me like a steel trap.

I closed my eyes for a second. I could see it now. I was soooo screwed.

I am going to forget about everything for a moment, I told myself.

"Your aunt called me to help. Want to tell me what happened?"

No.

I was having trouble holding it together. This better-than-any-shoe-sale man was a complication I definitely shouldn't have right now, yet desperately needed.

He had changed all right. I mean that body for one; and his face had aged. His hair, much shorter now, almost but not quite standing up short, but still black as midnight, or a raven's wing, or sin, except for this one huge silver streak from the front of his widow's peak to his right ear.

I just had to make sure I had the right guy. I mean, my neighbor, from the time I was a kid until he left for college and then who knows where, was skinny. This guy was well, in good shape for sure, and trim in the right places, but definitely not the lanky scrawny kid I remembered.

"Jason?"

"Ye-ah-esss," he said, drawing it out to three syllables and then smiling. "But no one's called me that in decades. Everyone calls me Jake."

"From your last name, Jacobson," I said. "Of course. I didn't know that you were back in Savannah."

"Just got back last night."

"I'm not sure why my aunt called you," I said gesturing around the hospital waiting room. "They're messing with us. It may even be too late to really..." My eyes started to fill and I looked up so the tears wouldn't spill over. "I'm not sure there's anything you can do."

"Hey," he said and did a deep knee bend. He leaned in toward me until our noses were only about four inches apart. "I'm a champion problem fixer. That's been my job description for the last twenty years. Your Aunt Linda is one of the smartest people I know. She wouldn't have called me if I couldn't help. Why don't you tell me what happened from the beginning and let's see what I can do."

"Rihh, kah, keh..." I couldn't get my voice to work. I took a deep breath. "Rick's phone message said that..." I almost broke down and had to start again. "It said that one of his guys ran over Rick's toe with a lawnmower. Now we can't see him. Something's not right."

Jake nodded.

"Rick..." I said, and my throat tightened even more. The waiting room traveled around me, spinning . "Rick Strickland," I said. My voice came out all scratchy.

"It's just..." my throat closed even more. I put my head between my knees.

I needed shoes. Lots and lots of shoes. Who was I kidding? I needed monkey gorilla sex and I needed it now. I needed so much hot Bonobo monkey sex I never had to think again. Rick is not dead, I told myself and began to choke. I was going to pass out.

"Why don't I try to find your Aunt Linda?" Jake said. "Is she here?"

I nodded and pointed to a sign that said cafeteria.

"Alright, I'll be back. Don't worry."

Please, oh please God, don't let my June premonition come true. Please God, not today. Please, let me be wrong, just this once, let me be wrong. I thought about Rick and panicked. I ground my nails into my palms. I couldn't take it. I was making myself sick with worry. I tried to will myself to be calm. We still didn't know what was going on. Jake was right, he had always been a champion fixer. Because I couldn't stand agonizing anymore, I focused on Jake instead.

One day when I was in first grade I got so frustrated trying to read I threw my book out the back door and into the backyard. I had given it a real heave and it ended up in the azalea bushes between my yard and Jake's. He dropped his basketball, picked up the book and brought it to me.

I sat on the back step, put my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands, and pouted.

"Stupid book. The words are all jumbled."

"Jumbled?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, you know, look." I grabbed the book. "The main boy's name is Brain. Who names their kid Brain? And he's always 'to trying' something."

"Let me see that book," Jake said.

I handed it over.

"I can fix this," he said and ran off to his house.

"Bring scissors to cut this rotten thing up," I called after him, "And glue to paste it back in better order."

Jake came back with a ruler, scissors, and piece of construction paper. He carefully made a bookmark and then cut a little slit in it that was about one word wide.

"Now read through the hole," he told me.

I moved it along the page seeing only one word at time through the reader. " 'Brian is trying to learn Spanish.' Hey, his name is Brian!' "

"Yep."

"You fixed the book!"

"Yep."

I thought about it. "If I use this thing," I shook the bookmark reading helper, "People are going to think I'm stupid."

Jake thought about it. "What if you told them I gave it to you? Then you could say you use it because your neighbor has a crush on you and you just use it to be nice."

"You'd let me do that? Tell people you had a crush on me?"

"Sure."

I shook myself out of my reverie. Jake was right, he was a fixer. I used that bookmark all year. Because of Jake I got tutors to help me until I could read as well as everybody else. If he hadn't figured out what to do or given me an excuse that let my pride do it I probably would have dropped out before I finished high school and never had a career in news. I kept making the hole in the bookmark a little larger. By the end of the next year I didn't need any more help.

I started to cry.

Crying was good, at least I was breathing. I wasn't spending two thousand dollars on Jimmy Choos and Steve Maddens. Better to be crying then to have to spend the rest of my life 24/7 in Gorilla Monkey Sex Addicts Anonymous.

I looked around the emergency room. Aunt Linda's friend Mark was resting with his eyes closed in the corner. A TV with a crack in the screen was showing the news with no volume on. I was so worried about Rick that my teeth started to chatter. I held my jaw for a moment.

I went back to thinking about these past months with Rick.

He'll be okay, I told myself.

Only I didn't believe it.

Chapter 3

June 30th, 11:15 a.m.

It was an unseasonably hot day in June. It was almost a week after my mini-breakdown caused me to quit my job in Los Angeles and run home to stay with Aunt Linda in Savannah. The humidity had turned the whole city into a muggy steamy soup of thick stale air.

When I heard the knock and Rick's voice saying 'hey, open up.' I didn't want to answer the door.

I wanted to avoid letting Rick in the house, but since my car was in the driveway there was no way I could pretend I wasn't home.

I opened the door.

"Oh my God, I'm blind," I said throwing my arm over my eyes to protect myself from the glare of Rick's shiny button-down shirt. It was two shades of neon green, one shade of forest green, with thin silver reflective wavy ribbon-like designs all over it. "Why didn't you tell me you were dressed like that? I never would have let you in."

"You like it? It's our new uniform shirts; I got them for all my guys."

"They're atrocious."

"I know! Isn't that just fabulous? They're so bad, they're good. Who could forget a lawn guy in a shirt like this?" Rick asked. "And check this out." Rick reached into his front pocket and pulled out a pair of huge, very hip sunglasses with a tiny bit of green and silver on the tinted glass. He turned left so I could see the big writing on the wide plastic temple. On the left side I read the words, 'Strickland Lawn Service'. Rick slowly turned right so I could see the writing on the other side of the sunglasses 'Shades, to protect you from the shirts.'

I covered my face. Then, despite trying not to, I began to chuckle.

"It's too much, right? Do you love it?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Classy."

"I got the glasses and shirts at cost from Garrett and Morrison in exchange for my," he put his fingers up to make quotation marks, "celebrity", he paused, "appearance in their commercial. Sweet, no?"

"And your guys have been wearing these?"

"Mmmn, hmm. And look," Rick pulled a tiny bottle out of his pocket. "Sunscreen."

I took the bottle from him. It had a clip so you could put it on your key chain. The label read, 'So you can spend happy time in your lawn. (And to protect you from the glare from the shirts.)'

"Clever," I said. "I like it."

"They don't get grass stains on them like the old polo shirts."

"And if they did, who would know?" I said.

"They unbutton easily if I want to look sexy in front of a hot customer," Rick said opening another two buttons past the two that were already open. "And I can use the sunglasses against the reflection of the silver in the shirt to check my hair," Rick said holding the glasses at chest level and catching glimmers of sunlight, reflecting them off the shirt, and staring at his own reflection and preening. "Yup, I'm good, the hair's perfect."

"Well, at least that hasn't changed," I said. "Can I get you something to drink?"

He put the sunglasses down and looked at me with a seriousness that penetrated down to my soul. "Yeah, you."

Chapter 4

November 22nd, 10:37 p.m.

The whoosh sound of the automatic doors made me look up. A goddess strutted in through the doors and stopped like a queen deciding whether or not the country was worth taking over.

I blinked rapidly when I saw Shalimar. I'm imagining it. Maybe I'm hallucinating. I wasn't.

In my mind, I jumped up to greet her. In actuality, I rose a quarter of an inch and settled back down.

I could see that she had transformed herself from beyond normal beautiful to drop-dead, jaw-dropping stunning. She sparkled from head to toe.

She strode in and there was more light to see by.

You've got to hand it to her; the girl knows how to make an entrance.

Shalimar was wearing a golden-beige trench coat cinched tightly at the waist with a wide bronze belt, gold-colored slacks, and matching gold high-heeled sandals. Her straightened hair hung around her face and shoulders, framing her high cheekbones perfectly. Shalimar was even more gorgeous and glamorous than the last time I had seen her which was at my wedding two months ago and she had looked great then.

I shook my head. How the hell had she known? Then I realized that, of course, she hadn't known. She lived in Atlanta. She would have had to leave four hours ago to drive here. I shook my head again.

"Perfume," I said.

"God, you haven't called me Perfume since we were in high school. Come here, Girl Friend. This emergency room is practically empty, but they are still going to keep you waiting 'till forever if it isn't a real emergency. Whadya' do? Bump your knee or something? Stomach flu?"

She dropped a small leather overnight bag on the floor, reached down, grabbed me by the shoulders, and hauled me up into a great big bear hug.

"I'm glad to see you too, Perfume. I'm always glad to see you, but what brought you here from Atlanta?"

"Not Atlanta." Shalimar shook her head. She leaned back and opened her coat showing a form-fitting gold blouse with real crystals sewn into it, and a diamond necklace that was worth more than most people earned in a decade. "I was in New York..."

"Oh, no."

Shalimar's husband had been working on a set design that was supposed to debut on Broadway. Was it this the week?

"Yes."

"Urgh," I made a soft noise in the back of my throat and winced slightly.

"And Sam and I were talking to Mick Jagger..."

"Oh, no!" Sam was a full-time set designer but one of his real loves was music. He was also a professional bass player and had worshipped the Stones since he was in high school.

"Yes!" Shalimar took a step back and fanned herself with the panels of her open coat and then pretended to hold a drink in her right hand. "All of a sudden I turned to Sam and said, 'Ut-oh, Dahlya's feeling awful, or will be.'" She mimicked handing her drink to someone next to her.

" 'Mr. Jagger,' I said to him, 'it's been so nice meeting you. I have this very strange, strong feeling that one of my best friends is going to be in the emergency room of our local hospital, so I have to go. But please, please stay and talk with Sam as I think you both have a lot in common besides a dedication to fabulous rock and roll and amazing lips.' "

Shalimar glared at me. "So tell me you didn't just bump your knee!"

"Not my knee," I said.

"Elbow?" she asked.

"No."

"Private parts?"

I shook my head.

"Well, if your strain on my brain brought me down here for nothing you're going to owe me one hell of a margarita."

Shalimar took off her coat completely and set it down, revealing a body that should be illegal to keep murders from envy from happening. I blinked convulsively, shocked into a fully alert state by the bright light bouncing off her upper chest. She was wearing the largest collection of diamonds I'd ever seen. They flashed brilliantly.

"Holy crap!" I said. "I was going to say something about how you have no idea how glad I am to see you and I am so sorry if I bummed on Sam's day. I was going to say that but I think you fried my speech ability cells." I had never seen anything like the diamonds she was wearing and I stared straight at her necklace as I continued.

"The hospital is giving us trouble here. Maybe if I ransom you all our problems might be solved. Dang!" When I stopped ogling the multi-strand necklace for a second I noticed the two matching diamond bracelets and chandelier earrings.

Shalimar put her hand under the necklace, lifting it slightly. She motioned me closer so I could feel the weight of it. Our fingers touched and a spark of magic flared, causing my mind's fear and anxiety to run all over her like frightened rabbits spooked out of a bush by a hurricane.

In that one second's contact all my feelings, the denial, the hope, and overwhelming worry, skittered up onto her like roaches. The necklace was incredibly heavy. I pulled my hand away as if the diamonds were on fire.

"You wore those just to distract me, right?" I said.

"Sista. What are friends for?" Shalimar said. "I'm here for moral support. You're S.O.L. on the ransoming factor though, they're on loan."

"I should hope so. That necklace could help balance the national debt."

"Wait! I just kidnapped, I mean jewelry-napped, 18 million dollars worth of diamonds! I'm not supposed to take them out of the state! Oh my God, I'm a felon. Hand me your phone, the charge on mine died in the cab."